Fiji Power 2015 Day 9 : 11-10-2015

Today we started the day by attending a church. This gave us another chance to wear our sulus and it was a new experience for some of us. The people were joyful and had very high spirits, dancing and clapping in time to the music. They were also thankful that we had helped out at Naqarawai village with the solar panels.

Today’s lunch was traditionally cooked as a lovo where fish, chicken and sweet potato flavoured with coconut were wrapped in banana leaves and buried in a fire with hot rocks above. Food cooked this way is called lolo and the cooking allows the coconut (and smoke!) to flavour the food slowly giving it an authentic Fijian taste. Also cooked on the hot rocks were roro wraps with coconut inside….delicious! 

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After the amazing traditional Fijian lunch, we walked along to a local organic ginger plantation that exports to Australia and New Zealand. Firstly we headed to the beautiful beach where the girls dipped themselves in the ocean and the boys explored the mangroves. It was a bit disappointing to see a lot of plastic washed ashore in the mangroves. Plastic bags are a big problem in Fiji. Afterwards, the owner of the planation showed us the ginger operation. They had machines for washing the ginger and packing of the ginger into boxes. Many Fijians were able to be given work planting, weeding, harvesting and cleaning the ginger and seed for the next crop. And so another day in Fijian paradise draws to a close.

Tomorrow the Fijian Government’s Ministry of Health is providing us with a boat to take us to Beqa Island where there are two medical centres that need power to their vaccination fridges.  So next year we could have Australian students working on possible renewable energy sources for Beqa Island. Perhaps wave or tidal power?