SUSUI WOMEN GARDEN CLUB
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| Sea Mercy Volunteer and Susui Sponsor Gretchen (S/V Peregrine) and the Susui Women Garden Club |
Loma Loma, Vanua Balavu (Fiji)
June 24, 2016
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| Weeding through the Chinese cabbage (Photo Tessa Irvin) |
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| While we wait for the women to gather for pesticide instruction, the kids draw caterpillars and bugs and fish and pigs.... |
Take Bale, for example, the leading woman of the village. When we called on her at 8 AM to start the gardening program, she had spent all night out fishing, caught 70 small fish that she was frying for our dinner, and had not gone to sleep yet. Kindly, she took us to the community garden, not complaining that she was tired, not asking us to come back after her nap!
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| Bale's daughter lunch: dry ramen noodles tucked into her shirt |
The Susui Women Garden Club, as they call themselves, is a small, enthusiastic group of young women, full of energy. Before our 1st visit, they had already built a fence to keep the pigs out of the garden and had planted a few beds: tomatoes and green beans. But the main problems was poor weeding and white flies. It’s not enough to turn the soil over, you need to remove all weed and roots.
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| Bale learns how to seed carrots with Sea Mercy volunteers JP, Willie and Gretchen |
We made quick work of seed distribution and planting instructions, including pesticide information and spraying. When we returned the following day, the women had gotten up at 4 AM, awoken by the village drum, as they do every day, had gone to church promptly, had breakfast, sent the kids to school, and had weeded the beds and sprayed the chili-garlic brew on the beans… all before we cruisers were even awake! JP and Gretchen seeded the 1st bed of carrots: once more, the women were so excited about those carrots, which they had never grown before!
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| Let's get this weeding party going.... |
By now we have this gardening program running pretty smoothly. Gallons of chili-garlic and white oil sprays, 88 Ramakrishna seed packs distributed, DOMINO’s contribution is now at its end, since we are leaving tomorrow for Vulaga, Onega and Vatoa, all Southern Laus islands. Tomorrow, it will be some other Sea Mercy volunteer who will take this program to Cikobia, another isolated island inside the Vanua Balavu lagoon.
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| Susui's kids (Photo Tessa Irvin) |
This has been an amazing time and we wish all the women of Vanua Balavu a rapid recovery and a plentiful harvest.
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| Domino delivers water in Susui (photo Tessa Irvin) |
Till next time…
dominomarie