Fiji Power 2016 Day 8 : 02-10-2016

Its official, we’ve been here for a week. We didn’t have much planned except attending a local Fijian “Vale ni Lotu” (church) service. For breakfast Mere baked us some coconut milk scones which tasted amazing. While we were eating breakfast Mere told us about the traditional woven mats that are made as a wedding present for women and that they take over a week to make. The brown colours are only for “chiefly” families. We were all surprised and interested in how much effort and significance they can hold. After breakfast and a quick lesson we all gathered around for story time. The stories that David reads to us are essentially children’s books but they still hold great meaning. 

When we finished with story time, we all floated around and did our own thing, like music lessons and cleaning up. At 10:30am we all squashed in two mini-vans and headed off to the church building. The “Vale ni Lotu” was lively, very interactive and went for over two hours. Much of it was in Fijian but they welcomed us in English and they asked us to tell them about the project Bookend Trust was doing in the medical centres in Fiji. The rest of the time was filled with singing, dancing and a talk by the “tala tala”, (preacher). When we got back home we had a great game of modified rugby to prepare for the NRL Grand Final tonight between the Sharks and the Storm.