we are expecting a fast moving cold front to pass through here tonight dropping temperatures into the LOW seventies ... out will come the ski parkas and wool hats.
There was absolutely NO one at the beach yesterday ... it was sunny & 78 degrees... way tooo COLD for Tongans ... so i had the sand and the surf all to myself. Then after a few beers, which i had brought with me in a small cooler bag ... I started to reflect on the SEA of faces that i saw in the parade earlier this week. There were literally thousands of kids .... proud and happy to be marching in a parade ...each marching step bringing them closer, into the future ... a future that offers little in the hope of finding any meaningful jobs. My guess looking around the CAPITAL city is that at best a couple of 100 new jobs OR less open up each year. Sooooo what happens to all those 1,000's of children marching toward graduation... what happens to them ?????
The potential is here; god knows it wouldn't hurt to have a few more helpful services available, but after 8 months in Tonga it's clear to me there is a meaningful disconnect. Necessity might be the tool of invention ... but not here .. there are lots of needs and Tongans want badly to have certain "things" but the sand in their shorts isn't enough to follow through and change out of their shorts ( let me correct that, Tongan's out of a sense of false modesty ...swim with all their clothes on.... not shorts) and that may very well be the problem !!!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Trust me the readers are out here! My son Stan (recently returned from PC Tonga) calls it living vicariously - Keep up your blogging for those of us who are interested in trying to understand just a little - if only vicariously.
Myra
wow ... thanks for the feed back ... stan is a great guy ... you did a wonder-full job raising a sensitive , caring young man ... i wish him all the best. From the moment you get to Tonga some of your thoughts are always about what it will be like when i leave this place behind ... how will i see the world differently ... Stan already knows ... i hope the transition was/is going smoothly
malo aupito
peter
Post a Comment