THE PRINCESS AND THE PIG

The Princess 

 Dick, Verna,  the Tongan lady who manages our Self-Reliance Center, and I had lunch with the Princess today.   Our manager grew up with her since they were 5, and they are close friends.  When they are in private, they act like normal friends and laugh and have fun, but in public our manager has to walk behind the Princess, wear special clothing and follow all of the rules for being around royalty.  The Princess  may not look like a storybook princess but she was very charming and fun to be around and made us feel comfortable having lunch with her at a local sushi bar.  Lucky for Dick, he had just bought his tupenu (skirt), but still hasn’t gotten a tavala (mat) and rope to go around his waist,  and I still need to
find a kia kia for my waist to be more appropriate for
dress up.

Children delivering funeral gifts.  The lady receiving the gifts are dressed in black with a woven mat and grass skirt.

They say the little pigs are the most tender.  Who needs a fancy grill with an electric spit?

We are crazy busy here, worked an 11 hour day today.  Seems to be common now days.  We’ve been training for a couple of days this week by skype with the New Zealand area office for new PEF  (Perpetual Education Fund) software.  It’s very complicated and not very intuitive.  They gave us 67 pages of instructions with it.  In the meantime, we’re getting backed up with people wanting help to learn about and apply for PEF, scholarships, jobs, self-employment workshops and English proficiency tests.  Also BYU-Hawaii  has their I-WORK program to help Pacific Islanders work their way through school by working at the Polynesian Cultural Center.  We started some new Self-Employment workshops this week- one on Wed. and one Thurs.  Most people come thinking we’re going to hand out $, and find out they are going to learn about creating a viable business and how to run it.  In one of our presentations we have great video clips of a lady from Ghana carrying a sewing machine around on her head to get business, and a clip of a lady who couldn't sell her peanuts, so she started making paste of it and selling it in bags, jars and buckets, and found out people bought far more when it was prepared like peanut butter.

There are a lot of touching stories we hear from many of the people who come for help.  A Tongan girl I worked with this evening just got released from her mission in Tonga and wants to be accepted  to  the I- WORK /Hawaii program.  Her father quit farming 7 years ago and moved to New Zealand to try to earn more money for the family.  She hasn’t seen him in 6 years.  After he had been there a year, her Mom went to NZ and spent a year with him, and the girl took care of her 6 younger brothers and sisters while she was 17 and going to school.  The dad occasionally sends some money from doing carpentry and living in NZ illegally.  She had to get a bishop’s letter signed to verify her need for I-work at BYU-H, and it had to be emailed today, so I helped her write a letter, drove her to the bishop’s house for his signature, 50 minutes around the lagoon to the far corner of the island after she had spent 3 hours coming into the office by bus to use a computer for the letter.  Very typical, most people don’t  drive or have cars, and phones are not dependable.  Their numbers are changing constantly.  It’s very difficult contacting people.  Addresses are also non- existent.  Their village name is their address.  The buses don’t seem to be on any kind of schedule.  You just wait, sometimes for hours, until one shows up.  People own them individually (buy a bus and just start driving it where and when you want).  On the way to the girl’s house, we saw a procession of school children and adults (pictured) going to a house where they were mourning someone’s death.  The children had made several items to deliver as gifts to those who mourn.  There were flowers, food, hand woven mats (some can take months to weave and cost hundreds of dollars at the markets) along with quilts and other gifts.  Then, when we arrived at the Tongan girl’s house, 3 of her brothers were in the front yard cooking a pig over a fire made by burning coconut shells, which is in another of the photos.  I don’t know how long he had to stand there and turn the pig, probably for hours.  There is always something new here to experience.  We love helping these good and appreciative people.  The work is rewarding.