| March 30, 2003
Dear All,
Well, the past couple of days have been interesting.
On Friday, we got news that one of Mom’s preschoolers died.
She was the daughter of one of the workers here at the school.
Her name was Leisei and she was 4. No one knows what she died
of. She was pretty sickly her whole life. Her stomach was all
like distended and stuff. Doctors in New Zealand are trying to
find out what she died of.
So then on Saturday, we all went down to Tacara (the village
down the road) with the choir to sing at the funeral. Emily and
I went with the choir actually. Mom and Dad went with our neighbor,
Robert, a Scot-Canadian. We sat through a service that wasn’t
too long, but the songs were in the North Efate language and so
almost none of the Onesua students or staff could sing along.
After the service we went to the burial site and sang two more
songs. This is all standing in the sweltering sun and trying to
crowd under all the umbrellas but still be in our vocal sections.
When we started singing I was, but then we all moved and so then
I was in a section that was an alto-tenor mixed group and so nobody
was singing my part, but oh well. After that, we went down to
the beach where the Onesua boys got the best seats (in the trees)
and all the girls had to sit on the dirty sand. We were all in
our white uniforms.
Probably the best part of the whole day was walking to and from
Tacara. We all walked through the warm (but not too warm), misty,
still jungle in single file and an awed silence. It was like right
out of a movie. Walking between the huge trees, with the vines
growing off their branches, seeing the lorikeets flash by in a
blur of color, seeing the lizards dart across the damp leaves
on the floor of the jungle; it was remarkable. Then we got back
on the road and died of heat stroke. But it was fun while it lasted.
Today, the church service was “Speech Day.” It was
two hours and about four minutes long. It only happens once a
year, thank goodness. We were crammed in there like sardines and
the heat was just stifling. Emily and I were sitting with the
choir, so we were with kids to talk with towards the end—which
I did. I don’t know if Em did or not. She was sitting three
rows behind me in the alto section. The whole church service was
basically a really big deal because the old principal was being
farewelled. Pastor Tom (the choir director) wrote a farewell song
that the choir sang at the special luncheon for the last principal.
I’m having a great time with my classes here. I’m
getting a lot of friends and now I’m talking in both English
and Bislama to them. It’s actually pretty fun. I think I’ve
got my classes figured out for Year 9, but I’m not quite
sure, so I’ll tell my academic plans to you in my next letter.
I have to go now. I’ll write to you all more later.
Love from Kinsey
The 2003 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.
191 |
