Well, if we had enough electricity to warrant a fan, you better believe that excrement would by flying in all directions from it. We are slated to move out of our house on Wednesday, either to a house in the village near where we are now, or if Peace Corps decides that the Koro Experiment has been a failed on, to another site. There was supposed to be a meeting on Monday to determine whether we stay on Koro on Monday. If the result of the meeting is that we are being pulled from our site, Peace Corps would come and get us on Wednesday to go…well somewhere else. If the decision is for us to stay, we would move on Wednesday to a house in the village, that while not quite the luxury we have enjoyed here, will keep us dry.
Then came news of cyclone Tomas, heading our way. (By the way, a cyclone is just what we call a hurricane around these parts.) Koro is in the direct path of the category 4 (out of 5) cyclone and we are expecting 100mph winds. The rest of Peace Corps Fiji is hunkered down in consolidation points, but since we are so isolated, we are our own consolidation point. There won’t be a meeting to determine our fate on Monday and no one from Peace Corps will be able to come on Wednesday because the seas will be too rough to send the boat. Meanwhile, it is business as usual here, so the school doesn’t think that a little breeze and a sprinkle of rain are any reason to not move. Plus, I am good and sick with fever, general body aches and pains, and various bodily functions happening that you don’t want to hear about. Nice timing, huh? (By the way, I made a joke about dengue to some folks via e-mail which was taken a bit more seriously than I had planned. It isn’t dengue; it’s probably just meningitis or something.)
Anyway, the real reason for the blog is to show the cyclone photos because these are pretty cool. Here are a couple of sights that show the impending destruction. This one,
http://www.met.gov.fj/aifs_prods/65648.html
is the tracking map. On the map, Fiji is the island group with Nadi, Suva, and Labasa in it. To find Koro, find where it says “18:00 15/3” (March 15th at 6:00pm). There is a “4” next to that showing where the eye of the storm will be then. Now, go south one “4” and look for a small island that looks like a little shark’s tooth next to the “4” there. That is Koro. If it is any consolation, we are on the eastern side of the island. This one is the satellite photo:
http://www.met.gov.fj/aifs_prods/gms_ir.gif
I really like this view because it is real and gives you the scope of it. These are updated every few hours so if you want to track our demise, it is there for the world to see! Our house is sturdy and has been around for more than a few of these, so I think that we will be perfectly safe. And while our house is on high ground, I am more concerned with the flooding that will most likely happen in the village—could be really bad as that river is prone to flooding.
I will update this as I can, and as long as the internet stays up during the storm. Since this will by first direct hit from a hurricane/cyclone, I am pretty excited!
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Moving in T-6 Days
I have always said that the best way to head off unpleasantness is to take a little vacation with your visiting parents. Well, that is what we did and I will tell you all about that in a second. First, the drama: we are definitely kicked out of our house. We had been promised that we would be OK to stay here until the end of the March and that we would hopefully have a new house lined up then. Well, I guess that “the end of March” means March 17th because that is when the new teacher is moving in. Turns out that the manager likes to make spurious promises because he also promised the principal and new teacher that we would be out “in 2 weeks.” 2 weeks was up last week. The promiser has conveniently tucked off to the capital and is wisely keeping his phone off. Needless to say, his days of working with the US Peace Corps have ended. If we end up leaving Koro, I will give you plenty of other juicy details that I will keep under wraps now.
Where does that leave us? Well, to my right I have noticed a large boulder and to my left a nondescript hard place. There is a house available in the village that may or may not meet Peace Corps security requirements. There would be no garden and no privacy, no view of the ocean from the porch, and nowhere to put anything. On the positive, it is a 6-year-old’s stone throw from the ocean, it is nice and big, and is shaded by a big tree. It is in the village, instead of above it, which has its positives and negatives. The house may be the least of our concerns as Peace Corps appears to be leaning toward pulling us out for a variety of reasons but boiling down to Sally’s counterpart turning out to be crazy and her associated loss of half of her job along with the deteriorating reliability of our transportation to/from the island. When we were posted here there were 2 boats/week and one plane/week. The plan got canceled and the boat was reduced to 1/week. Last week the boat broke. You can do the math. That happened to coincide with my parents’ visit which was overcome only by a death-defying maneuver that will be explained in further detail later (to keep you reading!).
So, where are we going if we leave is the million dollar question?!? More to the point, if you are about to send chocolate or a car or just a letter, stop the mail! Wait! We don’t know where we are heading and while we can probably have things forwarded, it would be best to hold off until we know more later in the week. We will either be moving into a new house on Wednesday or into a truck to go to Suva. You may commence sending delicious treats upon my command after Wednesday. There are one and a half options on the table. The most viable option is a site in rural Vanua Levu whose name escapes me. I told it is a great site. There was a health volunteer there until last year and the volunteer from our group who was to replace him went home. I do not know what we would be doing for work, but I can assume that it would be a significant step down from my current position, which is actually looking up.
