enter the geo-tourists…

Jonathan Tourtellot is a classic product of this infamous society I’m sitting in: wise, whimsical and, despite a head cold, full of wonder for the world – he is the stereotypical adventurous professor leading an ambassadorial training session deep inside the arteries of natgeoHQ, Washington DC.

And the subject of his images of Norweigan fjords and Costa del Concrete? Geotourism . Coined and defined by Tourtellot as:

“tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of the place, such as its culture, environment, heritage, and the well-being of its residents.”

In other words, tourism that doesn’t have a negative impact on a destination, and beyond this adds value to the place and it’s people, making it pay to protect it.

But what about eco-tourism, sustainable-tourism, responsible-tourism, heritage-tourism, or even tribal-tourism I hear you cry?

Why another?

Why now?

Well, because the ‘geo’ – of place – includes all of the above and more. Geotourism is all inclusive. But unlike the packaged tourism of before – this new form specifically describes practise that does not degenerate a place or it’s people, and often in fact does the opposite.

so. are we geo-tourists?

So where is all this geotourism happening?

Well, in a lot of places already. The reason I attended this conference was because I was fortunate to be asked to help judge on last year’s geotourism changemakers competition . 611 entries from 81 countries. The top ten made it to Washington and three were voted for online as being outstanding.

The winners included ‘Nature Air’ , Costa Rica’s and the world first ‘carbon neutral airline’, reaf

firming some of my lost faith int he benefits of carbon offsetting when it is local; ‘PEPY Ride’ in Cambodia giving people rural bike riding adventures whilst simultaneously engaging them about development in the country rather than throwing them unguarded to volunteer in orphanages that haven’t asked for their help; and ‘Wikiloc’ an online tool for anyone to log a trail or trek they know and love online – think wikipedia for trails. Very cool.

Tribewanted and Geotourism?

I took part in a panel session at the conference and was able to share some of the Tribewanted story. Amongst the audience there seemed to be a strong interest in our version of geotourism in Fiji and also how to develop a toolkit to turn each tourist/ tribe member into a changemaker on their return home.

We discussed that perhaps an exciting legacy for geotourism projects might be giving their visitors the opportunity to take their inspiring experience back into their lives. This is something we’ve always been keen to try and do on Vorovoro – connect island life with city life. I hope our new Tribewanted credits model which we’ll start testing soon will incentivise our members do this even more.

And you’ll be interested to hear that next year’s geotourism competition is focusing on: ‘Places on the edge – saving coastal destinations’

So when you next travel, take the geo-tourist test by simply asking:

“Are we sustaining or enhancing the character of this place?”

If the answer is yes, then maybe the future of travel just arrived.

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Geotourism on Twitter
On National Geographic

escape this city? join me on 27 Jan to find out how

I’ll be speaking alongside around the world cycling hero Al Humphreys on the night at Guanabara. Should be a great night. Book tickets

see you there!

ben

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Launching WEDNESDAY 27th JANUARY 2010 at GUANABARA bar in LONDON

ESCAPE THE CITY provides exciting options for YOUNG PROFESSIONALS who want to leave their mainstream corporate jobs and ‘do something different’

Escape the City, ‘Esc’ for short, is launching with a party at GUANABARA, HOLBORN, in CENTRAL LONDON on WEDNESDAY 27TH JANUARY 2010.  The evening will consist of inspirational talks from AL HUMPHREYS (Adventurer and Writer who cycled around the world on his student loans) and BEN KEENE (Social Entrepreneur, Founder of Tribewanted) and a gig from THE CORRESPONDENTS (one of London’s hottest new live music acts).

Esc was started by two EX-MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS, DOM JACKMAN (27) and ROB SYMINGTON (26), who are convinced that there is more to life than working in a job that doesn’t make you leap out of bed in the morning.  They are building this platform because they believe that thousands of young city workers feel exactly the same.

