Some of the kids playing. They love the "skip!" (Jump rope)


This is DiLala, one of the kids I've gotten to be good friends with. She's working on a project about mangroves.
This is Kasa, her sister (one of them; this is a family of 7 kids!).



One of the big projects the village has been working on for a year or so now is rebuilding the church. After the flood a few years ago that almost took out the village, it damaged the church. With money from the logging, they have been able to renovate the church. Things were underway when the carpenter died in March. They recently resumed working, and the following pictures are what the guys took this week.

I've been taking some time for myself in the village lately. Really, I've just been doing things that I should've done the first week I was here. Namely, gardening. A few weeks ago one of the couples in the village started cleaning up a vacant piece of land next to the house with our generator. I asked, finally, after months of general asking, very bluntly if I could have a couple plots to plant some veggies. He said sure. A few days later, I continued his weeding. Weeding is, of course, hacking down the grasses, weeds, and overgrowth with a big knife. I started and soon I had a group of people stopping to help me and in no time we had it down. It was another week maybe before he burned away some of the brush and dug the drainage ditch (it's a wet area). Then this week, Wednesday, I borrowed a big fork and started to turn over the earth. No machines in Fiji. I got another older man to help me and a while later one of my friends, who should have been in school since she's only 17, came to ask for my help on a school project and ended up helping us. After lunch the three of us and DiLevu finished it up. With four people the work went pretty quickly. Thursday I dug the drains between plots. We're pretty much done except we need to break up the soil more and put up a fence. And plant the seeds. Throughout this whole time my little pal Poso was there (DiLevu's 7 yr old son). Poso is something special. I've become really attached to this kid, as long as he's not biting me or in my house. Sometimes he's really goofy, like he has been Wednesday and Thursday. He's been our little foreman and always there to “help” me when no one else is there.

Another Volunteer once asked me what the best thing I bought was. My answer: my gumboots. I wear them all the time. When it rains. In the bush. Making my garden. Going to the ocean. Anytime I go anywhere there is mud or sharp weeds or rocks. You see them a lot in pictures of me.

Big news in the village!!! We got a pool table!! Yup, we're big time now. It arrived a couple weeks ago. People are crazy over this pool table. I haven't played yet. It's been over a year now I haven't played and not many women play (I've only seen maybe two or three women play so far on this one) here.

I had some sad news on Saturday. My host dad I stayed with when I first got here to Fiji died. He was really sick the last time I saw him, in April. I'm glad I visited.

Below are some videos. The first is a traditional "meke" dance that was performed last year at our 4th of July celebration. The second is the secondary kids singing at their prize giving ceremony last December. the third is my chief at the construction of the bread oven back in January.