Option 0.5 is Nacula Island in the Yasawas and while I am being told by the Peace Corps office that it is probably not going to work, I am pushing for it anyway. This is where my folks and I went for vacation last week and the place is amazingly beautiful in addition to having some serious needs. Knowing that we may be getting the flip-flop (that’s like the boot, but no one has those here) from our site here, I fielded them out for having a volunteer and they were thrilled about the idea. As it turns out, they had already submitted an application for a volunteer! Anyway, the timeline is much too fast for us to be out this week and in to an undeveloped site but I am not giving up that easily. That place was crazy-beautiful.
So, my parents came to visit and after having two visits from friends and family, I now know one thing: we will not be bringing any more visitors to Koro Island. The transportation to/from the island has now gotten the best of otherwise well-laid plans. For us, a boat that is, say, a week late or canceled entirely is not that big of a deal. On Fiji time, whether one goes this week or next is not that important. The importance is considerably magnified in the course of an American 2-week vacation. So, the Coffmans got stuck on the island and my parents got stuck off of it (or we got stuck on it, depending on your perspective). The ferry broke this time so there was no boat. My parents ended up paying out the nose to take a small fiberglass boat 3 hours across the Koro Sea in 25 knot winds. I did this to may parents, on my mother’s 60th birthday no less. (Did I tell you about the last time my parents visited me in a foreign land when my mother broke her ankle. (Worst son ever.) Well, they made it but I won’t be testing fate with sending another of my loved ones that way. When you come, we will meet you somewhere.
That being said, we had a really great time with my parents and at least the weather cooperated. Their trip took them to Savusavu for a couple of days (having been stranded by the lack of a boat) then to Koro where they got their dose of sitting on the floor and wearing funny clothing. My Dad took to wearing a skirt like he was born to do it. Then we headed for greener pastures, first to the Coral Coast of Viti Levu for a night, to Denerau for one night that got extended to 2 based on Sally and I being unable to quit the luxury after just one night. Then we headed to Nacula Island, one the last in the Yasawa chain, next to the island where they filmed Blue Lagoon (which we watched on an impossibly small screen while we were there). It was amazing and we stayed on what was probably the most picturesque strip of beach that I have ever seen. We did a bunch of snorkeling, Sally and I dove, we hiked the island, and otherwise pretended that we don’t live here and were just visiting. It was wonderful to just be a tourist. Sadly, they headed out on Tuesday and we came home here to face the music. To top it all off, there is a hurricane heading our way—should be here on Sunday or Monday. That should make moving easy.
Well, I am working on the photos from the trip with my parents and should have that for your viewing pleasure. In the meantime, I am going to head down to the village to drink some grog as my way of showing support for the women’s fundraiser to make enough money to build a bread kitchen. If we are staying here, it sure would be nice to not have to make my own bread.
Where does that leave us? Well, to my right I have noticed a large boulder and to my left a nondescript hard place. There is a house available in the village that may or may not meet Peace Corps security requirements. There would be no garden and no privacy, no view of the ocean from the porch, and nowhere to put anything. On the positive, it is a 6-year-old’s stone throw from the ocean, it is nice and big, and is shaded by a big tree. It is in the village, instead of above it, which has its positives and negatives. The house may be the least of our concerns as Peace Corps appears to be leaning toward pulling us out for a variety of reasons but boiling down to Sally’s counterpart turning out to be crazy and her associated loss of half of her job along with the deteriorating reliability of our transportation to/from the island. When we were posted here there were 2 boats/week and one plane/week. The plan got canceled and the boat was reduced to 1/week. Last week the boat broke. You can do the math. That happened to coincide with my parents’ visit which was overcome only by a death-defying maneuver that will be explained in further detail later (to keep you reading!).
So, where are we going if we leave is the million dollar question?!? More to the point, if you are about to send chocolate or a car or just a letter, stop the mail! Wait! We don’t know where we are heading and while we can probably have things forwarded, it would be best to hold off until we know more later in the week. We will either be moving into a new house on Wednesday or into a truck to go to Suva. You may commence sending delicious treats upon my command after Wednesday. There are one and a half options on the table. The most viable option is a site in rural Vanua Levu whose name escapes me. I told it is a great site. There was a health volunteer there until last year and the volunteer from our group who was to replace him went home. I do not know what we would be doing for work, but I can assume that it would be a significant step down from my current position, which is actually looking up.