Esc is aimed at ambitious, talented young people who aren’t catered to by traditional job sites and recruitment services.  Esc’s goal is to connect them with exciting, innovative, non-mainstream organisations where they can use their skills to make a difference, have an impact, and be genuinely fulfilled by their work.

tripbods, awards and orangutans: my world travel market top ten

See the world under one roof! The biggest global travel market gathered for its 30th – and hopefully – the end of one the toughest years for the industry.

I carefully handpicked the people I was keen to catch up with and talks I was going to attend. The scale of the event means you can’t really just turn up at the WTM in London and make connections (except at the Trinidad & Tobago rum shack perhaps…), so here’s my top ten:

1. Sally Broom and team from Tripbod who organised the excellent Fringe Responsible Travel Network event. Tripbod connects travellers to local experts who can organise bespoke itinereries for you.

2. Also at the fringe I met Thomas from West African Discovery who is doing well building a portal to promote responsible tourism for one of my favourite regions of the world

3. There I also caught up with Richard Hammond, who recently co-authored the excellent Rough Guides to ‘Clean Breaks’, and is now developing is successful blog Green Traveller into more of a business.

4. Nick Chaffe from Travelpledge has created a new model for giving back to local projects in the destinations you visit. This has great potential and could take a lot of the administration hassle away from tour operators and travel start ups who want to set up foundations but get distracted by running their business.

5. Amy Carter-James from Guludo for winning best poverty reduction project at the Virgin Responsible Travel Awards. Guludo Beach resort in Mozambique is proving to be one the most successful eco tourism projects in terms of its social impact. There’s definitely some things we can learn from Guludo and apply on Vorovoro. Tribewanted narrowly missed the highly recommended category for ‘Conservation of Cultural Heritage’…  but with an average of 200 nominations for each category I think we can be proud of being just off the podium. I was pleased to see Rivers Fiji being recognised. Congratulations to them.

6. Daniel Raven-Ellison from The Geography Collective heads a talented group of people who are creatively encouraging young people to engage with the world. Their projects: the Journey Journal & Mission: Explore and simple concepts that hope to get more kids re-connected with the essence of geography, evne f that means climbing a tree int he back garden.

7. A stunning video by Prince’s Rainforest Project @ the launch of Responsible Travel Day was brilliant and great to see focus on rainforest conservation. This led to a good debate on climate change and the travel industry’s role. The crux of the debate understandably centered around aviation emissions and whether they will be capped, regulated or changed to biofuels. Head of environment at BA had a tough set of questions to answer but appeared very committed to changes in the near future.

8. Guilliame Feldman from Way Out Experiences in Malaysia is turning fantastic tourism experiences into conservation of one my favourite beasts; Orangutans

9. Tom Griffiths from gapyear.com did a brilliant talk on youth travel trends and social media with one message: engage online or fail.

10. Finally I bumped into Tim Smit from the Eden Project in Cornwall who was at the WTM to launch an intriguing partnership with the Maldives to put together a plan for cultural and phsyical resilience in the face of climate change.

Feels like this year – because of the duel economic and environmental pressures – may have been a turnig point for the mainstreaming of responsible and youth tourism. It’s certainly growing rapidly every year. Talo!

playbarefoot

Earlier this year, Tom Vernon, a friend from the time I was working in Ghana, got back in touch to ask if I could help with his fast growing organisation – Right to Dream.

Tom went to Ghana 10 years ago and hasn’t been home. He’s founded an innovative and successful grass roots sports academy and education model that is now being adopted elsewhere.

This month I was involved in helping launch a new fundraising campaign for Right to Dream: Playbarefoot simply asks footballers of all standards in the Europe and the US to take their boots off for one tournament, one game a season and raise a few $ for those in West Africa who have the talent but not the means to realise their potential without the help of Right to Dream.

Here is a piece I wrote about the inspiring social impact of the Right to Dream project after a visit to Freetown, Sierra Leone.

