We love these Fijian People

This week, we did eye exams at three different churches.  Most of our patients were adults, many of whom needed reading glasses.  Each day we worked from 8:45am to 4pm (with a 10 minute lunch break) examining 75 to 85 patients, giving out about 60 reading glasses, and 10 glasses for distance vision.  We take lots of reading glasses with us so that we can hand them out right away, but the distance glasses are kept at our home.  After a full day of work, we still have a couple of more hours to spend finding certain prescriptions to take the next day.  It was quite an exhausting week, we were excited for the weekend!

We start each day by loading up all of our equipment into our SUV
before driving out to the destination for the day.

       

This chapel (pictured below) that we were at for a couple of days,  was the first one built in Fiji.
In 1955, David O McKay prophesied in a meeting of 18 people, that one day they 
would have a church overlooking the ocean (above is view from chapel, ocean in background.

We spent a day at the service center, examining the workers 

There is always a line up of 30 or more people waiting for us when 

we first arrive, and continues to grow throughout the day.  

They don't seem to mind the wait, as it becomes their social event 

of the week, as they visit with each other while waiting in line.

To make sure they come in the right order, each person is given a ticket with a number.  Once we have given out 75 or more tickets, we cut off the line, and tell them to come the next day.
Word soon gets out, and so more and more people come line up each day.

 After the patient writes their name and age on the form, I begin the pretesting.

Then Rick goes through the eye exam with each patient

On this particular day, it was very hot outside (with no wind, and so it got extremely hot in the exam room, causing us to sweat profusely.  When we got home, it felt good to shower and change into dry clothes. 

Okay, maybe I'm not getting any sympathy!  I'll try to avoid any 

further mention of how hot it is here in Fiji!

There was one young man who came in with a tiny, but very painful, piece of metal in his eye, that he had put up with for 3 days now.  His father had tried flushing it out with water, but it still wouldn't come out.

It took a little while to find it, but we manged to, before long.
Rick then put anesthetic in his eye, and using special tools
was able to remove it

The boy's dad decided to help out by shining the flashlight right in his eye

This is me and the stake president, President Varea.
He came every day, and stayed with us all day long while we worked. 
 It is the Fijian way, it shows respect and gratitude.

Many of the women in Fiji wear jumba sulu's.  They are usually bright and pretty and 
quite comfortable.  I thought I would have one made for myself so I could fit in with 
the other women, this is me in my new jumba sulu.  Also added a few of the cute 
ladies we see every day, kind of makes you smile!!

Don't all these ladies just brighten your day?

 On a day off, we took a 5 hour return trip to a remote village, named "Navala" toward the center of the Fiji island.  We decided as a gift, we would give them some reading glasses to give to those in need in the village.  

This is one of several bridges we crossed while traveling to this village.
Some of the bridges have no side rails, and can be a little more scary to cross.

This is what the village looked like as we got closer.  

Instead of tin houses, this village is full of the Bures with thatched roofs. It
is one of the most beautiful of villages we have seen so far

This is the guide who took us around the village. Before entering the village,
I changed from shorts into a skirt, it is the respectful thing to do.
We also have to  take off sunglasses and hats.

This is one of the outhouses in the village.

This is one of the "Cook Houses", where they can cook
without heating up their own Bures (houses).

This lady is using a big "Cane" knife to get into her coconut.
She then let us drink the liquid out of the end of the coconut.
I checked, and yes, she does still have all of her fingers!

This other lady, then scraped out the flesh of the coconut for us to have a taste.
It was soft and white, and tasted amazingly good.

We left most of the coconut to share with these young kids.
They seemed to really enjoy it, too.

 These are some of the school kids in the village.  

They love getting their picture taken. 

Our guide showed us her adorable little baby lying on a mat in one
of the Bures, playing with the weaved fan in her hands.  I so 
wanted to pick up that baby and give it a hug, but felt I had better
not do that, wasn't sure if that would be good ettiquette

 On Friday evening, we dropped by the high school where we first did eye exams when we arrived in Fiji.  They were in the middle of their formal graduation dinner and dance.  Down here in the southern hemisphere, their summer is just beginning now.  

This is the Principal (Salote Mawiriwiri) of the High School, and her husband.
When we showed up, they told us they were so happy we dropped by, and to
make sure we stayed for the meal and dance.  Good old Fijian hospitality!

 Doesn't everyone look great in their formal attire?

They then had all the graduates line up for photos.

After eating a nice Fijian meal, you can see that these ladies enjoyed the fruit skewers.

This is my new calling, I teach these wonderful kids in Sunday School.
Three of my kids are away this day.  It's a big class!

Rick's new calling is as a Young Men's adviser.
This is his class.  Two of the seven are missing.
It's a fun group!

Every month our ward has a 'linger longer'.
It's a great time to get to know everyone better

We are sure enjoying all of the experiences 

this Humanitarian Mission is providing us.

A trip to a very remote village

We spent two very interesting and long days in a very remote Village in the mountains of the interior of Fiji.  Much of the road was rough and would have been impassable without our 4-Wheel Drive Toyota Prado.  The scenery was spectacular along the way.  It is so lush and green, breathtaking!

At one point, the bridge had been washed out just a day or so before, so we just drove
through the river.  Fortunately it hadn't rained for awhile, so the river wasn't too deep today.

