School Time: Water Tanks, Painting, and, of course, a Celebration: Part V

The navy drew up different projects for each of the primary schools they worked on. They rebuilt and repainted GPS Pangai and GPS Faleloa, and worked on the toilets at some of the schools. At GPS Koulo, they gave us water tanks! Up until now, we’d been having a serious water-supply issue. All of the tanks at the school were broken, and there was no where for the kids to get water to drink or wash in or to flush the toilets when the piped water supply was out, which is fairly often. My sema vai (cement water tank) had been broken as well, but when a few members of the navy came in April to do reconnaissance and found out “an American citizen is living without water” they fixed it then, for which I am still profoundly grateful.

The soldiers came to my school armed with 3 brand new giant green plastic tanks, and spent the day digging holes and laying a cement block foundation for the tanks, setting them up, and reinstalling gutters on the school and the houses in the compound, including mine. The gutters are important because the rain goes off the roof into the gutters which run through pipes into the water tank. They also played a bit with the kids, who followed them around standing inches away, if that, and were completely star stuck. (For the next month every boy in my school played ‘American soldier’ at every opportunity: before school, during recess, after school, during school, all running around armed with sticks, making machine gun noises, and shouting out any English words they knew, primarily “Dead!” and “Winner!”.)

The next day I ran into one of the officers in town, and he told me there was some extra paint from painting the other schools and he told me they would be happy to come and paint GPS Koulo provided people from the village came to help. I called my principal and the town officer, and the next morning a few soldiers showed up with a huge supply of paint, brushes, and rollers and, with the help of most of the fathers of students at the school, painted our sad little school a very bright white with red trim, to match the uniforms of the students. While all the fathers worked, the mothers set to preparing a huge lunch for the soldiers (and the Tongan men, who ate afterwards and were a bit peeved to discover they couldn’t nap after eating, but had to get back to work). I walked around with my camera and the men and students alike would literally sprint across the school yard in order to pose with the soldiers or with the paint supplies. When they were finished, the school looked wonderful, just in time for the following day’s thank you ceremony!

Phil came that same day and helped us set up a schedule for Koulo and Holopeka’s thank you celebration for the navy. With his help we convinced my teachers that I shouldn’t dance again as one of the entertainment items, that yes, all the students should bring gifts, and no, we shouldn’t use this as an opportunity to tell them how poor Tongans are and list all the problems that we have that the navy should stay and fix. (Apparently it’s very Tongan to keep asking for more once you get something, and at other school’s teachers had actually made speeches not thanking the naval officers for coming but requesting more money/wok/materials and saying they hadn’t done enough…sometimes different cultures just clash on certain issues, and I wanted to make sure this didn’t happen in Koulo.) It wasn’t easy, but in the end, we thought we’d made our point. Phil told us what other schools had done, and we stuck to their schedule: opening speeches, entertainment numbers by the kids, thank you speeches, gift presentation, etc. My teachers obviously wanted me to emcee the event and make all the speeches, but with Phil’s help we convinced them that the soldiers would rather hear from the Tongans themselves, since that is who they came to help.

In the end Le’o, my neighbor and class 6 teacher, was elected to be the emcee and give the thank you speech and Viliami, the class 5 teacher, would give the welcome speech. My principal had to be forced to receive the donations from the navy and just say thank you. Le’o and Viliami asked if I would write the speeches for them, and I told them I would not, but that I would help them if they wanted to come to my house that night. In true Tongan fashion, when they showed up, they asked where the speech that I had written for them was, and were astounded to find that I actually didn’t write it for them. (This happens all the time with a few high school girls and girls taking classes at the USP (University of the South Pacific) branch in Pangai I help with English assignment.) So, we sat down and together wrote the speeches. I did have to do a bit of editing, namely convincing them to just say thank you and not ask for more, but all in all, they did a wonderful job and came up with some very kind things to say.

The next day, preparations started around 5 am. Parents arrived and mowed the grass and set up tents and benches on the school yard. I was barricaded in my kitchen having been asked to make 15 cakes the night before (I settled on carrot cake, banana bread/cake, and ‘chocolate’ cake) and pizzas so that the soldiers could have some American food at the lunch, which we set up buffet style under the awning outside one of the school room buildings.

The soldiers arrived around 10 o’clock, and the program started. The whole school performed a dance, and some of the girls did a special tauo’lunga dance, and everyone looked adorable in their costumes. Le’o and Viliami, despite being nervous to speak in English gave wonderful speeches (I was so proud!) and my principal, Manusiu, had to be pulled out from the crowd to accept the navy’s gifts of soccer balls, mini Frisbees, and school supplies. The families also really outdid themselves with gifts for the soldiers, and brought all sorts of Tongan handicrafts. The naval brass band was there, and between each item in the program they played songs, which all the kids ran up and danced to. Some of the older women, who love to clown and get a laugh, were being particularly bold and kept trying to escort embarrassed soldiers away so they could flirt with them and kept pulling the commanding officer up to dance. The soldiers were great sports about all of it, and the kids had a blast.

Right before we were going to eat the lunch, we heard a loud noise from the sky, and the kids went crazy. The navy had a few helicopters on board the ship and at each school visit they landed the helicopter for the kids. Since my school is right next to the airport and our yard is pretty small, they landed the helicopter right off of the runways, and we walked the kids around on the main road, while their parents jumped fences and climbed through bushes to get there faster. The helicopter crew was a riot, just what you’d expect helicopter pilots to be, and everyone loved them. They let all the kids climb into the cockpit and sit in the pilot’s seat, and each one of them wanted their picture taken (I think I have photos of about half the school sitting in the helicopter). Once the students had all been though the parents climbed in, and they seemed even more excited than their children. They’ve all apparently seen ‘Top Gun’ (which I still haven’t) and the men all wanted to exact flying maneuvers and war scenes. A surprising number had the same idea to yell into the radio “Mayday!” while everyone else looked on and laughed.

After everyone had a turn, we went back to the school yard where we ate and then wrapped up the ceremony with songs from the DJ and the brass band and lots of dancing. It was a wonderfully fun day, and I haven’t seen the students so excited before or since. I just hope the boys will lay off the soldier game; I’m a little tired of being ambushed every time I go out of the back of my house to get water.