Option 0.5 is Nacula Island in the Yasawas and while I am being told by the Peace Corps office that it is probably not going to work, I am pushing for it anyway. This is where my folks and I went for vacation last week and the place is amazingly beautiful in addition to having some serious needs. Knowing that we may be getting the flip-flop (that’s like the boot, but no one has those here) from our site here, I fielded them out for having a volunteer and they were thrilled about the idea. As it turns out, they had already submitted an application for a volunteer! Anyway, the timeline is much too fast for us to be out this week and in to an undeveloped site but I am not giving up that easily. That place was crazy-beautiful.
So, my parents came to visit and after having two visits from friends and family, I now know one thing: we will not be bringing any more visitors to Koro Island. The transportation to/from the island has now gotten the best of otherwise well-laid plans. For us, a boat that is, say, a week late or canceled entirely is not that big of a deal. On Fiji time, whether one goes this week or next is not that important. The importance is considerably magnified in the course of an American 2-week vacation. So, the Coffmans got stuck on the island and my parents got stuck off of it (or we got stuck on it, depending on your perspective). The ferry broke this time so there was no boat. My parents ended up paying out the nose to take a small fiberglass boat 3 hours across the Koro Sea in 25 knot winds. I did this to may parents, on my mother’s 60th birthday no less. (Did I tell you about the last time my parents visited me in a foreign land when my mother broke her ankle. (Worst son ever.) Well, they made it but I won’t be testing fate with sending another of my loved ones that way. When you come, we will meet you somewhere.
That being said, we had a really great time with my parents and at least the weather cooperated. Their trip took them to Savusavu for a couple of days (having been stranded by the lack of a boat) then to Koro where they got their dose of sitting on the floor and wearing funny clothing. My Dad took to wearing a skirt like he was born to do it. Then we headed for greener pastures, first to the Coral Coast of Viti Levu for a night, to Denerau for one night that got extended to 2 based on Sally and I being unable to quit the luxury after just one night. Then we headed to Nacula Island, one the last in the Yasawa chain, next to the island where they filmed Blue Lagoon (which we watched on an impossibly small screen while we were there). It was amazing and we stayed on what was probably the most picturesque strip of beach that I have ever seen. We did a bunch of snorkeling, Sally and I dove, we hiked the island, and otherwise pretended that we don’t live here and were just visiting. It was wonderful to just be a tourist. Sadly, they headed out on Tuesday and we came home here to face the music. To top it all off, there is a hurricane heading our way—should be here on Sunday or Monday. That should make moving easy.
Well, I am working on the photos from the trip with my parents and should have that for your viewing pleasure. In the meantime, I am going to head down to the village to drink some grog as my way of showing support for the women’s fundraiser to make enough money to build a bread kitchen. If we are staying here, it sure would be nice to not have to make my own bread.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Make you Laugh, Make you Cry
Well, I feel like until now I have put a pretty brave face on life here, describing with rapturous humor and wit our joys of living here in Fiji and on Koro Island. Typically, that has had a positive spin as I regale you with tales of gardening and snorkeling, flowers and sunshine. However, since my aim here is journalistic accuracy, and since my motto has always been, “Providing a fair, balanced and egocentric account of Fiji since 2009” I am afraid that this posting will not have its usual flair and buoyancy. “How could that be?!” I can hear you asking. Well, here is how.
We are being kicked out of our house. We may have to leave the island and go to a new placement. That is the short story and except for the first sentence, I may be exaggerating. Here is what happened. Our house is on the high school compound along with all of the other teacher’s houses. Since most of the teachers come from other places in Fiji, the high school is responsible for housing them. Usually there are more houses than there are teachers so the standard practice is to hire teachers then count houses. That method appears to have backfired. The reason for the usual excess of houses is that Fijians typically don’t like to live alone. So, if a teacher is single, they will often choose to live with other single people. Thus there would be a house with maybe three teachers sharing and houses to spare, as was the case last year. This year, just about every teacher is married with kids so need their own house. That includes ours. To solve the problem, the high school took Sally’s classes from her and then said we weren’t contributing to the school. (Never mind all of the other work we have done for the school.) Hence our house should be given to a teacher…who comes on Wednesday…on the same boat as my parents. Nice timing.
Rest assured, they promised that they won’t kick us out that day, but we don’t have much time. So the scramble has begun. We are really hoping that the village where we do most of our work will pony up and provide us a house, but if they can’t get that together, I think that we will be pulled off of Koro and placed somewhere else. That would be a huge bummer after 6 months of work here—not that all of it was productive, but at least we are on some sort of trajectory. Really, I just can’t stand the thought of losing my garden. It feels like someone is taking my child from me, I have put so much of myself into it. We have friends here and we are just about to get going on some major projects—a bread oven for the women’s group and a hydroelectric project to replace the diesel generator in addition to our “day jobs” (Sally at the high school and the clinic, me doing Marine Protected Area work). The thing is that it is pretty clear that Peace Corps is less than thrilled with how this site is working out. When we came here, there were 2 boats per week and 1 plane per week. That went down to 1 boat per week and then a couple of months ago, the plane stopped coming, leaving just 1 boat per week. That has made it very expensive for Peace Corps to have us here because any time that we leave, we are often gone for 2-3 weeks, like our last trip to Suva in which Peace Corps had to put us up in a (crappy) hotel for 2 weeks for a 3-day workshop. Communication has also proved to be fairly difficult. So, they may be looking for a reason to get us off the island and this may be it.
