Same Story

Natewa Bay, taken not far away from Viani

Councilor Paulini and Rachel in her Kindergarden

A few of us at Ms. Extravaganza 2008

PC Fiji, all of us after out beach cleanup in Nadi

Again I have to apologize for allowing a month or so to go by without posting anything up here. I have been traveling a lot, which accounts for some of it. In September I piggy-backed on an NGO's trip out to Viani village (which happens to be Rachel's village) for a voter education/constitutional rights workshop they were doing for the community. I went out there with one of the Labasa Town councilors and we took the opportunity to check up on a Rotary International water project being done at the primary school and to see if there was anything we could do to help Rachel along with the Kindergarden she has started in the village. The workshop went well and it was nice to get out of town for a few days and visit a village I had not had a chance to visit yet.

During the first week of October all 57 of the volunteers here in Fiji were brought into Nadi for our annual All Volunteer conference. Immedietely following my group stayed in Nadi for our Middle of Service conference. These two conferences have not traditionally been run consecutively (in the past All Vol. was done over Thanksgiving), but due to budget cuts back home and the depreciation of the dollar in conjunction with rising transportation costs have forced us to tighten the belt a bit and combine trips; the result was all of us being in Nadi for about a week. It was good to see some of the volunteers I do not get a chance to that often, however I'm not a huge fan of Nadi (international airport is there as are several of Fiji's larger resorts, as such it is expensive and tacky; not to mention seeing the sterotypical tourist from our country that comes to Fiji, spends two weeks at a resort that they never leave and is strikingly similar to one they might find in Virgina Beach, and then goes home feeling like they got the Fiji experience bumms me out a bit), and I truthfully would have rathered spent my time elsewhere. That being said, the conference was one of the better run ones we have had since I have been here and it is good to see out post growing up a bit and improving as time goes by.

This past week I spent three days in my province's chiefly village, Naduri. The first two were for our bi-annual provincial council meeting, and the third was for the annual Macuata Day celebration. The council meeting lagged on a bit as I was not involved in it as much this time around, but the Macuata Day celebration was a pretty good time. The main purpose of the event is for the provincil office to raise the 40% of its operating budget that comes from the communities they serve. In that sense it was quite successful in my opinion, the final figure I saw was $65,000 raised, which I believe to be a significant amount. Each tikina (think county) set up a stall on the village grounds that their representative delegation sat and drank kava in throughout the day. Each tikina also brought local dishes for a shared lunch and preformed a meke (a fijian tradition dance) or other item for general entertainment. Aside from the tikina that illegally brought a dozen sea turtles for the feast, it was a nice event and it was great to see people from all over the province celebrating together.

My work on the park here in Labasa has stalled a little bit. The Town Council is in the process of reconfiguring their lease on the park's land, and they have asked us to delay our renovations until they have finalized that (which will probably take about 3 weeks or so). We did however receive some more funding from the Festival Committee and are in the process of panning some other environmental/beautification projects around town.

We have had some funding and transportation problems over at the Ministry of Fisheries office that have kept us from getting out into the field as much as we need to. We have about half-a-dozen fish ponds that are ready to be harvested, so hopefully that will all rectify itself here in the next week or so and we can get back out there. I am trying to set up a better working relationship between our office here in Labasa and the local resturants and hotels so that we have a fixed market for the tilipia the local farmers are producing. I am also working on creating a manual that the ministry can use to help train interested communities on small scale aquaculture. These have kept me busy, but it's mostly office/town work and I'm itching to get in the field more.

My big success for the past 7 weeks or so has been my garden; it is starting to get pretty respectable. I have 4ft high long bean plants, a couple rows of broccoli, 3 rows of spinach, a couple nice squash plants, about a dozen good looking tomato vines, and a mint plant that is getting out of control. Those added to the preexisting papaya, mango, lemon, chili, and coconut trees on the property are working to make it a nice little oasis here in town. I hoping to get some more beans in this weekend along with a few other things. I am a little concerned on how some of these plants will fare during the upcoming raining season (about a month away), but it is still pretty exciting to walk back there everyday.

Thats about all I have for the time being. I will do all I can to get up here next week. I hope all is well...

