Tsunami Puppet Show

After the tsunami, our friend Ali started the Womens Community Action Program (W-CAP) to educate, involve, and improve lives of women on our island. And reaching the women will affect the men and children, of course. The group consists of women from many backgrounds and nationalities. The main facilitators are amazing women from villages affected by the tsunami. They are wonderful. I've enjoyed being in the group because I've learned so much.

One of our first projects has been creating a puppet show that addresses fears of the tsunami. The group wrote the script, made the puppets, recorded the script, wrote a song in both languages, learned to work the puppets, and arranged for us to give our show at schools around the island. I went along on Thursday to the school in Tula, one of the villages severely hit by the tsunami. Fortunately no lives were lost, but the students still are traumatized by the memory of it all and its lasting effects.

I felt so happy to be with them and give them some joy with our little show.

These are our six characters dancing before the show. I'll have to get some better pictures of them all. There's a frog, turtle, octopus, clam, shark, and starfish.

This is a cute girl named Marisa (on the right) with her friends.
We performed the show 4 times in different classrooms. The teachers were so sweet to let us come.

Here's Ella with our friends Amber, Dianne, and Maeva.

In this picture you can see temporary classrooms set up by a local construction company. Tula School has two, one is being used for the cafeteria and the other is the preschool, since those portions of the school haven't been repaired yet. You can see that the school is right on the beach!

Here we were with the older students (grades 6-8). I thought they'd be bored with the show, but they loved it!
Here are our performing puppeteers in action! (I'll get a better photo of them soon.)

The girls were fighting over the "palagi baby".
We drove up the the NOAA station afterwards and saw people settling up in the hills. That is a FEMA tent set up next to their make shift shelter. (How would you like to face a cyclone in that?)