Fiji: So, What Do I Do All Day?

A little post about my daily routine in Viro.

I wake up around 6:30am every day and have breakfast at home, this is also the time I call England since with the time difference it's 7:30pm (I have to climb a small hill behind my house to get signal!). Breakfast is usually crackers and tea, but sometimes there's pancakes and Fijian dumplings depending on whether there's flour or oil in the house.

The lali starts to drum at 8am and all the kids have a tooth brushing drill where they brush their teeth together before spitting in a big ditch! The children start arriving to school from 7:30 and go to their classrooms to finish up any homework and just chat to each other. After tooth brushing drill the children have Devotion where they sing a few hymns in their classroom or the whole school gathers in the Dining Hall and the village preacher comes along to talk to the children. I love the Monday and Friday whole school devotions because the singing is so beautiful, the children all harmonise and although I can't understand most of the words, the sound is amazing!

After Devotion, lessons start and if a teacher isn't in school, I go and teach their class. Teachers not being available happens fairly regularly as the Head Teacher is often busy with other work, another teacher is pregnant and one is breast feeding. Also, transport on the island is very hit and miss and if a truck doesn't come round to our side of the island, a teacher has no way of getting back to the village after spending the weekend away or after an evening meeting at another school! If all the teachers are in school, I take individual slow readers for 30 minutes each and teach them to read. There aren't many resources and so if a child hasn't learn to read in Class 1, it's very hard for them to catch up or for teachers to have the time to teach them again. I play lots of word games. alphabet fun and go through easy books with the child. I brought children's alphabet flashcards which really come in handy and make learning much more fun!

After recess I take classes 7&8 for English. They're 12/13 year olds who are going into secondary school next year where all their lessons will be taught in English and so I'm trying my best elicit good english language from them and teach them as much english as possible. In the village, the kids don't really have any opportunity to practice their English as we're fairly rural and there are no tourists or other Fijian ethnic groups (who they would use english to communicate with). I really like planning their lessons and trying to make it as interesting as possible! The TEFL teaching course I went on previously really helped me with this. Although English is a major language here in Fiji, in rural schools on the outer islands (like ours) it isn't so widespread. However, all the children are going to boarding schools for secondary education on the main island where english is spoken first almost everywhere.

During lunchtime I read to all the children in the library and am currently just over halfway through Matilda by Roald Dahl. I don't know if all the children understand every word, but I think they enjoy hearing my voice since they do come back every day! I have a lot of fun reading to the kids and am probably enjoy getting to read the book more than them at times!

After lunchtime, I've devoted myself to the library. Viro School has a library, but it was little more than a room with a couple of books which were regularly used by the kids to throw at each other or draw in rather than read. The library would be wrecked if you left the door open and it was quite upsetting to see. The children in the village don't really have any books at home (save for the Bible) and so they haven't really been taught how to treat books or about reading. I brought a lot of kids books from England but was told by the other teacher to not leave them in the library otherwise they would get wrecked. I keep all these books in a big bag (I took about 30!) and let children who've finished their work early read them. The kids really enjoy reading these books since a lot of their reading books are published by the Ministry of Education here and are.... pretty boring to be frank! No witches, wizards, fairies, gallant princes or mermaids in any of their story books and so the books from the UK are really treasured.

What I also noticed when I arrived is that there are a lot books all around the school in every classroom! Enough books to fill a proper library! But they're scattered over the floor and mostly used for decoration (or as something for the kids to hit each other with). So, every afternoon I've been gathering all these books and moving them to the library, ready to sort them all into different reading levels (so I have to read them all too!) and make the library a really special places. It's becoming a big job and I'm starting to devote myself full time to the library and not take the slow readers in the morning. The next volunteer will hopefully have a great library to take the slow readers in next year and so I want to get the library done well as soon as possible!

After school I run Guides on a Wednesday, spend a lot of time making posters for the classrooms and work on the computer. The school received a donation of a computer but no one knows how to use it, so I'm also teaching the other adults and teachers how to turn it on and type up word documents.

My timetable's pretty flexible and sometimes I leave the library to take PE, read or teach songs to different classes (or even, take the kindergarten for an excursion to the beach!). It's a busy life in Viro (not so much Fiji time as I expected!) but it's very fun and rewarding. I just hope I can finish my library in time!

Fiji: Don't say "sunny" Fiji to me!

Currently pouring down with rain as it has been for the last 2 days and it doesn't look like it's going to stop! I hope it's faring a bit better back in England :)

I'm wearing 4 layers of clothes at the moment, even though it's still around 20 degrees. You can definitely say I'm (as an anthropologist might say) going native. I couldn't imagine sleeping with a blanket when I first came and now I have to sleep with one at night! I also wear a jumper first thing in the morning at school.... my blood's definitely turning a bit Fijian!

Fiji: A Guide Camp to Remember

Every week for the past month I've been coming into town to help plan Fiji's Girl Guide Centenary Camp with the other leaders on Ovalau Island. Over the weekend the camp finally happened and was the culmination of a lot of meetings where I didn't understand a lot of what was being said (fast Fijian discussions!), so I was a bit apprehensive at first(!), but the camp turned out to be a spectacular event which I'm so, so pleased I could take my girls to.

This is the biggest Girl Guide Camp to ever happen in Fiji and girls battled through severe flooding in Suva and travelled for hours from many other islands to get to Levuka, Ovalau. It's been a very exciting experience for the whole of Fiji and girls have been on the radio talking about their journeys to the camp.

On the first night of the camp myself and the other Lattitude volunteers on Ovalau and Moturiki were invited to the VIP Dinner with the British High Commissioner (His Excellency), the invited guest speaker for the camp. It was such an exciting evening and very, very cool to be invited to a.... diplomatic dinner! Drinks were on Her Majesty and I was able to eat pasta for the first time in a month (with lobster and chicken also on the table!). I can't imagine me having that opportunity anywhere else but Fiji!

Saturday started with a very early wake up call before going on a march around the colonial town of Levuka. After this there was another ceremony and speeches from Fiji's Chief Guide, The British High Commissioner and other important officials. After this, there was some traditional Fijian entertainment before a talent display from the girls. I'm really proud of my girls who put on a play on how Guides began, which included them dressing up as Boy Scouts! My girls have been practicing dances (mekes) and this play for the past few weeks almost every day after school. I'm really proud of them and they did brilliantly in front of all the crowds.

It was my job to organise all the games for the camp.... games for 300 girls from across Fiji for 2 hours! This was the part of the camp I was most stressed about - gathering equipment, leaders to run the games, teaching the leaders the games, putting the girls into groups, timing the games... etc etc.! But the games went brilliantly which made me so so happy! Ten stations were set up and the girls rotated around the field to try out each new game, with active games interspersed with more relaxed games. At my games station I taught the girls some silly camp songs from the UK and it was so great for me to wander around the camp and hear snippets of my songs being sang by all these girls.

At the closing ceremony I was asked to get the girls to sing the song I taught them again and it was such an amazing experience having 400 girls and leaders singing "It was a crocodile...." at you at the top of their voices in Fiji. Another amazing thing is that I was asked to sit next to Fiji's Chief Guide during the closing ceremony which is such a great honour and a guiding experience I won't forget!

I'm so glad I could celebrate 100 Years of Girl Guides in such a special place, what an experience! I hope I can come back for another of Fiji's Girl Guide Camps in the future and I hope my girls are leaders and rangers there by that time.

After the camp ended and the girls from other islands had left to get the ferry, I got a text from a friend I'd made during the camp. She said the whole ferry was singing the song I taught them. I think you can imagine the smile that broke out on my lips!