Monday, July 27, 2009

The Last One...for awhile

Today Sally and I will storm the beaches of our island. Well, by today, I actually mean tomorrow since the boat drops us off at midnight, and when I mean storm, I actually mean drag since we are bringing with us everything that is required to make a home and feed ourselves for two months. And when I say beach, I mean…well you get the idea.

Sally and I have been in Suva for the last 5 days since swearing in as Volunteers only because our first boat wasn’t until today. If Peace Corps had their way, we would have gone directly to our site from swearing in, as some did. We had the fine luck of infrequent transportation so we got to stay in a fairly nice hotel (nice is relative term here, but it is certainly comfortable—hot water and everything!) and spend some time thinking shopping for a home that has absolutely nothing in it save a bed frame, a table, and 2 chairs. Since there is no store on the island, we also had to buy all of the non-perishable food for two months until we can get back to the mainland. That’s right, I just called the larger island of Vitilevu the “mainland.” Interestingly enough, that is what folks around here call it. Anyway, it won’t do us any good to buy perishable food since we won’t have refrigeration. For that, we bought plenty of gardening materials and seeds. We will have at creating a garden immediately upon landing since those will be our only vegetables for the next year. Until those come in, it will be a lot of seafood and dried goods (beans, rice, lentils, etc). Of course, there is always plenty of taro, cassava, yams (root crops), and coconut around the island in addition to the fruit trees that seem to be no one’s and everyone’s (look up the Tragedy of the Commons for why this is always a recipe for eating unripe fruit). So, it is starting to feel like our food worries about not having a store at which to shop are going to be assuaged by the abundance of free food on the island and the absurd fertility of the soil there.

On the job front, I just had a meeting with the group that actually requested an environmental Peace Corps Volunteers (heretofore PCV) and it answered a whole lot of questions for me. When I went to the island for my site visit, it didn’t seem like anyone knew why I was there, outside of my “Initial Community Contact Person” and even he didn’t seem to have a very firm grasp of what was going on. So, it turns out that I am there because the University of the South Pacific requested me. Actually, it is a branch of the University called IAS (Integrated Applied Science) that wants me there to spearhead a committee called the KIYMST (Koro Island Yaubula Management Support Team—Yaubula means Environment, roughly). The island has rampant environmental and ecological problems that are affecting the health of the people on the island, such as deforestation, free-roaming feral pigs (which crap everywhere), overfishing, poor waste management, and sewage leaching into the water. All of these things have the effect of polluting the reef immediately offshore of the villages, which damages the reef and lowers fish counts (already lowered by overfishing) on which the island relies for food. The fish counts have gone way down in the last 5-10 years and there seems to be an understanding by the people there that something needs to be done. So, the 14 villages of the island (along with the help from IAS and me) are forming this committee to educate communities through workshops about the issues and to help them find solutions to the problems.

It is lofty. At this point, it doesn’t exist, and my first item for business is to land some money for it. We have identified a possible funder, and I will spend my first week in my new home writing part of a grant proposal. Theoretically, Peace Corps asks that we don’t try to do these big projects right away, but I don’t want to miss this money and it would just be good to have so that I can just hit the ground running once I am settled enough to get moving on this stuff. After this meeting that I had with the IAS folks, I am really, really excited about this placement. Seriously, from this vantage point, this appears to be what I have wanted to do for a long time.

So, that is the boring stuff for you. If you have made it this far, congratulations. This will most likely be the last entry for a while, because there is no internet connection there. That being said, the high school had just gotten a grant for computers when we were there last and they were talking about getting internet on them. The infrastructure is there to have a very slow connection, so it is possible that they have done it. How things work around here is that people talk a lot about something well before anyone does anything about making it happen, if it happens at all. So, since they were just starting to talk about it, I am guessing that it is nowhere near fruition. It may be Sally’s job to get that moving. In fact, Sally may be responsible for bringing the 6th largest island in Fiji to the digital age. That’s a riot, huh? It appears to be the case that if you know how to do anything here, that qualifies you to be an expert. Fiji invited Peace Corps here to meet their needs for trained individuals and they meant it.

