The day flew by. Helen had stayed aboard Dignity after lunch while I carried on through the afternoon. When evening came we washed and put on our better clothes and went ashore for the party. Biu presented us a mat she’d made and personalized weaving in the name of the village and Dignity. The mat had a pair of small fans sewn into the upper corners. This was very special.
Before continuing the evening we had to sort out some confusion as Adrian, Lucy and the kids from De Capo hadn’t turned up having not been invited by anyone from the village. Everyone thought someone else had let them know. So I headed back to their boat with Samu to make sure they knew. Explaining that it was Fiji time, it was ok to wait for them to arrive before the evening continued.
Once they arrived we were given three performances by the village children. We’ve seen far better presented and rehearsed performances elsewhere but nothing has ever come close to the personal touch as this was for us and not some tourist performance. We thanked the kids by giving them lollipops, a rare treat for them.
Then we were invited to eat. They’d prepared chicken curry, some excellent land crabs with yams and other veges. It was all very delicious. As is the custom, we ate before they did.
The cava bowl had already been on the go but for the rest of the evening Samu and others played guitars and ukulele while singing Fijian love songs. The cava and singing kept flowing even after the extended time on the generator ran out and we were down to torch light. The evening ended with all the adults present singing us a farewell song. It was all very moving. I gave a little speech to thank them all for their kind hospitality and to let them all know that what they gave us in terms of their open doors and welcome was something that simply doesn’t exist in our country.
We finished the evening back at Isireli’s home with a cup of tea.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7WHZfZ4-Ww[/youtube]
This morning I woke feeling more of the effects of the grog (cava) than I did last night. We’ve prepared some photos of the children dancing with the very limited supplies of photo paper we have aboard and will take it ashore shortly. Eroni and Biu have popped by leaving us lots of fruit and vegetables. They enjoyed seeing the pictures we printed. We gave them one of the collages Helen made of them all.
The winds are light and we’ve had a slow, grog induced start to the day so we’ll probably go no further than the Bay of Islands again today and leave the area tomorrow.
We came out this way in search of something different, something off the tourist trail. We found it. I hope we’ve made a little difference to the villagers of Daliconi. They’ve certainly made a difference to us and we will treasure these memories.
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