We have been in Vanua Balavu for 11 days. What a wonderful time we have had! The first thing we had to do on arrival is a gift ceremony, called sevusevu. When a yacht comes into a bay here, that bay is owned by a village. So before we swim, snorkel or fish in the bay and before we can walk around the village or walking tracks over the island, we must meet the chief for sevusevu. The gift we must deliver is a 250g bunch of kava. Kava is the root of a pepper tree and the locals here beat it and grind it and mix it with water to make a murky looking drink. The drink tastes like muddy socks and numbs your mouth. We do not like it, but the locals say it is relaxing! Once we give our kava to the chief, he welcomes us to the village in a ceremonial speech with claps to punctuate the speech here and there. Then we are treated like family. We have become part of the village and we are allowed to do anything we like! At four of the villages we visited, we arranged for the local people to get together and try on reading glasses. We got them to approach one by one, starting with the lowest strength glasses and slowly moving up as they tried to read their bible. Each person found the right strength and we gave them reading glasses to suit. This was very much appreciated by the locals. We also had sunglasses to give away, but when these came out the line was not orderly at all, it felt like we were in the middle of a scrum! Two of the villages were especially grateful and insisted on giving us arm loads of fruit. We tried to pay for the fruit but they said it was not for sale. Three different men had gone away into their gardens and harvested bags of bananas and pawpaws. It was way too much for the two of us, but it would not be polite to refuse, so we gratefully accepted. Back at the boat when we unpacked the bags we found we had almost 60 bananas!!! As you can imagine, for the past week we have had bananas on toast, banana porridge, banana yoghurt, banana muffins, banana pancakes, banana cake, fish and banana curry, beef and banana curry, pork and banana curry and more! It is very nice to have fresh fruit and we do enjoy bananas, but it is a challenge to keep up with ever ripening bunches! We now have a freezer well stocked with banana cake.
The people in these villages are very friendly. Everywhere you walk there is a smiling face, a wave and a shout of ?bula!? We feel very welcome here. We walked through Lomaloma village, this village has the secondary school for the whole group of villages in Vanu Balavu. Each village has a primary school, but the children go to Lomaloma for secondary school. Some staying with family and some boarding. NZ is helping to build a new secondary school here as the previous one was severely damaged by cyclone Winston last year. When the locals heard we were from NZ they immediately thanked us for the new school. They really appreciate the help from NZ. The islands of Vanua Balavu are all inside a large ring of reef, so there is a huge lagoon around the island group here. This protects the land from the worst of the ocean swell, though not from the wind. We saw many damaged buildings, toppled trees and coconut palms without heads due to cyclone Winston. The large concrete church at Susui village was flattened by the cyclone. Services are now held in a 6x10m tin shed.
It is interesting to note than in the past, after a cyclone, materials would be sent here from Suva, along with a government appointed carpenter. The locals did not like this arrangement as the carpenter often did a poor job of the building work, but historically the governments insisted on this control. Prime Minister Bainimarama has changed this. Now the people in the village have been taught how to build their own buildings and they do it themselves. They are very happy with this! Because the outer reef protects this area from the worst of the ocean waves, the coral reefs here are amazing. Most islands in the pacific get regular damage from storms and cyclones and this hammers the coral into tiny pieces where the waves are pounding. But inside the protected lagoon of Vanua Balavu, the coral is thriving. Soft coral forests, hard coral gardens. Pinks and greens and blues and purples and yellows and orange. Staghorn, brain, lettuce leaf, pumpkin, fire, fan, and so many more corals that I don?t know the name of. The reefs are teaming with fish. The full range of brightly coloured tropical fish, plus larger species of tuna, giant trevally, white tip reef sharks, black tip reef sharks, snappers and more. Turtles swim by popping their heads up to look at us when we are on the boat and we enjoy seeing them swimming around when we are snorkelling too.
We have done a bit of kayaking here. Around the clusters of mushroom shaped rocks in the Bay of Islands and up the inlet from Little Bay. Spectacular scenery at every turn. The bird life is abundant here too. One that had us puzzled for a while was the Barking Imperial Pigeon. It sounds like a dog barking, woof, woof ? until you listen some more and it is really a deep whooh whooh! There are many herons here, one came to visit us for a while, but we did not want to encourage it to sit on our railing. They make a huge mess!! One evening we had some very unwelcome visitors. Flying beetles! They came in their hundreds as night fell. We scurried inside and closed up all the hatches with insect screens. Thinking they would all fly away again by the morning we went to bed quite happy. But in the morning when we ventured outside, they were still all over our boat! They had taken up residence inside the boom, under the shade tent, inside the pockets of the bimini, under the dodger and crawled behind some of the woodwork outside. Hundreds and hundreds of the little critters! We closed up the boat again, but this time we were outside ? and turned on the wash down hose. Spent the morning squirting these critters away and scrubbing everywhere they had sat ? they had been busy pooing everywhere all night! Yuck!! So the boat got a good scrub down that day and we moved to a different anchorage.
At Batavu Harbour we went ashore for a walk and had a very pleasant stroll through a beef cattle farm. Only a small amount of cattle here, and just as well. The locals told us that no big boats come in here, only small ones, so they can only ship one cow at a time to the mainland! On this walk we also went over to the other side of the island, with fabulous views over the Bay of Islands area. Spectacular turquoise water, so clear you can see the reef areas easily from up on the hill.
The village of Sawana was interesting. It is a Tongan village! Back in 1847 the King of Tonga and his cousin Ma?afu arrived in Vanua Balavu in Fiji and set about trying to conquer Fiji for Tonga. Ma?afu was involved in suppressing religious wars here and apparently got control of Vanua Balavu in return for a canoe that he had given to the previous chief of the Lau. He did manage to conquer some other islands in the Lau group but the British arrived in 1874 and took control of the whole of Fiji, including the Lau. Ma?afu stayed here, and today, the village of Sawana still speaks Tongan as well as Fijian. Apparently it is common for locals from Sawana to go to Tonga to choose a wife and bring her back to Sawana. The minister of the local Methodist church here also comes from Tonga. We visited the primary school at Susui and got there in time for the morning flag raising and singing of the national anthem. The anthem is sung in English, Fijian and Hindu. These are the official languages of Fiji. It was a sports day at the school and the children had running races and tug-of-war competitions among other things. Karl had fun trying to keep up with the little ones in the running and he helped one of the teams to win the tug of war! The long suffering teacher just grinned at his antics and the kids thought it was hilarious. We have been the only boat in the bay at each stop while we have been here, so it has been very quiet. The weather has been sunny for 10 of the 11 days we have been here, the water is warm and very clear. A wonderful place to just be.