So, let me wrap up this very long entry and say that Sally and I miss home very much and mostly miss our families (close friends, feel free to include yourself in the previous statement). It is hard to be so far away from growing nieces and nephews, especially when new ones appear in our absence (Katie and Bob, I am definitely not talking about you guys here). That being said, we are really happy here and excited to get started our site. Please remember to write us as it will be our only communication from you all once we are there, excepting the occasional phone call. Here are some important topics on which to hit on when you do, in case you are dry on ideas: relationship news, news on houses or businesses, quotes from nieces and nephews, the weather, what you had for dinner (seriously), any sort of news, and of course regular updates on my beloved Giants. Also, if anyone can go online and find out what in the hell is happening with our government, please look that up and send it to us. All of that is censored here and as far as we know, everything is rainbows and kittens, which is weird because it definitely was not before we left. Signing off for now. We love and miss you and will check in a few months.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Our new house


OK, so the next items for consideration are our new house. So, here is what it looks like from the outside, although we were promised a new paint job by the time that we get back. From what I know about this culture, saying that you will do something, does not have any bearing on whether you will do that thing. We have also been promised a bed.
That being said, what our house lacks in paint, it more than makes up for in view. This is the sunrise over the Pacific from my porch. You read that right FROM MY PORCH! Awesome.


But then this is the kitchen...


...and this is the bathroom. This is Sally and me on our first night in the house. As you can see, we are not long on furniture. The solution to that problem is not yet obvious. But we look pretty happy in our matching clothes! Also note the jock-short hair on the guy on the left.





Hooray for photos!

So, I am finally at a computer that has fast enough internet to load some photos. So, here are a couple. These are some from training that are now past tense, but still cool. For example, here is a photo of my family that I lived with for 2 months. They were really great. Here is my mom Bua, my dad Samu, and my brother Mosese. (The short one is Sally). My brother was 23 years old and I really like him. We are planning a visit by him to Koro.




Here is a photo of my house that I lived in for 2 months. While it didn't look like a gem from the outside, my mom was really great and she kept a pretty clean house. I'll take small and clean any day. .


The shot of the buckets and chair is my shower. There wasn't actually a shower so we used the buckets. It works pretty well and I am starting to enjoy the bucket method of bathing. The mosquitos in the shower I never got used to. I am not very good at this blog thing so I can't figure out how to add more photos to this post. So, I am going to start another one. Be right back.

Monday, July 20, 2009

A Real Volunteer!..almost

Well, I am just two days away from officially swearing that I will uphold the constitution and that I won't bomb anything that looks American. That being said, I will be in the ambassadors house on Thursday so I will have my chance before actually swearing in. As of today, I have been in Fiji exactly 2 months and am 2 days away from the end of training. We just had our language proficiency exam, which I passed by colors (as opposed to flying colors). Sally, on the other hand, set a new standard in how fast one can physically learn a language. The best part is that she is supposed to wait to talk until after her husband has which means that she is often standing next to me translating and feeding me lines. It seems to work.

Anyway, training is over which means that we will be heading to our site soon. Because there are very few boats to our little island in the middle of nowhere, we can't go straight to our site after swearing in. We will be in Suva for almost a week giving us some time to buy everything that we will need to eat and live without electricity for 2 months. That will be the next time that we will be able to leave our island. This move means that we have a new address. It goes like this:

Brian Smithers/Sally Moyce
PO Nasau
Koro Island
Lomaiviti Group, Fiji
South Pacific

The mail comes once a week on the boat and then we will go to the Post Office (a guy) and ask him if we got anything. He then looks in the sack and says yes or no. If it is no, I walk away very sad knowing that my next chance to be disappointed will be 7 days away. Please do your part to minimize that disappointment. There is still some debate as to whether the internet will make it to our island, but as of now, there is no internet there. That means that letters will be it for a while. That being said, the island has the infrastructure to allow internet and there is talk of us (Sally, really. In a strange twist of fate, Sally is going to be teaching computers at the high school) ushering in the digital age to Koro Island. Scary thought. So, I will post next week when I will finally be able to get some photos up here, and then that may be it for a while. Tune in next week!