We kicked off playbarefoot with Michael and Waid, two Ghanaian footballers now in colleges in California who I hadn’t seen since they were 12 years old doing keep ups in a yard in Accra

If you like the look of what Tom and the team are doing at Right to Dream the best thing you can do is organise a small playbarefoot tournament. info@playbarefoot.com

speaking with some young entrepreneurs in the lakes earlier this year

From blood diamonds to beach football

In one of the world’s poorest countries an innovative new sports foundation led by a premier league player is changing more than just perceptions.

***

“The rebels were at our door. They came in with their guns. They wanted my baby son. I pleaded no, that he had a stomach sickness. The female rebel told the men to go. She gave me 100,000 leones (£20) and left. I thanked God. Maybe if I didn’t have a sick son to care about they would also have taken me away. They killed one baby near to my house.”

It’s June 1997 and members of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) are sweeping through the Kington district of Freetown, Sierra Leone ‘recruiting’ for their militia by snatching babies and children and shooting the rest.

The ‘resource’ war was being fueled by a fight for diamonds dug along river beds to the East of the capital. The exchange of diamonds for weapons between the RUF and Liberia was deepening the crisis. The 1997 surge on Freetown was its violent climax where more than 3000 lives were lost. You’ve probably seen or heard of the film ‘Blood Diamond’ starring Leonardo Dicaprio depicting these horrific events. Sadly for many living in Sierra Leone today, this was a reality, not hollywood.

“Since my baby and I survived that day I have always wanted the best for him. Sometimes I sacrifice my whole salary just to send him to school. John is everything I have. At first I resisted football as I thought it would take time from school but now I can see the future it can give him. He is a goalkeeper and if he makes the academy everything could change. He could lead our country.”

Selina MaCarthy, a nurse and her only son John Fillie, were lucky to survive. Twelve years on and John is on the cusp of being selected as one of a dozen first generation players to Sierra Leone’s first professional youth football academy. Scouted from across the country this small group of young boys will represent a project that has aspirations not just to help them realise their potential but to also use football to empower teams and communities to initiate positive social change. An ambitious project in any country, but considering the recent history of Sierra Leone and with unemployment at 80%, it appears brave and optimistic.

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Freetown

“Welcome to Lungi International – you are in Freetown now!” Exclaims Kenya Airways as you taxi past the mirage of palm trees on a single strip of sweltering tarmac.

Freetown. Like its African neighbour to the North East, Timbuktu, Freetown is one of those distant, exotic, almost mythical places that most of us are aware exist, vaguelly recalling a lyric from a song or a reference in history, but little more. This is slightly worrying, considering the significant role we as a colonial power played in forming it. Aside from the familiarity of names – Aberdeen, Waterloo, Hastings – the first thing you notice in Freetown is the typical bustle but without the hassle I’ve experienced in other African cities. The dramatic geography of Freetown – sweeping peninsula, arcing beaches and ports, and steep surging hills, is almost at odds with its quiet charmed chaos; endless ramshackle Dickensian markets, with seas of people, taxis, bikes, trolleys, swelling in and out of the streets like tides. There are numerous war-inflicted amputees who wheel themselves along muddy alleyways in gloriously inventive homemade contraptions. One guy who looks my age and has lost both his legs high above the knee calls me from his tricycle, ‘hey aboto (white man) don’t take taxi. Come with me. I have four wheel drive,’ before pulling an impressive wheely, laughing loudly and spinning off down the hill.

The buildings have retained their colonial style but since the war many have changed the materials they’re built with; window shutters and steep rooftops are bent out of corrugated iron rather than hard woods and stone – it’s like a Tim Burton town in the sunshine. If anything, wondering through Freetown I feel less threatened, less of an outsider, than in other African city’s I’ve visited. In Freetown you happily become part of that ‘seething mass of humanity’ we often hear about but rarely experience.

