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.