Friday, December 24, 2010

Merry Christmas

It is just after midnight making it Christmas and since I can see the international dateline from my house, and since we even moved our clocks ahead an hour last month, I am pretty sure that I am one of the first people to see Christmas.  Plus, since the family of the deceased paid for the diesel to run the generator all night, we even have electricity!

That being said, here is a curveball that no one saw coming.  If you read my last blog about the great Christmas controversy, you know that we are having problems deciding whether Christmas is on Dec 25th or 27th this year.  The decision has been made.  We will celebrate Christmas on Sunday, Dec 26th.  That way, we make exactly no one happy.

Anyway, Merry Christmas whenever you celebrate it.  Next year in Israel!  (Wait, I think that is what Jews say at the end of Yom Kippur.  I’ll settle for California.)

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

The Great Christmas Day Question

We have had some trying times this year in Fiji: a devastating cyclone and a crippling drought, followed by an epic flood. But none of those calamities compares to what has befallen Fiji now. These natural disasters have been bad, terrible for those most affected, but as we know, Rome was destroyed not by disasters from without but by its own internal divisions.* What now threatens to undo the fabric of Fiji is this question: What day is Christmas?

Here is the problem. Christmas falls on a Saturday this year, and Boxing Day on a Sunday, both of which are National Holidays. But since those are days off anyway, the government gave Monday and Tuesday the 27th and 28th as paid holidays. A little back story here—there aren’t many employees at all in this country so most of the people who get an actual paycheck get it from Uncle Samu. The other issue is that when a military dictator tells you to jump, if you wait to ask how high, you will probably get arrested—at least they don’t do much in the way of shooting here. So, Christmas is on the 27th…or is it?

The issue of on what day we celebrate Christmas was sort of an academic one in the village. There are no jobs so there are no paid vacations. One does what one likes, which means that no one does much of anything for the two weeks before and after Christmas anyway. Who cares what day you call Christmas? That was until someone died, and since funerals on usually on Saturday, it was scheduled for this Saturday—the day formerly known as Christmas Day. And that is where the debate started.

You see, if Christmas is on Saturday, you can’t have a funeral, but if Christmas is on Monday, Saturday is a perfect day for a funeral. The two sides lined up and the debate was on. At one point in the meeting, the pope was invoked as being in favor of Christmas on Monday the 27th. Never mind the fact that these people are not Catholic and that I am pretty sure Benedict did not weigh in on the Fiji Christmas Question; evidently, the pope has changed Christmas to Monday. Cooler heads** spoke of the fact that everyone else in the world celebrates Christmas on the 25th, regardless of the day of the week. That didn’t matter according to some since the government had decided the day. Ultimately, it was agreed that there would be both the celebration of the birth of the Lord and Savior and the burial of an old man on the same day (Christmas) and that the Minister would just have to be creative. Monday the 27th will be devoted to drinking kava and thanking God that no one has a job from which to be taking a holiday.

Times like these make miss rampant materialism, gaudy, wasteful decorations, and the glorification of gluttony. Please, please give me back my American Christmas. And can it be on Saturday, December 25th without a funeral?

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*Unless of course, it really was the result of lead-pipe induced insanity leading to an outbreak of homosexuality that invoked God’s wrathful dismantling of the Roman Empire. Seriously, that has been opined. I am pretty sure it was the two-party system and skyrocketing, war-induced debt.

**Me

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Water, Water Everywhere

    Well, we asked for it. Ask you ye shall receive and whatnot. After one of the worst droughts the country has ever seen, our village just had the worst flood that it has ever seen. It all started innocently enough. It was Thanksgiving and Sally and I planned a lovely couple of days in Sauvusavu town with all 20 of the Peace Corps Volunteers on our island, Vanua Levu. (It means “big land,” which would explain the 20 volunteers. Don’t worry, it is way smaller than Rhode Island, I am sure.) So, we rented two houses, made all of the Thanksgiving food that we could create out of local ingredients—sorry, no turkey—and had a great time. Really, it was fun and we managed to have some pretty authentic T-Day food.

    On Thursday night, it started raining and I mean RAINING. One can only see rain like this in the tropics. Maybe they have it in the southeast US, but we certainly don’t have it on the west coast. Wow. Rain. Lots of it, like someone just dumped out the sky and the sky was a giant bucket. By morning, town was a lake, which is hard to do because being right on the ocean, you would think that it would make its way to the sea. Somehow by sheer volume, that rain found ways to pool up and make reservoirs. Luckily, we were all staying until Saturday to give this some time to clear up. It didn’t. It rained all day Friday and then all night Friday like that. Seriously, that is one big bucket.

    By the time Saturday came it was clear that we wouldn’t be going back to our villages which after a couple of days of fun didn’t hurt anyone’s feelings. Plus, when you get stuck somewhere like this, then Peace Corps has to pay for it. Thank you taxpayers! We had a lovely time. The rain let up by Sunday and we all started making our way back to our villages. We had heard some stories that our road and our village had been particularly hard-hit, but we had no idea. We got there on Sunday to find that the village was underwater, although it had been really underwater, 5-6 feet deep in some spots. It flooded a whole bunch of houses, flooded the community hall, the dispensary, all of the electrical junction boxes, and washed a few houses away entirely. The coastline moved in about 100 yards. You know everyone makes the joke that once global warming happens, they will have beachfront property and how great that will be? Well, I won’t go blaming this flood (and then erosion) on anything, but now we have it. Where our neighbors house was is now an arm of the sea and a new tidal river 25 feet from our house. Once they finish knocking down the house, we will have a perfect view. Sorry neighbor.

    Anyway, we got to the village to find mayhem, a whole lot of standing water still and the water shut off. That was a problem because in all of this, Sally and I managed to get some bug that would have required us to use a lot of water, if you know what I mean. So, back to town we went where we stayed for a couple of more days while the bug went away. We got back home on Tuesday and later that day we got our water back. Today is Wednesday and the electricity is even back on. A landslide took out a section of our water supply but they were able to replace it pretty quickly.

