After lunch we drove to the University of the South Pacific (USP) which is set on a beautifully manicured campus with low rise buildings. Here we met Asinate's Uncle who is teaching carving in spite of having no formal training himself, but a huge talent. We had been told that his work needed fork-lift trucks to move it about and indeed several entire trees, branches, roots and all had been intricately carved with imaginary beasts and patterns in every conceivable part.
Paula Linga is his name and even his small pieces are beautiful. To our delight he gave us a smoothly carved black piece made of Vesi wood in the form of a mythical creature and I realised that it was close as could possibly be to the Oxford dodo by pure chance. 
He works in a marvellous domed outdoor studio and is now finishing off the works left by various students from surrounding islands. Everything he produces is sold instantly unless the University itself wants to keep them. What an idyllic life!As Sabbath was coming in that evening (A feels that Friday is the appropiate evening according to the Bible anyway) we had family prayers and an extra big feast.This was in the form of a Fijian ' take-away' in the sense that Asinate had spent part of the day with her sister who runs a chicken farm with her husband. They were busy making up packed meals for customers all over the area to raise additional money for Asinates's nephew's wedding. It consisted of a vast package including roast chicken, marinated and smoked fish, ro-ro, lasagna and a casava pudding. Tim brought in wine as a treat too. It was a lovely evening if you could ignore the tannoyed preaching from the church in the village below that went on for hours, but we slept well in spite of that.
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