Cakes, kava and cupids (not forgetting the fish!)
So, to fill you in on news from the last few weeks....Well, first of all I passed my fish test first time, as did Oli. It's funny to think that we thought learning 3 or 4 seaweed was difficult on the A-Level biology field trip and now I've just learnt over 150 fish; the work doesn't stop there though as we've now had to start learning invertebrates - I've got my test tomorrow! We've also completed our dive training now - Oli is qualified to Advanced Open Water and I did all the advanced stuff again as well, although I just need to send off a form to upgrade my junior qualification. Now everyone is qualified, we've been able to go diving in some much better locations with drift currents to carry you along and coral teeming with everything from ornate butterfly fish to 1.5 m long grey reef sharks.
Two more Sundays have passed since I last wrote and on both occasions we've gone to Navatu (our local village) as the truck driver that was meant to take us to another village for one of them was ill. It's been really good though as each time you go you are hosted by the same family who give you tea and cake before church, then, after you've sat through another dull ceremony, provide a good lunch which invariably contains very fresh fish, noodles and cassava. On the first Sunday of every month, three villages in the Kumbutavu district join together to host a service and on the 5/2 it was Navatu's turn. As such, on this Sunday the village was bustling with extra people. After lunch I wandered round the village and was invited into a house that seemed to be a boys' retreat, the occupants at the time all being male and under 20. I ended up chatting to a lad of my age from the nearby village of Namalata, named Tulele who was studying computer science at college and wanted to come to Brighton to do his degree. Around 3pm I drifted over to the village hall where a big round of kava drinking was going on and stayed there drinking kava, chatting and singing with the local choir until 8pm!
On the following Friday, we went to the village of Namalata for a fund raiser, buying each other bowls of kava for 50 cents each to raise money to send a girl to school/college (I wasn't quite sure). The locals joined in and it was great fun, going on for several hours and raising a total of $374 - not bad. After we'd eaten dinner there we were meant to return to camp but the boat had been moored in the wrong place and was now grounded by low tide, so instead we had to try and make ourselves comfortable on the floor of a nearby house and return early the following morning.
On one night last week we had 'Cake Night'. The ladies of Navatu village came round in the evening with a fantastic selection and we stuffed our faces with sweet food. To contribute to this some people made doughnuts and Becky (one of the other volunteers) and I made flapjacks, which we baked by putting in a tin, then balancing this on a can inside a really large pan on a gas hob, The result was exceedingly good. After we'd had our fill, music was put on and the dancing commenced; the ladies taught us a Fijian dance and we showed them the Macarana!
On the 13th February, Marc (our expedition leader) arrived back with our brand new boat: Vola Siga (pronounced Vol-a Sing-a). During his week's absence, he'd gone all the way back to Suva, picked the boat up from there and driven it all the way back, a journey which took around 8 hours from Suva to Savusavu. The boat is 10 m long, white and has twin Yamaha 40 engines on the back to drive her. Specially fitted out for diving, a rack fitted down the centre line of the boat securely holds up to 10 tanks with BCDs attached and spaces underneath the bench provide storage for the rest of the gear. Marc also brought with him some brand new BCDs and Regulators as well as a special delivery of post.
With Valentine's day just past, last Saturday we themed our party on it and everyone had to come up with a love related costume. Hearts were conspicuous everywhere but the star prize has to go to Laura and Ciara who actually made wings out of chicken wire and an old sheet so they could dress up as cupids. For Valentine's day itself we had a 'secret santa' with Valentine's cards, each picking a random person to write one for. After dinner they were handed out and read aloud before the sender was revealed. The cards ranged from the hilarious (M's card to Marc using all sorts of locally themed similes to invite him into a gay relationship) to the obscene (perverse drawing involving pigs and A's breasts on her card) to the actual sweet and serious. My card from Mandy (our trainee staff member) fell in the first category with a sort of rhyming poem following similar lines to M's.