    So here we are. It is Wednesday and we are back to normal, sort of. Our house was spared water going inside, but let’s just say that my complaints about children, pigs, and chickens in my garden were misplaced. A flood sets a new standard. I now have a clean slate. Actually it is not clean at all but buried by debris. I will dig through the debris then have a clean slate. I haven’t seen it but I heard that farm outside the village is trashed. It is one thing for me since it is just sort of a hobby, but farming is peoples’ livelihoods and I don’t know what many of them are going to do having lost their second crop in one year (the cyclone finished off the first one last March).

    A good chunk of the village is underwater still and we are trying to figure out a way to drain it. I know how to do it but then this guy in the village died, which means everything stops so that we can have the funeral. Once that is over, then we will get to digging channels. I am hoping to put three sumps into the ground in the lowest parts of the village, connecting them with pipe and then draining it to the river. It won’t stop a flood but it will drain the village after it. Of course, after a day of sunshine, we just had another heavy rain and while the river doesn’t look like it will flood again, the new rain just keeps filling up the village like a bathtub. I am remembering the drought fondly.

    So, there you have it. It’s funny—I found myself working on farming because that was where the need was. So, that is where I put all of my energy. Just like that, my job has changed completely. My farming days are over. I am now a flood engineer and an erosion expert. Life as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

    Sorry I don’t have any photos of this. Somehow documentation didn’t seem that important at the time.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

I Have Been a Snob

I admit it. I have been a beer snob, a food snob, a wine snob, a music snob, a comedy snob…you get the idea. Here is the thing. In a previous version of Brian, there was good music/humor/etc and bad music/humor/etc. In Fiji, innovation breaks new boundaries for non-existence. Something is good if it adheres to what came before it. Listening to contemporary Fijian music sounds almost exactly like Fijian music from 1970. Jokes get told and retold and told again and every time get uproarious laughter. Here is the problem—the music and the jokes aren’t particularly good (copy that for the beer and food). Upon arrival, I did a lot of not laughing and plugging my ears on the bus.

But over time, something has been happening to me. I find myself laughing at the joke I have heard countless times. Worse, I find myself telling the joke. I now have my favorite set of Fijian songs and have learned to play and sing them myself. I love the food here and even the beer…nope the beer is terrible. In looking back I realized a few things about this change. The first is that in the US, we have a bunch of musical choices and for some reason, we have decided to tie our identity to a particular style. If you live in rural parts, you listen to country. If you are black and live in urban America you listen to rap. If you live in Portland, you listen to whoever no one else has ever heard of. But there is no middle ground. I listen to rock not country or I listen to jazz not rap. Well, the good news is that in Fiji, there is just Music. There are not styles. Everyone listens to Music and everyone loves music. On a bus, you can hear Christian rock, pop, reggae, and rap all in a row and everyone sings along, young and old.

It was this very music that I scorned. Occasionally, I would find myself in a bar where this steady stream of “bad” music would be played, and the previous version of myself would sit and scorn the music poking jabs at the song’s lyrics and contrived melody. Meanwhile, people are dancing and having a great time. The same is with the retread, basic humor. The old me snickers at the people not the joke, because how can they think that this is funny. Well, here is my lesson for the day. When I refuse to enjoy particular music that is on or to laugh with others at a stupid joke, who wins? Me? Who is having a better time, the one dancing or the one mumbling something about how much they hate rap? What have I proven by not enjoying myself while others are? Am I better than they are?

I don’t want to be a music/food/humor snob anymore. (I’m keeping wine and beer; good wine is good wine and bad is definitely bad). I want to laugh and dance, preferably with others. The music and the joke are just the medium for us doing the things that give us life anyway: laughing and dancing, preferably at the same time.

Things around here are going well. We just had a visit from the Regional Director of Peace Corps. He is sort of a big deal. There are only 3 PC regions in the world and he runs the one that includes the Pacific and Latin America. He came to Fiji and wanted to visit one village. So, they sent him to our village, and the village did it up right. Of course, their excitement over his arrival came about a little dishonestly. You see, when I told the village who was coming, I explained that he was just under the Director of Peace Corps and that the Director answers directly to the President. That is all true, but you can see the natural thought flow if you do that in reverse. It goes Obama, PC Director, Regional Director. The second in line to Obama is coming to our village!

I tried to explain that there are many government agencies, not to mention Congress, but it didn’t matter. The word was out. So, as far as they knew, one of the most powerful men in the world was coming tomorrow. The whole village turned out, we sang and danced when he arrived, exchanged whales teeth, exchanged kava, had the official kava ceremonies, etc, etc. It went on and on but culminated in a big party with a huge lunch and lots of singing and dancing. The latter is pretty big because dancing is not allowed in our village. The ban was lifted for that day alone. He was there for four hours and had a great time, but really his coming revolutionized the village and the pride they took in that visit is hard to explain. There is talk of making the anniversary of his visit a yearly holiday for the village to celebrate the occasion. And I was there the day that the 2nd in line to the US Presidency visited Fiji.

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Here is Mala, a friend of mine, who this day is acting as an bati, or bodyguard/warrior to make sure no one tries to eat the Regional Director.

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I am flaunting my newly-acquired mad ukulele skills upon the arrival.

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This is the official welcome for big-timeys like the 2nd in line to the US President.  It is called a vakasobu, which means kneeling before and the chief (kneeling) is offering the whale’s tooth.  Poor whale.

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Here are the cannibal-preventers preparing the yaqona (kava).

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The women (including Sally) doing a meke, traditional dance.  She was pretty good.  I was playing the ukulele and was pretty good myself.

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This is us with the Regional Director, Carlos Torres.  By the way, I did the math.  Since it goes Obama, PC Director, Carlos in the line of succession, I myself am 6th in line to be President.  A long shot to be sure, but if Ford could become President, why not me?

Monday, November 1, 2010

Best Day Ever

Getting married was pretty cool.  So was graduating from college and the day that I got recognized as one of the most innovative teachers in the US.  Being the best man at my best friend’s wedding ranks up there as does the day I got the Rotary Fellowship.

But today goes down as the best.  The Giants won the World Series.

Who came up with ‘shoes’ anyway?

