Easter in Lukoj

April 9,2009

Sorrry for the delay in posts. . . my computer had to be sent back stateside to get fix so I couldn't send any clip drives to my mom to upload! It's back now, so lots of catching up to do.

Easter in Lukojtoday! The Easter Bunny can even find the Marshall Islands apparently…a little early though! Hah He came to Lukoj Elementary School last night and hid bunches and bunches of Easter eggs all around and inside the school. It was a blast!

Last night Lona and I spent the night packing Easter eggs with jelly beans and chocolate in anticipation of Lukoj’s first ever Easter egg hunt! The Marshallese are big into the Church aspect of the holiday, however, they have never really ventured into the bunny aspect…so I figured I would bring a little of the fun to the islands this year. After preparing the eggs, in fear of animals and kids finding them early we waited until just after dawn and went down to the school to hide them. From the bushes, to the garden to the roof and the cracks in the walls, we hid them everywhere. Inside and outside. Up and down. Lona and I even coiled one up into the buns in our hair and had those packed extra full with fun treats! We hid over 150.

When the kids began showing up to school we had them sit outside in a line in front of the garden. They weren’t allowed to move and they had do sit looking at a partner practicing their song we were singing at our final assembly. (an attempt to keep them distracted, didn’t exactly work.) By around 9:00 most of the students and shown up and we were ready to start. Before we would let them start though they had to get the teachers approval by singing an Easter song. It took a couple of tries to get everyone singing, but they got the hang of it eventually. After the song we divided the kids up into older classes and younger classes and gave them restricted areas; we wanted it to be fun for the little ones too. Grades 4 and below were inside the school only and grades 5 and above were outside only. Kinder got their school house in addition to inside the school with everyone else too. Everyone lined up and if you looked at the starting positions from afar you may be tricked into thinking you were watching the start of a 100 meter dash. It was hysterical. Counting down from three, at one the entire L.E.S school grounds turned into a zoo. Monkeys climbing, arms flailing, dashing around scooping up every colorful object they laid their eyes on. If an egg broke and the contents spilled onto the ground, they scooped up what they could on the fly by, threw it into their mouth and were on to their next target in an instant. It was like no Easter hunt I had ever witnessed; it was the best Easter hunt I had ever witnessed as well.


April 19, 2009

3 more weeks of school. That sounds insane. I just got back from taking our final break of the year and am now preparing to embark on the home stretch of this oddly incredible year.

Last week I went to Majuro for the week, and that was a nice break from Island life. I went in of Friday, spent the weekend out on Enneko with a bunch of the Majuro crew, and enjoyed a very relaxing and fun couple days. After Enneko I stayed in Majuro for a few days and actually toyed with the idea of staying in the RMI and working for another year. No worries though, I did let that thought go. I talked with the man who is in charge of the Music and Arts Society here in the Marshalls and was considering staying and doing field work for him as well as developing a website for the project he is currently working on. Looking at the pros and cons it would be great experience and was not an entirely bad option, however, when I really put some thought into it I decided I am quite ready to come home. So that is what I am doing.

After my nice break I headed back to Lukoj on Friday only to be quite embarrassed by our school. The plan before leaving for break was to have all the teachers back in Lukoj no later than Friday morning, because the Ministry of Education was planning a visit to assess the schools projects and progress. Before leaving I had made several attempts to conduct community meetings and prepare the parents – have a project for them to be working on when the MOE came to evaluate their work – however no one ever showed up to the meetings. Really, there was nothing more I could have done.

Anyway, I warned the teachers… “Have lesson plans ready…and we need to have summaries of the meetings we have held. Fancy, make sure you know where those are and bring them.” So all of the teachers go to Majuro on Friday and we are to return before the following Friday. Do you think this happens? Of course not. Not one teacher came back from Majuro. Tari was incredibly wasted at the dock and laughed at the secretary of Educations face when asked if he was coming back…Fancy was no where to be found…Lona said she didn’t have money…and Movie said she was sick. So I rode the boat over with the 4 MOE employees and we showed up to an empty school. The parents were told to prepare the school, clean it and bring refreshments for the workers; but there was not even a single kid at the school when we showed up. Imagine the embarrassment I felt then. I attempted an apology, but really what is that going to do? After thinking about it though, part of me was a little glad that this happened. Unfortunate but possibly true, maybe this is what it will take to get MOE’s attention and really make them understand that Lukoj has a few problems in way of the school. I think that that is what it actually did too…so in a strange sense I was a little bit glad that it happened.

After they finished taking photographs of the dilapidated school we dropped my things off and headed to Arno…where the town and teachers were prepared. My favorite part of the day though was when we were getting ready to leave Lukoj and go to Arno. As we were driving away our PTA chairman was walking down the road and noticed that I was on the truck accompanied by MOE employees. He stops the truck and proceeds to enquire what we are doing. “Well, we were supposed to have our meeting today, but there was no one at the school.” “What meeting?” he asked, as if I hadn’t told him about it 15 times last week. “The meeting I told you about a number of times last week and tried or organize a meeting about but no one showed up 3 times. That meeting.” “Oh…uh….well…hold on let me just go tell some people, they can make some coconuts and we can go to the school.” “That’s ok, maybe another time. We are done in Lukoj for the day. Thanks though.”

I think he may have been a little embarrassed, but frankly I didn’t care. Although that may have been rude of me, it was rude of the town to simply disregard all of the times I called a meeting. It didn’t really make me mad at this point, in fact, it almost made me a bit relieved.

In Arno we conducted workshops with the parents and teachers and talked about different ways the community can get involved with the school. There is such a large emphasis of church involvement that the schools tend to be forgotten about…and that is what the MOE is currently trying to change; they want to bring more awareness to education on the outer islands.