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!