Yesterday, I successfully pissed off the chief.  As you can imagine, that is something you aren’t supposed to do.  It doesn’t sound like much; I invited a government agency to come and do a workshop on micro-finance and saving.  I cleared it with the turaga ni koro (mayor) and was under the impression that he would clear it with the chief.  Well, even though they are brothers, they don’t speak to each other.  So, no one told the chief and he got his feelings hurt…really hurt.  Fiji is weird in that it is extraordinarily easy to offend someone and equally easy to get forgiveness.  The chief would not talk to me and when he did, it was clear that I was on the fecal list.

Basically, I had to make a formal, public apology.  One might think that when the white guy screws up in a cultural way, some lee-way might be given.  Nope.  So, I brought the kava and using some newly-learned phrases gave my apology.  I said my piece, gave him the kava, he said his piece, everyone around agreed that it was really the turaga ni koro’s fault and all was forgiven.  Problem solved.

Well the rains came and when the rains come around here, look out.  Now it rains all of the time.  Last week, I went to town and I wore, get this, shoes.  I realized as I was putting on those shoes that this was the first time that they had ever been worn.  I bought these shoes on the way out the door to Fiji and hadn’t worn them for a year and a half.  (In the name of full disclosure, I also have a pair of running shoes that have a bit more use, although not nearly as much as I would have liked.)  One thing about wearing shoes after not wearing them for a long time.  THEY SUCK!  Shoes have no business in this country.  I was wearing them because of the rain, but ultimately, my feet got good and wet anyway and then since there was so much stuff for absorbancy purposes, I then had to cart all of that water around with me.  Flip-flops are the only way to go around here, rain or shine.

Well, if you are anywhere near California, I am sure that you are aware of all of the issues that are in the news.  Of course, you have seen all of the ads and the various opponents and have probably made up your mind who you are supporting by now.  I am also sure that you understand how important this year’s contest is and are approaching this November with the gravity with which it deserves.  That being said, the way that the Giants man-handled Texas those first two games has got to make you feel good!  (Of course I was talking about baseball.  Why, is something else going on.)  If you have read my past blogs, you may remember me babbling about the Giants finding their way to greatness when I don’t live in the country.  At that point I threatened that if they went to the World Series, I would be moving permanently out of the country.  Well, friends and family, it was really nice seeing you while it lasted.  Perhaps I will try to visit the US during the off-season, but I can’t stay for long as I don’t want to risk the Giants reverting back to mediocrity.

Here’s some good news!  Sally and I are heading to New Zealand in February.  You should come too!  That will be our first time away from Fiji since we got here and, suffice it to say, we are pretty excited.  I love it here, but a western nation break sounds pretty good.  We managed to get a ticket with Alaska Airlines frequent flier miles.  I love Alaska Airlines and that I can get a ticket from Fiji to New Zealand using their miles, and not very many of them, for that matter!  We could make that trip 2 more times and have miles to spare.  (We won’t, I don’t think.)  I am telling you this because we are actively recruiting joiners.  You should come.  February 13-26.  I am taking the GRE (again-they expire after 5 years) on the 12th so will be pretty happy by then.  You can buy me a drink by way of congratulations.  Doesn’t that sound great?  So, good you probably want to buy me another one!  Aw, shucks, you are too kind.  No--Gordon’s gin, please.  Oh, they don’t have any?  Beefeater is fine, thanks.  I can’t wait to have that conversation with you in Christchurch!

Friday, October 15, 2010

The Rain Came

Well, be careful what you wish for.  If you have been reading, you know that Fijian has been in the grip of a serious drought prompting a state of emergency, rationing, and the like.  After a decent stretch of being largely unaffected by the rain shortage, my village also ran out of water.  We had access to one tap not too far from our house where we could fill up buckets in the morning before that went dry.  Then the rains came.  For two glorious days, we had as much water as we wanted.  There was even enough water pressure to take a shower!  Then the floods came.  The floods washed out the pipe.  Then the water shut off entirely.  So, I started collecting rain water in buckets.  Then the rain stopped.  Thank the good folks in China who made my toilet seat cover.  You don’t want to know what is in there.

Otherwise, things are good.  The Giants have made it to round 2 of the playoffs, basically proving my theory that I need to be out of the country for the entirety of the baseball season for the Giants to succeed.  So, it was nice living near you all while it lasted, but I am sure that you understand.  I am a team player.  The next question is whether this effect on the Giants’ success is dependent on hemisphere or distance from the US.  I am thinking of Anchorage for my PhD, and am thinking that living off the continent may be enough of a distance to make the Giants at least competitive.  Oregon clearly was too close.

Back to the water, that is now one of my main projects.  I have been working with the government to try to secure funding to fix the water supply so that it doesn’t get washed out every time it rains.  Slow and steady on that front.  At the last village meeting, we were still in the drought and were out of water.  I gave my big speech about water conservation and how we need to fix all of the leaky taps in the village.  (“Leak” is a relative term.  Every tap leaks here.  It is only a problem when it is broken enough so that it can’t be turned off).  Naturally, it is pretty frustrating to me when there is no water at my house and up the pipe are 20 taps that can’t be turned off.  Amazingly, they community had not yet made that connection.  So, it was decided that in two days time, a group of us would do a survey of all of the taps in the village that needed repair.  Then we would have a fundraiser to make the funds to fix them and we would get to it.  Well, the next day the sky opened up.  That was the end of any talk of water conservation or fixing the taps.  One might be tempted to think that it will be a matter of time before there is another dry spell, but Fijians will be damned if they are going to think ahead.  So, there will be no fixing of taps until we are out of water.  We were so close.  I just needed that drought to continue for a couple of more days…

Sally is on a girls weekend in Taveuni so it is just me and the cat, only the cat hates people.  So, it is just me.  I don’t understand how the only cat that manages to live of our string of cats turns out to be the worst pet in the world.  I have never been so thoroughly used for food before.  Sure Stu bit someone every once in a while, but at least I knew that he liked me.  This damn cat (Kalima, Fijian for 5th)refuses to be touched and bites you if you try.  There is no cuddling, no sitting on laps, and certainly no purring.  He just comes in for food and then leaves.  His days as “our” cat I think are numbered as Sally has begun the kitten hunt again.

