Mid November we celebrated the launch of our plan to promote health education within the school. The first step was for the school to build an aid post. This building is a short walk from the school and is open Monday, Wednesday and Friday during school hours. It has two rooms inside but is quite small. The first room is Andrea's desk and basic supplies for first aid. The second room has a bed as well as shelves for the rest of her supplies.
The aid post worker was trained in first aid and the basics related to malaria, infections, and is able to give out medication. Her name is Andrea and she is quickly becoming one of my good friends! Here she is receiving a gift of banana lap-lap to thank her for working at the aid post. She is in the brown island dress.
She is going to Pentecost island for 3 months of training and when she gets back we are going to make plans to climb to the volcano's crater on our island!
The ceremony to officially open the post was lots of fun!
One of the teachers (Mr. Vira) and some of the students performed a skit to demonstrate how in the past the villagers were not always receptive to visitors coming to their islands. The boys dressed in leaves and pretended to block the invited guests as they arrived by holding up pretend bows and arrows.
Here they are also banging a beat on the tamtams. These are hollowed out tree trunks and are used to form the beat for dancing as well as to announce many other things such as births.
These are the salu salu's that were made from fresh flowers to give to the invited guests. This is the National Flower of Vanuatu and many of you may have seen it on stamps that come when I send letters. I call it "friendship honey" because that is how it sounds but the name is spelled something like "Fragipane." It smells BEAUTIFUL!! The come in white and pink.
With every ceremony that I have seen so far in West Ambae there are generally the same order of events. The invited guests arrive (probably about an hour or two late...this country takes fashionably late to a new level!). They are given salu salus and sometimes fresh coconut water to drink.
Here the chief of Tavala is giving a fresh coconut to the doctor that works at the only hospital on West Ambae.
The ceremony is opened with a prayer.
There is always an MC. Then there are multiple speeches followed by presentation of gifts. Here is my counterpart Chris who I will be working with at the school. He was the MC and loves the megaphone!
Now the plan is to encourage members of the community to use the aid post. There is a very small fee to get a sore cleaned and bandaged. I think it is either 50 or 100 vatu (aka 5o cents or a dollar American). Also, the school will be doing more health education and I hope to be a part of that as well. First goal...get them to wash their hands!!!
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