Hmmm

View from Raviravi coastline

Rain coming to residential area in Labasa

Not much going on this week. I was supposed to got to Lautoka with my office, but it kinda fell through at the last minute. So I have been working at the office the entire week so far. Things are going well, and there are some good projects is the works here. One of our volunteers is builting some composting toilets out on here island, and I may be going out with them to aid in that endevor tomorrow or maybe friday. Bit of a short post unfortunately this week, but I imagine more will be going on my this time next week. The rain has stopped it's incesent pounding the last few days allowing me to finally get some laundry done and possibly making transport easier, so we'll see what happens.

January Rains

Labasa bus stand

Rachel and I with Matt in his village

Morning on the coast

Road collapse due to rain near Seaqaqa

I just got back from a trip out to Kedra (pronounced Kendra) village up in Dogotuki, which if you know you fiji geography, is up near Udu point (the upper northeast of this island). The turaga ni koro (village headman) asked me to come out and look at a possible ecotourism site they are trying to develop up there. So, on Wen. last week I went up there and stayed with his family for a few days. They have a large waterfall that they are looking to built nature trails two and possiblily a few small camping huts for people to stay at. The site was beautiful, and they seem to be quite motivated to get this accomplished. During the visit, I also learned of their interest in some alternative means of electricity (solar and hydro, on very small scales of course) and some aquaculture. This all sounds great and will hopefully bring about quite a bit of work up in that area of the provence.

The only issue with the area is transportation, which, especially during the rainy season, is a bit dicey. The buses has stopped going out that way due to bad road conditions, so my transportation back and forth from there was the tikina's truck (which is a flatbed truck that a thin frame was built over, a tarp fasened around the frame, and a couple benches bolted to the bed). Being the only method of transport for the region, I rode in the back of this truck with about 25 other people trying to get up there. The trip was long, about 4 hours, and the road was a muddy mess (we had to get out and push the truck 3 or 4 times, one of which a dumptruck had to pull us up a hill). It should bea bit better come April, but during the rainy season here it is a difficult place to work it.

The last few weeks we have seen a ever increasing amount of rain. Even some of the paved roads have been made impassible due to mudslides and the such. A 100 meter section of the road between Labasa and Savusavu collapsed (pictured above), which halted mail, cargo, and personal travel by land to Labasa for a week or so. But this is supposed to be about the worst time of the year for these kind of things, and it will not be too long until things clear up a bit.

Thanks about it for the time being, I enjoy everyone's updates, so please keep those coming.

Holiday trip pics

Waterfall in Bouma Heritage park

I just got back this week from a trip to Suva for a workshop, and while there I was able to get my hands on the pictures from my Christmas/New Years trip. I didn't want to go over the trip until I got them, so i'm going to do a bit of time-traveling here and briefly go over my fabulous trip out in Taviuni. For most of the trip we were either camping of shacking up with other volunteers that live out that way. On our first day there we visited a volunteer friend of ours and went up to a "water slide" in the mountains surrounding his site. The term water slide is used loosely, as it is better described as 60meters of shallow rapids that you can rocket down like a slide. The locals are fantastic at it, going down head first and surfing their way down; my trips down weren't nearly as graceful, led to several bruises, and quite a few laughs for the fijian kids that were there. After spending the day there, we spend the night and the next couple days (including christmas) and a camp site towards the top of the island. The canadian dive instructor that had been living at the camp site for the last 6 weeks or so called it the best he had ever been to, and it difficult to argue with him. We made friends easily and had a peaceful christmas and boxing day there. We were able to finagle a decent discount, and went diving on Rainbow Reef while there, which was my first time diving in Fiji and was amazing(the picture below is from the dive trip). The following day we then went out to the west side of the island, hooked up with a volunteer living there and did the Bouma waterfall hike. The picture above is the lower falls (there are three).

