THE VILLAGE OF CUBI
Left to right: Emma, Mere, Rubbha, Zane, Mela and myself.
We have been based in Musket Cove, Malolo Islands in Fiji for the past few weeks. On Malolo Lailai, there is a small village called Cubi (pronounced Thumbee). We have been privileged to meet some of the locals; Hadassah, Sunia and their families. We have been now welcomed into their home many times. We have also been shown around their garden and learnt a lot about how they garden, plant-based remedies, how they fish, cook and learning about their lives.
Currently, the children in Fiji aren’t going to school due to Covid-19 and school is postponed until further notice. There are currently 15 kids from year 1 to year 8 in the village of Cubi. The Ministry of Education in Fiji have put school resources up online. However, the majority of the outer villages, like Cubi, don’t have laptops or printers. This means that there are many kids cleaning the house instead and causing mischief (in a very cute way!)
We brought plenty of schoolbooks and stationery with us and have a printer aboard, so we decided to print resources, so they can keep a bit of schoolwork going. We got printing, sticking, and labelling the books for the kids, the work is aligned with New Zealand’s curriculum, they have great resources! Haddassah is one of the grandmothers in the village and she knows everyone and everything! When she got the bag, everyone wanted to know what was in it. She told them to do all of the chores before they could look. When you haven’t done school in a wee while, school sounds quite exciting! Haddassah told them to do the work because the ‘supervisors’ (myself, Mum and Dad) would be back to check and they will bring…cake!
My new name in the village is Fiona. The day I met Sunia and Haddassah, I had a long plait in. Apparently, I looked like ‘Princess Fiona’ off Shrek with the plait and the nickname come about. I get a mixture of Fiona and Molly.
Word of mouth quickly spread throughout the village kids that ‘Fiona was bringing cake’. This became a very good incentive for all of them to get school work done!
Today we stopped by to drop off the cake. We had Rubbah and Zane run up to us - they knew exactly what Fiona would be bringing! We sat down with some of the people in the village with lemon leaf tea and even tried octopus they had caught that day and cooked cassava (the Fijian’s version of potato). Some of the children waited patiently, eyeing up the cake. When they got to have the chocolate cake, they savoured every last bite of it!
It has been lovely meeting and learning more about the people of Fiji. I am looking forward to meeting more of them when we see more of Fiji. We are about to head off sailing up to the Yasawa’s, however, I am looking forward to checking back in with our new friends of Cubi.