Navatu Island
2nd February - I can't believe I've been away a month already! I'd better fill you in on what I've been up to since Suva. Fiji has two main islands: Viti Levu, upon which Suva is situated, and Vanua Levu, off which the island of Navatu and our camp is situated. The overnight ferry we took from Suva to Savusavu was aboard a slightly rusty boat that looked like it was built in Soviet Russia, complete with Russian signs to direct you around the ship and the odd boarded off broken staircase. Arriving in the early morning at Savusavu, the difference to the cosmopolitan, almost Western Suva was noticeable. A single road along the edge of the shore was lined with shops, many of which seemed to be out of an old Spaghetti Western, made of wood with a little verandah in front. We were only there a day but made good use of our time: in the morning we did some real last-minute (alcohol) shopping, then in the afternoon we all piled into the back of a truck (literally) and drove off to the middle of nowhere. Plunging into the bush at the side of the road on a small unmarked path, this widened out into a good path through dense rainforest and eventually reached a river running through the trees and our destination: a waterfall. We spent the next hour or so jumping off the top of it into the pool below and generally having fun in the water.
The next day (22 Jan) we set out early along a rough bumpy road in driving rain to finally reach our camp. A short boat ride was needed to take us across the 100m channel that qualifies Navatu as an island and we went straight to the village (also named Navatu) to be officially greeted by the spokesman for the village in a sevusevu ceremony - just some short speeches while we sat cross-legged on the floor. And then, finally, we got back on the boats for a quick trip from the east to the south of the island where our camp, Nakubalovu, lies nestled in palm trees. The narrowest strip of sand separates the sea from our camp, which during spring tides is covered completely. An open-sided thatched shelter serves as the communal eating/living area next to the wooden kitchen, which looks like an old fashioned corner shop with shelves lined with tinned food covering the walls (at least after our fortnightly restock). Two gas hobs and an open fire allow for a surprisingly wide range of food to be cooked, especially given the limited ingredients available, The dishes I've cooked have gone down particularly well - my meatballs and fried potatoes with tomato sauce was widely acclaimed (it's amazing what you can do with corned beef!) and my spicy chicken risotto had people scraping the bottom of the pan for more.
The large communal bure is nearby, inside of which all 18 of us volunteers squash in to form a web of mosquito nets. Sandy paths lined with coconut shells connect all the buildings and lead up the hill behind us to the showers (which I helped rebuild on our first day here - they are simply bamboo covered pits with walls woven from the leaves of a coconut palm tree; to shower a bucket is filled from the tap below, carried off and tipped on your head) and toilets (similarly open air and requiring squatting). On the other side of the kitchen, the dive shack houses all our dive gear, the compressor and the generator, and beyond this the five staff bures house our expedition leader (Marc), our chief scientist (Chris - a cool Belgian; who'd have thought it?), our assistant scientist (Heidi - also our chief village liaison officer; she knows the several hundred inhabitants so well she could probably draw their family tree), our dive instructor (Elina - she's Greek) and the trainee (Mondy, short for Andrew - he was a volunteer on the previous phase, a bit crazy but good fun).
I had originally planned to do all my dive training again from scratch but Elina put me in the refresher group for those that were already qualified. After a quick revision of theory and a refresher dive where we practised our basic skills, I felt I was OK and could remember what to do. Since then, I've been on a further 8 dives (we dive every day except Sunday) and I feel fully confident. I have decided to do the advanced training again, mainly because you get to do some fun dives like deep and night dives. Of the 10 weeks with Greenforce, only 3-4 weeks are spent on doing the actual surveys. This is because, due to the need for accuracy, we first have to learn over 200 fishes as well as corals and invertebrates and need to be able to accurately estimate the size of the fish we see. I've begun learning some of the fish and can identify most Angelfish and Butterfly fish but there's still a long way to go!
On Sundays we all don our smart(ish) clothes - sulu, shirt and tie for the boys; bright colourful misshapen Bula dress for the girls and go over to our local village (or on alternate Sundays another village in the local area) for church and lunch. My adopted family in Navatu is Laponi and his wife Mere - two very friendly people who live in a simple one-room house with a nice woven-reed floor for sitting and socialising on. Church was slightly weird as much of it was conducted in Fijian and we had to sit (uncomfortably) on the floor for longish periods. The singing was good though - unaccompanied and in close harmony. I joined in as best I could from my Fijian hymn book, despite the strange notation and foreign language.
Being the rainy season and given that we're in the wettest part of Fiji, we've seen a fair bit of rain. The last few days however have been quite fine and hopefully this will continue, as it makes camp life much more pleasant!