The sad thing is that we may be looking for a way off as well. I say that because we have had some pretty significant problems with our respective “jobs.” Sally has essentially been removed from the equation, through no fault of her own, from the high school, even though that is who invited her here in the first place. I finally got my very large grant to manage the natural resources on the island which has started a money and power grab and it has gotten ugly. I now absolutely regret getting this money and I feel like this is going to cause more problems than it will solve. There were already fairly insurmountable political issues happening between individuals before I got here and now the money has compounded those problems. Whether we stay or go, I am actively retreating from this project anyway and depending on how bad it gets, may be asking the grant agency to stop payments.
But it is not all doom and gloom. The New Year has brought a new outlook in village work. There is quite a bit of motivation and we are in the middle of it. We just went to a pretty great workshop on alternative livelihoods and we are excited to put that into practice. The weather is hot but the rains finally arrived meaning that we get a shower or two per day to cool us off. The tomatoes are going gangbusters and we just entered avocado season! And my parents are coming to visit this week, which is really exciting. Our last friends came and helped us ride out a cyclone and my parents can come and help us pack. You see what wonders await you when you come to visit?! Anyway, my parents are coming here for a week and barring another cyclone, we are all going to the Yasawas for a week. If you don’t know about the Yasawas, it is the Fiji that everyone writes home about—literally because that is where most of the tourists go for good reason. We are going to the last island that the boat goes to so we will be going to the least touristy of the touristy area. We are homeless, but we are homeless in Fiji. We could be homeless in Mongolia or Latvia (actual Peace Corps posts). When I am sitting on my porch in January with shorts on, breathing in the ocean breeze with a book in my lap, I often like to say, “I hear that Kazakhstan is lovely this time of year.”
We are being kicked out of our house. We may have to leave the island and go to a new placement. That is the short story and except for the first sentence, I may be exaggerating. Here is what happened. Our house is on the high school compound along with all of the other teacher’s houses. Since most of the teachers come from other places in Fiji, the high school is responsible for housing them. Usually there are more houses than there are teachers so the standard practice is to hire teachers then count houses. That method appears to have backfired. The reason for the usual excess of houses is that Fijians typically don’t like to live alone. So, if a teacher is single, they will often choose to live with other single people. Thus there would be a house with maybe three teachers sharing and houses to spare, as was the case last year. This year, just about every teacher is married with kids so need their own house. That includes ours. To solve the problem, the high school took Sally’s classes from her and then said we weren’t contributing to the school. (Never mind all of the other work we have done for the school.) Hence our house should be given to a teacher…who comes on Wednesday…on the same boat as my parents. Nice timing.
Rest assured, they promised that they won’t kick us out that day, but we don’t have much time. So the scramble has begun. We are really hoping that the village where we do most of our work will pony up and provide us a house, but if they can’t get that together, I think that we will be pulled off of Koro and placed somewhere else. That would be a huge bummer after 6 months of work here—not that all of it was productive, but at least we are on some sort of trajectory. Really, I just can’t stand the thought of losing my garden. It feels like someone is taking my child from me, I have put so much of myself into it. We have friends here and we are just about to get going on some major projects—a bread oven for the women’s group and a hydroelectric project to replace the diesel generator in addition to our “day jobs” (Sally at the high school and the clinic, me doing Marine Protected Area work). The thing is that it is pretty clear that Peace Corps is less than thrilled with how this site is working out. When we came here, there were 2 boats per week and 1 plane per week. That went down to 1 boat per week and then a couple of months ago, the plane stopped coming, leaving just 1 boat per week. That has made it very expensive for Peace Corps to have us here because any time that we leave, we are often gone for 2-3 weeks, like our last trip to Suva in which Peace Corps had to put us up in a (crappy) hotel for 2 weeks for a 3-day workshop. Communication has also proved to be fairly difficult. So, they may be looking for a reason to get us off the island and this may be it.
