Snorkeling in Savusavu

Picture of participants at WWF workshop, see if you can win the "Where's Aric" game

Fun at Labasa airport (in case there weren't enough bad pictures of me out there)

I am getting ready to make a trip down to Suva this week for the first training session that I will be helping to facilitate for the new group. I go tomorrow to meet with some people from WWF and Wildlife Conservation Society to talk about some future work and get a few things set that can’t be done long distance. Another volunteer is also holding a poetry competition there in the big city that I am hoping to attend, and which I expect to pretty fantastic (not nearly enough events like there are held in Fiji). This weekend is a holiday weekend here (the Queen’s birthday, observed), so we have Monday off work. As such, after preparing for my training session on Saturday, I hopefully plan on getting some diving in. On Tuesday I have a doctor’s appointment for a nagging ear problem I have been having, then my training session is on Wednesday. I fly back up next Thursday, then am off to a meeting in a village outside of labasa for a day or so. It stands to be a bit of an exciting week.

Not a whole lot going on up here the last week or so. I am working on getting a meeting together of local Labasa leaders and other stake holders to discuss the environmental issues we are dealing with in the city and strategies we can look at to solve them (or at the least mitigate them). The impetus for the meeting is figuring out the best way to use some funding that is available for projects working on these things, and the hope would be to bring other organizations that are trying to do the same kind of work into the fold so that we can pool our resources and do something a bit bigger than we would be able to accomplish on our own individually. So, going into all this we have some good ideals, let’s hope we can keep that legitimacy and come out of it with something good.

If I don’t get back up here next week it is because I’m going to be kinda all over the place. I will do my best to post something soon after.

Kids at the Lagi Kindergarten brushing their teeth

Aerial view of Labasa

Ok, so I have gotten a lot of flack about keeping the person who visited me unnamed. I tried to respect said person’s right to privacy, but this was apparently not needed (in some people’s cases unappreciated). So, with unneeded building up, Mary Margaret Popelar, famed Long John Silver’s company rep, UD grad, and Wasigo resident came to visit me a couple weeks ago. We had a great time. She came up and spent a week or so in Labasa, during which she piggy-backed on some of my work trips around the area and did some work with the Salvation Army kindergarten here in town. We then spend a few days in Taviuni, where we finally saw some sunshine and relaxed in one of my favorite places here in this country. After Tavs, we spent a couple nights in the big city, down in Suva, then made our way back west on the main island so she could catch her plane. When she first planned her visit I though 17days was such a long period of time, and that we would have ample time to do everything we wanted. But, I caution anyone else planning to make the trip out, that those 17days went so fast, and I couldn’t believe it was time for her to go when it came. It was really good to see someone from back home though, and it was nice that she was here for my year anniversary (which took place on the 23^rd of May). It’s crazy to think that I have been out here that long; it doesn’t feel like it’s been a year. Which is good I imagine; it probably means that I am having a good time out here doing the Peace Corps thing.

Mary left on Sunday the 25^th. Afterwards I came back to Labasa and jumped straight back into work. WWF held a workshop in Naduri (the chiefly village of my province; it is about an hour and a half from Labasa). They brought representatives from the 37 villages in the Marine Protected Area (MPA) network that I work with in to the village to look at how the network has worked out so far, and if there are any changes that need to be made. It went pretty well I thought, and there were several big decisions made. Together, we redrew many of the MPAs and worked on starting some freshwater and forest reserves. They are really trying to take an ecosystem based approach to the conservation up here, which I think is the right mindset to have because (especially in as small a place as Fiji is) the activities that go on upstream in rivers and on the land greatly influence the status of our marine areas. There is still quite a bit of work to be done, but I think that the organizations working up here are moving in the correct direction.

I have also been doing some work here with a local organization on some beautification and environmental friendliness work around Labasa. They run a festival up here every August and use the proceeds from it to do community projects in the area. One of their areas of emphasis this year is to better the look and environmental impact Labasa has. In this capacity, they have asked me to advise them and too look into a suitable project for them to work on in these areas. It’s kind of exciting, as they actually have a bit of money and quite a bit of motivation to do some of this work. So far it is going well, and I am getting some good suggestions and involving some good people to look at all this. It has the potential to be a really good start for the area.

Two weeks ago the new group also arrived. So the office has been busy recently with their training. They have asked me to come in and help facilitate four of the training sessions for the new group over the next 2 months or so. It’s kind of a strange feeling now being on the other side of the training deal. I remember being in their place last year and thinking that all these people knew so much and had so much that I could learn from, and I guess I just don’t feel like that large of a resource as I built the volunteers I met in training up to be. Interesting how life moves I guess.

So, I will be making several trips back and fourth to Suva in the next couple months as well as having another visitor (Jessica) coming out at the end of July. I also have a bit of a line on some scientific diving taking place up here in August that I might be able to jump on board for (keep your fingers crossed for me). All this coupled with normal work and the beautification work look to make these next few months pretty busy. I took a bit of a brake in there, but I will do my best to post something again next week. Hope all is well.