Trinity Students Support Fiji Project

Three Colac teenagers have spent their July school holidays volunteering in Fiji.

The teenagers joined a Venturer Scouts Community Aid Project as a part of Scouts Victoria and embarked from Warrnambool to Fiji for 17 days.

For six days the group helped build a medical waiting room in the Moa Moa village in Fiji.

The group included Jack Evans, 18, Hunter Leersen, 17, and 15-year-old Charlotte Leersen. (TCC students)

The room's foundations were already built, with the teens helping add the finishing touches to the walls and roof - a task Jack said felt "really good" and "wasn't as intense" as they expected.

When the teenagers arrived at the village they were confronted with the weather difference.

"It was just so hot and humid. When we got off the plane I didn't really know how big a difference humidity is day to day, but as soon as i got off the plane it just hit me. It's like mist, it just stuck to you," Jack said.

"It was also pouring rain. we had to climb across bars and stuff to hammer nails in the rain," Charlotte said.

Getting around was also challenging, especially for hunter, who arrived later in the trip.

"it was a bit tough trying to figure out the village layout. I did get lost along the way trying to get to breakfast," he said.

Staying with host families, many of the scouts slept on mattresses or shared beds. Charlotte wasn't so lucky.

"Most of the families the groups stayed with had mattresses on the floor, but when I got showed into my house they pulled the mattress out and I had to sit on the floor for a week," she said.

The trip was a great experience for the teens, who were unable to do the trip last year due to COVID, with the Fijians treating them like family.

"The father of the host family was son to the chief. With how the buildings are set with houses to the side and a cement path and then you have the chief's house. Only he's allowed to walk through the door, and even his wife's got to go around the side, but he just welcomed us through the door," Jack said.

The best part of the trip for Hunter was how Fiji felt like home in some ways and Jack liked how kind the people were.

"Seeing the similarities as well as the differences, I know the landscape was a lot more similar than I was expecting, at least it seemed similar to the Otways," Hunter said.

"They don't have a lot of stuff, but they don't need it. They're really good people, fun and happy, they just make do with whatever. They really appreciate it when we give gifts. So, when we help out at the clinic, some days we did more than others, and they'd just be really appreciative of it," Jack said.

The teens recounted a fond memory from the trip of a five-kilometre hike and river ride on their second-last day at the village.

"We had to go down one really steep hill in the mud because it rained the night before. We were all sliding down the hill and then we ended in another part of the river. They built billy-billy boats with bamboo, and we had to sit on those to get all the way back to the village. the one I was on fell apart, so I was holding it together and that was really fun," Charlotte said.

"The one I was on had just cracked in front of me. So I had to try and balance it out and at one pointwe had to stop in the middle of the river and grab a new piece of bamboo to repair it," Hunter said.

When asked about how the teens felt about the experience, they all agreed that it was an enjoyable opportunity to have been part of.

"I found it pretty good, I'd do it again if I could," Jack said.

by Jena Carr, reproduced with permission of The Colac Herald