By Savithri Rodrigo
Malo Island, Vanuatu (Commonwealth Union)_It was surely the best gift that Santa ever gave him in all his twenty years. Yanson Matalue from Malo Island Vanuatu became a millionaire this Christmas when he won a Christmas promotion run by telecommunication provider Digicel. A twenty year old student whose parents are farmers was overwhelmed and overjoyed at the same time, given that this is the most amount of money his entire family had seen in generations.
“This million will go a long way to help my family,” said an excited Matalue when asked what he would do with his prize money. “I will use some of it to build a new house because that truly is a priority for us.” Additionally, he also wanted to give his family the best Christmas they would ever have and vowed to celebrate the season with festive food to share with family and friends.
It was a random draw on radio that selected Matalue as the winner, which would naturally be the root to changing the life of this young student.
Malo Island, which was formerly known as St Bartholomew has a population of a little more than four million and is frequently battling cyclones and earthquakes. Besides Malo being an attractive tourism destination, general subsistence for the population is in agriculture which gets hampered due to vagaries of the weather.
