Back from Suva

I just got back on Sunday from the national track championships in Suva. It was great. We took 21 students, 3 coaches (me included in that number), and 2 other teachers. The kids did fantastic, we finished with three medals: a gold in girls shot put, a silver in the boys 400m, and a bronze in boys shot put. The boy who received the silver missed the gold by 3 hundredths of a second; he ran a 48.91 400m, which looks like it is going to be good enough for him to run in the Fiji National teams 4x400 relay in a upcoming international competition. It’s the first time the school has won a gold at the national level in over 10 years, and bringing home three medals is a huge achievement for our area. There was only one other school from our entire province to win a medal (and it was a bronze at that). Needless to say, we are elated at our team’s performance, and especially excited about the prospect of one of the students qualifying to be a Fiji representative at the international level. It was a good trip, the meet was exciting (made me miss the sport a lot…), and it was good to see some of the folks from the other island and spend a little bit of time in the big city.

There is a potential for the next couple weeks to be busy. I have a couple meetings this week concerning some possible work projects, one of which is with someone who may be interested in starting pearl oyster collecting and is particularly exciting. Next week, assuming it is approved by the big wigs, I am planning on going out to another volunteer’s site to work on some composting toilets being built there. If you are not familiar with them, composting toilets use no water, and as the name suggests compost the human waste into usable soil. They are fantastic for areas that have limited water supply/poor sewage disposal (the latter characteristic encompasses just about all of Fiji, and most of the world). I actually think they should be used much more often in the states, and may start a campaign to increase their usage when I get home (if you are interested shoot me an email and I can forward you the building plans for one….). We also have our biannual provincial council meeting next week, and I have my first visitor arriving next Friday!! Which is way exciting, and due to said visitor I will most likely doing quite a bit of traveling here in May.

That’s about all at the moment. I’ll write back up here next week, and will hopefully have some good news about work projects.

Some Bad News

Savusavu

Children from a village up here

So, some bad news; I found out late last week that the race I had been training for (scheduled for May 17th) has been canceled. This is a bit disappointing as I had been training for it (not including some injury time) for about 30 weeks and had made some travel plans around it, but I’ll have to roll with the punches I guess. There is a triathlon or two coming up on the horizon that I imagine I can continue training for, so all is not lost.
Work has been a little slow this past week. The village visits that my office has been planning have continued to be delayed (it’s now been about 15 days since we were supposed to start), and unfortunately not much else had been planned for this period of time. I do have the national track meet coming up next week (we leave on tues), which is exciting. The two day meet is going to be shown live on television in 12 pacific countries; I’m told it’s the largest secondary school track meet in the world (but these claims have a high probability of being over inflated); at the least, it’s the largest in the pacific. The kids and the school are starting to get excited, and it’s hard not to get wrapped up in the energy. We’ll be in Suva for about 5 days, so it should be interesting traveling around the big city with twenty-one 15-18 year olds.
That is about all that has gone on in the last week. There have been a few people in and out of town, so the place hasn’t been too lonely. The dog is growing quickly and starting to test his boundaries; it’s an exciting time for the little guy. Otherwise all is well. I’ll get back up here before I leave next week for Suva. Take care….

Busy April

The Dog's first time at the beach

Savusavu Bay

Rachel and I with the interim prime minister

It’s been a busy last couple weeks. Although we did not, as scheduled, start our village visits. Those are now scheduled to begin tomorrow, and I am hoping to catch a ride with the team that will be visiting all the coastal villages from Udu point down by boat. It’s a great opportunity and I hope it works out, but I have a few responsibilities to tie up here before I would be able to go, and it may be a on the wire decision as to whether I can.

The track team I have been coaching ran in their zone meet (the equivalent to our regional meet in the states) two Fridays ago. We finished 2^nd, behind a school that fielded a team 4 times the size of ours, and finished with gold medals in 15 events. We will be taking the individuals/relay teams from those 15 events to Suva for the national meet at the end of April (I believe the dates are the 25^th and 26^th). It’s pretty exciting, and I felt that our boys and girls had a very good showing. I am greatly looking forward to the national meet, which apparently a big deal is made of, and it will be an experience traveling and camping with the kids. There are a couple volunteers up here that will also be accompanying their school’s teams down to the games, so I can only imagine that some friendly competition will arise….

Last week was pretty granola, but I did make a weekend trip down to Savusavu. Several of us came in, and had a belated Easter and birthday gathering for one of the volunteers in town there. Our visit coincided with the current prime ministers visit, and a few of us randomly ran into him at one of the hotels there and promptly accosted him for photos and conversation. Consequently enough, I also brought the dog down (who is named after the prime minister……) and took him out to the beach for the first time. He wasn’t exactly all that excited about it, but he now knows that the earth is not covered by just land; and important lesson for anyone. I also say a bid of the Aberdeen Rugby 7’s tournament, and the U.S. team made it to the quarter finals! I know that very few of you (if any) were aware of this, but it’s kind of a big deal because the U.S. team is usually abysmal. All the people here in Fiji were quite surprised (as they are not used to the U.S. even making it out of pool play), and I was rooting hard for a Fiji vs USA final, but alas, it was not meant to be as Fiji lost to New Zealand in the quarters and USA lost to South Africa. Maybe one day….

Otherwise, all is well. I just sent in my expression of interest to be involved with the next group’s training, so hopefully one or more of my ideas will be accepted. I am also continuing to prepare for the race in May, which is quickly approaching, and it looks like I might have a state side visitor around that time, which is all kinds of exciting. If I make it on this trip I’m not sure when I will post again, but hopefully I will be able to find some time in the next week or so.