On the success note, the Regional Director for Peace Corps in the Pacific region is coming to visit Fiji and wants to see a successful site.  So, they are bringing him here!  Cool, huh?  The village is pretty excited and is planning to do a serious sevusevu (kava presentation) ceremony, do a meke dance, and make a bunch of food.  It should be a good time.  Since Sally really does all of the work around here, I will need to figure out a way to look busy while he is here.  Then I am going back to Suva with the director for a fancy-shmancy dinner at our Country Director’s house.  Thank you tax dollars!!  (By comparison, the US spent more per day in Iraq than it has spent on Peace Corps in all of the years combined in the entire Pacific region since 1968.)  I will enjoy my trip to Suva and my free dinner, thank you.

And as some of you who bother to write or email to me may know, the Grad school hunt has begun.  The long list now includes Montana, Montana St, Stanford, UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, University of Alaska Anchorage, Colorado St, and Cornell (wrong coast, I know).  The short list looks more like Montana or Alaska but things can change.  I have been emailing with a number of folks at a number of schools and I am excited and encouraged and scared numb.  That means that if you have an opinion, you should speak up sooner than later.

I had planned to include some photos of our latest dive, especially because they would have included a video of a hammerhead shark that we saw.  WHOA!  Alas, Sally took that camera with her on her  trip so it will have to wait.  Plus, my internet connection is incredibly slow.  Next time.  I promise this blog will be more entertaining next time.  Does anyone even read this besides my sister?  Thanks Danielle for keepin’ it real.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Things I Used to Like

Here are some things that I used to really like that I now hate with unyielding passion:

1. Children: Yep, you heard me right. Go ahead and call me a monster. As my friends and family create a small army with their offspring in my absence, I have come to despise the little creatures. Some of you may remember that I once taught children and that I really enjoyed it. I really loved being around kids and shaping their minds. To be fair, I should probably be a little more specific about the kinds of children that I would choose to purge. They are 7-12 year old Fijian children. I won’t be able to explain this in a way that doesn’t make me out to be the worst person you know, so I won’t even try. Nothing is required of children in this country as far as following rules. It is a remarkably safe place so there are no reasons to put restrictions on your kids for the sake of safety. As such, children run free in the village, which is great. The problem is that they do whatever they want in these marauding bands just looking for trouble. This usually results in destruction to my garden.

2. Dogs: This one is really sad for me. I really like(d) dogs. A lot. I now hate them. Passionately. Dogs here are treated like…well…dogs. I now know that when you treat dogs like really stupid children, showering them with attention and good food, they turn out to be pretty cool (Stu’s biting problems aside). However, if feral, starving dogs just sort of hang around the village they breed like rabbits and then start to resemble marauding packs of children (see above). They are emaciated, mangy mutts that are in no way cute or useful. They are scavengers that destroy compost bins and keep you up all night with their fighting, barking, and general mayhem.

3. Chickens: Many of you know that I generally like birds, spending inordinate amounts of time money on equipment to preserve their likenesses. I also love the idea of chickens, with their gifts of fresh eggs and amazing ability to turn kitchen scraps into fertilizer. But God help you if your neighbors decide that they always lacked a rooster and get one. In movies, roosters crowing in the distance to wake you up just after sunrise makes them seem quaint and useful (saving electricity on the alarm clock). This is a lie. Roosters have no idea what time it is; they just make unholy noise at all times. It is amazingly loud. That isn’t the worst of it. Chickens take garden destruction to a new level. In their single-minded determination to find each and every seed that ever fell from a plant, they dig, scratch, and peck at every square inch of ground in a half-mile radius. My neighbors’ new chickens are much closer than that to my garden. Destruction has ensued.

4. The sun: OK, it is easy to shoot holes in this one. This isn’t nearly as expendable as children to our survival. We need the sun, I get it. The problem is that we have seen way too much of it lately. I haven’t really been around for too many seasons in Fiji, but I am told that we are working on the driest year on record. That would make sense; it has rained something like 3 times in the last 3 months. After feeling pretty lucky that our water hadn’t run out in the village, the water ran out. Now we have no water for most of the day. There is a period right around the middle of the day when we do have water and then I fill up as many water-holding containers as I can. Showers are out—now I take bucket baths and daily I find new ways to decrease my water usage while washing dishes. Please sun, go away. Come again another day.

This was fun. A couple of weeks ago, Sally and I went over to the neighboring village to go to a wedding. It was pretty cool. Mostly, the clothes were cool. Thanks to Christianity, the actual ceremony was approximately as one would expect it. After church though, the party got started. Dancing isn’t allowed in many Fijian villages (like ours and this one) but sometimes exceptions are made. Weddings are a good excuse. I don’t know why dancing isn’t allowed. Everyone loves it and as far as I can tell, the gates of hell do not open when people partake, but someone told someone 150 years ago that Christ doesn’t like dancing and so it got banned (along with bare breasts, which was a loss of equal severity). Anyway, we got to dance and nothing gets the crowd going more than whitey dancing. It was a good time. Of course, there was a lot of food and plenty of kava but for my money, I’m going to weddings for the dancing.

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And with every wedding, there of course has to be a funeral. There has been a fair amount of death in the village lately. Our neighbor died last week. She was an elderly diabetic so it was not a huge surprise, but I just came from a meeting to talk about the upcoming funeral of the father of a very good friend of mine, Mala. This was more of a surprise, and I am pretty floored by it. People just up and die here. Whenever someone gets sick or injured in the US, there is great tumult until a solution is found, death only coming when all possible efforts have been exhausted. Here, death just happens. People don’t rush off to the hospital; they die. I feel awful for my Mala and his family and am once again reminded of the fragility of creation’s walk on this world—excepting children, chickens, and dogs which seem indestructible.

Monday, September 20, 2010

GO GIANTS!!

