Tufutafoe #1

Our first seminar is in the books. Yesterday we took on the men, women, and primary school students of Tufutafoe. The venue was the school hall and there were approximately 60 in attendence. 40 of which were students. There were 3 nurses from the Sataua district hospital who performed the screenings and helped us explain some of the more complicated points such as BMI. Two students assisted with the skits. One of the girls narrated the skit and the other did the rice weight demonstration.

In the picture above Mose, a local nurse explains to a local chief how the BMI chart works while Semisi writes down height and weight information.

This is the rice weight demonstration. We took a twenty pound bag of rice, an old shirt, and filled pockets with rice. The pockets were sewn onto the shirt by our seamstress department, which consists of Sieni. The weight was distributed throughout the shirt to make it as obese like as possible eg. neck, back, and arms. A normal weight person who is preselected from the audience is asked to sweep the floor once without the weight and then once with the weight.

The girl from Tufutafoe did great even though she overacted a bit. The rest of the program went well. For being the first one of the tour I felt we were well prepared and were able to get our point across.

At the conclusion of the program we were fed by the local women's committee. This is the ironic part and also the reason you have to have a sense of humor to work here. They fed us fried chicken and canned corn beef. So our seminar didn't make an immediate impact, but I think that a few still got the point.


The above picture shows nurses Tuatupu and Sianufe providing diabetes and hypertension checkups for locals from Tufutafoe.

Here are some pictures from the rest of the program.