Last Projects in Fiji

Teachers and us at our farewell party at the school The Compost Toilet Opening Ceremony The World Map: all paint was donated by Bob and Ann Styles (Gramma and Grampa) The finished compost toilets. The money was donated by

• Susan and Tom Loganbill (mom and dad)
• The Massy-Greene Family
• Friends of Fiji, Madison Wisconsin

Thank you again for everyone who helped make our Peace Corps experience a success! We very much appreciate all of your love and support!

Last Imagaes of Fiji

Our farewell dinner

Our little church at our very last day project painting the water tanks

Liss giving her last dental presentation

Liss and Pita making sand villages

Drew preparing all of our things for raffling

Titi and Manasa

Farewell Feast: Fresh pig, fish, and palusami

Drew holding our gift to the island a Peace Corps Rugby Cup, which Drew got to present with his Dad.

Melissa Loganbill and her Mom Viri

The last view from our last boat ride leaving Vatulele

Moce Fiji!

This is officially the last update from Fiji! Can you believe it 3 years and 2 months in this country and we have packed up our bags to move on to the next adventure. We left Vatulele on August 7 and it was one of the most difficult moments in our whole Peace Corps experience. On our last day in Vatulele, we took a run across the island with our dogs, took one last swim in the pristine turquoise ocean at Liku beach, and then we held a raffle to give away everything we owned to the villagers. We went to church for the very last time, and then it was 8 hours of drinking kava and listening to our village sing beautiful songs until 6am. Traditionally in the Fijian Village departing friends and family must stay up all night before they take their leave so that you spend every last minute with the ones you care about. It was a long, tearful goodbye for everyone! We spent a few days in Suva finishing up paperwork and saying goodbye to our office and friends. Our chief is here with us at the airport saying goodbye. He is a very sweet man for making a trip out just to see us...he is 75 years old! He keeps telling everyone here that he's with his Peace Corps :) We were finally able to show him this blog right now and he loved it! We are sure going to miss this place! Well, it's off to New Zealand....Let the adventure begin!

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.

Oso Oso....Busy!

Well, the last stretch is in sight and we are already beginning to pack up our tiny house! You would be amazed at how much you can get into a one room tin shack over the course of three years! Although, Melissa's pack-rat ability is highly exceptional on an international level, our goal is to give as much as we can to our villagers.

In the last month, we unfortunately learned that Peace Corps will not be replacing us with new volunteers. Although they equip us with state of the art GPS, a satellite phone, life jackets and a cell phone, after three years they've decided our unpredictable boat situation is too risky. At this point we agree with their decision, but of course the village is deeply disappointed.

The school compost latrine project coming along nicely.

We also celebrated Mother's Day in the village on May 18. Melissa was promoted this year to play the queen in the annual Mother's Day play in church. Although technically she was demoted because her previous part for the last 2 years as the King's servant actually had lines...2 to be exact.

All the mothers of Lomanikaya.

Melissa with Salote and Ana giving a performance of a lifetime :)

As our departure date is approaching the villagers have become more sentimental and we find visitor coming by more often for tea, chatting, and even dinner- We actually just introduced our chief to chicken tacos..His reaction " ooh, na tokoo is nice."

We also have been trying to teach computer lessons as often as we can. This year we are combining our efforts so one of us can focus on individual typing lessons while the other gives an environmental or heal

th lesson to the rest of the class.

Melissa with Talica and Jone, sixth graders.

The best surprise this last month was our associate pastor naming his daughter after us and bringing her home in May. Melissa Loganbill Naivau was born April 28, 2008 weighing 3.8 Kg. She is just beautiful and we are so honored.

Melissa, holding Melissa, with Drew.

Change of Seasons

Traditional Fishing with one big coconut net

As Drew and I anchored on our sandy beach of Vatulele we were greeted by a tanned aging man, and a camera crew. He introduced himself as Jack, working on a documentary of the traditional fishing techniques in Fiji for Jack Hanna's Into the Wild TV show. Unphased, Drew and I shook his hand, as we do with all visiting tourists, and continued to unload our supplies from the boat. We both went on our way, and unfortunately, it wasn't until we came in and googled him that we realized that we had been graced with a celebrity's presence!

Spearing the fish onto shore

We thought we would give you some picture footage from Into the Wild Fiji, which should be coming out on TV in the next couple of months.

Flopping Fish

Mr. Hanna and his crew filming the action

Besides the "Wild" excitement Drew and I have been busy entertaining fellow volunteer visitors, attending week long Methodist church conferences, and enjoying the cooler weather. The last few months of our service will be in and out of the main island doing trainings for the next group of volunteers so we are pushing hard to finish up our village projects.

We officially broke ground for the new latrine facility at the primary school. Drew has also been working hard with the school kids to finish up the world map mural. Below is the headmaster painting Fiji on the map. All of the kids are always so disappointed to find out Fiji is so small compared to the rest of the world.

