Sportventurer Fiji Hockey

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Hello I’m Jo from Yorkshire!

Jo Ribeiro

I’m 31 and have always wanted to do some travelling but didn’t take the opportunity before or after university, so now was the right time for me to go.

I decided to take 3 months off work to go and see the other side of the world. I also wanted to do something rewarding with my time as well, and that’s when I found Sportventurer on the Internet. I have always been mad keen on sport so the idea of coaching sport and spending time in Fiji sounded great.

I didn’t really know what to expect from my time in Fiji but I was very excited about the whole experience. After travelling in Australia, I arranged to come to Fiji for 5 weeks. It was an amazing trip, full of experiences and I met some great people as well!

The coaching was really rewarding – I hadn’t done much coaching before but from the first session you just get stuck in, learn from the other Venturers and use your experience from being involved in sport. The kids were great – very enthusiastic although they could be a bit of a handful sometimes, it was all good fun! Fiji is a relatively poor country, something I didn’t realise from looking at glossy brochures back home, and they really appreciate the training and equipment that Venturers provide. I trained with the East of Fiji team at the National Hockey Stadium, where they have a first class water based astro-turf pitch, which was awesome. The standard was reasonably high although it varied greatly from player to player. Everyone in the team was really welcoming and seemed to appreciate having someone from overseas training with them. I also joined a women’s rugby team called the Bumblebees, all the girls there were really friendly and loved having me play alongside them on the Saturdays I had in Suva.

I also became qualified as a swimming coach whilst I was in Fiji. I did a couple of hours coaching most days at the Olympic pool, which is very near the SV house, and sat an exam which gives me an internationally recognised swimming qualification. It a bit tiring at times coaching hockey and then swimming but it was really worth while as the kids were all really sweet and very really eager to be coached. I went away for a couple of weekends to some of the outer islands which were beautiful – they are all like picture-postcards, with clear blue water and white sand. I stayed with a Fijian family on one island and went fishing and snorkelling with them and then sat round a bonfire singing and drinking kava late into the night!

After only 5 weeks of being in Fiji I was understandably sad to leave. I had made some amazing friends, both with the locals and with the other venturers. The kids in the schools made it all worthwhile and seeing their smiling faces made me happy to be making a difference in a country that could do with a lot, lot more than I had to offer.

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