A Trip Out to Guegeegue

   After my language lesson last Monday, I went out to the high school on Guegeegue.  The vice-principal there is husband of a friend (Ms Carmen, Ciela's Baru teacher) and a few weeks before, I'd donated a telescope to the school.  I'd brought the telescope out to the Marshalls in the hopes that I'd spend more time looking at the stars with it, but with the kids, that hasn't happened and it's just been sitting in the closet.  The school was happy to get it and I went out on Monday to help set it up and show the teachers how to use it.
  Most Marshallese here on the atoll live on Ebeye but the public high school is on Guegeegue, a twenty-minute drive down the causeway from Ebeye.  I'd never been out on the causeway or on any of the islands past Ebeye so I was pretty excited to make the trip.   It's tough to tell from the pictures below but the road is in really bad shape.  There were huge potholes and where there weren't potholes, there were large rocks and washboards.  Let me say here, I truly admire every teacher and student that takes that road twice a day in pursuit of education.
  When we got to the school, one of the science teachers and I set up the telescope and practiced using it.  Some students were hanging around and came to watch what we were doing- they'd never seen a telescope and were amazed when thy looked in it and saw the moon Right There.  Word got around that something interesting was happening and soon we had a line to look in the telescope.  That made me so happy and  was exactly why I donated the telescope- so that the kids might be as excited as I was about the stars and that it might spark an interest in science for them.
 

The article in the high school's monthly newsletter

 

 

The causeway

Ms Christiana Castaneda (Sciece teacher) and Ms Lora Dalupan

The teachers in front of the high school