My invite to this vibrant place came via a friend I’d kept in touch with since the summers I’d spent leading volunteer expeditions in West Africa. In 1999 Tom Vernon took some time out from a sports science degree in Liverpool and found himself coaching and teaching on the streets of Ghana’s capital, Accra. Tom was quickly struck by the gaping hole between the potential of these brilliant ten year olds and the countries so called poor Premier League. Something was going badly wrong in their development. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that a lack of adequate nourishment and basic education were undermining any chance these young talented players of becoming something. Tom rallied family and friends in High Wycombe and soon had the funds to start a basic academy. He scouted the country for his first generation of players, recruited volunteer coaches and teachers and set about work. Ten years on, Tom and his team at Right to Dream are completing a European standard sports academy in Ghana, have graduates at Fulham FC and, almost more impressively considering these boys backgrounds, 22 are currently on scholarships at top colleges in the UK and the States. Tom has also managed to become Manchester United’s head scout for Africa. Funny what a summer teaching English abroad can lead to.

In 2007 Tom got a call from a well known English Premier League player asking if he could help him set up a similar academy in Sierra Leone. Craig Bellamy, captain of Wales and today one of a plethora of world-class strikers at Manchester City, did not have the best ‘google me’ results page as he would be the first to admit. Regardless of reputations a partnership was formed, Bellamy visited Sierra Leone again, wrote a significant initial cheque and publicly made his commitment to the people of this war-torn nation. The government gave the newly formed Craig Bellamy Foundation a decent slice of land an hour from Freetown and in mid 2008 the goal-scorer took part in a ceremony and broke the earth where the new academy would be built.

It’s July 2009 and Bellamy is in South Africa preparing for the upcoming season. His visit to Sierra Leone last month oversaw the final trials 27 of which, 16 will become the academy’s first generation. The young goalkeeper John and his mother are hoping he makes the cut.

Alongside the academy, the Bellamy Foundation has also set-up with seed funding from UNICEF, a football league built on incentives that go beyond winning fortnightly matches. Each one of the forty U14 and U12 teams are also awarded points for fair play on the pitch, attending school and on the weekends when games don’t take place, initiating and completing community projects. Meeting some of the teams coaches and managers and you soon discover that a football league table can be a powerful motivator.

As we watch the competitvely fought U12 game between Promising Stars and Portugeuse Town in front a crowd in their hundreds, Kamusu Koroma, Regional Manager for the league in the Freetown district tells me:

“Previously the coaches and supporters would beat the ref before the game starts. Through the coaches training programme and now in the league we are demostrating fair play and incentivising ourselves to change the way we behave.”

When I ask if this is an overnight change across the league, Kamusu acknowledges the reality, “This is not a day job, it is a process. The good thing is that we are confronting corruption head on and showing that you can win football matches without cheating and violence.”

Coach of Freetown’s Eastern Eagles, Abdul Karim, goes further; “I believe the fair play policy of the CBF league is already changing attitudes of the young players. We are moving away from violence in our communities because of this league.”

The boys themselves are understandably more focused on the football but are still aware of the bigger picture they’re involved in, “Let me say the difference between this league and other games I’ve played in is that we are all all brothers here. We don’t fight anymore but we can still win,” says a determined looking 13 year old called Suleman who is known simply to everyone else as Essien because he is rarely beaten in a challenge even when he plays with boys two years older than him.

Beyond the football pitches the teams have already been involved in community clean-ups, water well repairs, and leading peer and health education sessions. As Tom Vernon suggests this is quite something considering that many of these boys older brothers, uncles and fathers were the child soldiers that make “this today’s history.” And because like goalkeeper John, most of the boys in this league were born just as the civil war was reaching its peak in the late 1990s, it is not an exaggeration to say that it is with them where a good chunk of hope for a better Sierra Leone rests. We know there are many life lessons to be learnt through sport but when it is set against this kind of recent historical backdrop as it is here, it becomes a much more powerful opportunity to those fortunate enough to be involved. Coming here you can understand the wave of optimism.

