Too Cold to Work

We woke up this morning to a soggy, rainy Monday. After a delicious breakfast of vegan pancakes, we put on our rain gear, hopped in the truck and drove 10 minutes to the next village – Loa. We had been told to meet Cemeli at the yellow house in the center of town. On arrival, we were welcomed by his son “Q”, and Cemeli’s younger brother, Malakai. Cemeli and Malakai together take care of the water system for Loa. Justin gave his “we’re EWB and we’d like to help you improve your water system” spiel, well-practiced from our presentation in Vunikura the day before, and we had a lively discussion on the issues and problems with the Loa water system.

Q showed us around his village, and a couple hours later we had mapped nearly every house, communal tap and latrine in Loa! Deborah commented that there were curiously high numbers of people home for a workday, to which Q replied “they don’t work because it’s too cold outside and they don’t want to get sick.” By our internal thermometers, it was probably about 80oF, and we were sweating up a storm in our waterproof windbreakers.

This afternoon we had an informative interview with Dr. Anibal and Nurse Nani, the Argentinian couple who run the Mission Clinic. They provided us with information on the villages’ health and hygienic habits. They also recommended that we talk to the government run free clinic in Tuvavesey, who provides vaccinations and women’s health care for the area.

Sampling update for Vunikura: nearly all our samples tested positive for confirmation of total coliforms; we are now running the samples for confirmation of E. Coli. We had a disconcerting positive sample for the Salmonella Presence/Absence test on the Mission water, which is run through a slow sand filter. We plan to do further testing on this water, and meanwhile are appreciative of our case of “Island Chill” bottled water that we purchased in Savusavu. ("Island Chill," by the way, is the generic alternative to "Fiji" bottled water, which is also readily available here... go figure).

Tomorrow we are off to explore the source and tank for Loa, and meanwhile will leave you with photos of the kittens of Buca Bay (courtesy of Deborah’s kitten obsession).