A Big Moment

To help explain (and justify) our lack of posting, we wanted to share with you a big moment we recently had in our service here in Vava'u. While our village does an amazing job of celebrating the old customs of Tonga, it also wants to be present in the 21st century so the children have as many opportunities as possible with their lives. Throughout our service, they have constantly reinforced this vision.

To make this vision a reality, we scoured our Tongan contacts and finally got put in touch with a Tongan businessman who lives in Auckland, New Zealand by the name of Mosese Uele. For several months we worked with Mosese, telling him all about our amazing students and village. Mosese grew up in Tonga but used his skills in English and computers to start his own import/export business in Auckland. We all agreed that these are the types of skills the village must have if they are going to be able to have these same type of opportunities. In the end, Mosese told us he would like to visit our village and donate four computers to our school. He said he would only do this if we agreed to train the Tongans on how to use, maintain and maximize these computers.

On Wednesday, after a lot of stressful planning, Mosese came to our village with five computers. The people were so touched by this generosity they planned a massive town celebration in which they roasted pigs, setup a feast and a performance to honor the gift. It was an amazing day in which there were LOTS of prayers, speeches and thanksgivings. Ryan even got up and gave a speech in Tongan!

After all is said and done, now the hard part begins! We are working on re-wiring the Tessa library to accommodate the computers, scouring the world for cheap English Language Learning and math computer programs, and training our village on how to maximize these wonderful gifts. For us, the most important thing about this entire experience has been that it was a Tongan man who was giving back to a Tongan village, which made the day about Tongans empowering Tongans through education versus the white-man just giving things to a needy community.

Our next project with Mosese (oh we are not close to done with him) is setting up a second computer lab for the community which will be for general use. Mosese was so touched by the reception he received, the eagerness of our community and the plans we have made that he has asked us to facilitate another gift of computers at a later time. Already we have had several young men in the village volunteer to work with us and take on the task of creating a community computer lab. Our goal is that within one year, both of these projects will be completely run, maintained and administered by the people of our village, which is the only true way to create sustainable change in this community.

Here are some pictures from this wonderful day, enjoy!

 

 The new computer lab in the Tessa Library:

    

          

The community enjoying the feast:

     

 

      

Here is Mosese joining in the traditional Tongan feast dancing. A little rain never stops the Tongans!

 

   

   

 

 

I was so proud of how great Ryan was with our community. At first, the men and women were a little hesitant to go into the library and check the computers out. But, Ryan was so encouraging and tried to have everyone come see "their" new computers that by the end of the day, even the women came in to have their picture taken! This is a huge deal because the women were SO shy and uncertain about going into the library where all day only the important village men had been. I was so happy to walk into the library and see two really involved moms chatting with Ryan and asking to be shown some things on the new computers! YEAH!!!

 

P.S. There are many pictures of me on this blog because I let kids loose with our camera, which Ryan is firmly against. So, when it came time for me to take pictures of him giving his speech and leading the big reveal of the computers, I realized the camera was in a 5th grader's hands at the other end of the feast table and he was taking pictures of roast pig. Oops!