On our way to Rainbow reef

The view from my campsite

Rope bridge on Lavena Coastal walk

Some of the Lavena youth posing

After a night in Waitabu village, we spend the evening in Lavena and went on the coastal walk to village has set up there. The walk takes you through the rainforest of the park there and end at a waterfall you can swim out to a dive off. After doing a bit of snorkeling out in the marine park on the westernside, we returned to the East. After spending the night in Somosomo village we got up early in the morning and hiked up the mountain to Lake Tacimocea. The Lake is surrounded by Fiji folk lore about it's origins, and is the only site where the Fiji national flower can be found (also called tacimocea). We spend the morning climbing the mountain (the picture directly below depicts one of the views on the hike up) and a couple hours searching for the flower and swimming in the lake.

The village boys and I looking out from atop the mountain

The Tacimocea flower

After the hike (which took 8 hours give or take), we headed back to our previous campsite where we spend a very low-key New Years Eve with a few other volunteers and some new friends

New Years in camp

We spend another day at camp snorkeling and enjoying a lazy New Years day. The following morning, on finding out our boat back to Vanua Levu had been canceled, we headed down to the Southern tip of the island (Vuna) for the night. There we did some pretty good snorkeling and such, then headed back home the following day.

One of the Orchid species native to Taviuni

Sunset in Vuna

All and all it was a great trip, can't wait to make it back out there.

Back to the present... My trip to Suva went well, the workshop I attended there was great. Now it's back to the grind here in Labasa for awhile. I have some meeting and a WWF workshop scheduled for the end of the week, so hopefully all goes well and I am able to generate some more work through this week.

As an aside, one of our volunteer's dogs in Savusavu had puppies last week, and I think I have been talked into taking one. Since my roommate left the old house has been a little empty, so it may be good to get another living thing hanging around.

Puppies!

Hope all is well with everyone, and I hope to get back on here in a week or so. Send me updates and any ideas you have for Dog names!

quick note on address

Just a quick note to let you know I have a new address that will make my mail a bit more reliable. So, if any of you are inclined to send me anything please use the following address:

P.O. Box 2589

Labasa, Fiji islands

If you sent something to the other address, no worries, is will still get here, it will just take a bit longer. I write up here again in a week or so.

Back to work

Buavou village

Mikelle being a good volunteer and catching rain water during our "cyclone" scare

We may have been going a little stirr crazy after being in the same house with 11 volunteers for 24 hours

I have great stories and such from my christmas vacation, but I want to wait to share those until I have the pictures from the trip to post (which should be by the end of next week), so check back in a few days for that.

I got back about a week ago, and hopefully I can hit the ground running here on some work in the new year. This past week I made a couple of field visits to aquaculture farms in the area. One of the things I hear the most from villages in the MPA areas is that they have not found a way to supplement the income and food generation that they have lost due to setting aside some of their fishing areas to be protected. As such, I am working on traveling around to the villages in the Provence that have sustainable income generating projects, looking over their operations, identifying individuals in the community who can transfer these skills to other communities, and then trying to connect the dots. Theoretically it is a good plan, as there is some governmental money set aside to help some of these projects to get off the ground, but we'll see how it goes logistically. The visits this week have been good, and there is certainly a large market available for aquaculture product and for the communities that have a low supply, it is good protein source. I am also looking at communities that do bee keeping, pearl farming, and seaweed farming to visit in the next month or so. Hopefully after that I will have a small array of possible projects that interested villages can chose from based on their needs and community assets.

Otherwise things are kinda slow here in Labasa. I've been the only volunteer in town (as the others are still finishing out their holiday vacations), so it's been pretty quiet. Next week i will be in Suva for a couple of work days and then a three day training at the end of the week (I was chosen to work in out peer support network here, and they are bringing the eight of us in to teach us how to support our peers). My plan is to get back up here next weekend when I return and write again.

I hope every one's holidays here great, mine certainly were. I look forward to hearing updates from all you guys.

Kaulugata Siga ni Sucu (Merry Christmas)

The winning team from our rugby tournament

lil' frisbee on the beach in Pacific Harbor

Some of the Labasa Crew on Fiji Day Weekend

View of the Labasa "skyline"

A view of the Vanua Levu country side from a nearby peak in Labasa

Ok, so it has become my new years resolution to post more on this. My new plan is to post once a week and just do short posts so that it is not such a daunting task to update you on everything that has happened over a couple weeks or more. This is to say, that I'll begin working on that plan once I get back from my holiday travels; another volunteer and I are going to be spending the holiday season in Taviuni (an island off the eastern coast of mine). Starting to get pretty excited about it; we should be able to get in some diving and a decent amount of hikingwhile there...hopefully I'll have some good pictures and stories after this adventure.