A Long August

It has been a pretty busy month, and it has unfortunately kept me from writing up here as often as I would like. The organization that has been funding my environmental group had their week long festival here at the end of August, which has kept me a bit preoccupied. For being run only a week in a small town in Fiji, the Festival of the Friendly North raises a pretty substantial about of money; we grossed this year about $125 thousand (net is expected to be around $100 thousand). All of the money that is raised goes towards community projects in the greater Labasa area. Through the past couple years they have constructed new wings for an elderly nursing home, dormitories for a local school for the handicapped, aid to flood victums, a fitness center here in town, and contributed towards several other smaller projects (including the town beautification that I am currently assisting with). The funds raised this year are planned to go towards building a mortuary in a rural town a couple hours east of Labasa and continued beautification work. It is a great organization and I have been very happy to have been a part of it. The Fiji Sun did a short write up on the beautification project (I'm kind of a big deal here, I own many leather bound books...people know me...), and it can be found here: http://www.fijisun.com.fj/main_page/view.asp?id=5472 . They miss quoted me a bit, but the general idea still came through I think.

The pictures above are from the Festival parade where some of the members of my environmental group (H.O.P.E. Labasa) along with some of the other volunteers in the area marched. They gave me a night to MC the entertainment program and a small amount of time to speak on the final day of Festival about our beautification/environmental work. Between these I think we got a decent amount of awareness out to the area about our group and what we are trying to accomplish. We received quite a bit of good feedback and have started getting some new support since the Festival, and we seem to be gathering a bit of steam as we go on.

As scheduled, we began work on the park here in town midway through August. The Labasa police came out and joined members of H.O.P.E. to start the clean-up of the park, and we are looking at begining construction here in the next couple weeks. We have been asked to aid in the creation of a children's park around the new fitness center that the Festival funded, and we are hoping to do some youth education work with some of the new funding that should be coming in now with the completion of the Festival.

Otherwise things are going well. I have started working about half the week over at the Ministry of Fisheries. They have several projects they are juggling, and right now I am going around and trying to figure out exactly where I can best fit in. I have been taking it a bit easy this week, as with the Festival and everything there have been a lot of visitors and late nights. It looks like (keeping my fingers crossed) that we will be starting the reef surveys in a week or so, which will keep me busy and traveling for awhile, but I'll do my best to write back up here soon. I hope all is well with everyone.

Back Again

Pictures from our trash can painting

I feel like I start off a lot of these posts this way, but I apologize for being a bit derelict in posting recently; it has been a crazy month or so filled with several projects, several visitors, and several new responsibilities for me. I am really going to make a better concerted effort to get back to the once-a-week posts.

My friend Jessica just completed her visit to Fiji last week. She was in for 8 days or so, during which we spend a few days on Viti Levu around Sigatoka and Suva, then the rest of her time up here in the Labasa region. It was a good little break from the grind, and it was nice to see someone else from home out here; I hope to get some pictures from the trip up in a couple weeks or so. Jessy attended one of the meetings for the Marine Protected Area project I am helping WWF up here with, and in the process found her way to making an appearance in the Fiji Times, one of Fiji's national newspapers. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, you can see the picture (jess is on the far right and I am sitting next to her obstructed by the man in front of me) at the following link: http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=96136

I have been doing quite a bit of work recently with the environmental group I helped to form here, H.O.P.E (Helping Our Polluted Environment) Labasa. We just completed out first project, which was organizing the primary and secondary school children around town to come out and help us paint the new trash cans places along the main road. We received a write up in the paper for it, which can be found at the link here: http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=95729 We are now in the process of renovating a park here in town. It has been pretty exciting, as we have received several donations and quite a bit of free labor for the endeavor, and it looks like we will be "breaking ground," so to speak, in a week or so. Labasa is glaringly lacking any green areas in town, and we are hoping that crreating this park will be a stepping stone to creating more awareness about environmental issues to the population here as a whole.

I also just started to officially work with the Ministry of Fisheries up here. It's looking like I will be focusing on their aquaculture program, which I am really looking forward to as it has very good potential up on this island and there seems to be a healthy amount of interest and funding. They are also the lead organization on the spat collection and seaweed farming projects I have been trying to promote, so I stand to be able to continue with that as well. I feel like I am finally at a point between my work with the environmental group, the provincial office, and the ministry of fisheries that I have full work days, which may sound a bit odd, but it comforting to be busy....

Three new volunteers just arrived here in Labasa; all female and all working in the health sector. It's really good to have some new blood up here; they have all come up being pretty energetic and motivated, and it's brought some new life up here which is great.

Thats about all I have for now, I'll get back up here in a week or so.

