In the Last 2 weeks of January 2026, Noel Jenkinson, Denise Carroll and Peter Washington from Chelsea Rotary with Peter’s son in law Stuart Murphy and Peter Brown’s son in law Julius, assisted former Chelsea Rotarian Peter Brown in painting a newly built school in Dreketi Village on the remote Fijian island of Vanua Leva.
Peter Brown, a retired Builder, moved to Fiji, joining the Rotary club of Taveuni island and has worked on many Fijian Rotary projects over the past 10 years. Finally completing the Dreketi School rebuild project has been a 4.5-year project after the original school was destroyed by a landslide 8 years ago.
Taveuni Island is the closest island with 2,000 inhabitants, an hour flight north from Nandi, which has an international airport. To get to the island of Dreketi Village, from Taveuni, is a 40-minute boat ride on a restive 40 horsepower boat. Dreketi Villiage has no power, cars, communications, no batteries, only a few solar panels and of the 200 inhabitants of which 50 are children who need the school.
Fijians excel at collaborative teamwork, like the rendering required. When it comes to individual work, they lose focus and tend to just walk off, leaving the job undone. Hence Pete’s call out for an international painting team.
Sand was gathered from another beach, sieved and concrete mixed on site in a petrol mixer with a ramp to get the sand up, the horror of any OHS team! The building was made of Besser bricks, wood brought in by the tiny boat and an ad hoc mix of screws and bolts depending what was on hand when supplies ran short due to the logistical nightmare to get anything in an urgency.
It’d rained like crazy the days before we started work, so water had to be removed as only half the roof was on. Painting the ceiling was precarious as Julius, Peter’s son in law didn’t bring rollers until day two. The ceilings were very labour intensive with all the beams in each room requiring two undercoats and two topcoats.
The team got there by 8.30 and worked through till 4.30 each day for ten days, eating lunch out of an Esky. They had one day’s reprieve waiting for the Fijian team to catch up on rendering. It was a huge task but the Chelsea team along with Pete, Stuart and Julius got all the rooms painted and three quarters of the outside. A stellar effort from five volunteers!
The building consists of four roomsRoom One is for the kindergarten and amenities. Room two is for the teacher’s area. Room three has composite classes 1-2 and 3-4. Room 4 has composite classes 5-6 and years 7-8.
There was an opening ceremony with singing and dancing from the childrenThe students were presented with gifts of pencils, drawing books, art and sports supplies from the Chelsea Rotary Club.
Four and half years ago, when the process started, there were no plans for installing computers in the new school. Rob Edwards, a Sydney Rotarian, through his “Time foundation” has a plan to install Solar Power /Lighting /computers / internet access and “Starlink” to 300 “off Grid” schools in Fiji. So far, he has completed 40 schools. It is now planned to set up the new Dreketi School with computers. Chelsea Rotary has donated $5,000 towards the cost of the electrical wiring for the school.