It is another postcard day here in Fiji.  In fact, we have now had a few too many of those as the government just declared a state of emergency due to the persistent drought.  This is supposed to be the dry season but I am pretty sure that in the tropics, dry doesn’t mean no rain for three months.  We actually did just get a little rain but it wasn’t nearly enough.  The funny thing is that since this was called a “La Nina” year, we are supposed to get much higher than average rainfall.  We were promised buckets of rain by some high-ranking meteorologist.  He was wrong.

We are actually OK in the village as our water comes from a spring.  Our pressure is low so we don’t usually get showers—just bucket baths.  In other areas, there is no water at all.  Since much of the cities’ electricity comes from a hydroelectric dam, rolling blackouts have started there.  Our lack of electricity is nothing new and can’t be blamed on a water shortage.  We are holding steady at 3 hours a night!

Interestingly enough, I am now working on a water project to fix the water system here so that there is running water in the village, even when it rains!  I bet you didn’t think that was possible.  A couple of years ago, a flood took out part of the village’s water supply and it was fixed "”Fiji-style.”  That means that every time it rains, the pipe gets clogged and/or a section of pipe that now runs through another river comes apart and washes downstream.  Usually when it happens, it takes a few days to get it repaired and for the tank to fill back up.  So, I am hunting up money to get that fixed.  I am hoping that the government is game.

Otherwise, the farming continues!  I have just figured version 2 of my Backyard Gardening book and Peace Corps has now sported the money to publish it.  Version 1 was done in-house as a manual.  It has been a pretty big success (by Fijian standards) so Peace Corps is going to actually publish it now.  I am pretty excited.  Sadly, the illustrator for the book had to return to the US due to knocking up his wife.  I just heard from him—in a couple of weeks time, he got a job, bought a house, and two cars.  I realize that sounds an awful lot like normal life to most of you, but it sounds like some fantasy land to me.  I haven’t driven a car in well over a year now and I can’t imagine setting an alarm clock to get to a job on time.

The last time I lived abroad was in 2002 in Australia.  Of course, you immediately recognize that year as they year that the San Francisco Giants went to the World Series, getting within three outs in game 6 of winning it.  You all remember it, I am sure.  Well, here I am living abroad again and here go the Giants again making a run at the playoffs.  If they go to the World Series again, there is a good chance that my years of living stateside are over.  If I have to live in tropical paradises to ensure that my beloved Giants go the the big show, I will gladly accept my role.  I have enjoyed my time in the US, but you understand I am sure.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Man, this is some nice weather

Seriously, it is like paradise, the weather here right now. Funny thing is that it is winter. Now, I haven’t written in a little while, it’s true. I now have a computer again and even have figured out internet access at the house. After we fixed the electrical system in the village and then the village fixed the problem of figuring out how to pay for the fuel for the generator, we even have pretty steady electricity now (3 hours every evening, more or less). Point being, I have no excuses for not blogging other than that life here has sort of turned out like life, you know dull for the one who lives it.

When I got here and started living this life, everything was so new and entertaining, disgusting, sad, etc. Now it just feels like life. It is just what I do and I don’t think that there is anything to write about. Hootenanny, I know. There are actually all kinds of cool things going on.

First, we are getting some work done…or at least started. Getting started on something seems like a decent accomplishment here. First, water. The cyclone in March washed out a section of pipe for the main water supply that comes from a small catchment in the hills behind the village. Well, the village fixed that with some silly putty and spit so now every time that it rains, the river washes out that section and the village goes without water for a few days while we try to find the pipes and put them back together (with new spit). Now we are going to get some cyclone relief money to fix it right.

Farming: as always, I am keeping my hands in the soil. Evidently, there is something of a green revolution happening in the village now. They had no idea that one could just up and grow food by your house, or so they tell me. Either way, after laughing at me for a few months for trying to grow veggies in the village, I am now swimming in delicious veggies. WHO’S LAUGHIN’ NOW!! Me, that’s who and now everyone is planting like crazy. Now, I sort of make the rounds, checking on folks’ gardens, answering questions, and working with them. It is really fun, because a lot of these veggies, Fijians have never seen grown and didn’t know that they could be. A number of the new gardeners are poised to start making some mad coin from the veggies in the near future. That will be fun to watch.

I am also working on a larger scale vegetable farm with a family and we are going to get some funds from the Ministry of Agriculture to get serious: plowing, irrigation, nursery, etc. We are well on our way and have planted a large area but are sort of stuck at this point as it is becoming unwieldy to try to water it by hand hauling buckets from the swamp. The nursery will also allow them to cover an area to grow some things during the wet season when the market price is the highest. I can’t wait for that because it will also mean that I won’t have to go without tomatoes and bell peppers next Jan-March!

Down the road, I am looking to try to figure out a hydro-power setup for the village’s electricity, but I have run into a series of roadblocks there. Namely, no one want to pay for it. So, I have put it on the backburner and we will continue literally burning money to run the generator.

On a fun note, Sally’s aunt Pamela and her cousin Melissa came for a short but sweet visit. Actually, they hung out with us for five days as part of a larger trip including two other countries: New Zealand and expensive Fiji. It was great having them here since it is always great to have family and friends here. It is basically the only time that we travel so we get to take a little break. And of course, with our gentle prodding, they usually arrive with appropriate amounts of alcohol and chocolate. We went up to Taveuni, hung out on the beach, did some snorkeling, and went on some waterfall hikes. It was great. I sure do live in a beautiful country.

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0809110252_Pamela & MelissaOh, and I have picked up the ukulele. It is a really fun little instrument and it makes me famous, being white and all.

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Here is me impersonating superman!

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Friday, July 16, 2010

Back in Action

Well, it has been a little while.  Sorry about that, but the computer Gods decided to call our laptop on home.  Never fear—my birthday, a visit by the Moyce kids, and my parents generosity all lined up to get a new laptop to us.  Thank you to all involved, especially my folks.  This thing is like a supercomputer—so sleek and fast.  I feel like I could find prime numbers with this thing.

It is now July of 2010, one year after being sworn in and heading off to site.  The actual day is July 23rd, but we will go ahead and call it one year.  That means one to go.  (We got here in May, but Peace Crops doesn’t count the training period as service and we signed on for 2 years of service.)  It has also been almost 4 months since we have moved to our “new” site, which certainly isn’t new anymore; it feels like we have always been here.  It’s strange how quickly one’s new reality just becomes reality.