Aside from projects, and trying to figure our next chapters in life we have just been trying to savor every minute with our villagers.

Pita, Moni, and Tai Mala enjoying papaya in our backyard

Village Projects

With the turn of the new year we have been on a roll in the village. In the middle of January we finally opened the dispensary in Lomanikaya village. The dispensary was funded by guests from the resort and it has taken nearly 5 years to finish. The village conducted an opening ceremony for the dispensary and had the nurse practitioner and Melissa as the chief guests. Now that it is open, it serves the two villages with access to medicine, minor first aid services, and check-ups. It is especially convenient for Melissa because the dispensary is only about 100 meters from our house. She has been very busy with training the village health workers and providing check-ups and health advice for all the villagers. It has actually become a popular place to hang out as all the kids stop by on the way home from school and many villagers come by for a break from their daily chores.

Shortly after the dispensary opening we experienced our first cyclone on the island. Cyclone Gene came through Fiji on Monday, January 29th bringing vast quantities of rain and strong winds. Luckily for us and our village we had minor damage and no one was hurt.

The cyclone did manage to bring down quite a few trees including a 50 foot coconut tree that came 2 meters from hitting our house. Unfortunately, the strong wind and waves pushed the village boat up the beach and a coconut tree fell on the boat breaking off the engine. Once the storm broke there was a big village effort to clean up all the debris and of course swap stories of the wild night.

Recently Drew was able to finish the Water Distribution Project. This project provides the village with easier access to water within the village by pumping the well to three tanks dispersed through out the village. The first two tanks were connected to the pump before Christmas and all the villagers and their visiting families were overjoyed at the ease of accessing water. After the holiday season the village finished up the project by installing a hand pump and covering the well to keep it clean. The third tank was recently connected so now water is easily accessible for everyone. The tanks require pumping every night when the generator turns on and the village men have taken the initiative to begin a rotation amongst themselves.

Thanks to the very generous managers, Nick and Chris, at Vatulele Island Resort we recently got certified to scuba dive. The diving around Vatulele is absolutely beautiful with tons of big fish, reef sharks, and colorful corals. We celebrated Melissa's 27th birthday with a shark dive in the Bega Lagoon. It was an amazing experience to face our fears and observe the huge beasts of the ocean. We saw and touched 8 nurse sharks ranging from 8 -12 feet, white and black tip reef sharks, and two 12 feet long bull sharks came by to have a snack. Other than the sharks there were plenty of giant trevally as well as other fish circling around the buckets of fish. If you are a scuba diver this is a must see in Fiji.

We followed up that dive with a week of work in Suva and then we used the rest of our vacation time to travel around Viti Levu. We went to the island of Caqalai to enjoy a few days of snorkeling and relaxing. Caqalai is a tiny island that you can walk around in 15 minutes and it has amazing reefs filled with brilliant corals and fish. We then took a short boat ride in the pouring rain to Levuka, Ovalau which is the old capital of Fiji. This small town has an old colonial feeling with a backdrop of tall, jagged mountains. We spent a few days touring the town, small museums, and landmarks from the first settlers. From Ovalau we made our way up to Nananu-i-ra to spend our Easter weekend with fellow volunteers. It was a terrific vacation and it makes us sad to think that it will be our last real vacation in Fiji.

Bring on 2008

Happy New Year! We hope everyone had a fabulous holiday season! We got back in Fiji just in time for Cyclone Daman to run its course through the northern group of islands. Peace Corps consolidated all the volunteers to the main 2 islands, so we were sent to Suva for 5 days waiting to see the cyclone’s course. From November- April its cyclone season in Fiji and with global warming they say to expect more cyclones than in the past. Besides dodging Daman, we have been enjoying the slow holiday season. Everything winds down during this time because it’s the “summer break” for all of the kids. Despite the indolent attitude towards working, Drew managed to get his water distribution project up and running before Christmas- just in time for all the visiting family members. All the villagers are so happy they don’t have to draw water from the well anymore. We spent Christmas day with our village family eating lots of roast pig, chicken, and fish, going to lots of church, and playing games on the beach with the kids. We decided to go to Taveuni Island- coined the garden island of Fiji- for New Years. We spent a few days surfing, hiking to waterfalls, snorkeling, and camping on the beach with a few other Peace Corps volunteers. It took us 26 hours by ferries and buses to get there, but the breathtaking scenery made it all worth the journey. Since the date line runs directly through Taveuni we were absolutely the first people to bring in the new year. We look forward to getting our last few projects finished up in the next few months. Drew will finish his water project in the village and help Liss with the construction of the new compost toilet project at the school. Our village is having an official ceremony this week to open our dispensary, so Liss can finally work in our village. All the best in 2008!