Yesterday checked out the local rivers with Dave Cook, cruising up the rainforest streams, caught a pile of mangrove jacks and sleepy and estuary cods, plus of course the ever voracious seki=seki!
Dave Cook and a nice little mangrove jack
when we got back, Jenno set about catching more mantis shrimps, got some good video of it, so Steve you can see exactly how it is done! :-)
Great day.
Today was meant to be a no-fishing day as taska was booked to take a yank on a ww2 trip, but that got cancelled at the last minute, so this arvo took a pile of schoolbooks, some balls, and school supplies over to bobae village. While over there, naturally went to double island and hotspot, landed 3 giant trevs, lost 2, had one lure monstered and pulled to pieces in the process, all good!
Bobae village
I gave Bobae all up about 100 a4 size lined exercise books, 100 next size up, 30 or so quad books, several folders and refils etc for them, several packets of pens, pencils, colouring pencils, and some balls.
I also gave them a couple of collapsable 225l watertanks they had for sale on the 1-day site a while back.
They have 80 students in the small primary school there. I talked to the teacher, he says they would love tennis balls, soft ball sets, uniforms for the soccer 7s teams they have (2 of them), so I may just have a hunt around, see what I can find for them.
The water tanks will mean the kids will have water to drink and wash at the school. Ideally they would love a few more as it is certain that the villagers will all help themselves to this water as well. It is interesting isn't it, how much we here in the developed world take things like running water for granted. Up there, it don't happen like that!
A similar amount of stuff has gone to the school at Noro town, where supplies are even more stretched.... they need 11 new rooms for pete's sake, not just books! Another 50 assorted books, colouring pens etc went to anotehr smaller school near bobae, and I gave a couple more water tanks to Taskas village for them to use, along with 15 full soccer uniforms that I had picked up cheap in hamilton last year for their soccer team.
The Bobae carvers did a simple but very nice big bowl for the Hinuera-TePoi lions club (I'm a member) as thanks, as I told them everything had come from them....they did chip in a couple of hundred towards getting a lot of this stuff, and very nice, somewhat interesting letters of thanks, as english really is these peoples third language., but it truly is the thought that counts, not the grammar.
I am quite keen on organising more stuff to go up there in the containers, they are begging for reading books for young folks up to say 12yrs old, so if any of you see a pile of these being biffed out, please grab them and we will see if they can go to a good home, not just into the recycling can.