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.