We have had a pretty good couple of months, getting around a fair amount.  First we went up to another Volunteer’s site on an island off the north coast of Vanua Levu to do a gardening workshop with the school on the island.  It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the energy of the kids, which is weird because I basically hate kids now (relatives excepted, of course).  I know that you are supposed to go to developing countries and think that the kids are so cute that you just want to take them all home.  Suffice it say, that is not happening with me.  Don’t get me wrong, Fijian kids are just kids, but they have a tendency to mob anything cool and destroy it as fast as they can.  That bugs me.

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Anyway, after that, we headed down to Suva for our mid-service training and then to meet up with Bobby, Katie, and Madeline (Sally’s brother, sister, and cousin) in Nadi.  We had a really great trip, even though they left after drinking more of our alcohol than they brought, an absolute no-no around here.  Let that be a lesson to would-be visitors (I hope that you are reading this, Pamela and Melissa, especially Melissa.)  First we spent a couple of days on the Coral Coast at a place we did not like (Mango Bay) and then a place we really liked (The Beach House).

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From there, we spent far longer in Savusavu than we had planned, but we found a great deal at Daku Resort for a house right on the water with a pool and we could cook our own food.  They even had a grill, which was they first of its kind that I have seen in Fiji.  You name it, we grilled it.  After  a couple of days in the village where the only memorable was Bobby getting a bad case of Cook’s revenge (James Cook “conquered” Fiji), if you know what I mean.  So, we headed back to Daku to round out the stay.  Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke, no what I mean.

I do work around here too, but this posting is long enough.  We are coming up on a visitor drought so there will be plenty of time to hear about what I do for a living!

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Here I Am

I am currently stuck in Labasa, a town on the north coast of the north island, Vanua Levu. It isn't much to speak of. You see, you can't expect the buses to follow the Sunday schedule on a Sunday when it is followed by a Monday which is a holiday. Silly us. We waited for a long time at the bus "station" to find that out. Of course, there is no way to check on these things besides waiting for a bus and seeing what happens.

Sally and I had gone up to a small island called Mali, off of the north coast of Vanua Levu, to a do a work exchange. That means that another volunteer asks for you to come to their site because they want your "expertise." Sometimes that expertise is that you make them laugh. That being said, we were invited by our friend Christian for me to help him start a vegetable garden at the primary school on the island and for Sally to do a workshop on nutrition. It was a smashing success actually. We pounded out a few plots with 12 kids--food that will be used to feed them since most of the students stay in a dorm at the school. We also had a pretty good time.

Anyway, the plan was to come to Labasa Saturday night, stay with these 2 volunteers there, and then catch the morning bus to Savusavu to make our bus back the village. Well, that didn't happen because for some reason, Fiji doesn't have to go to work on the day that the Queen was born. That gives us another night here, the upshot being that I have access to a computer! On the computer front, my parents have been generous enough to offer the purchase of a new one which will be brought by Katie, Bobby and Madeline (sister, brother, and cousin of Sally) when they come to visit in a few short weeks. Needless to say, we are pretty excited for them to get here for both computational reasons and otherwise.

Life has been pretty good here since we last spoke. I just spent a few weeks in Suva training the incoming crop of volunteers the ins and outs of backyard gardening. Peace Corps Fiji has decided to make that a priority this year, and every volunteer is going to start a garden at his her site in the first few months. I also wrote a book (Organic Gardening in Fiji: Lessons in Absurd Fecundity) which the Library of Congress doesn't quite know about yet, but Peace Corps is using it as its manual. We are still tidying it up to see what we will ultimately try to do with it. ("We" includes another volunteer, Matt Roy, who did the illustrations.)

Back in the village, I came home to find out the chiefs had followed my advice and told the Chinese fishing company where they could stick their 99-year lease. That as some really great news. And we finally got started on a large-scale organic vegetable farming operation with the young men of the village. We got the land squared away and have fenced it off (with bamboo that we hauled out of the forests ourselves--not nearly as much fun as it might sound) to keep out the horses. They are in the process of clearing out the grass and when/if I get back we are going to get some seeds in the ground. The farm is initially going to be used to get enough money together to build a 10-pig piggery. Then, between the farm and the piggery, the group should be able to turn a tidy profit, feeding the pigs healthy stuff and feeding the waste back into the farm. I didn't really understand how like alchemy composting was until I got here. Do it.

So, next week Sally and I head down to Suva for our Mid-Service Training, which means that we are halfway there (Bryan Adams songs regularly enter my mind lately). In one year, we will be packing bags at this time. Crazy, huh? Time does a-fly. We go from Mid-Service Training to meeting Bobby, Katie, Madeline, and computer in Nadi at the Westin, this ridiculously posh place that I went with my parents that keeps throwing out these crazy deals to locals. So, why not hang out by the infinity pool for a couple of days? Well, I can tell by your attention span that you are bored now so I will wrap it up, but hopefully with the arrival of a new computer, the blog droughts will yet again come to an end. Don't forget to write, and when you do write, don't forget to put some chocolate in there with the envelope!

One last thing. I got to follow the USA's first World Cup match against England on the computer this morning. Oh man, I love the World Cup. Go USA!

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Uh-oh

I am sad to report that the motherboard has gone out on our laptop. We are working on a solution but it does mean that blogs will have to be severely curtailed until we have a working computer. For the brief version: life is good, we had a great trip with Sally's parents, our cat is still alive, I just did a great series of home gardening workshops for incoming volunteers, and we are going diving at the world-famous Namena Reef on Friday. Yahoo!

Sunday, April 18, 2010

After having spent a couple of weeks in the new village, I have come to the resolution that this was the best move that I have ever made.


