Farewell & Goodbyes
25 June 2014 | 19 9.01'S:178 32.51'W, Fulaga
John

Fulaga is a hard place to say goodbye to. Not only is it absolutely stunningly beautiful but the village people are equally as beautiful.
We have been here for two weeks and have only touched the surface. This needs to be a month long stay to see and enjoy everything there is. The people are so outgoing you become attached to them in a very short period of time. In a way it is like meeting a stray puppy and wanting to do everything you can for it. These people are the ones who truly live hand to mouth, day in and day out. Life for them has changed a lot over the past 20 years but it would be difficult to even come close in telling their changing lives.
Every day they have to forage for their food for the evening and the next day. Each family has a small plantation (fruit and vegetable garden) that they have to plant and harvest to have anything for the food mat at night. Their plantation consists of lemons, limes, oranges, banana, mango, papaya, tara root, cassava root, sweet potato, coconut, and some green leafy plant that resembles spinach when cooked. They can buy flour, regular potatoes, poorage (oatmeal), a few canned goods, spices, leavening agents and powdered milk. Each family has their own or communal pig pen where they raise one or two pigs (which they do not name) for feasts and producing other little pigs. In their yards they have several chickens and in their back yard, a large abundance of fish, clams, lobsters and crab.
Their home electricity consists of a battery with a small solar panel and a single 12v light. When the battery has useditÂ's dayÂ's charge it is lights out. The village has a nursing station with a small clinic and a school that provides classes from k-8 for three villages. The nurses station has limited solar power and the school has the largest solar system to operate some school equipment. Each home has their own outdoor wood fired cooking facility and a spot for a lovo (outdoor underground oven). They do have a community cooking building with a single propane stove with oven and a wood fired cooking area. The thermocouple on the oven does not work so in order to use the oven someone has to hold the temperature knob in to bypass the thermocouple. The community cooking facility is rarely used but for feasts or baking bread for feasts. So not only do they have to forage for their food but they have to also forage for the wood to cook their food. When they have a feast the ladies of the village gather to make the bread. When Lisa and I gave a baking class for bread and cookies, they said their bread was much heavier but they made theirs from the same ingredients so it is a matter of letting it rise once in a bowl and then again before cooking. While they make the bread at the community kitchen they bake it back at their individual lovos. For a feast they make about 70 loaves of bread.
We were able to see two of the villages and did not have a chance for the third which is about 7 miles away by boat. The main village has the island chief and about 300 people, the next has only about 150 people and the furthest one about 100. Transportation is by foot (mostly bare), long boat (fiberglass) or outrigger dug out canoe. The total of the boats and canoes are 5 for about 40 families of the main village, two boats and 1 canoe for the second largest and we donÂ't know about the third.
On Tuesday, knowing that many of us cruisers would be leaving over the next week, the village had a picnic out on the beach where most of us were anchored. All the cruisers in Fulaga (about 14 boats) were in attendance. We went on mostly their agenda which was foraging for the protein substance, fish, crab and clams. The villagers brought the staple, cassava root and I had made an announcement the day before to a couple other cruisers that it should be a pot luck with cruisers bringing side dishes. The villagers took the yachties out foraging with them. A large group went back into the mangrove swamps, in the mud gathering mud crabs, some went net fishing, while others went snorkeling and spear fishing. I went with Joe surface spearing mullet. This is tricky with the water parallax trying to spear a 12 inch fish, 20-30 feet away from you, while it is moving, with a spear consisting of 4 prongs on a fairly straight stick 8-10 feet long. We got three and missed 5 more. If this was his dayÂ's meal he would have tried for 6 fish to feed his extended family consisting of an adult son (mentally challenged) and TauÂ's mother along with Jasmine, TauÂ's sister and Sam their young son.
The picnic was an absolute hit. The picnic lasted from low to high tide with four of us, Orcinius, Jimminy Cricket, Pacific Hwy and Sea Whisper taking the villagers on board and us towing their long boat with all their fishing gear. When it was near the end the village host families gave each of the cruisers a gift. Most of the gifts consisted of hand weaved mats of various sizes and a couple of carvings. Palm reed mats, purses and baskets along with hand carvings are the villages trade. They are very good at it. They sell their wares to the local store for either money or credit and the village store operator sends the goods to Suva, Savusavu and Nadi for sale to the tourists. We bought several items from their village display. Lisa was presented a mat hand woven by Jasmine with the phrase, Lisa and John, Orcinius,Mis U Al Vs (Miss you always). Again it was heart wrenching.
We took most of the village back on Orcinius with 5 going with Sea Whisper. It was a fun ride in the rain. All the village ladies were inside while the men were outside under the cover. Lisa had some music playing inside and the ladies started dancing it up. What a hoot. They are so friendly and jovial. Sea Whisper was departing the next morning so they stayed anchored at the village lagoon. Because it was getting dark we decided to stay anchored in the lagoon and then go into the village the next morning to say our final goodbyes.
It was a restless night for me because the wind picked up about 0200 and I knew I had only layed a 3:1 scope and everything would be a lee shore. At first light Sea Whisper weighed anchor and departed. We watched them go through the pass on our AIS and all was well. Around 10:00 Lisa and I walked into the village for our final goodbyes. To our family it was a bit tear jerking. First Jasmine and Joe and then we walked over to the school to tell Tau goodbye but before she would let us say goodbye she had to have her class perform a little song and dance. It was great and all the kids said a smiling goodbye. We then went over to say our farewell to the chief. We met with him for about 10 minutes and told him through our interpreter, Joe, how wonderful everyone was and how sad it had come time for us to leave. Lisa had made up a video of the villagers with their local church music in the background. The pictures were from us and Sea Whisper. Tau was to present it to th e chief in the evening after showing it to him on her computer.
So while we planned to leave today, we decided to stay one more day and do some snorkeling and beach combing. We will be leaving tomorrow to make our way to Kandavu and then on to Nadi.
All for now.
John & Lisa