2007-08-31 Another Village

As always, things have not proceeded exactly as expected since the last update was sent. I guess that uncertainty is what keeps it interesting. I wrote about several things I wanted to buy from the USA. Well, I couldn't seem to get any response from West Marine International Sales. They simply don't answer either my emails, nor the messages our friend Doug left from his Florida business. They must be thriving, and can't bother, I suppose. But in New Zealand, friends Phil and Pete have
been stirring things up, and it's looking promising for us to have not only the backup electronics, but possibly even the new windlass before we leave Fiji. When Captain Cook explored this part of the world a couple hundred years ago, he sailed a ship with enough crew, and enough materials to rebuild the ships systems at least twice during the 3 year voyage. Our support crew stays at home, working their jobs, but reading the mail, ready to find and ship what we need. Once again it's clarified
that short handed cruising is not really an independent, solitary activity.
Karen has now wrapped up her kindergarten teaching, coming home Thursday with an armload of little gifts, and a dress stained with the hugs and cuddles of a dozen grubby, runny nosed little villagers. It appears that one of them may well have also given her the mild stomach virus that's been running through the village, but that should run its course in a couple of days. Meanwhile, we're readying Sequester for the short but probably lively passage to Savusavu. The first 5 hours or so will be
straight upwind, to the end of the Udu Peninsula, and with the trade winds blowing as they are it promises to shake loose anything not well secured.
On Monday I didn't get much done in the shop at Also Island, but we got to visit Langi village, where the clinic is located. Jim got a call from Duavata School asking for boat transport for a student to the clinic. One of the projects in the shop right now is the construction of a 23 foot boat for the school, but for now they depend on the Also 5, Jim's 19 foot runabout, for student transport. To pick up the patient, a faculty member, and a guide we had to go to the North landing near the
village, where the water is deepest, because it was low tide and a boat couldn't access the other jetties. The guide came to help us get into Langi, where we would have to wade over 100 meters of knee to ankle deep mud to get ashore at low water. Since Karen and I wanted to see Langi anyway, and we had a guide, Jim could stay at the island and tend to business.
The approach to Langi at low water was straightforward; drive in until the boat stalls. Put the anchor over the side, then start carefully slogging ashore. At that point the water is about a foot deep over nearly a foot of soft black mud. Thousands of sharp shelled mollusks live in the mud, but there's no kind of shoe that will stay on in that stuff, so it's bare feet, carefully placed to minimize cuts. I was thinking how fortunate it was that the patient was fully mobile. We could never have
carried a badly injured person of any size into the village . It would have had to wait 4 hours for the water to be high enough for the boat. As it was, the patient turned out to be the 16 year old daughter of a prominent village family, going to confirm that she, like so many other adolescents, had let her emotions rule one night and was now pregnant.
A few minutes of fairly strenuous wading got us to the shoreline. There we took advantage of rainwater in a beached boat to clean ourselves up a bit, then proceeded up the little road. Langi,like Thawaro, is a collection of wood and galvanized sheet metal houses set randomly around a sizable common green. With no glass windows or closing doors on many of the buildings, privacy is provided by leaving considerable space between them. As we walked up the green toward the clinic, a half dozen
people stepped out to greet us from different houses. They recognized us from their visits to Also Island for fuel and supplies from the store. I recognized Sammy, who I'd rescued with a couple of spark plugs for his outboard motor last month, and he invited us to come back for tea after we'd seen the clinic. As we approached the clinic we met the nurse, took a two minute tour of the facilty, then left the patient there and went back to Sammy's.
Karen was soon holding the newest of the family there, a two month old girl, and we were talking about all the activity around a temporary shelter going up in front of the house. We knew that quite a few Thawaro villagers had just gone to Labasa for a 2 week Methodist conference, but saw no such activity in Langi. It turns out that Langi is a Catholic village, and was to host a conference in the coming week, with people from as far as Suva coming to visit, and with the prospect of a church being
built at Langi to provide for the Udu Catholic population. It was the logical place, since at least most of the time, if it hadn't rained heavily, a 4 wheel drive could get to Langi . It's the end of the road system in Vanua Levu.
Conversation ranged from the guitar I was fixing for Sammy to his fishing business, and then to other visitors they've had through the years. They showed us photos of a group who came for several years to be dropped off with their kayaks at the end of the Udu, then paddled back downwind to Labasa, staying overnight at Nukasau, Langi, and Tilangitha on the way. It had been an annual high point for the village until the promoter died in a helicopter crash about 10 years ago. As we finished up
the pictures and the tea, the patient and attendants came in, done with the clinic visit. The tide hadn't had enough time to change much, so we retraced the long muddy slog to the Also 5, went back across the bay to drop off the party, then headed for Also Island in time for lunch with the crew.
The rest of the week has been filled with work on the new school boat, more progress on a big ice box for the Lady K fishing boat, tool repairsfor Jim, racking up my own tools, and visiting with the flow of people who come through the Island to shop. The coconut telegraph has spread the word that we're moving on soon, and many people ask when we're going, and do we plan to come back. They all wish us well, and we do plan to return. The back blocks of Fiji are a bed of roses; among the thorny
stems are many flowers of friendship. We surely hope to pass this way again.