Above is the picture of the women gathered to talk about what they wanted to do in their haus kuk. Here is the brief report of the meeting from Sr Theresia, in response to our request for help going forward… All the women gathered together and I asked them how they wanted to discuss ways of using the house. They wanted to use their old groupings to talk first. So they went off for 30 minutes.. When they came back, they were asked to report back to the group. They said the following: There were four groups:- Three groups want to learn to cooking different things. They want to learn to sew. They need manual sewing machines because there is no power. The catechist told them to use the church generator. Some argued that that will require petrol and that won’t easy to buy.
One group wanted to say that some women went to a course and learnt about making soap, cooking oil, pig stock etc with resources they have such as kaukau, potatoes and other veggies. They have done anything because they didn’t have the machine to do it so they could try that. They have to get a special machine. The fourth group was made up of the oldies. They are the backbone of the church at Oamug. They were the ones who started the work first. Now they said they can’t do any of the above activities but they wanted to look after the haus kuk. Help the groups if they need help. Pray for the groups that great things will come out of the building. So the three groups appointed their leaders as pictured below. Martha will act as the coordinator of the three groups. After the big meeting, I met with the leaders briefly. They wanted to start with sewing first while waiting for stove haus. We planned to have a meeting on the 23 of November to discuss more. This was a very lively meeting. Some men came along and thanked the women and asked lots of interesting questions. After the meeting some women went to the junction to collect the supply [for the stove haus] that was dropped there because the road to Oamug is bad, couldn’t drive. (The women carried bags of cement and roof sheeting for a half-hour walk along a rough rocky track!!!!).