Tribewanted: Vorovoro

Hi guys

I really appreciate all the feedback you guys are sending me and the links are really helpful…they save me heaps of time sorting through what is appropriate.

There were a couple of things that struck me when I visited here a month ago for the first time in over two years. Firstly I saw that a number of things that had been damaged and ordinarily would be thrown away were repaired. My no. 1 example of this is the kitchen water tank featured with Dan in the Paradise or Bust series. It seems that a log fell out of the fire one day and burned a massive hole in the side of the tank. Most people would have thrown this out but not TW. Someone got out the fiberglass mat and fixed the damn thing! No. 2 was on old shovel that I just know should RIP, but once again the Fijian boys put a splint on the handle and put it back to work. I have to admit that I’m learning something here…and I’m the sustainability manager! I haven’t seen this sort of thing since gramps passed away! I think in this day and age, most of us have lost the ability to fix stuff. It’s great to be part of a team that still keeps these old values alive.

Amy wouldn’t even let me toss out some of our rubbish because she said Epeli could probably make something out of it…and I think she’s probably right! I’m now looking more closely at the things we use and the waste we produce and wondering what I could salvage from the heap. I’ve learned that since the beginning, TW has been busy cataloging the food we bring in to the island and weighing the rubbish produced to see how we have changed since we started. This raises some good sustainability questions.

Are we reducing our inputs and meeting more of our own needs?

What are our main wastes and how are our efforts to reduce them going?

What wastes are produced elsewhere that affects us here in Vorovoro?

Some people think you are only “sustainable” if you are completely self reliant in every aspect, but I don’t think anyone can really claim that. Sustainability is a process and as long as we are bit by bit meeting more of our own needs and having less to toss today than yesterday, then we’re on the right track and that’s good enough for me!

If I was ever going to leave Fiji permanently (I won’t) and there was just one legacy I could leave in Fiji, a revolution in the way people think about and handle waste would be a hot contender for that position. I took up Amy’s suggestion to take a peek at the south side of the island as this tends to be a catchment for all the rubbish drifting from town. Sure enough within a few minutes I was able to collect over a bag full and as Amy predicted, there were the indomitable flip flops. Of course we don’t have a lot of control on what people in town do unless we launch an awareness campaign. As I picked up a plastic bottle and looked at it, I suddenly remembered that TW wants to rebuild the old pontoon and the words “floatation device” came to mind shortly followed by “air tight storage container” and a few days later, “insulation bubble”. From then on I started to try to find new names for every piece of rubbish I could see. Maybe you can help suggest new names and possible uses for some of the common items of rubbish. Of course a plastic bag looks a lot like a floating jellyfish in the eyes of a turtle and therefore could truthfully be termed “turtle choking device”, but let’s keep it positive. What else could you call the following?

A plastic bag
A shampoo bottle
An old flip flop
A bit of fish net
chicken wire

Elisabeth (on island last two weeks) told how she had experimented with Epeli to cut off the tops of beer bottles to make cups using a string soaked in kerosene, placed around the bottle to be cut then lit, then dunked in water. Apparently it comes off clean! I have got to try this at home with the kids!

Scraps of wood could be used everyday here to feed Pupu’s oven and reduce the need to cut trees for firewood.

We’re now looking for a tribe member to create a flip flop sculpture as a statement. Any creative ideas?

Rubbish can be an eyesore, however as friends of the environment, we want to reuse as much as possible and reduce the need to burn fuel to cart it off to the rubbish dump, therefore we need to hoard a wee bit! Perhaps we need to screen off an area behind a woven bamboo wall where we go to forage when we need to. That wouldn’t look too bad hey?

Thanks to Patrick and crew two weeks ago for cutting off the top of lots of plastic bottles and threading them onto a hosepipe. The hot water system is much improved…who knows…24 hour coffee could be just around the corner.

God bless to you all

Chuck