Helping SeaMercy with the remote village Avea on the remote island Avea
Take Off
Jörgen Wennberg
Tue 14 Jun 2016 14:27
17.11 S 178.54 W We were mean to leave for the Northern part of Vanua Balavu and heading further West continuing our discovery of Fiji. However Jonathan come to our boat the night before we left asking us if we could consider stay another day with SeaMercy. There is another remote village on a really remote island that would need kids to play with. If it had not been that we are on limited time schedule with the World ARC we definitely have joined SeaMercy for a few weeks helping out these villages. So off course one day more we could definitely stay. This village is called Avea on the little island of Avea North Est of Lomaloma. They needed help with everything: water supply, food, building a new community hall and digging a new garden. Our main contribution was Alex and Inez and Jörgen also helped with the batteries to the water makers. Avea has 71 people living there where of 19 children.   The kids of the villlage came out from school one by one curious to see which games were played outside. We started by the running competition and then they were gone in all sorts of games.     Especially football. Alex played footboll and run around non-stop for 4 hours. He totally collapsed that night!    And Inez founds her friends too!   While Jörgen helped with the water maker, the French lady on Domino had gathered all the women for gardening ...   and the rest of the men cutting wood to start building the new community hall. The former water supply was the church’s roof. However this one blew leaving the village with no drinking water. The picture to the right is salt mixed with fresh water for cleaning and washing.   By the end of the day we had walk behing the village and discovered the school’s toilet being removed from its ground, picture to the left.   Jonathan is standing in blue talking to the kids of the village telling they will come back tomorrow and work on with the rest of the school building.  Inez sharing her muesli bar with the kids.  Our goodbyes from Avea.    The view over the shore where we were anchored, called “mushrooms” stones.   |