[password]waiknot
[position]18 53.337S 178 27.904E

[status]
Still at Ono Island, enjoying village life while we wait for better sailing weather. Our recent village adventures are covered in the blog.

[blog]
On Monday we met the people of Naboulawalu village on Ono Island and did sevusevu with the chief. Like other places we have visited in the Kadavu area, visiting yachts are quite rare - it is quite a novelty for "valagi" to come into the village here (compared to the Yasawas where tourists are common). "Valagi" is pronounced "Parlangi" the same as it is in Tonga, and means the same thing,"foreigner". Heather finds this quite amusing as her maiden name was Parlane and when she was a child, the pacific island children at her school used to tease her about her name and call her "Parlangi" but at the time she never knew what it meant! Now as we walk through villages the little children all rush out calling "Valagi, Valagi!" to announce the arrival of visitors to the village. Everyone has been so welcoming and friendly here, there is a real warmhearted feel to the place. As we walked through the village, many folk came out of their houses to meet us with a smile and "Bula". They were all k
een to find out about us, where we came from and how long we were going to stay. One of the locals, Malina, gave us some papaya and the chief, Miti and his wife Raijieli, invited us for dinner. Yesterday we went for a 4km hike over to the other side of Ono, to visit the school at Naqara (pronounced Nagara). There are 6 villages on Ono Island and all the children travel to the primary school on a Sunday evening and return to their village on Friday afternoon. The trail across the island is sometimes steep and rocky, it crosses several streams and is very pretty. Scores of skinks skittered away from our advancing feet, while numerous colourful butterflies flitted around our shoulders. Part of the trail is in rain forest and part is in pine forest which has been planted to provide timber for their houses. It is a little arduous in places, and the 4km walk took us almost 1 1/2 hours! On the way we met a few local men, one with dogs to hunt for wild pigs and a few with machetes for plant
ing or harvesting crops they grow in the mountains, such as Taro and Yam. We got to the school at lunch time and heard the cries of "Valagi, Valagi" go up from the playground. Suddenly we were swamped with children all wanting to hold our hands and talk to us. After a bit of a rest we started the trek back - and quickly realised that we are not as fit as we thought we were! Simultaneously feeling good about getting some exercise and scolding ourselves for being unfit for rugged terrain, we arrived back about 3pm. Malina was waiting for us with some hot buns she had baked in a pot over the fire. They were delicious! Dinner with the chief was an interesting experience. We were asked to arrive at 5.30pm and dinner was already set out on the "table cloth" on the floor. Places were set for us to sit on the floor and eat. Boiled taro, yams and breadfruit took up much of the floor space, along with taro leaves baked in coconut milk and 2 very small but whole barracuda poached in coconut mi
lk. We were also treated to a load of small local shrimps in noodles. There would have been enough food for 10 people, far too much for the four of us. We were ordered to eat with the chief, but his wife waited until we were finished before she ate anything. The chief kept right on eating! The floor was covered in hundreds, perhaps thousands of teeny tiny ants and these marched right over the food, crawling amongst everything. We were carefully trying to pick out pieces of food that were in the clear, but our hosts just grabbed large portions of food and ate it, not seeming to even notice all the ants! We were then served tea, which is boiled water poured over a couple of leaves from the lemon tree. We are not tea drinkers at all, but it would not have been polite to refuse. Karl did decline sugar in his tea however, because the ants had got to the sugar bowl first! When we got back to the boat, under cover of darkness and before climbing on board, we stripped off all of our clothes
and shook them out, fearing the ants might be trapped in our clothing and infest the boat. It would be terrible to live with ants sharing all our meals. Today so far has been a baking day. More "William" cake has just emerged from the oven. This simple to make fruit cake is superb at any time, and especially great to nibble on when on passage. Two loaves of "Corcaigh" bread have just gone in to the oven, to give us fresh bread for lunch. The weather forecast is still "crappy" as David would say (must be a meteorological term), for the next couple of days. So we won't be venturing far, but we will enjoy more village experiences and continue our passage preparation.

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