Meke and Lovo!

We visited the third and final village, Buca, today after being in town nearly a week. We hope they weren’t feeling neglected! Their headman, Asaele, welcomed us into his home and we chatted about their water situation. The leadership of Buca is actually very organized and fundraises upwards of $3,000 a year for improvement projects within the village. They have an elected water committee comprised of 4 villagers who have plans for the existing water supply and distribution system. Their primary concern is the leaky polyethylene (?) pipe that runs from the mainline to the taps. The committee has placed an order with the government for 1-inch PVC pipe to replace these pipes and they are hoping for a 6-month turn-around time.

Last year the Dream Machine Foundation had designed and installed a slow sand filter for the village of Buca in line with their current water distribution system, only to have it bypassed 3 days later and never to be used since. Their reason for bypassing the filter: it was too slow. It wasn’t filling the storage tank faster than the residents of Buca were draining it. Asaele acknowledged that clean water was important, but not having water at all was unacceptable. His idea is to move the filter closer to the village and put it on a parallel line to be used solely for drinking water.

We spent a good part of the morning getting the layout of the village and promised to return on Sunday when we’ll hike up to the water source (a good 1 hour, according to Asaele) to take samples.

Our missionary friends spent their last night in Natuvu tonight, and were given a goodbye party complete with Fijian traditions like a Meke (traditional warrior dances and songs) and a Lovo (Fijian luau aka barbeque!). Some of the Loa men, dressed in full warrior garb, performed a spear dance while the rest sang Fijian melodies in perfect four-part harmonies. Even though we’re here for another two weeks, they included us in the group and presented us with flower necklaces and invited us to feast on the rock-steamed tarot, kavasa, pumpkin, breadfruit and assortment of fresh fish caught that morning (we think one was barracuda). It was certainly a festive night and we were honored to be a part of it all.

Hanging out in V-Town

Today has been one of the least taxing days of our trip so far. With no more room in the incubator for any new samples at the moment, we were limited to bumming around Vunikura and chatting it up with the local ladies about their families’ health and water usage (this was actually strategically planned as our formal health assessment). Ana introduced us to her auntie, her cousins, her sister… we actually have no clue how these folks are related as the word “cousin” and “uncle” are tossed around to mean “someone I grew up with who was around a lot.” Everyone is everyone else’s relative here!

We spent a good couple of hours asking about their hygienic practices (soap is quite a luxury in these parts), common illnesses, and wishes for an improved system. We both found it interesting that symptoms related to ingesting biologically-contaminated water (diarrhea, vomiting, overall stomach-achiness) were not considered by the villagers as common occurrences. More common were skin diseases, asthma, and the giggles (Fijians have infectious laughter issues).

What the folks at Vunikura are most concerned about when it comes to their water, it turns out, is volume and turbidity. When it rains, their distribution system fills up with muddy water (and who really likes the taste of that?). The 30+ year old pipes are backed up and ultimately break, leaving them to go to the nearby river to collect their water until the pipes can be repaired. Also, the growing population is putting an increasing strain on the water supply, especially when a handful of people carelessly leave their taps running all day long! Clean, safe water is important, yes, but a dependable distribution system seems to be a higher priority to the residents we spoke to. They mentioned that they have been raising money ($50 per adult male) to give to the Fijian government for a new system, which is quite a sacrifice for the families. Unfortunately the government is extremely slow in helping out these rural villages; we plan on contacting them to see if we can work with them to improve the system.

We sadly learned today that the daughter of Titimo (the Taqici headman) passed away yesterday, from a congenital heart disease. We gave our condolences and were graciously invited to attend the funeral on Friday. We asked whether this would be appropriate and were assured that Titimo would appreciate our attendance. With Seewah’s advice on behavior and dress in hand, we plan on sharing our sympathies with our new friends on Friday.

This afternoon we started digging through the Mission’s medical records in an attempt to understand what illnesses are affecting the residents of this area. Thankfully Laura, one of the volunteers currently staying here, offered to continue summarizing the stacks of data for us tomorrow (thanks Laura!).

Tomorrow we are off for our first real visit to Buca – the third and final village we will be assessing. Because the sampling incubator is still full, we will be GPSing the taps and getting a general understanding of the layout of the village.

Here is a photo of Violeta - Ana's adorable daughter.

Did You Remember Your Costco Card?

This morning we were off to a relatively late start and missed our Loa guides Q and Malakai. Fortunately, because the community is so close-knit all it takes is a spoken name with an inquisitive inflection and you get a friendly finger pointing you in the right direction. We drove up the road and found machete-wielding Malakai ready to take us to the town's water source. Cutting steps into the soft, steep jungle slopes for his clumsy companions, he led us to a stunning, hidden waterfall which was the source of water for his village. Malakai makes this trek barefoot on a weekly basis, while we spent a good part of the walk desperately grasping for vines and thorny trees to catch our balance. Deborah’s grand finale included a graceful slide on her backside down the last few feet of the trail.

From the source, we walked as far as we could along the above-ground portion of the distribution line, stopping to look at the “air relief valves” or simply put, holes drilled into the pipe with a piece of bamboo stuck in them to keep the water from geysering out. Malakai shared his concerns of the system with us: the source is often clogged with debris during rainstorms, and the distribution pipe is frequently damaged during Department of Public Works “road repairs”.