One time I moved to Portland to convince Sally to marry me, so that move turned out to be a pretty good move, but this move has been revolutionary. I eat cheese again. Sally is great, but she is no cheese. Sometimes, I just eat cheese all by itself. You can do that when you will be able to buy cheese again in a week or so. Already in a few short weeks, I feel more a part of this village than I ever did on Koro. I don’t quite know why that is. Part of it is that our house is in the village here and in Koro, it was above. There is also a different attitude in this village that is much more aligned with what the stereotype of Fijians are: amazing hospitality, giving, hard-working (when they want to be), and crazy nice. Koro had a reputation for the people being a little less than this and now in comparison to our new village, they were right.

Point being, we have been welcomed here with open arms. People bring us fish 3-4 times per week, cassava most days, and are constantly inviting us to come eat with them. Sometimes we oblige. Our house has turned from a dirty fixer-upper to a clean fixer-upper. Since we don’t plan to make this permanent, I am afraid that much of the fixing up will not be done be me (given the Peace Corps financial constraints as well), but it is certainly comfortable. It is a large, concrete block house with 2 bedrooms, a dining area, a large sitting area, a porch and an indoor kitchen and bathroom.





The bathroom and kitchen being in doors is pretty sweet since that is a rarity in Fiji. That being said, the bathroom is tiny and a bit weird. The shower head and toilet are in one small room so you basically have to clean the toilet in order to shower. The good news is that there is rarely enough water pressure to shower so bucket baths are more common. The kitchen has a range and an oven (that only gets up to about 200F) and, get this, a kerosene fridge, as yet inoperable. Who knew those existed? Not me. I had seen propane fridges, but not kerosene. I am currently hunting down parts to get that working. Turns out those parts aren’t particularly easy to find. (If anyone knows anything about kerosene fridge parts, now would be a good time to send me that e-mail you have been meaning to.)




True to form, the first thing that I did was to get a garden going and after a week of intensive digging, the usual veggies are on their way. Gardening is a bit more difficult here than it was on ultra-fertile Koro. Since my house is right on the beach, it is pretty sandy. So, I wheel-barreled in load after load of soil from higher up. (A wheel-barrel?!?! There probably wasn’t one of those on the entirety of Koro. There are 2 in my village!) I also helped out the soil with a bunch of cut grass and ashes from the many copra driers in the area. What? You don’t know what a copra drier is? Silly Americans. Copra is the dried meat of the coconut that is dried and then sold on the open market where it is used mostly to make various grades of oil for higher end uses like cosmetics through cooking oil, depending on which layer of oil. Since there bajillions of coconuts here, the villagers just collect them up and then dry them on these large, wood-fired driers. Point being, they create a lot of ashes, which I then haul off to my house. So, the garden is up and running, and once again, most people are confused at just what in the hell I am doing. Oh, they will see.

As for work, I just went from having a very well-defined, fairly important job through the University of the South Pacific on Koro. Of course, there were lots of problems, but I knew what my goal was and more or less how to do it. Here, I am starting from scratch. Basically, my job is to find out what the environmental needs of the community are and to help them to meet them. So far, that is looking like farming practices as there is a lot of talk about all of the pesticides that the farmers are using (which are then washing into the rivers and then the ocean killing coral, reducing fish populations after the give cancer to the sprayer who was never told that he had to wear head to toe covering and a facemask). So, I’ll start there. I am also hoping to start an organic veggie enterprise with the young men of the village to sell to the local resorts that are always begging for fresh veggies, and there is always biofuel. There is a ton of oil in coconuts and if I can convince the village to make their own oil instead of selling the resource cheaply so someone else can, they can make a lot more money. We’ll see. Anyway, that is it for now. Since clearly all of the letters that should be coming our way (but aren’t!) must have gotten lost in the mail, I will give you our new address one more time:

Brian Smithers (or Sally Moyce)
PO Box 904
Savusavu
Fiji Islands

I hope that you are all well. I miss you all and am eagerly awaiting the Sally’s parents who are coming in May and the Moyce kids (not Bobby) who are coming in June…or July. I forget.


Monday, March 29, 2010

Win Some, Lose Some

In the spirit of you-win-some-you-lose-some, we have arrived at our new site. It was not an easy journey. After the cyclone, the ferry broke basically stranding the island without incoming food, which would not have been that big of a deal had not most of the crops been destroyed by the cyclone. It also stranded us. We were told on Thursday that we were being pulled from the island and that Peace Corps would be coming on Friday night to pick us up and move us. So we packed. Then the boat broke so we unpacked. (The best part is that it broke in the ocean so had to turn around and go back. We didn’t find out that the boat hadn’t made it for awhile.) Then they said it was coming so we packed. We continued that routine for the better part of a week. Finally it was decided that Peace Corps was unwilling to risk getting off the boat to pick us up fearing that another boat may never come. If a boat ever made it to Koro, we were to get ourselves and our belongings on it and never look back lest we turn into a pillar of salt.

So, on the day that the boat was to finally and truly leave, we packed (as per our usual). The boat was to leave at 1:00pm getting to Koro at around 9:00pm. Since food was scarce on the island at this point, every meal was becoming an experiment in scrounging. We were also trying to minimize unpacking at this point. So, we planned to eat lunch and then skip dinner. The boat didn’t leave at 1:00…or 2:00…or 3:00. It left at 6:00. Then it had to turn around again. Evidently, they put the cars on wrong so the whole thing was listing. They had to return to port to put arrange them correctly. The boat really and truly left at 8:00 so we headed down there nice and early to make sure that we could get all of our stuff there. We got there at around 2:00am for a 3:00am arrival. Guess what time the boat didn’t come and what time it started raining. The boat finally limped in to Koro after sunrise at around 7 or 8. I stopped keeping track in there somewhere due to delirium. One of the engines had failed, the water pump had failed, and the lights on the lower deck had failed, but the boat made it and nothing short of the boat being on fire or actively sinking would have preventing me from getting on it.

So, we did. Just a short 4-hour trip to Savusavu and we would be free from the burdens of travel to Koro forever. Then we got to Savusavu. Well, one of the winches to pull the boat into port broke so they couldn’t pull us in. We sat in the harbor for 3 hours while they tried to fix it. Finally, they tied a rope to a truck on land and the truck pulled us ashore. And thus ends the last time that I plan to ever ride the SOFI ferry again. All in all, it took us 14 hours to get from Koro to Savusavu, two dots on a map that on any map you probably have are indecipherable from each other.