The sad thing is that we may be looking for a way off as well. I say that because we have had some pretty significant problems with our respective “jobs.” Sally has essentially been removed from the equation, through no fault of her own, from the high school, even though that is who invited her here in the first place. I finally got my very large grant to manage the natural resources on the island which has started a money and power grab and it has gotten ugly. I now absolutely regret getting this money and I feel like this is going to cause more problems than it will solve. There were already fairly insurmountable political issues happening between individuals before I got here and now the money has compounded those problems. Whether we stay or go, I am actively retreating from this project anyway and depending on how bad it gets, may be asking the grant agency to stop payments.
But it is not all doom and gloom. The New Year has brought a new outlook in village work. There is quite a bit of motivation and we are in the middle of it. We just went to a pretty great workshop on alternative livelihoods and we are excited to put that into practice. The weather is hot but the rains finally arrived meaning that we get a shower or two per day to cool us off. The tomatoes are going gangbusters and we just entered avocado season! And my parents are coming to visit this week, which is really exciting. Our last friends came and helped us ride out a cyclone and my parents can come and help us pack. You see what wonders await you when you come to visit?! Anyway, my parents are coming here for a week and barring another cyclone, we are all going to the Yasawas for a week. If you don’t know about the Yasawas, it is the Fiji that everyone writes home about—literally because that is where most of the tourists go for good reason. We are going to the last island that the boat goes to so we will be going to the least touristy of the touristy area. We are homeless, but we are homeless in Fiji. We could be homeless in Mongolia or Latvia (actual Peace Corps posts). When I am sitting on my porch in January with shorts on, breathing in the ocean breeze with a book in my lap, I often like to say, “I hear that Kazakhstan is lovely this time of year.”
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Hot...so...hot...
It is 94°F…in my kitchen. It has been 94°F in my kitchen for long enough to where Sally decided that the thermometer always said that. So, we took the thermometer (a meat thermometer that the Coffmans brought us!) out of the kitchen into the living area. We realized the thermometer appears to be working since the temperature immediately dropped to 85°F. That seems reasonable. This morning, when I looked at it, the temperature was all the way down to 82°F which is almost down to clothes-wearing temperature. The humidity helps because it is sort of like swimming everywhere.
We appear to be in a drought. The thing is that when there is an El Niño in your part of the world, that rain water is coming from somewhere. That somewhere is my garden and I want my rain back. From what I hear, you all would be more than willing to give it back but since no one knows who is in charge of these things, we appear to be at a loss for blame. (The obvious would be of course to blame God, but from what I can tell, people only like to assign the good parts of life to God. The bad parts are still as-yet unexplained to me. Perhaps God takes weekends and 2 weeks per year off. That would explain the spike in drunk driving homicides on Saturday nights and the periodic natural disaster.) But I digress. FROM WHAT?!? This whole blog is a digression, so I will continue.
A few weeks ago, I got a call from a neighboring village that there is a problem with a sea creature attacking the women as they fish. So my counterpart and I headed down there to dig up the dirt on this sea creature. It turned out to be a small sea jelly that was amassing in the thousands and stinging the women as they fished. The problem is that they didn’t feel anything while they were in the water so they just carried on. When they got out of the water, the trouble started. It was a head-to-toe itch, pain, and fever for a few days. Bummer, right? Not much to be done but stay out of the water when they are around, I say.
But upon further review, that wasn’t the extent of the story. You see, these sea jelly attacks were happening only in the tabu (marine protected area), an area closed to fishing, that had been opened up temporarily over the holidays. It also turned out that the tabu area was not opened up correctly. When you open a tabu, you are supposed to first clear it with the Komiti ni Qoliqoli (Fishing Committee) then have a sevusevu ceremony where you offer up some kava, then pray over the whole thing. That didn’t happen. It was just opened up, so the blame for the sea jelly attack fell squarely on the shoulders of those who opened the tabu area. Evidently, nature gets pissed when you don’t do things the right way. I started to open my mouth to bring some logic to the matter, but I didn’t. Really, whatever keeps that tabu area closed is fine with me, and if it is fear of packs of sea jellies that stalk the seas looking for poorly executed protocol to strike, fine by me.
Then I thought about this a little more. What the hell do I know? My counterpart explained it quite well at the meeting. The Fijian word for the environment is yaubula, but the word environment doesn’t quite do it justice. The word bula means just about anything you want it to mean in Fijian but really it means “life” or living. Yau, in this context, means “wealth” or “riches.” Yaubula is all of the stuff that is alive: forests, people, and seas jellies. And more importantly, God is in charge of all of this. You mess with one and you mess with them all. If you don’t do things the way that they are supposed to be done, marauding sea jellies may be the least of your problems. We often don’t have any idea what the consequences of not doing things the right way are, thinking that we do. Little white lies we don’t think will amount to much end up amounting to a lot. We used to think that damming rivers was a great idea. If the sentence starts with, “Nobody gets hurt if I…” chances are someone is getting hurt, or will eventually. Do I really think that keeping sea jellies out of the bay teeters on the wording of a ceremony? No, but I do think that things are a lot more connected than our western brains and way of life allow for.
