April 2005
G'day
Thanks to our coverage on Getaway in February this year business has taken off in a big way. Over Easter our villages hosted a record number of people - in excess of twenty adults at one time - and all guests reported back favourably on their experiences. The big winners are our participating villages with traditionally poor villages like Namuamua now embarking on a number of exciting community building projects - thanks to guests ho have visited through FijiBure.com
The popularity of FijiBure.com and the thousands of web sites now linking to it has resulted in our getting top coverage on all the major search engines - go to your favourite search engine and try "Fiji holidays" or "holidays in Fiji" and you will find us listed on the first page among the first few of hundreds of thousands of recorded pages. Our special thanks to on-line marketing specialists emailstaff.com for their valuable assistance in getting us to such a dominant position!
Next month I am travelling to Fiji and will be visiting the second biggest island, Vanua Levu, in the north to see a couple of romantic new village locations on isolated islands - like Malevu (see below).
While we continue to expand and look at new countries to link up with our administration manager, Sarah White, has been doing some valuable research which has resulted in the investigation of a whole new direction for one arm of villagehomestays.com. If you stay tuned to this page you will see the niche markets that we are targeting which will include unique and disturbing exploratory tours to villages that have been devastated by mining and other factors so that you can understand first hand the inequity of western culture on these peoples. While our main thrust will remain "bringing different cultures together"... we feel that it is important that those who want to find out for themselves the negative impacts of our dominant greed-based culture on theirs can do so in an organised way. We would appreciate your feedback on this new area - tell us what you would like to see us do.
If we are to live and be part of history we need to go to the coalface - this is an area that we will endeavour to expand in the future.
For example, who ever heard of the village of Banaba which was relocated after world war two to allow the UK, Australia and others to exploit the rich phospherous minerals that their homes in Papua New Guinea once stood on. These people were dumped on an island in Fiji and simply left to re-establish their lives without any real tangible compensation. We are now looking at including their relocated (Fiji based) village on fijibure.com - this will allow guests to talk to the village elders so that they can come to terms with the manner in which they were treated - it also gives you an opportunity to help them rebuild their fragile community.
Extract from the Banaba web page linked above:
The Banabans court case against the British Government and the British Phosphate Commission (BPC) would finally come to an end in 1979 and become known as one of the longest court cases in UK history.
The Banabans would win their case against the British Phosphate Commission for their failure to replant a part of their island, but were awarded derisory damages of £UK9,000 and made to pay their own court costs which amounted to over £UK300,000
As a result of political pressure the British Phosphate Commission offered £UK780,000 which the Banabans knew was still wholly insufficient and would not provide sufficient funds for the replanting of their island.
In their other action against the British Government
for breach of trust, the Banabans lost. The judge held that even though they
had had a ‘raw deal’, in law there was nothing that could help
them. However, he made plain that there were grave breaches of a higher or
governmental trust which his court was powerless to remedy, and made an
unprecedented appeal to the Government to act accordingly.
Some classic signs seen on my travels:
In a Swiss mountain inn:
In a Swedish furrier:
In a German Hospital:
In a Bangkok temple:
In a Tokyo bar: |
The village of the month:
The village of the month is Malevu. We are getting nothing but good reports from guests who have visited this tiny and remote village on Naviti Island in the Yasawas.
Image right: Toye on top of the Naviti mountain
For those who love walks or snorkelling Malevu has it all with wide expanses of ocean and a special two hour trip to the top of the island - a dominant old volcano plug which rises hundreds of metres into the air. Amazing views from up there!
Congratulations Toye!
Scott Balson