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FIJI - FIELD UPDATES - WEEKS 1&2

By Rachel

After all meeting up on Wednesday 5th July at Nadi we began the long journey over to out camp. An overnight stop at Suva, the capital, gave us our last chance to stock up on supplies and to buy our Bula dresses/shirts and sulus, as well as a fun night out dancing (with some poles involved!)

We then took the overnight ferry to SavuSavu, emerging out of the boat after 14 hours to beautiful sunshine and stunning scenery. In the afternoon we went on a mini adventure! We took a walk through a slippery forest to discover a beautiful waterfall, our first chance to try out our bikinis! (yes, even the boys!)

The next day we took a long, bumpy truck ride around the island to take the boat over to our camp. The first sight of camp was breath taking and we were all really excited to finally be at our new home.

It took a while to get camp up and running but we all worked hard on Monday with digging, cleaning, tidying, cooking, filling, building and unpacking, but we are now all settled into our new way of life.

We had our formal welcome to the local village, Navatu, with our SevuSevu on Monday and have just spent our first Sunday with our adoptive families. We were fed up to bursting, had lots of rest, went to church and drank plenty of kava. The villagers are so friendly and generous to us all it makes us feel very welcome.

The first week was spent getting people diving and learning fish species and names. All the new divers (open water babies!) have been working hard learning all the theory and doing their first dives. It is all really exciting but quite hard work as they begin to graduate from open water babies to open water teenagers!

So, after a long week on camp getting everything sorted out we celebrated with a uniformed themed fancy dress party, which allowed everyone to show their creative side and let their hair down before another week begins!