Back

It's been a couple weeks since I've gotten anything up here, but in my defence, I've been doing quite a bit of traveling. The first training session I did with the new group went really well, and during that week I was able to get some good meeting in with WWF and a few other people to line up some future work. I took advantage of the long weekend (June 16th was the Queens Birthday observed holiday) and spend some time traveling around the big island. I spent a couple days over in Sigatoka (on the Western side of Viti Levu) and actually got in a bit of diving. It wasn't the best that I have ever done, but it was nice to just get out there in the water again. That side of the country is pretty difficult to get over to on any regular sort of basis, so it was nice to see some of those volunteers and hang out for the weekend. When I got back to Labasa from that trip I had a meeting with a some local stakeholders and officials about the environmental issues that we are facing here in Labasa. I didn't get as many people out as I had hoped, but the meeting went really well, and looks like it is going to be a group that gets together regularly. We discussed several different things, but we layed out a framework for addressing some important problems (like litter control and waste disposal). It was just an initial meeting, but I'm excited for the direction it looks to be heading. Last week I was also in Suva for a couple more training sessions with the new group. It's good to see some new blood coming in, and I am excited for those volunteers that are coming up here to do so. I just got back on Saturday, and am trying to get back in the groove.

During the next couple weeks the group that came in before mine will be departing. It only reinforces how fast the past year has seemed to go. It also looks like I will be invloved with starting a youth organization in the area. A local NGO (Save the Children) is looking to expand a branch of one of their programs up into my provenence, and they are planning on using my position here as a facilitation point to make it happen. It should be a good project; it deals a lot with empowering children and young adults to take leadership rolls and such. I don't have a whole lot of experience with these kinds of things, but I'm looking forward to the prospect of it. I go back down to Suva in a couple weeks for another training sessions. The new groups finds out their sites in July 4th, and we are all eagerly anticipating it to find out which of the new volunteers are coming up to our area. I have a few other things going on here and there, but I should be able to get back up here next week.

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.

Finally

Road to Savusavu

Kid with a killer mullet

I missed a week in here somewhere, but I have been busy, so I don’t feel too bad about it. I have a visitor from the States in now, which has been great. Before she got in last week, I had been doing a bit of research on beautifying the town area of Labasa. I have recently found myself working with the executive board of the Friendly North Festival here, which is an annual festival held in Labasa; the money from which goes towards civic projects here in town. This past year they raised money to build a new fitness center here (which will be completed in a couple months) and to do a beautification project here in town. The board has since asked me to help them to choose and organize the beautification project. So, I have been running around talking with the town council and chamber of commerce and others to see what we might be able to do with the money they have set aside for this work. It has been an interesting endeavor so far, and the way people talk, it might be something that many different groups can get behind and really work on to change the face of Labasa (and in doing so make it a bit more environmentally friendly). In this regard, we are looking at things like putting in new trash bins (the few that exist are pretty sad), creating a children’s park, re-landscaping some main street areas, etc. There is a lot of potential between all of these things to be really good for the area.

Friday, I went down to the Fiji Institute of Technology campus here in town for their clean-up day. We cleaned up the campus area then walked down the main street picking up the trash. There were maybe about 50 people, and I think the event went really well. There were several people along the way who stopped and asked the students where they were from and what they were doing, and I feel that it worked well to help raise awareness about the trash problem in the area. It is certainly not sufficient to change much, but it at the least showed the town that the youth would like to see a better Labasa. After the clean-up, the students did some of their traditional dances and participated in sports events for the rest of the afternoon, which is a great way to run an event like this; everyone works in the morning, then goes out and has fun in the afternoon. I was very happy with the way they pulled it off, and especially with the beautification work we are talking about, it brought to light some very good issues.
The last couple days I was out on Mali Island, just off the coast of Labasa. One of the villages out there asked me to go out and talk to their people about the spat collection (juvenile oyster’s collected to sell to pearl farms) project that I am trying to promote in the area. I ended up speaking with two villages on the island about the project, and I think it went pretty well. One of the villages is interested for sure, and we can go on to the next step with them and the other is going to discuss it this week and get back to me. I have been trying to find a community to try this project out since February, and it is exciting that one may have signed on yesterday.

I have some more work to do on the beautification project to do the rest of the week. I think my guest and I will travel out to Taviuni and maybe down to the main island middle of next week before she has to leave, so I may not be able to write back up here for another week or so. But, when I get back I should have some good stories.