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.