Drug Week

This last week in which I will be staying in Naivicula is Drug Week, a week with activities and guest speakers to raise awareness on drug and violence against women and children. Yesterday a high ranked local female police officer talked about drugs. Today, the children held a march through the village (which was pretty cool) someone from the Fijian Women’s Crisis Centre came to speak. During the march, in which everyone had posters and ribbons with slogans against drugs and violence, some children had found a Bob Marley poster (including Marley with a big joint) that they proudly waved around in the march.

On Thursday, Kim’s host families will host a small farewell party for the both of us, of which I hope it will be mostly for Kim. It is pretty weird sometimes when I also get (unjustly) credited/thanked for cool stuff Kim has done for the school, while she spent 5 months here and I come around for a few weeks. I think it mostly happens because I am still new and different for most people here, while everyone is already pretty used to Kim around.

On Friday, the school will hold a bazaar event to raise money, for which they are currently building nice sheltered stalls. According to Fijian custom, the villagers that build those drink kava afterwards with the head teachers and another teacher, which allowed me to finally try some (it had a pretty weird taste). The whole experience was a bit ironic as it was drug week and the ceremony was held inside a classroom decorated with anti-drugs slogans.

Furthermore, my library project is nearly coming to an end. The library is pretty neat already and Kim and I gave away loads of unused work books that were just collecting dust and attracting wasps. The library appears to be a pretty good environment for a kind of wasp that builds pretty gross and big nests with earth, and it did not take me very long to find a whole nest of live wasps when removing books from the upper shelves, but I am still alive and they are not.