The last month or so has been busy. We were all brought in for a training and all-volunteer day, which was nicely placed on thanksgiving. Afterwards, I spend some time in the Sigatoka region visiting the sand dunes and such. We've been busy in the office getting together all of the end of the year reports and meetings that have to be held. I done some traveling around to Savusavu and a few of the surrounding villages. It's been difficult recently to get any of the projects/ideas I have off the ground, as everyone is either finishing up things that have to be in before christmas or preparing for holiday travel. As such a lot of my recent work has been laying ground work for projects to begin in January. I have, though, been helping WWF (world wildlife foundation) with some of their research up here, which is both fullfilling to a degree and takes up some of the holiday downtime up here.

Otherwise, everything is going well. The only recent piece of bad news is that my roomate here recently decided to go home, which is really too bad. It brings us down to 4 volunteers here in Labasa, me being the only one now from our group here. But, no worries, we're building a bridge and getting over it.

I wish the best to everyone over the holidays, and I swear I will get something back up hear soon into the new year.

Halloween in Fiji and some other traveling

The indian boy next door teaching me how to make roti

rope swing at colo-i-suva

Team zissou


Chow eating contest (you may notice me pumping my fist in victory...)





Things degraded a bit as the night went on....

I just recently got back some traveling on viti levu. They brought all of us from my fiji entry group to a resort near sigatoka for our three-month-in meeting. This just happened to coincide nicely with the well known american holiday of halloween.... which we of course took full advantage of. Meghan, Rachel, Steve, and I went the team zissou route (if you dont know this reference, please do yourself and the world a favor and rent The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou). We has a great time, as i'm sure you can tell by the pictures; we even got the fijian staff to dress up with us and participate in "traditional" halloween traditions (try explaining what 20-something-year old people do every year for halloween in a tactful manner to someone who grew up here in fiji), such as bobbing for apples and the ever popular chownoodle eating contest (think ramen fiji style). It was the first time we had all gotten to see eachother in one place since we were sent out, and it was too much fun seeing all these people again.

After the conference I took a few extra days down on the big island to get some work done in the capital and hang with a few of the people that were sticking around. I had intending on only being in Suva for a day two, then continuing my travels elsewhere, but the biright lights of the gem of the pacific had other plans.... We spent a day a colo-i-suva, which is a federal park just north of suva. It has several great hiking trails and some lovely swimming oppurtunities in the freshwater pools created by the river that runs through it. Pictured above is one that we stopped at with a relatively precarious rope swing. I was also able to make it out to the Pearl resort on Sunday (it is located on the coral coast between suva and sigatoka), which is a beautiful place in it's own right, and they have live jazz music on sunday afternoons! It was my first taste of good live music here, and it was a much welcomed reprieve from the normal island electric drum set, casio keyboard laden, pop music of fiji. Otherwise, I went to some nicer bars, ate some good food, and got a decent amount of work done.

This past weekend (yesturday actually) we had the rugby sevens tournament put on by the committee I work with the raise money for their various conservation projects. It didn't work out exactly as expected (a common occurance here on the islands), but was pretty successful. If you're not familiar with the sport, seven-a-side rugby is a bit of a faster, shorter halved version of the normal 15-a-side version. Teams came from all over vanua levu, and a few even came up from viti levu; the games started at 8 or so and went all day, finishing around 7:30 or so....a full day of rugby and fijian vendor food...can't complain about that...there were even t-shirts! It was a good event, and raised money for a well worthy cause.

That's about the deal for now. I will be traveling back to viti levu in a week or so for some technical skills training and for all volunteer day (stragically placed on thanksgiving), which should in itself give me a few more stories to tell. Thanks to everyone one who sent me updating emails and letter.... i swear i will get back to all of you as soon as i can.