Tuesday, July 26, 2011

A New Home for Wit

So, Sally and I now officially on the run—not from cops or anything, just from Fiji.  I had planned on keeping up this log but since Sally and I each had a blog and we now have more limited internet time, we have decided to join forces into one travel blog.  And in the name of obfuscation, that blog is neither of our blogs from Fiji.  It is a new entirely and can be found at:

www.longwayhome-sallyandbrian.blogspot.com

You should go there, not here, for your future Brian’s writing needs as that is where I will go for my future writing.  Check it out.  Then someone should remind my parents how to bookmark it (I’m talking to you Rick and Danielle.)

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Farewell Photos

Well, we have done it—we have left the village and are now in Suva.  But I wanted to get some photos up here of our farewell from the village because it was a pretty special couple of days.  The whole thing started with our itautau on Friday.  That is our official good-bye ceremony where we present the yaqona (kava) to the chief and the village presents us with some gifts.

Here we are at the beginning of it, getting our isalusalu put on.  These are what one would call a lei in Hawaii but these are also woven plant fibers mixed in with the flowers.  Oh, and the other white lady there is our replacement Carol who also arrived that day.  It is pretty weird to think of someone else’s service just starting in my village just as we are leaving.  Good luck Carol.

Here I am presenting the isevusevu, which is sitting there in front of me.  I cheated and read it but I was still nervous as hell.  Even reading it, I had to get the tone right and know where the stresses and swoops of the speech go.  I am told that I did a passable job.

Accepting the isevusevu and also presenting our gifts to us was a spokesperson for the chief, although the chief also spoke to/about us to the community.  It was pretty cool.  Anyway, this is Noah and he is our neighbor so I like that he presented the gifts to us.  The village gave us the woven mat that we are sitting on and a bunch of woven wall hangings that are made from reeds.  Pretty cool stuff.

 

Then there was the food.  Fijians are known for eating and eating a lot, but the food that we had for our party was ridiculous: fish, prawns, chicken, different curries, dalo, cassava, and dalo leaf, all cooked in coconut milk, and most of it prepared in the lovo, or earth-oven.  Mmmmm.  Unfortunately, I knew that I would be drinking grog later so that eating too much would just make the rest of the night more uncomfortable.

Then comes the grog.  Always the grog.  I sat up front by the chief since it was my night.  Unfortunately, that often means sitting and staring into one’s lap as sitting up front carries a certain responsibility towards dignity.  If you sit up front, it is all business.  Sitting down low means you get to make a scene.  That is where the guitar hangs out and I was occasionally called there to play some songs.

 

 

Like any good tradition, the dignity up front isn’t hard and fast and sometimes the guitar would come to me if I refused to go play it down below.

 

 

Sally gets to have all of the fun with the ladies.  They never have to be dignified.  We asked to break the taboo on dancing for the evening, but were denied.  It turns out there is a link between dancing a little and crime…or so we were told.  No dancing allowed.

Sunday at church the chief gave us another farewell speech that was amazing in that was in English!  That was about the third or fourth time that he had spoken in English since I have been there—once being when Andy and Mary (in-laws) came and visited.  Anyway, his English is not great so it was really sweet that he humbled himself to speak to us in our language.  Then it was Sally’s turn as she humbled herself speaking in Fijian.  She did a great job although the tears were no help!

 

After another two nights of drinking grog, we got on the bus and headed out.  Just like that, Peace Corps life in the village was over.  A lot of the village came out that morning to see us off which was really sweet as well.  They sang us the farewell song, there was lots of hugging and tears and we were off!  So there it is.  Peace Corps.

We are in Suva now, just doing our final close-out things and getting our life a bit organized before heading off on the next leg of the journey.  We are also dealing with some medical issues.  I had a lovely growth on my ear that was getting bigger by the week.  I had it checked out and it was decided that it needed to be removed and checked to make sure it wasn’t a tumor.  It wasn’t—just a cyst.  But I got to have it cut out of my ear which was amazingly painless.  Local anesthetic really is cool.

Anyway, we are all set to go now.  I will try to keep this updated when I have chance on the road.  First stop, Indonesia!

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

T-Some Number of Hours

It is our last day in the village today which is really weird thing to say. And before you go judging me for sitting in front of the computer on my last day in the village, keep in mind that we have been constantly celebrating/mourning our departure for 4 days and tonight will be no exception. Also, it is pouring rain and there isn’t much else that I could be doing right now that isn’t drinking yaqona (Key: yaqona = grog = kava).

So tomorrow morning, Sally and I will be getting on the bus from the village for the last time and heading to Savusavu for a more familiar farewell from the 10-15 Peace Corps Volunteers in the area that will involve making merry and drinking too much (beer, that is). We are staying one night there before flying to Suva in the morning. In Suva, we have a few things going on. The first is to get the thing that is growing on my ear checked out and removed (the thing, not the ear). It is unclear what it is so a biopsy is being done but no one thinks that is of any concern. But to be safe and since Uncle Sam is paying for my medical care for another week, I thought it best to get it dealt with. The next thing to do is all of our close out paperwork, final reports, turn in equipment, etc. that needs to happen before Peace Corps will let us leave. Then we leave.

I am way ahead of myself. The last month has been pretty cool. We were really dreading this last homestretch envisioning not having much to do except to sit and wait to leave, filling the time drinking grog and eating an endless stream of farewell meals. The grog-drinking and the farewell meals have happened, but they have actually been a lot of fun. And we have been pretty busy: Sally with getting her school library and literacy project to a place where it can be handed off to the next volunteer and me with the seaweed farm to a place where it can be handed off to the community and my farm and backyard garden to the next volunteer. Neither of us could say with any certainty that those are projects are ready to be handed off, but handed off they are. I have been hoping to get into the water one last day to see the seaweed before I go but the weather has been especially nasty the last few weeks.

Then all of a sudden, it was the last week. We had our official farewell ceremony, called the itautau, on Friday. That is where I present the community with some yaqona and give a fairly scripted speech, thanking them for welcoming us and taking care of us and begging pardon for anything that we have done to offend them. As the man, that fell to me and I think that I did a pretty good job. Then the chief gave a speech to us, thanking us for all of our work, asking pardon as well, and giving us our veitalatala, our sending. Then the gifts. We got some pretty nice things from the community; among them is a mat that goes on the floor made of pandanus leaves, some wall hangings made of reeds, and some other odds and ends. Beautiful things.

Then the food. Whoa. We haven’t eaten some good food here, but rarely are all of the best food on one table. They were there that night and right in front of me. The problem was that there wasn’t enough room and that I knew I had to spend the next number of hours drinking grog and food and grog don’t mix. Or to be clearer, they mixed very well when they came back up at about midnight.

Sunday was more farewells, this time in the church. There were plenty of speeches thanking us in the service, once of which was by the chief in English. That was really sweet and humbling for him as his English is not very good. In fact, much of it was indecipherable, but it was such a nice gesture for him to do that. Then it was Sally’s turn to speak which she did very well, turning on the waterworks. We leave Tuesday morning which means that Sunday night and Monday night are long nights of drinking grog as that is the expected way of leaving. I got through Monday night and my plan is to just drink grog until I can’t tonight and then ditch.

So, that is it in a nutshell. I am afraid that I am not yet able to reflect deeply on this experience to provide some unique view into the human condition after all I have seen and done here in Fiji these past 2 and a half years—it is still just the reality of life. Or maybe that is it. Normal life just seems to follow you, despite how ‘abnormal’ one’s conditions may appear. It is interesting to me just how ‘normal’ our life here has become.

I’ll get some photos up here from the events when I have some time to edit them.