Celebrating independence- what a difference a day makes!
12 October 2019 | Sawa-i-lau
Grace Foot
Independence Day in Makongai was celebrated in the village on the other side of the island from us an 8 mike walk aling a goat trail we were strongky advised by the well fed ladies of the village that this wss not a walk any sane person would contemplate. Into the open sea complete with pumice fields we set with the dinghy! We were assured hat the jiourney would take 15 minutes (all the children travel to school this way) but as we had no idea where we were going we werent surprised that it took us half an hour and we arrived with rather soggy bottoms! We wound our way aling a short goat trail to arrive at the school where the celebratiins were taking place. They had all turned out in Fijian national shirts which stephen uncharitably noted were made in Bangladesh! The community consisting of about 5 or 6 families were gathered sheltering from the sun under a UNICEF tarpaulin drinking pink squash out of a bucket and eating a selectiin of biscuits. We were invited to join in and presented them with a bag of lollipops, colouring books, and plasters which they seemed thrilled with. Once the headmaster and the matriarch had opened the festivities with prayers the main event was a volleyball tournament we were divided into teams , Stephen and i were with one lady in a team called Lions and Al was with two very large ladies one the chiefs wife in the Rooster team, unsurprisingly these two teams came last Al was actually by the best of the 3 of us, and Grace surprisly was the worst!
We got back to the boat and had a good snorkel seeing a couple of the giant clams, leopard fish and other brightly coloured fish and good coral.
The following morning we set off at 5.30am to wiggle through endless narrow passages which Curly had hoped would be clear of pumice lava sadly this wasnt the case and islands of it were swept up right at the narrowest points of the passage where there was no choice but to motor through it! We made it before sundown to a different world with up market private houses sandy beaches and kite surfing. In the morning we would leave again at 5.30am for the Yasawa islands