Ha’akoka

A couple of days ago, the four of us went on a cultural bike tour the took us, among other places, to a school called Ha’akoka.  It was a public primary school that served three villages.  We had bought supplies for Tonga when we were in Mexico and presented them to the fourth grade students.  We’d heard that Tonga didn’t have  enough money to supply for the schools, so we’d decided to help.

The school contained three well-kept two-room buildings on well-manicured grounds.  We went into the fourth grade classroom, a room with a couple tables surrounded by benches with a backboard up front.  The kids were sitting at the tables.  We walked in introduced ourselves, and emptied our bags.  We unloaded about 30 notebooks, 75 pencils, 50 pencil sharpeners,and a ton of colored gel pens.  We also had a full math curriculum and some reading books. You could see the kids’ faces light up with excitement as they saw al the supplies.  It made us feel like we were changing their lives.

Since the kids were just stating to learn English, we helped them with their letters and talked to them.  In math they were learning number sequences, so we taught them the Fibonacci Sequence.  We also helped them practice multiplication and subtraction.

I really enjoyed going to the school.  I liked helping the kids and making their schooling easier.     It was a really nice experience and I’m glad we got the chance to help the Tongans out.

-Danielle in Neiafu, Vava’u, Kingdom of Tonga