Saturday, July 20, 2002

Air Vietnam's Tech Glitch


I'm headed back to the Philippines for my vacation - my first time via Vietnam. The plane was a 50 seater turbo propelled one.

On to the runway when... POP! Plane slows down instead of taking off... and reaches right just at the end of the runway and stops.
A voice announces: "We are experiencing some technical difficulties. Passengers will please go down the plane and the bus will take you back to the airport."
Must be just a little glitch, I thought. But not for long when I saw two fire trucks hurrying towards us. Out of the plane I saw its two burst tires flaming!
It must have been a "simple technical difficulty" for them because it blocked the airport from incoming flights for the next four hours.
Anyway I managed to reach Vietnam just before midnight.

Life does have some glitches or technical difficulties. It's how you see them that makes you calm or panicky!

Friday, July 05, 2002

A need for Teacher-to-the-Village Program

Today I joined the Salabalath literacy center school teachers to their weekly village visit. There we visited the children who have not been attending school lately in order to find out "why?"
Most of the reasons they give pertain to distance... like the school is far (it really is!), it's difficult to walk alone, need to be in a group, bicyles not in working condition, no money for repairs, etc.

I thought to myself about that old saying: "If the mountain cannot come to Mohammed, then Mohammed comes to the mountain." In this country, why couldn't we bring the education to the village then instead of them coming to us? For villagers the essential of education would not be the building or the book, but rather the teacher. Why not a group of roaming village teachers that could live in the village rotating for periods of time. And the ministry could just approve the program or the curriculum to be taught. Funding institutions, I suppose, could finance the development program rather than the building/structure. Might be cheaper too!

This style worked for the Christian missions out there in Papua New Guinea... priests go to the villages for their pastoral needs since the church was far. Couldn't this work too for education?

Let me reflect - even in the Salesian context - do I necessarily have to wait for them to come or could I start going out to them?