During my stay in Freetown I am a guest of Durosimi Thomas and his family. Duro is the foundation’s in-country director who has built a career as a freelance BBC sports correspondent (he had a premonition in 2001 not to go to African Nations cup game in Ghana because he tripped on a stone that morning, 126 people died in a stadium crush that day), resurrecting local interest in football and staunchly fighting anti-corruption in his country at every turn. A deep voiced, our-man-in-freetown thick set man, Duro is only too aware not to get carried away;

“Football is what I know, and football can teach people to be better citizens quickly. But it will still take time. Bellamy has given Sierra Leonian’s a good opportunity to find a new way, let’s hope we take this chance.”

*****

The league is only three months old and the academy is yet to open, but the hundred strong staff now involved with this new approach to sport and development in Sierra Leone obviously believe passionately in what they are doing both for themselves and their nation.

Kamusu, the regional manager of the league for Freetown, shakes my hand as I leave one red-sand rectangle of football, shouting and laughter for another;

“Football is finally getting a great name here – before, playing football was seen as idleness, now you can break the cycle of poverty by kicking a ball.”

For Kamusu, young John the goalkeeper, and his friends that survived the horrors of last decades war it is the simplicity of such an ambition that seems to be kick-starting the kind of positive mindset many people of this beautiful country clearly crave.

These footballers can feel change coming, even if it is only one game at a time.
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Article written by Ben Keene on his visit to Freetown in July 2009

The Craig Bellamy Foundation Academy will officially open in 2010. The league will extend later this year to also include girls and amputees.

To find out more and support the projects:

craigbellamyfoundation.org
righttodream.com
Twitter: craigbellamySL

Tribewanted celebrates its three year island anniversary as the project is extended

• 1000 ‘tribe members’ have spent an average of two weeks on Vorovoro Island

• $2,000,000fj (£630,000) has been injected into the local economy through the project as agreement with landowners extended for further five years

• The celebration included traditional Fijian meke (dances) performed by the tribe members, lovo (earth oven) feast and kava (Fijian Islands drink)

• Tribewanted founder, Ben Keene, plans to begin new tribes in 2010

In April 2006 an online community was launched with the mission to recruit a ‘tribe’ of adventure travellers to help develop a sustainable community tourism project on the Fijian island of Vorovoro. A partnership had been formed between Vorovoro island owners who were advertising for a tourism development and two young British social entrepreneurs.

The project opened on 1st September 2006 with 13 of the online tribe members arriving on the beach to be welcomed by the island’s chief landowner, Tui Mali and his yavusa (tribe).

Over the next three years a village has been built using traditional craftsmanship and materials. Several ‘bures’ – thatched Fijian houses – now nestle between the palms where visiting ‘tribe members’ sleep on drift-wood beds. All water is rain-harvested from a tribe-made dam on the hill and other roof-tops. The average tribe member consumes just 6.2 litres of water a day compared to 200 litres per person per day in the United States. Compost toilets and bathing in the sea have been the main reasons for this conservation. A small amount of energy is generated by wind and solar power sponsored by UK green energy company, Ecotricity. Area for biggest improvement is needed in the kitchen where 12.5% of the food comes from the island, but the project has almost eliminated using any imported food. Similarly waste is minimised on Vorovoro with 40% of the 13kg produced per person each month being recycled. The project currently houses several chickens and ten pigs and plans to add bee hives shortly as well as a community diving project and fair trade coconut workshop.

On the neighbouring island of Mali, tribe members have taught in the local primary school a day a week for the last three years as well as raising funds through the tribe’s own foundation and art projects for wiring and sanitation projects. The school also visits for Vorovoro for project away days .

Visiting tribe members stay for a minimum of one week at a cost of £200 which includes being met from the local airport and transfered to the island, all meals and stay. The tribe can be involved with the daily projects and jobs as much as they like alongside the permanent on-island Fijian team. The only expectation of the visitor is that they wash up their plate and respect the local cultural etiquette in terms of dress and greetings. Most members spend very little time sun-bathing compared to participating in island life: cooking, weaving, firewood-collecting, gardening, feeding the animals, carving coconut jewelry, sustainability forums, learning Fijian meke’s (dances), presenting sevusevu (ceremonies), learning songs, spear fishing and snorkeling on the great barrier reef of Cakau Levu – the third largest in the world – or creating their own art, education or eco project.

