Thursday, September 6, 2012

Tomato Rescue in Fulaga

Just at the time we were slicing the very last hoarded tomato (now about 6 weeks old), we got a call on the Rag of the Air radio net that Pandion, a boat we'd been corresponding with by email, was headed straight for Fulanga. I took the opportunity to ask them to bring us some fresh veggies, and boy, did they deliver!! We got a big bunch of "spinach" greens and a huge bag of lovely tomatoes.

We enjoyed participating in Pandion's sevusevu in the village. It was obvious that the villagers had been listening to our advice and stories about doing sevusevu in other villagers. They served Lola, Lorca, and Sage (11) tea and cake, and did a much better job of explaining to them the rules of the village and giving them a tour of the village. We encouraged them to accept the invite to church and lunch afterward. And a good time was had by all on Sunday.

When the assistant chief (the chief is away in Suva) found out that Lorca was a doctor, and Lola a nurse, he asked them to hold a clinic in the village. So Monday was taken up by more village activities. While they held the clinic, I went in to take another look at the computer in the school. It had been acting flakey, and Dave volunteered me to take a look at it. In my opinion, it's hardware--either a dying hard drive or power supply. Sometimes it starts up and other times it doesn't. No computer techs here, and no similar computer to swap components with, so I couldn't help them much with that one.

The clinic was a great success. They saw 14 villagers, doing mostly screening type checkups. The only sad news was that 85% of the villagers are overweight and have chronic high blood pressure. Sera, the local nurse, said she will work with them on meds, diet, and exercise, but that it is mainly lifestyle issues and hard to get people to change.

Dave spent Monday while we were in the village on the boat working on our heat exchanger. It had been "making water" (which it's not supposed to do). He pulled everything apart, cleaned it up, and found a boot leaking. He put it all back together yesterday, and we ran the engine, and he thinks that problem is solved.
-----
At 08/19/2012 7:15 PM (utc) our position was 19°09.18'S 178°32.43'W
http://svsoggypaws.com/currentposition.htm

No comments:

Post a Comment