There was one other boat there. As we closed in on it, we gradually realized it was Oyster Reach. They had arrived from the opposite direction the night before and had not yet done sevusevu. We agreed to go in together.
First sights in Komo, Matui's family, and Chief Luvu
We were met on the beach by Matui, who led us to the village on the opposite side of the island via a short, but very steep path which spits us out at the school (to the delight of the kids). He took us to the chief’s house, where we had a proper sevusevu ceremony. Thankfully, there was no mention of any additional fees. Matui told us we were the second and third boats to visit the island that year. Once we were all declared honorary villagers, we all had an amble around.
We had pretty much the same experience as at Namuka. Everyone was exceedingly nice and more than happy to share whatever they were doing with us. Komo’s main industry is making magimagi (pronounced mangi-mangi) – a twine made from the special magimagi coconut tree (only found in teh Lau group of Fiji). We saw an old man pounding fibers with a stick and asked if we could take a photo. He was delighted that we were taking an interest. He giggled away like a schoolboy the whole time, as if there was nothing more fun in the whole world than sitting under a tree, bashing coconut husks.
Magimagi (coconut twine) is sold in 25m lengths. Among other things it is used to decorate building posts.
One of our last stops was at the government health clinic, where we met Ratu Osea Tuibusa, the nurse. He was preparing for an inspection by his supervisors (repainting), but made a point of carving out some time for us to ask questions about him and the clinic, it helped that Cindy of Oyster Reach was a nurse too.
Move village scenes - the last is pandanas leaves drying - used to weave mats etc.
On all of the remote islands of Fiji, the health clinic is the primary care provider for the population. The nurses that staff them are all highly trained in a variety of specialties at the main trauma center in Suva and seem to be at what would be the Nurse Practitioner level in the U.S.
The shop, and shopkeeper with her daughter, our guide whistling to a hermit crab to persuade him to come out of his shell for bait
and the wonderful nurse Ratu who interrupted his painting of the clinic to spend time wtih us.
He was full of all sorts of interesting information. The village has 143 people, including 43 students grades K-8. He currently had four people on home care and the most common problems are cuts needing suturing for the young and diabetes and hypertension for the old. There had been two births this year. All expectant mothers are sent to Suva at the end of their second trimester so they can give birth in the main hospital and not risk having complications at the village. He says since that particular policy was enacted, infant and maternal mortality rates at birth fell into line with first world countries. Overall, health care in Fiji seems to be pretty good.
When we returned to our boat that evening we found a sea snake wanting to board!
They have deadly venom but apparently their jaws are too small to bite a human
We went into the village one more time the following day to deliver high quality prints we had made of the people we had photographed. All were received with unreserved glee. The old guy was especially delighted to see our photo of him being delighted at his work. He started giggling away all over again (and promptly gifted us a Fuwe (a traditional Fijian fly swatter). We also returned Matui’s hard drive, which we had loaded with movies. It seems like a strange world where people grow and catch almost all of their own food, live in houses of corrugated tin with no furniture and only a single solar-powered light bulb in the ceiling, yet will hand us a 1.5Tb hard drive to load with Hollywood blockbusters that will be watched on the one TV in the village before the battery dies at night. We were happy to give a little back to these wonderful people.
We also found time to snorkel (along the coast to the west of our anchorage) and discovered giant patches of healthy coral to drift along
No comments:
Post a Comment