Dua, Rua, VA!

It’s Sunday. A lazy Sunday. We slept in until about 7:20. Apparently, Justin’s alarm went off at 7:00, and the only person in the boy’s dorm who DIDN’T wake up to it was Justin (ear plugs are a requirement in a room full of snoring dudes).

After breakfast, we put on our Sunday best (which happened to be whatever smelled the least like sweat and body odor) and traveled to Vunikura again to participate in Sunday mass. There are no pews in the church at Vunikura, so we were invited to sit cross-legged on the linoleum floor for 90 minutes while listening to church hymns, bible readings, and the sermon… all in Fijian, of course. There are striking similarities between American church services and the one we witnessed, most notably being the short attention span of the children who, not a minute into the program, began wandering about the small building as the adults tried in vain to wrangle them in. Deborah quickly made friends with the toddler in front of her who was absolutely captivated by her bracelets. By the end of the service, the girl was sprawled about Deborah’s lap looking longingly up at her new buddy.

After the service, Ana, our self-appointed translator, arranged an impromptu town meeting where we would be introduced and we could tell our story. The meeting was non-mandatory, and Ana was quick to point out that “see, only the women come to these things”. This was partially true. A handful of men arrived as the meeting was getting started and included the priest, our guide from the day before, and 3 or 4 concerned fathers, but the majority of attendees were made up of women and curious children (Titimo and Silvetere (the Headman) were out of town ).

We explained to the group that we had been talking about coming to their village for the past year and were excited to be working with them to improve their current water distribution system. We also invited any of them to share their opinions on the current condition of their water supply. There were no volunteers, so we asked them to participate in single-family surveys later in the week. Overall, we felt well received and hoped that the village can be patient with us over the next few years while we go through this process.

Following the meeting, we took the opportunity to schmooze a little with the residents of Vunikura and presented them with our gifts: bars of soap, pencils, pens, crayons, stickers and paper folders. Justin wandered over to the volleyball net where a few of the guys were playing a pick-up game while Deborah sipped fresh coconut milk as the kids enjoyed their new bounties.
Before leaving Vunikura, we gathered one of the families for a photo shoot. Deborah aimed the camera and tried to impress the villagers with her recently-learned Fijian: “Dua… Rua… VA!” which loosely translates to ‘One… Two… FOUR!’ Well done, Deborah. Well done.

In the afternoon we enjoyed an epic two hour nap, which was mostly likely a result of yet another amazing lunch at the Mission cafeteria. This time we had seitan and spinach canalones. Yes, that’s right – home-made seitan. The woman who owns this clinic, Marta Toomas, is vegan and has taught the locals to make the most delicious meals for the guests! Deborah is in vegan heaven.

A quick note about our sampling results for Vunikura: The source, tank and tap samples all came out positive for presumptive total coliforms and presence/absence of salmonella. Now we have started the confirmation test for coliforms. Note: the picture shows the results of the salmonella P/A tests. The bottle on the left shows tap water. The second is a salmonella test on our bottled water (the orange color means NO salmonella). The remainder are salmonella positive tests for the Vunikura water.

Although we still plan to return to Vunikura to further document the tap locations and walk the distribution line – tomorrow we are off to meet with the next village, Loa!