Project Preparation

Today the Yalden family visited Vaturu District School in Nagado Village– picking up a very late Yr 7 boy off the side of the road along the way. We met with school staff, school and kindy committee members and lots of students. They showed us all the tyres they had collected which was fantastic – it demonstrates commitment on their part, and saves John about 6 hours this week hunting for used tyres in Nadi! They are arranging some village support in the form of a chainsaw, wheelbarrow and extra shovels etc. John shared some kava with the men and later oversaw delivery of all the poles. 

Counting tyres

Emma met with the kindy mums and they have a roster all worked out for who is cooking lunch each day next week – it has worked out that we are making a donation to the kindy committee to assist with kindy expenses, and the community are contributing their time and much of their locally grown resources. We also made a similar arrangement for assistance with childcare. The ladies are looking forward to being involved with the project and will share the load as volunteers. When a small celebration lunch was carefully suggested for Friday afternoon – an excited discussion (in Fijian) followed – it now appears it might be a ‘party’ and it sounds like there will be dancing (meke) – and so Emma took the liberty of suggesting that team members may want to practice their meke during the week to join in.

Tarli and Kiarra checked out the classrooms for Class 1 and 2 and had a chat to the students – the girls and the students were very shy! When the teacher tried to explain what a playground was, most of the children did not understand as many of them have never seen one – it will be wonderful for them to watch it unfold in front of their eyes – and the teachers are well prepared for the kids to be quite distracted next week. They are also looking forward to having some extra students for the week.

We discovered that immediately after school lunchtime – at 12.45 each day, all students have 15 minutes quiet reading time – and so we offered our team’s assistance to help with reading. 

Class 4

Class 1

Vaturu District School, Nagado Village Fiji

Class 2

Site of future playground

The school is in the Sabeto district and services two villages plus a number of farming settlements. Nagado is right next to the school, and the second village Nataloa is around 30 km further into the interior and only accessible by 4WD or horseback. 56 students come down by foot or horseback every Sunday to board at the school. There are 195 students (Class 1-8) and around 20 kindy kids.

The school has one computer in the staff room, no library and no playground other than a basic flat area for ball games and a couple of tall sticks for a volleyball net. The head teacher (principal) Mr Meli is overjoyed at the thought of a playground to make the kids want to come to school, to give the boarders something to do after school and to get the kids active at lunchtime so they concentrate in the afternoon.

The school has been involved in a demonstration / experimental project with SPC (Secretariat of the Pacific Community) which involves setting up small crop plots of different varieties of produce, a propagation shelter and a meat chook shed and the school has been growing the meat birds and selling them to assist with school expenses.

The playground site could not get much better than this. Flat, close to power and water, accessible by truck (concrete), nice red rock free soil and close to the school classrooms so the kids will watch us all week – they might not get much school work done. The view from the playground will be 5 star – look one way and you see spectacular mountains and waterfalls shrouded in mist, look the other way and you see the islands in the distance.

Emma and kindy kids