Short film: Waciwaci

From filmmaker: Kim Paul Nguyen
Lakeba Island is one of Fiji's most remote, in the Lau Island Group, in the South East of the Fijian Archipelago. Waciwaci is a small village there of about 200 inhabitants. I spent 1 week on the island, walking to the village every morning, getting to know the residents, talking to them about the sea, the weather, their health and their plans for the future. The climate change impacts were obvious and worrying. Waciwaci is being flooded by high tides more and more every year, with more and more of the shore being washed away.
Homes along the shoreline have already been moved or abandoned, and the flooding has already caused substantial damage to the primary school building. As such the government plans to move the school to higher ground in 2018 - a new location has already been picked out and construction is due to begin shortly. Everyone in the village thinks they'll have to move in the next 10 or 20 years, and they don't know where they'll go. They don't want to give up their homes.
But in terms of health? Well, turns out Waciwaci is actually one of the healthiest places I've ever been. The one doctor on the island reported that apart from scabies, which many of the Waciwaci children do have, nearly everyone is very healthy. And that makes sense, they grow and collect food in the forests and the sea, they have active lives, healthy diets and lots of strong social connections.
There are increasingly frequent droughts on the island, making food and fresh water scarce, but when the rains return the islanders' diets go back to normal. The impacts on health infrastructure are a significant concern - some of the nursing stations in the Lau Group are regularly flooded by seawater, and the threat of flooding means the hospital on Lakeba Island is planning for possible relocation.