A Busy Week at Work and After Hours

Over the past week, Martyn has been focused on working with the auditors to sign off on the 2015 accounts. And preparing for the 2016 audit.

I have been focused on getting the completion report for the VHW course finalised and submitted to the MOH by the end of the week, which we succeeded in doing (4.30pm Friday, phew!). Nicola Young had already put a lot of work into the report, and Judy and Elder Jara also contributed. We're almost at the end of the project now, just packing up the office equipment and teaching resources and putting everything to bed till the next course is still to be done over the next week or so.

Judy had previously told Nicola and me that her roof leaks and water comes in onto her bed, so on Tuesday I went with Neville, Yowel and Noel out to her house in Etas, a village on the outskirts of Vila, to see what needed to be done to repair it. We found Judy preparing some pumpkin shoots for cooking.

The village Aid Post is occupying half of Judy's front porch and her sister Linda is the Village Health Worker. Their former Aid Post was destroyed by TC Pam. It serves approx 2,500 people in Etas - the MOH guidelines provide for an Aid Post for every 300 people! Anyone interested in a project??

This is the front of the Aid post / Judy's house, with L-R Yowel, Judy, Noel and Neville. Judy insisted on giving us some of her bananas to take home.

Some of Judy's neighbours were constructing a platform for a new water tank that has been donated by Australian Aid. This will bring a water supply much closer to Judy's house, which has no running water and no electricity. She told me she has a concrete block house on her home island of Pentecost, but chooses to live near her brother in Etas so she can do training work in Vila to earn some money.

This is part of the road up to her house - we had to go into 4 wheel drive for parts of it. No buses go up her road, it is too steep and rough, so to get to work she has to walk out along this road, an all weathers, to catch a bus on the main road through Etas, the  often another bus to get her to where she needs to go in Vila. Life is incredibly hard for many people in Vanuatu.

Not that far away from Etas is the gorgeous resort of Tamanu.

I was blessed to go there for lunch with Nicola and her two cousins who were visiting from NZ. Her cousin Megan took this photo, and this is her cousin Sandra on the right, who I was at primary school with! She is also a senior teacher at the school our 3 girls attended years ago. Happy coincidence.