Full Steam Ahead

Kindergarten Students (above and below)

It has been very steamy here – hot, sticky, at times windy and rainy! It has also been very exciting the past few days. We have selected a school that will suit and the school community are very much looking forward to working with us to construct a play space for 3-8 year olds.

Sabeto District School is a rural school located around ten minutes from our base. It has an obligation to educate children from four surrounding villages / settlements – some of which are located on floodplains and some in the interior / highlands. There are currently 207 students plus around 30 kindergarten kids.

School fees are $FJ90/family/year (around $AUS50) however due to extremely low incomes of the community, only 52% of students were able to pay in 2012. In addition, 90% of families were severely affected by the March 2012 floods and some by the more recent cyclone Evan. Despite these challenges dedicated teaching staff have enabled 100% of students to successfully pass exit examinations and be accepted into secondary school over the past three years.

Existing Sandpit between the poles

Looking towards the space we have to transform!

The existing playground consists of a tiny sandpit area (with no sand), some tyres and a see-saw that is about to collapse. The school and kindergarten committees of management have requested that we utilise this space to provide suitable equipment for 3-8 year olds, so that kindergarten and the first 2 year levels at school can share the equipment. The staff have a strong focus on early childhood development and the kindergarten teacher has been working hard to provide an enriching learning environment. She has been hoping for a decent, fenced sandpit (complete with sand) for the past few years. Together we have agreed that we will aim to construct a large sandpit under a shady tree, some climbing and balancing equipment and possibly some tunnels, using timber, tyres, chain and rope. There is an old metal swing frame, which may also be able to be repaired and incorporated into the area.

Class 4 Boys

The local community have agreed to arrange for volunteers from the village to help with construction and resourcing of materials. The principal is hoping to allocate the bigger students (12-14 year olds) on a roster to work alongside us so they can benefit from cross-cultural experience and take some pride and ownership in the playground.

Makelesi – the lady who looked after Tarli and Kiarra when we lived in Fiji – lives in the local community and will be in charge of on-site childcare for our team. Tarli and Kiarra have had lots of fun the past few days with Makelesi and cannot wait to be back in May. We have gathered data on cost and availability of building materials and tools, and still have a few tasks ahead of us.... 

Class 1 (Prep) Boys

Greetings from poolside.

Bula! I finally got internet on my Mac thanks to the tech at Vodafone, so I can upload pics to the Blog, which I am doing whilst sitting by the pool eating kokoda (fish in coconut). Choti (6 today), Kiarra, Tarli and Adleena (7) proudly wearing their butterfly wings we gave them, with the girls' school in the background (Lautoka Muslim School). I met the manager of the resort this morning and negotiated a deal for the team after checking out a few other options and am very pleased to say I am meeting our local contact this afternoon to discuss schools. Stay tuned.

Update from Fiji

As promised we had a lazy fijian Sunday and didn't leave the resort compound at all. Monday morning I had my first decent sleep-in for years. Our local contact fell ill so a change of plans- the girls went shopping in Nadi town for supplies. Tarli and Kiarra got their first ever pair of flop flops (thongs), we got the latest dodgy DVDs, market breakfast of pineapple and bananas - $ 4 fed us all!

I have almost sorted lunch options for the project and think a team member will be doing a lunch order run each day for an assortment of bakery snacks, indian food and fruit.
We investigated transport options, sought recommendations for timber, hardware, and old tyres from various local sources and discovered everyone had an uncle or cousin in the business !

The girls were stoked at free ice creams from the supermarket to reward us because we were big shoppers spending over $50. If only that was a big spend back home!

We took the local bus everywhere, complete with funky music and windows with no glass!

We spent the evening in Lautoka for Choti's 6th birthday ( we sponsor two girls to attend school). It was the first time anything special had ever happened for one of their birthdays and we shared their first time ever in a pool followed by chicken and chips for tea. These moments always help put things into perspective ! T&K were so excited, but so shy to start with, but by the end of the night we had to physically separate the four girls to get on the bus home.

Tomorrow we plan to visit hardware, timber supplies and potential hotels and I am hoping our local contact is back on deck so we can figure out the minor issue of a project site. I am typing this on the bus on phone and very much looking forward to a cool beverage after a long hot day!

Off we go!

Bula and welcome to our first Blog! Four hours until Emma and the girls head off to the airport en route to Nadi, Fiji for a week. Our tasks - to develop some local partnerships, create a relationship with a suitable school with a desire and need to be part of our project, and to make arrangements for in-country accommodation, travel, tools and materials.

We fly through the night and will spend Sunday doing what nearly everyone else in Fiji does on Sundays - not much at all! We are very much looking forward to landing in the rain as we haven't seen much of it here in Melbourne for a while, and it will actually be cooler in Nadi than Melbourne as we sit through day six of a 9 day heatwave. For weather updates in Fiji visit Na Draki Weather in Fiji .

John has been busy researching options for sturdy play equipment made from simple materials - timber, rope, tyres, inner-tubes. We are thinking we might do a team building exercise at home with the team to construct a prototype....pretty sure the kids will be happy with that idea.

Emma is meeting with a potential partner organisation first thing Monday morning and they are very excited about our ideas. They already work with a few schools and have some ideas and we will be guided by their advice. The plan is to engage the school community in discussing and developing ideas for their play space - then over to the design team (John) to work out how to deliver an outcome that suits in the given timeframe with the available resources. We hope to engage staff, students, school families in construction of the play space as well.

Watch this space for updates over the next week - hopefully I will work out how to include photos as well.