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.

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.

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.