Fiji- Phase 20- Week 3

We woke up on Tuesday ready for a boat dive to the outer reef, it was the first time we had dived on the reef and it was incredible! The visibility was amazing 20-30m and loads of us saw sharks and turtles. JP and Rosie saw their first turtle and had a celebratory dance, Vicky and Hahja created the crazy O.K signal dance and Debs and Eleanor saw a Tawny Nurse Shark. Defiantly the best dive so far. In the afternoon we had a killer volleyball tournament, a 5 team round robin and a final that is yet to be played due to illness and injury.

Wednesday was the day of Ratu Semi’s funeral in Navatu. We had an early start (5.30!) to walk to the village and the sun was just rising when we arrived. The funeral service was held first thing in the morning, the church was full of villagers paying their respects to their Chief but we were privileged enough to be given seats in church for the service. The service was very touching and the priest gave some kind words in English for our benefit. After the service we followed the coffin to the burial site, the young lads of the village carried the coffin and wrapped the casket in woven mats before lowering the coffin into the ground. They then buried Semi with their bare hands as a sign of respect and with speed and dignity they built a surrounding wall around his grave out of stones. Throughout the burial everyone sang hymns, it was very emotional for all the villagers, volunteers and staff. After the burial we spent the rest of the day feasting, drinking Kava and celebrating Semi’s life with his wife Ma, we all felt very privileged to experience something that not many other visitors to Fiji have seen.

The day after the funeral we started our science training; to begin with we started on basic fish anatomy. We also started our in water size estimations whereby we have to estimate the length of different sizes of piping underwater making sure we account for the distortion of the water. Some of us found it difficult to start with but Al seemed very pleased with his effort, we won’t mention his mark!! In the afternoon we had 2 new arrivals, Lorna and JoJo who have just finished degrees in medicine and are joining us for their electives. Due to a huge electrical storm we couldn’t do our night dive but we all had a rain shower on the decking instead.

On Friday we started the day with our Navigation dive, which everyone successfully passed, we then carried on with our size estimations. In the evening group 2 managed to get their night dive done, everyone was excited about the chance to dive the reef at night, we may not have been the most elegant group but we all passed our dive with flying colours. The weekend began on Saturday with a drift dive at Ariel’s, we saw Hawksbill, Loggerhead and Green Turtles, a White tip reef shark and a large Shark sucker. In the evening we had a ‘when I grow up....’ themed party. Some of the best outfits included Rosie’s ballet dancer, Vicky’s P.E Teacher and James’ Ninja outfit .

On Sunday we visited a new village called Namalata, everyone was amazed by the fully functioning toilet which was used to its full benefit! The church was bigger than Navatu but the chief of the village was kind enough to welcome us to the service in English. We sang plenty of songs before a well earned lunch of sausages followed by Kava, of course! Monday morning saw half the group go to Kinder in our village and the afternoon saw us undertake our Deep dive to 30m. Nobody really felt the effects of Nitrogen Narcosis but the dive was wicked. All in all another awesome week in paradise.

Rosie and Vicky