Friday, July 10, 2009

Thoughts on Illness

Here are some things that I have learned about illness from living in Fiji that I didn't know before:

1. All sickness is caused by cold getting into your body. It is not important how hot the weather is because cold can still get in there even if it is 90 degrees out.
2. There is no such thing as a fever as all illness comes from being cold. (This is self-evident from #1 above.)
3. Any illness that cannot be traced to the cold can easily blamed on eating non-Fijian food, such as that made by the Indo-Fijians. Who knows what they put in their food.
4. All illness should be treated with heat--putting on as much clothes as you can and refusing cool liquids, such as water. The only fluids that you should take are hot teas. Socks are very important in this regard.
5. You cannot catch illnesses from other people, excepting in the case that the cold got into all of you together. While viruses and bacteria may exist, their role in illness is questionable at best.

Some crazy virus just swept through the Peace Corps folks (in addition to a whole lot of Fijians). it was less than pleasant. On the other hand, I just went snorkeling and it was amazing. Two weeks until I head off to Koro Island. That is when this blog should really start getting interesting.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

My First Impressions

Sally and I just got back from our first visit to our future home and there is decent mix of excitement and fear. First, the excitement. We got to fly into Koro this time because of the boat schedule and got to see the island from above. Sally and I with our counterparts were the only ones on the plane that would have maxed out at 8 people anyway. The island looks absolutely amazing. It is a volcanic island so is ringed by lowlands by the sea that leads immediately to very steep hills/cliffs leading up into the highlands. The whole place is covered in rain forest with the occasional coconut plantation. And of course, you can see the coral reefs ringing the entire island. Hello, snorkeling (and hopefully diving). When we turned to land the plane, I was pleasantly surprised to see a runway, but less excited when that turned out to be a grass strip. Never fear, our 12 year old pilot did a masterful job.
Our house is a 2-bedroom wood house with running water, a flush toilet (oh yeah!), and here is the best part. We have a covered porch that looks out to the Koro Sea. We can watch the sunrise from there. Our house is above the village in the teacher's housing that is next to a high school. So, our neighbors are folks affiliated with the school. That part is cool because they are from all over Fiji and are more educated. The village is just a short walk down the hill that Sally has already fallen down and so far seems pretty cool. That being said, there is clearly a reason why I am there as the village is dealing with a lot of environmental issues that plague these small islands. I will have plenty to do to keep me busy.
Now for the fear. The island is an hour drive and an 8-hour boat ride from the nearest store. That boat comes only once per week and is sometimes cancelled for weather anyway. There is also no public transportation on the island which makes getting anywhere very difficult and expensive. There are no stores on the island, which means no beer, no ice (for martinis) and certainly no cocktail onions. That last part has Sally shaking (delerium tremens, I believe). We only have electricity for a couple of hours a day in the evening, which rules out refrigeration. And there is nowhere to buy anything of any kind. That means that until we can get some veggies out of the soil, we are going to have to rely on fish from fisherman in the village and a combination of dalo, cassava, and yams (3 very starchy roots). I will be eagerly anticipating the growth of that tomato plant! You should definitely wait to visit until that tomato plant is fruiting.
So, our desire for isolation in a tropical paradise has managed to come to pass. Now, we are kind of stuck with it. I am sure that once we get settled, it is going to be incredible, but we have some serious learning to do as to how to survive in such isolation. If you have any ideas, let me know. We have 3 weeks until we make the move! Sorry I don't have photos up yet, but I will soon. There has been no way to get me photos from the camera to the computers in the internet cafe, but I am hoping to remedy that soon. Until then, you can use your imagination!