This is the river beside the village, which has been known to have huge floods
rising by over 150 feet during days of torrential rain, from time
 to time, causing the people to evacuate in the middle of the night.

When we arrived at the Chief's home, we parked our vehicle in a safe place.
His home is in the most picturesque spot! Absolutely beautiful!
The river runs just below.

These are some of the houses in the village.

The Chief invited us for breakfast, so we are now just making our way to his home.
It was the nicest home in the village!

This is the Chief's home, where we must take off our shoes and hats to show respect.

The Chief, Noa Seru, was thrilled with the gift of sunglasses we gave him.
He kept wearing them, and didn't want to take them off.

We were given some special bread, rice cooked in coconut milk, and mint leaf tea for breakfast.  

All of this... while we sat cross legged on the floor.  As we were saying a blessing on the food, 

a chicken hopped through the window and landed beside me, pretty funny!  

 It took some courage to eat the bread for breakfast, after watching the flies constently landing 

on it, but we had to be polite, and not offend the chief.   Thank goodness, we never got sick.  

This is the Chief and his wife, standing there with me, and Frank Stanford.
Frank (from Calgary) is the one who has helped us get into the villages, schools
orphanages, and churches to do eye exams.  He is very busy with humanitarian  service,
including helping villages with their water supply. He has sure made our job a lot easier.

This is the school we went to, following breakfast with the Chief.  It was
in such a beautiful setting.

These are 4 of the teachers at the school.
Don't they look great in their Bula shirts?

One happy boy...

These boys were quite comfortable wearing their school uniforms - Pink Sulas!

Lined up waiting for their eye exams.

The girls pink dresses matched the boys pink sulus.

These kids are happy and know how to have a good time.

The Kindergarten class was so cute.

Once we finished the school children, we moved on to check the eyes of many adults.

Because this was a remote village, many of the children and adults couldn't converse in English, so we had to change our approach to the eye exam.   This meant the eye exams were quite short.  It allowed Rick to examine 140 children from the Elementary school, and 54 adults, for a total of 194 eye exams.  It was a long and tiring day, and I don't think we will ever do that many eye exams in a single day, again. 

At the end of the day, the Chief surprised us with a supper made by some of
the women in the village.  They don't use chairs or utensils to eat with, so we
sat with them on the floor, with our legs crossed, eating a number of unique
dishes of food, some of which we didn't recognize.  Most of it tasted great!
The women don't usually eat until the men are done, but they made an exception
for me as I was part of the eye care team.   We made sure we left lots
of food for the women who had worked so hard to prepare the meal.  They
sat at the end of the table and watched until it was their turn.

The next morning, we went to the village town hall and saw these palm leaves
left out to dry, in their preparation to weave mats.  Some of the leaves were
buried in the soil to provide a dark brown color, to give the mats some color.

This cute little pig went to the market..... the men were hunting the mother pig,
but she got away, so they brought the baby home to fatten up.

When we arrived at the village town hall, we found  these people waiting
on the floor mats.  They just don't have, or use chairs in their homes or public bldgs.

While the ladies were waiting to have their eyes examined, they
sorted out their yarn to prepare for weaving floor mats.
Don't they look great in their colorful Jumba Sulas? This is how
they socialize and catch up on the village gossip.

This is the view from the town hall, where we did the eye exams.

Isn't this a well decorated village town hall?
It was a little difficult examining eyes in such
a brightly lit room, but we managed okay.

I was kept very busy helping most everyone select their reading glasses.
They were very grateful, as now they would be able to see
 better to  prepare food and do all their crafts and handi-work.

On one of our days off, we visited the "Garden of the Sleeping Giant".
It's a beautiful Orchid Garden that was created by "Raymond Burr"
 (from Ironside & Perry Mason) before he passed away several years ago.

We quite enjoyed the beauty of it all.

The garden was a wonderful place to take a break to relax a few minutes.

A rather unique tree to stand in...

A nice place for a swing...

Very large corrugated leaves...

Rick decided to join the tree huggers!

We then went to the nearby, "MUD POOLS AND HOT SPRINGS".

My mother would never let me do this when I was young...

They convinced us that the mud has special healing
powers and anti-aging factors, so we rubbed it all over us.

It definitely didn't feel good as it started to dry!

This better work!

After 15 minutes, we were allowed to go into Pool #1 to wash off the mud.
The soft mud in the bottom was about 2 or 3 feet deep, and felt rather strange.

In Pool #2, we got even cleaner.

In Pool #3, we were back to normal. and feeling refreshed.
Do we look 10 years younger, now?

One more wash in Pool #4, and now we're done, and ready
to dry off, and get back on the road again.

After returning to Suva, we decided to peak in on the High School Grad.
The kids looked beautiful, we were definitely not dressed for the
occasion, but they invited us in, and fed us.
That is just the Fijian way!!!

Many of the missionary couples had the same idea.
This was a snack toward the end of the evening.

The decorations and lights were very well done.
They love a party and they love color and bling.

We went with our friends the Greenburgs, to Pacific Harbour on Saturday

This is part of the very pretty harbour, just outside the
hotel where we had a nice lunch

Walking to the end of the pier, we ended up getting pretty
wet as the waves splashed up on us!

This is the most beautiful lily pad pond I have ever seen.
It was full of white, pink and purple flowers!

In the very modern Hotel Pearl, lobby.

The end of another amazing and unique week, here in Fiji.  

What an adventure!