The average age of a visiting tribe member is 28. Although the project is also seeing an increasing number of families visiting. Jimmy and Jenny Cahill from Indiana in the US, spent ten weeks on the island with their three children Lucas, Bethany and five year old Oliver who has his own video guide to island life. The Cahill’s will return to Vorovoro in October to lead the project for one year.

Jenny Cahill says: “Our time on Vorovoro has given us gifts that will be a part of us forever – we have experienced enduring and strong connections to ourselves, to each other, and to our goals and intentions for our family. We have formed relationships that will last the rest of our lives. The important lessons of slowing down, laughing much, and enjoying the moment we are in have become a part of us.”

Online Tribewanted has won several awards including Broadcast’s ‘best social network’ in 2008. Out of the 1000’s of blogs, regulars include: The Hammock Society Interviews and Recipes from Vorovoro’s Vali ni Koro . 34 tribe members have been elected ‘chief ’ so far online, giving them the chance to help lead the project for one month on the island.

The three year anniversary began at sunrise with members and locals preparing the lovo, an earth oven that cooked pig, chicken, fish and root vegetables. Guests from neighbouring islands and the mainland arrived by boat and at midday Adam Carter, a 24 year old Australian accountant on his sixth visit to Vorovoro, blew the conch from a bilibili (bamboo raft) to announce the arrival of the islands chief – Tui Mali.

A ceremony consisting of sevusevu (kava drink), tabua (whale’s tooth presentation – the contract) and meke (dances) followed. The rest of the day and all through the night the 35 visiting tribe members and 100+ locals sat under the stars singing Fijian songs and drinking kava.

Ben Keene, founder of Tribewanted, says:

“It’s been an unbelievable three years. The first few months were the hardest – with the fire, the military coup and a cyclone all threatening the projects survival, and its always been tight financially. But we got through it and the tribe have flourished. I’m very proud and grateful for the way the two cultures have integrated on Vorovoro to form one community. When I return now I can sit back and enjoy being part of one of the happiest little villages in the world. There is nowhere I’d rather be.”

“There’s no reason why the best and most inspiring vacations should finish the day you go home. Tribes – people connected to one another, a leader, and an idea – can change the way we all live, for the better.”

“I don’t particularly see Tribewanted as voluntourism – its more adventure meets education meets community – it’s tribal tourism. On Vorovoro you belong to something and you play your part.”

“The downside of island life is leaving. The emotional attachment to the people and the island is strong and we’ve had a lot of members find it difficult to get back to life off the island. The good news for Vorovoro is that this means they often come back.”

“I always hoped the idea of Tribewanted could go beyond Vorovoro. Now is the time to do this as we have proved that it can work. Next year we will be launching a worldwide search for new tribes in new locations. The values of the projects will be the same – to empower both locals and visitors to live more sustainably whilst celebrating the local culture. The goal is to build a collection of the best community tourism projects anywhere and use social networking to fund, connect and scale them. It’s ambitious, but then again a lot of people thought what we’ve just done on Vorovoro as just a dream.”

Tui Mali, chief and landowner says:

“In most of Fiji there is a line in the sand between the locals and tourists. On Vorovoro there is no such line. That is why I’ve invited the tribe to stay. They are part of our community here on Vorovoro now, we feel sad when they leave.”

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The project re-opens on 9th September 2009 and the lease agreement between Tribewanted and the landowners of Vorovoro has been extended for a further five years.

A two hour documentary about the project will be shown on National Geographic in Spring 2010. Ben Keene has also written a book published by Ebury. ‘Vorovoro Sessions’ is available for download from itunes.

