Day to Day

Many of you have recently been asking us what we are doing with our last few months on the island. Of course we have been busy with projects, but our island life is so full of day to day chores that most people don't realize we even have. We thought we would give you a glimpse into our daily life and what we have been doing behind the scenes living on a tropical island for the last three years .

Every morning a truck rolls down our one island dirt road to the last village to pick up employees of the resort. This is the village's cue to rise and shine and start getting the kids ready for school. We usually take a wake-up jog down to the next village with our dogs, Tave and Qisa, to get us ready for the long days.

Running down the beach towards the sunrise.

Before hitting the bucket bath we try to get in a few chores like mowing the lawn or washing clothes. Washing clothes in a big basin and scrubbing them on a piece of plywood took some getting used to. It isn't all that bad unless it's your turn to wash the sheets. It is so hard to scrub every single inch in a small tub.

Drew using his machete, the typical Fiji lawn mower.

What makes it more challenging is you have to walk down the village a few hundred yards to get more water to rinse your clothes. After a good rinse you get to hang your undergarments high and proud for all to see with your other clothes and pray it doesn't rain or else mildew begins to set in.

After cleaning up and breakfast, Drew is off to the Teitei, his plantation to garden. After many months of hard work we are finally eating this season's harvest. He has beautiful yams and lettuce growing right now.

Drew and the Fijian yams, Uvi.

A box of his fresh picked COS lettuce.

Melissa’s off to work at the little health clinic down the road. She gets to help patch up munchkins all day and help out the health workers.

Hanging out with Tagitagivula, and Tai Malakai.

Usually Melissa and Drew meet at home for lunch, but Drew takes a longer lunch break to stay out of the hot sun and get some extra chores done.

He gets to go to the bush and cut down dead tree branches for our firewood and then prepare it for baking over the fire. He also gets to go to other side of the village to feed the pigs our left over food.

We both get home around 6pm and finish up our chores around the house. Everyone in the village makes their own brooms from coconut leave stems to keep their houses clean. Melissa sweeping with the local broom, a sasa.

We switch off washing dishes. We had to get a good system going with 2 basins all done in our little shower room. We usually have to do our dishes each night or else the food will attract more mice and cockroaches from the jungle behind our house.

Then we get to prepare our dinner which usually consists of a couple of fish either Drew has caught spearfishing or from our generous neighbors. Melissa loves her fish filleted so she can marinate it in one of her many homemade concoctions. Drew is a big fan of the local coconut milk cooked with fish. He usually scrapes the coconut with a grater then he squeezes out the fresh milk to boil with the fish.

Drew scraping coconut flesh in our kitchen.

After dinner we usually wind down by the lantern reading or playing with our pets. Then it's off to bed to dream about doing it all again tomorrow!

This is the latest progress on the four new latrines at the school. Hopefully, they will be done this week. We will be having a grand opening ceremony to commemorate all of the effort by our village and the school for completing them so quickly.

This is the latest picture of our namesake, Melissa. She is sporting a new dress from the Styles' Family, and mini tennis shoes from Z'aree Loganbill, Drew's cousin. This was taken after her baptism last Sunday.