Wilma!

The thoughts and opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not represent those of the WorldTeach organization.

February 17th (part one)

I am sorry for the long delay in posts; they are keeping me busy out here!

I need to go back to the week of January 18th to fill in some gaps for you. The best part about the new semester is that my awful geometry class has now become one of my better classes. I gave 6 out of 18 students D’s (which would be an F if you used a normal grading scale) and each one of the six dropped my class! They all had behavioral issues in my class so now I don’t have to deal with them!

January is a very bad month for hurricanes so for the entire week, I kept receiving memos to secure my classroom every day after school. On Friday, the messages kept rolling in that a tropical depression was headed our way. In the morning we were told that it hasn’t even been classified as a hurricane and so it won’t be bad. That night I was in my room reading when Crystal calls to find out where I was. The police were driving through the village and announced that my side needed to vacate immediately. So much for knocking on my door! I went and told Josh the news and we grabbed our things and left. My house is one of the closest to the beach (we are on higher ground though) and the waves had already washed onto the road. The waves took some big boulders with them so it was for precautionary reasons to vacate us. My first instinct was to go and stay with Trish and Tautua for the night and then head up the mountain the next morning. As we were walking through the village the police chief was driving around and we jumped in his truck for a ride up the mountain. We didn’t want to risk being stuck in the village all weekend with the storm. Josh and I were dropped off at Saunoa’s where we spent the remainder of the weekend.

When we reached Saunoa’s house, we explained what happened. He was very concerned about his family (our neighbor’s) and decided to drive down to the village to talk with them. They wanted to stay down in the village, but Crystal decided to join us for the weekend. Throughout the day on Saturday we read, ate, and shared some stories. At one point Saunoa took us on a ride to check out the village. By Saturday, our village had already been hit the hardest. We couldn’t drive into it due to all the fallen trees and rocks covering the road. The waves soared close to 75 feet up the rock! Yet most people stayed in the village throughout the weekend.

On Sunday, the storm continued on and we figured that there was no point in worrying about school for at least a few days. On Monday we slept in, ate some breakfast and then left Saunoa’s around 9 o’clock. The first thing we did was go to the school and check out the classrooms. The computer teacher and I share a door between our classrooms so she decided to have all the village kids eat meals in my room while they slept in her classroom! They did a pretty good job cleaning up but there was a lot of random things left and all of my school work was completely reorganized which I was not very thrilled about. We didn’t stay long at the school since we wanted to go check out our house. We still couldn’t drive into the village so I took the walk through all the rubbish to get to the house. The village looked pretty beat up. My house was perfectly fine, no damage done but a few fallen trees in the back. No more papayas this year :( I quickly grabbed my camera and went out to take photos of the village. Hopefully you saw some of these that I sent a month ago!

After scanning the beach a bit and talking with some people I headed back home. Josh was still at home and we decided to walk up to school. As soon as we left the house the rain started as a drizzle. As we reached the end of the village it became a downpour so we hid in someone’s fale. One of our students happened to be in the fale so we spoke with her for a bit. As we were standing there the police car drove by announcing something throughout the village. Desiree, the student we were with, translated that the storm just did a U-turn and is headed back for us. They expected big waves to hit soon. Crystal also called to tell me to go back up the mountain. Josh and I pretty much said what the hell and jumped into the back of the police truck. Again, they brought us up to Saunoa’s. For the afternoon we hung out trading stories not too sure what was happening. Eventually we decided the weather seemed fine so we drove down to the school to check out the forecast online. The storm didn’t do a U-turn; it was actually headed towards New Zealand! Hurricane Wilma was long gone!

That night I took a much needed shower, relaxed, and went to bed early. Since most of the villages were still recuperating, we spent Tuesday as an in-service day at the school. I enjoyed it and got much accomplished since I needed to work on my lesson plans for the week. The next day we were back into the regular swing of things. The elementary school in my village didn’t report back all week due to flooding.

Since the three day week was pretty relaxing and I was all caught up, I came home early each day. On Thursday I spent the evening weaving a basket. While at Saunoa’s, I found a basket weaving book. He assisted by showing me how to cut the coconut leaves to get started and left me the book. I was very excited to get started that night. I spent a good three hours working on the outer part of the basket. I still needed to finish the bottom but I was starting to get frustrated so figured it was best to leave it for later.

On Saturday, Crystal and I decided to take a walk to Fitiuta to check out the damage. All but one house was damaged from the storm. Our vice principal’s sister owns a house right on the beach and it was literally swept away in the storm. Half of the concrete foundation remains. The storm also demolished most of the road leading to Fitiuta. Luckily, there have been construction workers that have been here for a couple of months making a sea wall to fix the road. Most of their supplies were washed away with the storm though. My faithful friends, Kola and Spot, ventured the roads with Crystal and I. Kola is a black female dog with three puppies and Spot is a brown and white spotted female dog with four puppies. They live in my village and for the past two months have followed me everywhere!

The walk was very tiring and we were ready to get home to relax. We walked towards home for a half an hour before we were able to hitch a ride down to the wharf in Ta’u. The boat was coming and I was finally going to receive the food I had been waiting for for weeks! We spent about an hour at the wharf waiting for the boat to arrive. Once it arrived, it sat out in the ocean while the little boats motored over to get things out. Faleasao’s wharf was destroyed during the storm and Ta’u’s is too shallow for the big boat to dock. For three hours we watched and waited for all the boxes to get unloaded. We were one of the last one’s to get our things. It didn’t matter too much since Tautua was also receiving packages and he was our ride.

That evening, I unloaded all of my goodies and pigged out! It was a good day.

After church on Sunday I walked the beach, cleaned my house, and finished weaving my basket!

Stay tuned for the next part!

Love,

Gretchen