It is now February, which puts us at the 8 month mark, 6 months at site. The school year just started and there has been a pretty big turnover of teachers. That means that we have a bunch of new neighbors, and after having no neighbors for 2 months, the place feels weirdly crowded. That being said, it does mean the return of 4 hours of electricity every day! After having 0-2 hours for the last two months, 4 hours feels like an absurdity of riches. Who needs 4 hours? We can’t even use that much? I keep looking for things to charge, but they are all charged! We even watched a 3-hour movie last night (The Great Escape, a pretty good classic). Next week, Sally and I head to Suva for 2 weeks for a training, but we are really going to the training because it is a chance to get off the island for a little bit. The training is only 3 days, but the way that the boat schedule works, we have to be gone for two weeks. I am going to eat cheese. We were sitting on our porch one evening and I turned to Sally and asked, “Do you remember appetizers? Those are awesome.” I think that I will have some of those too.
Then my parents come. We are really excited about this because they will get a chance to see Koro and then we are heading off to veg out in the island paradise of the Yasawas for a week. I mean, we live in an island paradise, but when you live there it doesn’t feel so much like paradise. You know too much about it. In order for it to be paradise, you need to go to another island and that is what we are doing.
Here we are at this crazy waterfall that you have to swim up to in Taveuni. There's a cool waterslide too!
Then there was this waterfall, straight out of some cheesy set. Only, it's real.
Just give me a reason to jump off a waterfall.
Home ain't so bad either. This is from the roof the day we got back.
We appear to be in a drought. The thing is that when there is an El Niño in your part of the world, that rain water is coming from somewhere. That somewhere is my garden and I want my rain back. From what I hear, you all would be more than willing to give it back but since no one knows who is in charge of these things, we appear to be at a loss for blame. (The obvious would be of course to blame God, but from what I can tell, people only like to assign the good parts of life to God. The bad parts are still as-yet unexplained to me. Perhaps God takes weekends and 2 weeks per year off. That would explain the spike in drunk driving homicides on Saturday nights and the periodic natural disaster.) But I digress. FROM WHAT?!? This whole blog is a digression, so I will continue.
A few weeks ago, I got a call from a neighboring village that there is a problem with a sea creature attacking the women as they fish. So my counterpart and I headed down there to dig up the dirt on this sea creature. It turned out to be a small sea jelly that was amassing in the thousands and stinging the women as they fished. The problem is that they didn’t feel anything while they were in the water so they just carried on. When they got out of the water, the trouble started. It was a head-to-toe itch, pain, and fever for a few days. Bummer, right? Not much to be done but stay out of the water when they are around, I say.
But upon further review, that wasn’t the extent of the story. You see, these sea jelly attacks were happening only in the tabu (marine protected area), an area closed to fishing, that had been opened up temporarily over the holidays. It also turned out that the tabu area was not opened up correctly. When you open a tabu, you are supposed to first clear it with the Komiti ni Qoliqoli (Fishing Committee) then have a sevusevu ceremony where you offer up some kava, then pray over the whole thing. That didn’t happen. It was just opened up, so the blame for the sea jelly attack fell squarely on the shoulders of those who opened the tabu area. Evidently, nature gets pissed when you don’t do things the right way. I started to open my mouth to bring some logic to the matter, but I didn’t. Really, whatever keeps that tabu area closed is fine with me, and if it is fear of packs of sea jellies that stalk the seas looking for poorly executed protocol to strike, fine by me.
Then I thought about this a little more. What the hell do I know? My counterpart explained it quite well at the meeting. The Fijian word for the environment is yaubula, but the word environment doesn’t quite do it justice. The word bula means just about anything you want it to mean in Fijian but really it means “life” or living. Yau, in this context, means “wealth” or “riches.” Yaubula is all of the stuff that is alive: forests, people, and seas jellies. And more importantly, God is in charge of all of this. You mess with one and you mess with them all. If you don’t do things the way that they are supposed to be done, marauding sea jellies may be the least of your problems. We often don’t have any idea what the consequences of not doing things the right way are, thinking that we do. Little white lies we don’t think will amount to much end up amounting to a lot. We used to think that damming rivers was a great idea. If the sentence starts with, “Nobody gets hurt if I…” chances are someone is getting hurt, or will eventually. Do I really think that keeping sea jellies out of the bay teeters on the wording of a ceremony? No, but I do think that things are a lot more connected than our western brains and way of life allow for.
