17:40.826S    177:23.162E

 

On each of our trips up the Yasawa chain of islands we have anchored for a couple of nights off a small village called Namboro on the island of Waya Lailai. It is a particularly friendly place and on each of our visits we were very warmly welcomed by the villagers and especially Tom (pictured below with some of his grandchildren) the head man of the village and representative of the Chief (who actually lives in another village across on the other side of the island). The place is probably typical of many of the smaller communities in Fiji with less than two hundred people living together, with no roads, no vehicles, in simple houses with a small Methodist church and junior school (and of course a rugby pitch with not much grass and posts made from giant bits of bamboo). The locals mainly still subsist by farming and fishing although increasingly the young are finding work in the lodges and resorts of the growing tourist industry.

 

Recently however, something major has changed for all the inhabitants of Namboro. While in the western world we think of leaps in consumer technology in terms of the arrival of the iPod or the near universal availability of wi-fi, here in this magnificent corner of the Pacific something much more fundamental and life altering is going on.  In the two weeks since our last visit electrical power has arrived in Namboro!  I'm not talking about plugging in to the mains, there are still 40 miles of sea between them and the nearest corner of Fiji's national grid, but they have installed a good old fashioned diesel generator, which is big enough to supply light to the 30 or so houses.  Whereas just a few weeks ago, once the sun was down, all went dark with maybe the occasional cooking fire piercing the night, we could now see the beach gently lit up with the glow from the windows.  It is probably hard for us to even imagine a change like this but it certainly made us think.  It is 128 years since Edison invented the bulb and these people have just had the chance to turn the lights on at home for the first time!  We sat on the deck under the stars watching the glimmer along the shoreline and wondered what the next few decades will bring?