Tribewanted’s partners include: Ecotricity , Survival International & World Nomads

Images available on request

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Outside Fiji contact Andy Barr on +44 (0) 1452 300683 or +44 (0)7743057458 / press@tribewanted.com

or in Fiji contact Tribewanted on 992 0428 / island@tribewanted.com

Techcrunch says: ‘Yo, developers: wanna go to Fiji?’

Just in from Techcrunch UK about bootsrap launch event tomorrow night:

BootStrap Camp (@bootstrapcamp), an entrepreneur-supported community that helps start-ups build connections and find people willing to help them out with a bit of coding or a few introductions, is launching with the mother of all promotions: 25 weeks on Vorovoro, the Tribewanted island in Fiji.

You don’t actually get 25 weeks on the island. That’s the total time available, which will be split between the community: BootStramp Camp will operate on the basis of “credits” you can earn by helping others. You can then spend those credits purchasing services from other members. Or weeks in Fiji.

Personally, I can’t think of anything worse than a bunch of bespectacled geeks (yeah, me included) parading themselves around a tropical island. Don’t expect it to be like Shipwrecked.

But as a developer with a bit of spare time, I can think of worse ways to be rewarded. There isn’t much to look at on the website yet, so I guess you should follow them on Twitter for more info. One final thought: does this offer not pander to the misconception that European startups are lazy and too busy looking for a way onto to a tropical island?

Top 10 Team Fiji tour moments to remember…

1. Walking into the Weir pub an hour after their arrival and Leavi greeting those having a quiet evening meal by the canal with a: ‘Bula, we are here!’ Indeed they were.

2. The team arriving day one of build at Hampton Court in hard hats, yellow reflector jackets and steel toe cap boots; it was like a Fijian version of Resevoir Dogs with ‘father’ Marau leading the way. (The boots were soon removed as normal service resumed whilst doing the bure-top thatching).

3. Walking through London with Leavi as tour guide: ‘You build this (pointing at Westminster Abbey), we build the compost toilet.’ Seeing the re-unions with tribe members in the park that day was brilliant.

4. Strolling into the tropical biome at the Eden Project and Te pointing at the first flower and saying, ‘eh, we’ve got a song about this one,’ and proceeded to pull out the guitars and sing it. Those that had worked in the biome for the last 8 years were excited to hear their plants had songs and new medicinal values as well as Latin names. The boys were such a hit at Eden that day that they were offered jobs for the rest of the summer. Next time…

5. Taking the boys with the family across Devon at sunset in a hot air balloon. Oh. My. God. We landed in a field where there was a young farmers tug of war contest taking place. And although we missed the chance to enter the men from the sky in skirts as a team, we were soon invited for cider at the barn dance. Welcome to rural England!

6. Marau and Leavi’s random dancing on the bili bili rafts and around the village on the opening night of the show. No fear and absolute classic entertainment.

7. Api explaining on the BBC why, when he tried to say Bula to a swan it bit his finger.

8. Te lowering the Fijian flag as we all sang isa lei on our own little beach at Hampton Court to a slightly bemused, smiling and in some cases teary British public at the end of the show.

9. Api and Tale busking for their cocktails on Hampton Court bridge on their last night. Tale: ‘It’s easy to make money all you have to do is sing.’ Api, pointing at the guitar case: ‘heh, who put the pinapple in there?’

10. Marau two minutes away from attempting to take a bin-bag wrapped handsaw on the flight as carry on luggage at Heathrow. It was quickly shoved down the back of Tale’s rucksack. Laughter ensued before more tears as these big sensitive men said their final goodbyes. The laughter had gone back to Fiji.

Those were the moments I will remember. What were yours?

Lots of pictures from members on facebook and Nienke’s brilliant videos at tribewanted.tv

Almost time for me to return to Fiji, see through the three years and get ready for Vorovoro part two…

Vina’a va’alevu’s to Jane, Andrea, Ulai, Kelly, Keti, Sophie, Jim, Amy, Craig, James, Helen and all those who made this dream come true for the boys and help bring a little bit of the best of Fiji to the English summer.

Team Fiji in London – the movie