After taking samples from the source and the tank and GPSing the distribution line, we headed back to the Mission for lunch and paperwork. In the afternoon we took a trip to Sunny’s “Costco”, a warehouse-style wholesaler of canned foods and non-perishables. We purchased bleach to sterilize our sample results, and crackers and soda for our missionary friends who were up half the night being ill. (Given their miserable status, we have become even more fond of our bottled “Island Chill” water and have placed an order for a second case with Sunny).

Sampling Update: All Vunikura samples have tested positive for the confirmation of E. Coli. We are now running the Loa source and tank samples, and a full set of Mission tap water (fingers crossed).

Although there are virtually NO beaches with sand in this area (~sob~), we found a small stretch of grey sand outside of Sunny’s place. We grabbed a couple bag-fulls and are drying them in front of our rooms with the intention of performing a sieve analysis to determine if the grain size distribution is acceptable for slow sand filters.

Now it’s time for Justin’s first capoeira class (afro-brasilian martial art) from Deborah, before our samosa dinner (yumyum!).

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).

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!

Vunikura Hiking/ It’s Black!

There are multiple religions in this area and with that two Sabbaths are observed – Saturday for the Seventh Day Adventists (SDAs) and Sunday for the Catholics and Methodists. This actually works to our advantage as we can work with whoever is not observing their Sabbath. Vunikura is all Catholic and therefore today we headed there to sample the source and tank. Seewah was observing the sabbath, so we were joined by Ana, Arone and Pele. Ana is a primary school teacher in Vunikura who is very warm, friendly and speaks English well. She is close with Roger and is very excited that we are here to help her village.

The source (which we had seen the day before) is a dammed spring which appears to have adequate flow, even in the dry season. The inlet pipe has a screened entrance, but we were told that there is a problem with sediments clogging the pipe; the entrance is cleaned out approximately once a month.

From there we were taken to a potential second source, which turned out to be a river very far from the village, with a hill in between. We don’t think this is a possible source, plus from further conversations it appears that the original source has sufficient flow, but needs improvements to prevent sediment clogging and leaks along the distribution pipe.

We interrupted the hot, sweaty morning with a fresh coconut break. Arone and Pele climbed trees to harvest the fruit, and Ana used one of the men’s machetes to hack it open for us. A delicious treat! Next we observed the storage tank, located at the side of the road. The tank appeared half full, with adequate flow coming in.

Throughout the day we queried Ana on family life and health in Vunikura, and her opinions of their water system. By the end of the morning she invited us to attend Sunday mass in Vunikura and promised to help us find families who were willing to be interviewed for our baseline health survey.

In the afternoon we came back to the Mission with our source and tank water samples to our makeshift ‘laboratory’ in Deborah’s room. We opened our sample incubator, excited like kids at Christmas to see the results of our tap samples from the previous day, and were surprised to see four solid black bottles. This indicates the presence of salmonella in the water, which is an indicator for Typhoid. Yikes! We also saw small bubbles in some of the total coliform MPN tests. Double Yikes!

We spent the remainder of the afternoon discussing and reviewing our Vunikura data. Tomorrow we plan to return to Vunikura for church (Deborah’s first time!) and to administer health surveys. We’re looking forward to more time spent getting to know the Vunikura villagers who seem very friendly and welcoming.

Did Someone Call for an Engineer?

We met Roger at 6am on Friday and trucked over to Seewah’s house. Seewah is a local who works in the clinic at the Mission and who has volunteered to play the role of liaison and interpreter between EWB and the villages. Although the official language of Fiji is English, and English is taught in schools, many of the villagers usually speak in their native dialect and are shy speaking to us.

From Seewah’s house we drove to the water storage tank in Buca. The tank is located at the side of the road, uphill from a small graveyard. We observed the existing slow sand filtration system that was put in by the DMF just last year, and is currently bypassed due to volume constraints. This was just a quick visit and we plan to return later to take more photos and measurements. In the village we were introduced to Amose, the deputy Headman. Apparently in Buca there is a village chief who is appointed by lineage and a separate Headman who is elected every two years from one of four clans in the village. We gave a short spiel to Amose about EWB’s intentions and was given permission to access the village.

Next we drove to Vunikura and were introduced to Headman Titimo, head of the Taqici tribe. (The village chief “William” was out of town.) Vunikura’s water system operators Arone and Pele accompanied us up to visit the water source for their village. This source was a bit of a hike through dense tropical foliage. Again, we promised to return for more photos and samples.
We made a quick stop to meet Sunny, an indo-Fijian who runs the local “Costco”, which turned out to be a mechanics yard and small supply store. (For readers who don’t know, Fiji is made up of two cultures – indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians who descend from the time of British colonization.) We then met Cemelle (which sounds an awful lot like “Smelly” to us), who is the water system operator for Loa. We arranged with Cemelle to meet with his village chief on Monday morning at 8 am, Fijian time of course!

Following a successful skype meeting with our EWB team back home, we schlepped back to Vunikura with Seewah as our guide, to take samples at the village taps. Titimo, the headman, showed us the taps. There are about 35 to 40 houses in the village and approximately 12 communal taps, although some homes have their own taps. We were told that one house even has 3 taps (although we didn’t observe this for ourselves). Justin brought the GPS system to document the location of each of the taps, and we collected four samples.

We quickly went to work that evening testing them for total coliforms, E. Coli, salmonella (indicator for typhoid) and turbidity in our portable water quality test kits. From there we turned in for the evening, exhausted but happy with our first day of hard work.