It is now February, which puts us at the 8 month mark, 6 months at site. The school year just started and there has been a pretty big turnover of teachers. That means that we have a bunch of new neighbors, and after having no neighbors for 2 months, the place feels weirdly crowded. That being said, it does mean the return of 4 hours of electricity every day! After having 0-2 hours for the last two months, 4 hours feels like an absurdity of riches. Who needs 4 hours? We can’t even use that much? I keep looking for things to charge, but they are all charged! We even watched a 3-hour movie last night (The Great Escape, a pretty good classic). Next week, Sally and I head to Suva for 2 weeks for a training, but we are really going to the training because it is a chance to get off the island for a little bit. The training is only 3 days, but the way that the boat schedule works, we have to be gone for two weeks. I am going to eat cheese. We were sitting on our porch one evening and I turned to Sally and asked, “Do you remember appetizers? Those are awesome.” I think that I will have some of those too.
Then my parents come. We are really excited about this because they will get a chance to see Koro and then we are heading off to veg out in the island paradise of the Yasawas for a week. I mean, we live in an island paradise, but when you live there it doesn’t feel so much like paradise. You know too much about it. In order for it to be paradise, you need to go to another island and that is what we are doing.
Here we are at this crazy waterfall that you have to swim up to in Taveuni. There's a cool waterslide too!
Then there was this waterfall, straight out of some cheesy set. Only, it's real.
Just give me a reason to jump off a waterfall.
Home ain't so bad either. This is from the roof the day we got back.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Party Like Time is Relative
Well, here it is, January 11th and New Years celebrations appear to be here to stay. Evidently, New Years Eve lasts 2 weeks. It all starts with Church, as most things do here, for three hours leading up to the actual New Year. Oh, by the way, due to an experiment with Daylight Savings Time this year, we celebrated the New Year before it was even theoretically possible. You see, Fiji is 12 hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time which is the maximum. There is no 13 hours ahead because that would put you over the International Date Line and into yesterday (take that Tonga!!). Fiji is the first country to see each new day and hence each New Year. However, this year Fiji is giving Daylight Savings a try, putting us 13 hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time. Impossible you say! Agreed. We are the same time as Tonga now but it is tomorrow from Tonga. I believe that makes the nation of Fiji the first documented case of time travel into the future and I am proud to say that I was/am/will be here.
Anyway, back to our theoretically impossibly early New Year, once the New Year comes in and church is over, it is time for the water to start. They say that there is some connection between the cleansing powers of water and bringing in the New Year right, but what that ultimately looks like is people throwing each other in the river and if you happen to have some sort of vessel, bringing the river to each other by surprise. It is really fun and lasts for two weeks. That means at any time, someone can grab you and haul you into the river or just surprise attack you with a bucket of water, be you on your way to church, in a meeting, whatever. The good news is that it is really hot out so this is not a bad thing.
To accompany the two weeks of water fights, there is incessant drumming. Each village in Fiji has what is called a lali which is a drum made from a hollowed out trunk that, when played with sticks, is very loud and carries for miles. Historically, it was used to communicate between villages, call villagers in the case of an attack, or call people to work or meetings. Now, it is still used as the village timepiece, letting you know when meetings and church are starting. Well, during the 2 weeks of mayhem, anyone is allowed to play the lali day or night. That usually involves kids beating on it from sunup until, well, sunup. Nonstop. Then there are the cannons. These are hollowed out lengths of bamboo that when are heated up (with fire) and then aerated a certain way with vaporized kerosene, then lit on fire make an unholy boom that really carries. Right now there appear to be dueling cannons on either side of the village going. The point of this seems to be to point this at someone and scare the living bejesus out of them. It really is fun, especially because you are already living with the fear of being thrown in the river at any time while being shot at. The rest of the time you just party.
Now, let’s talk about teeth. In America, you can tell a person’s socioeconomic strata purely by their teeth. Anyone with any expectations of lower middle class through high class has all of their teeth. If one happens to have lost a tooth along the way, from a chainsaw accident perhaps, one finds a way to pay for something that fools people into believing that one has all of their teeth. Missing one tooth puts you somewhere in the realm of lower middle class but might bring with a sort of cache representing a “countercultural” past wherein one got into a barfight or two but now is a contributing member of society…just with a hard core past. It is sort of a badge of honor, but must be accompanied by faded tattoos of lurid scenes. Missing more than one tooth puts one squarely in the lower classes because one either does not care what people think or does not have the means to care what people think. Either case is often the result of addiction.
In Fiji, all bets are off regarding teeth. There are people with full sets of healthy teeth and others who look like they won a rock chewing contest. Neither scenario is correlated with social station. There are people who run the country who don’t have any teeth to speak of. It is a real problem for me, conditioned as I am to judge based on dental metrics. If I sit down in a meeting and the person sitting opposite of me has no teeth, I am inclined to kindly ask them to leave as I have a very important meeting with someone or other. That person often is that someone or other. The island head man, missing all kinds of teeth; our village chief, barely a tooth to be found; one of my good friends, missing half of his top teeth. When one can’t judge a man by his teeth, it becomes very difficult to effectively look down on people with any accuracy.
