posted Nov 28th

can you spot Moala island to the south east of Suva?

And then there’s the problem of logistics: only very small planes go to many of these islands, while some have no landing strips at all & can only be reached by boat. To give an example of the difficulties involved, we tried to go to Moala island a few years ago & so first of all sent boxes of books by boat (too heavy for the plane), while we ourselves bought tickets with Air Fiji. However, after the books had already left by boat, plane flights to the island were put on hold for several weeks due to bad weather & the grass airstrip being flooded! As the international plane tickets for our onward flight from Fiji were already bought & our visa was going to run out, we didn’t have weeks of time left to wait for flights to resume & so we had to leave Fiji & the boxes of books were never heard of again!

(We pray they ended up in some village school!)

Lau Traders boat that donated all the cargo charges

As we were bringing the boxes to the boat, we received a phone call asking us to please bring some fuel along with us, as it’s scarce & very expensive in the islands. Luckily Carpenters Hardware donated a 20 litre jerry-can & so we filled it up with fuel & added it to the pile of boxes.

A few days later came our much-awaited flight by small propeller plane to Moala……to be continued!

Moala here we come!!!