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.