Anyway, we are here in our new village—a large-ish village about 2 hours by bus outside of the town of Savusavu. Savusavu itself is known as the “Hidden Paradise,” and while I wouldn’t go that far, it is nice. Most importantly, it has stores and in those stores are cheese, and jam, and peanut butter, and VEGETABLES! It is a 4-hour round trip to get there so you have to mean it to go there, but the fact that we can is revolutionary to us. We got off Koro once every couple of months and only then if we had a conference or something. We just got to the village but so far, it seems great. The biggest difference is that they have had a Peace Corps Volunteer before. That means that in the Fijian way, we are always being compared to him (and evidently, he was super-PCV here. The man did amazing things from what I can tell), but it means that they really want us here. They know what Peace Corps is and is not and had been begging for another volunteer for some time.

Our house is pretty awesome. We had a great house on Koro, but this makes our old house look like a hovel. It is owned by a woman who spent enough time in Australia to have upped her standards a bit. It is a 2 bedroom concrete block house with lots of space. It is right in the village with our front porch (yep) overlooking the Methodist church and the sea behind it. It isn’t quite the view that we had on Koro, but anytime that your porch looks at the water, complaining is moot. The only issues have to do with dirt. The last volunteer here was a single, young, and clearly dirty male. If the rumors hold true, he didn’t pick up a broom or rag in 2 years. I believe it. Then after he left, the filth had 9 months of time to marinate while the house was unoccupied. So, we walked into that mess. It is still a work in progress but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Since the cyclone, there is no electricity in this part of the village. That is a bit of a bummer and will make computer access a little more difficult and less frequent. So, if you are used to reading my wit on this blog on a regular basis, it will be much less frequent in the near future. E-mail will be similarly disrupted. As for phones, the phones that we have been using (mine: 7413233 and Sally’s: 7413231) don’t work here. We have a number for now that does, sort of, work here. It is 9346384. If you are calling, use that one for now. We will keep the other phone numbers for use around town and the rest of Fiji, but if you are trying to call in the near future, use 9346384. We also have our new address. So, here is the summary of information:

Address:

Brian Smithers/Sally Moyce
Box 904
PO Savusavu
Fiji Islands

Phone: 9346384

One really great thing about this move is how easy it just became to come and visit us. We are pretty well booked out through August but after that, we are looking for visitors!

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Family Vacation

My parents visited a couple of weeks ago and it was some pretty good timing for us. We had just found out that we were being moved from our house and since it was a house at the high school compound, they were also taking away Sally’s job there to justify removing us from the house. We were having a rough time, so my parents coming and us taking a little vacation was just what the doctor ordered, but it didn’t start particularly well because our ferry broke.

The original plan was for my parents to fly from LA to Nadi and then take a short flight from Nadi to Savusavu, where they would catch the ferry to come to Koro. Well, the ferry broke and was grounded in Suva stranding my parents in Savusavu where they stayed for a couple of days while we figured out how to get together. We decided the only option was to hire a small boat from Koro to go and pick them up. It was pricey. Then the winds picked up. Koro and Savusavu are not especially close. You can’t see one from the other on the horizon for example. Well, my parents rode in about a 10 foot boat over the open Koro Sea in 25 knot winds…on my Mother’s birthday. It was awful, I am told, but they made it. We would not subject anyone else to that trip.

Once they made it to Koro, we had a wonderful time. We stayed one day in Dere Bay, the rich, white side, before heading over to our village for some culture. And they got it. We dressed them up in Fiji clothes, drank kava, presented the isevusevu to the chief and hung around Fiji-style. It was great. From there we hit the road and that is where our vacation really starts in my eyes.






After the overnight ferry from Koro to Viti Levu, we hung out in Suva for just a bit and then hopped a bus to the Coral Coast where we stayed at a little place called Tambua Sands Beach Resort. It was pretty cool—nice white, sandy beach and comfy bures (little houses for sleeping), but the food wasn’t great. This was our first taste of tourist-traveling. Where we live, you can’t buy any food out so either you make something yourself or someone makes it for you, but either way it is free. Even when we go to Suva, I know that I can grab lunch for $1. So, when I saw that drinks were $10 and dinners were $15-$20, I couldn’t believe it. I realize that isn’t that big of a deal on the US market, but here it is highway robbery. Anyway, it took me a bit to get over the feeling of being robbed on this trip.







Finally, we shoved off to the Yasawas (with another case of those 40’s) to Nacula Island where we stayed at a place called the Oarsman’s Bay Lodge. We chose it because it was as far into the Yasawas as the ferry boat goes, figuring there would be less tourists (there were) and because it sits on what is referred to in Lonely Planet as the best beach in Fiji (it was). I can’t begin to tell you how beautiful this place is. Photos will have to do, but it was certainly everything you might think of when you say the words “Tropical Paradise.” We also chose the Oarsman’s Bay Lodge because it is owned and operated but a Fijian village and we want to support those ventures whenever we can. That usually means you suffer on some of the food and amenities, but this place was still pretty cool. I would go back in a heartbeat. (In fact, when we figured that we were going to be moved from our site, Sally and I tried to get placed in that village to help them run and update their lodge in addition to some other projects.)












Then there was the diving. It is a bummer that I can't upload video here (really slow connection) because I have some good stuff of some sharks. Anyway:











Like all good things, this one ended. My parents flew out on a Tuesday, we hopped a bus back to Suva, had a power meeting with Peace Corps about our future (or lack thereof) on Koro and were back to Koro the next day. It was a great trip; we loved having my parents here who, even now in the their 60’s, are some of my favorite people to travel with. Who else would have ridden the open seas on a row boat to see us? They amaze me with their adventurous spirit and willingness to roll with the flow on a trip to Fiji, where the flow never rolls in a straight line. Plus they pay for stuff. So, Mom and Dad, I hope that you are planning your trip here for next year because we are counting on you. I thought that we might try foregoing the skiff entirely and try swimming from Vanua Levu to Taveuni!