Tribewanted: Vorovoro

Bula Sia everyone!

Well, exciting times. Word of a cyclone forming and is headed for Vorovoro, cyclone Funa. Heavy rains and winds are here and everyone is scurrying around. The wood for the reed bed has been used to cover windows at Tui Mali’s house. We have been told to pack a bag with important items to take and other bags will be put in the Great Bure the strongest structure. Te is walking around with a hard hat because of the falling coconuts. Just like dropping a bowling ball on your head from two stories. Just wind, rain and waiting. Anything started is stopped when the rains come. The boats have been put on shore and tied to trees, the new brothers; Jerome and Kevin were very helpful, rolling the boats like the great Egyptians on logs and planks across the sand. Now, we wait. This picture is of the chicken free zone after some of the winds had past the entire structure collapsed as well as breaking trees along the way. We had just cleaned up this area before the storm. More work to be done by the tribe to get it back to normal.

Working on a separation of the pigs, the mother they said may be ready to give birth. You can get in on the pool, broken down by day in 4 hour increments. Here we are choosing squares and the number of piglets. Porky and Bess are my names for the new arrivals. Filling in the squares didn’t take long. Now they think it may be later than predicted. We’ll see.

Look at the progress on the chicken pen. Pupu already has one chicken looking at his new quarters. We ran out of chicken wire again. One more roll should do it and time for the chicken round-up. We’ve been seeding the pen with scraps so they get used to going there. We’re seeding the old pen as well to catch the strays. We’ll see how this will work in hopes of getting the 4:00 rooster alarm clock. It would be nice to have him away from the village.

We had the opportunity to work with Tui Mali at the Mali District School on clean-up. Tui Mali spoke to me as the chief to ask the tribe members to join him which the members were more then willing to do. We arrived after breakfast and were immediately treated to tea. We joined Pupu in cleaning up the areas that the men with machetes and brush cutters had cleared. Here’s a picture of the men with machetes. There were three groups like these as well as the brush cutters that had some heavy duty weed whackers. Then we have our crew with the rakes. The villagers gave us more rakes and we cleared the areas all morning. We took a break for lunch and cleared a little more then we were invited to a grog session with Tui Mali and the village. He invited us to more lunch and some of the guys accepted, then a little more grog and time for the trip home. Again the traditional dunking in the sea as we left the village, new tribe members dove into this tradition with great gusto. The tribe enjoyed helping out at the school and the school appreciated the help.

The Thursday before Mariah the marine biologist left a group had a nice day on the reef. They fished and snorkeled off Survivor Island where Survivor Fiji was shot. I had to stay in Vorovoro since the number that could go was limited. Kathi provided these pictures. They arrived and set up tarps on Exile Island, if you remember the show it was a desolate stretch of beach on a very small island. The snorkeled and spear fished until noon and then cooked their fish over an open fire, laid them out on a surf board and all ate lunch Fijian style with fingers and lime. It looked finger licking good. All that went said they had a wonderful experience.

Back on Vorovoro, Julia and Jenny decided to have a hand at the machetes. They provided new bedding for the piggies and split coconuts for them as well. It’s not only the men that can wield a mighty whack, but the women as well.

Nothing left to do for now, but continue the clean-up from the storms. We have a sunny day and people are airing their bedding and hanging laundry while we have a chance.

We love the sunshine and the life on Vorovoro.

Vinaka