While the schools have been on holiday this past week, the principles and head teachers of the SDA schools across the Vanuatu archipelago have been gathered at Aore for teachers’ training. Several presenters from the Union education office in Fiji and the Division Office in Australia held the sessions. So, even though the students were gone, the church was quite full when we arrived for services, damp and rather bedraggled.
After church we meet several expats including Naomi Turnbull. She and her husband, Dr. Mark, have a medical outpost on one of the smaller northern islands of Vanuatu. You may remember I mentioned them prior to our leaving the USA (their website is http://www.4hishope.com/ ). They found that there was a need for a school in the area, so stepped out in faith and started one. They have 45 students and 4 teachers. Naomi is functioning as the principal. Since this is not where here personal education lies, she is out there getting all the assistance she can get including the seminar just completed on Aore. We had recognized their little airplane out at the airport when we landed on Santo earlier in the week. People we had met in Vila who had been presenting at the seminar were on their way flying out when we were arriving, and they told us that she was out at the Aore school when our paths crossed in the terminal.
Naomi and I had a great visit, ate together at lunch and just yakked.
I love retirees. We met an Australian couple, well that is not totally correct, they are native New Zealanders (better known as Kiwis) but have claimed “Aus” as home all their adult life. Donald and Isabelle Paget worked in the Solomons and Vanuatu for years. He is a builder and mechanic, she is a nurse educator and midwife… two very readily needed skills. They have spent their retirement with 3-6 months out in the islands, then back to Aus to raise funds and rest up. They have a wealth of stories and they just spill over with them. Both love to “story” (the local term that roughly equates to visiting).
When Karl told them that he had been on Tanna last week erecting a One Day Church at the Kwataparen School, they told us they had been a part of the group who did the original buildings for the Kwataparen school decades ago. (See 27-May post Re: Kwataparen)
Stories:
The first SDA school in Tanna was in Port Resolution. There was some opposition that continued to foment until the church members learned that a group had decided to tear down the school and kill the teachers and the children. The students were determined that God would protect them while they learned and continued to attend school. One day, the pastor heard that the talk had turned to action and the school was surrounded by a big group of angry men planning to carry out their threats of vandalism and murder. The pastor quickly went to the school and sure enough, it was surrounded. He prayed and begged God to make the men sleepy and blind their eyes. Then, with trust in God’s providence, he quietly eased into the school. He told all the students to not make a sound, but follow him out of the building. Without a peep, the entire school, students and teachers, followed the pastor on soft footsteps past the men that surrounded the school who appeared to be groggy and unaware of anyone passing. After all the students were safely home, the men surrounding the school suddenly became aware that the school appeared deserted. Upon investigation, they found not a person in sight. They destroyed the school, but all the people had escaped and were safe. It was after this that they moved the school farther west around the south end of the island and set up the school at the present day site of the Kwataparen School.
However, opposition did not completely disappear. Donald told us that while they were building, the water would stop flowing in the pipes they had bringing it from an excellent up land source. He would go up and clear out what ever vegetation had been used to stuff the pipe and stop the flow. Some days, he would go up there 2 and 3 times.
In constructing the original buildings, a volunteer group had come in from New Zealand, I believe. Upon reassurance that all was ready, the group came, only to find the ground not cleared and only a small amount of cement block. A little discouraged, they and the local church members set their backs to clearing the land. More block trickled in bit by bit… the crew laid the block as quickly as it was handmade with wood forms, still green and uncured. Next there came word of a cyclone skirting their area. They debated what to do, but decided with the local members that they would not flee, but pray and stay with the work. Everyday for 5 days the heavy rains came across the land, but when it reached the school site, it split, raining on either side and then beyond, but the building site stayed dry and the winds low.
Isabelle told of a Fijian physician/surgeon that came to work at the hospital when they were working on Santo. This man was not only dedicated to his profession, preforming brilliant surgery, keeping up with things through professional journals, etc.,but he was also a devout spiritual man.
One day, they came into the offices of the small hospital. Though it was darkened, they could hear the doctor’s voice. They called out, but got no answering call back. Still they heard his voice. Upon investigation, they found the doctor on his knees on the floor, his head resting on his Gray’s Anatomy, pleading aloud with God for wisdom in a diagnosis and surgical procedure he had no experience with or had ever read about. Isabelle said that they soon found that this was not an isolated case. This was how he confronted the unknown that would crop up in his practice of island medicine in a primitive setting.
The expatriate physicians that came to the city to practice medicine for the governmental agencies of France and England, who jointly governed New Hebrides in those days, got pretty lazy when they reached the islands. They spent a lot of time boozing and taking it easy; they didn’t subscribe, nor keep up with any of the medical journals. Sooner or later, they would get into a difficult situation and would come looking for the Fijian physician at the little SDA hospital all in a panic and a dither. When someone would tell him that one of these guys was in an emergency situation and was desperately looking for him, he would smile and say… “oh, they just have come to get caught up on something they need to read in one of my journals.”
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