Anyway, back to our theoretically impossibly early New Year, once the New Year comes in and church is over, it is time for the water to start. They say that there is some connection between the cleansing powers of water and bringing in the New Year right, but what that ultimately looks like is people throwing each other in the river and if you happen to have some sort of vessel, bringing the river to each other by surprise. It is really fun and lasts for two weeks. That means at any time, someone can grab you and haul you into the river or just surprise attack you with a bucket of water, be you on your way to church, in a meeting, whatever. The good news is that it is really hot out so this is not a bad thing.
To accompany the two weeks of water fights, there is incessant drumming. Each village in Fiji has what is called a lali which is a drum made from a hollowed out trunk that, when played with sticks, is very loud and carries for miles. Historically, it was used to communicate between villages, call villagers in the case of an attack, or call people to work or meetings. Now, it is still used as the village timepiece, letting you know when meetings and church are starting. Well, during the 2 weeks of mayhem, anyone is allowed to play the lali day or night. That usually involves kids beating on it from sunup until, well, sunup. Nonstop. Then there are the cannons. These are hollowed out lengths of bamboo that when are heated up (with fire) and then aerated a certain way with vaporized kerosene, then lit on fire make an unholy boom that really carries. Right now there appear to be dueling cannons on either side of the village going. The point of this seems to be to point this at someone and scare the living bejesus out of them. It really is fun, especially because you are already living with the fear of being thrown in the river at any time while being shot at. The rest of the time you just party.
Now, let’s talk about teeth. In America, you can tell a person’s socioeconomic strata purely by their teeth. Anyone with any expectations of lower middle class through high class has all of their teeth. If one happens to have lost a tooth along the way, from a chainsaw accident perhaps, one finds a way to pay for something that fools people into believing that one has all of their teeth. Missing one tooth puts you somewhere in the realm of lower middle class but might bring with a sort of cache representing a “countercultural” past wherein one got into a barfight or two but now is a contributing member of society…just with a hard core past. It is sort of a badge of honor, but must be accompanied by faded tattoos of lurid scenes. Missing more than one tooth puts one squarely in the lower classes because one either does not care what people think or does not have the means to care what people think. Either case is often the result of addiction.
In Fiji, all bets are off regarding teeth. There are people with full sets of healthy teeth and others who look like they won a rock chewing contest. Neither scenario is correlated with social station. There are people who run the country who don’t have any teeth to speak of. It is a real problem for me, conditioned as I am to judge based on dental metrics. If I sit down in a meeting and the person sitting opposite of me has no teeth, I am inclined to kindly ask them to leave as I have a very important meeting with someone or other. That person often is that someone or other. The island head man, missing all kinds of teeth; our village chief, barely a tooth to be found; one of my good friends, missing half of his top teeth. When one can’t judge a man by his teeth, it becomes very difficult to effectively look down on people with any accuracy.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
I am Joining the Fijian Police
I am joining the Fijian Police. Not only are they in good with the latest coup supported dictator, but they have the best marching band that I have seen since Stanford. Here is how it all started. When Sally was in As I was walking up, I could hear some music which, as I got closer turned out to be a recording of “I Did It My Way.” Or was it? No wait, it was live, big band, conductor, singer and all. Sinatra was immediately followed by an Elvis Presley medley and then to make sure the experience was absolutely surreal, White Christmas. What’s more, it was good—really good. They had French horns for crying out loud. Where did they even find those, much less learn to play them? (That being said, the guy playing the instrument I now call “clapping hands” is a little circumspect. Something tells me his brother has some hiring authority in the force.) I have been of the mind that Fijians do a lot of things well enough but I hadn’t seen much evidence of proficiency much less virtuosity. These people were pros, right down to the uniforms. Men often wear skirts here, only we call them sulu. So, it was no big deal that the men were wearing skirts in the outfit, the cool part is that the bottom of their sulu are cut in a jagged shape like a jester’s would be. All of the police wear these, even when on patrol; it is just another reason why I am joining the police.
Then there was the marching. This is where it really got off the hook. They could march. Oh boy, could they march. It was witty, charming, sexy, you name it. They brought out the traditional Fijian dress for a couple of numbers and followed it by having the trombone players thrusting around. It was great. The best part of any performance however is always the person who I will call the “joiner.” This person is invariably an old, fat woman. Here is how it goes. Someone will be performing something that they have spent a significant portion of their life perfecting before this moment. As they are 
showing off their dancing, singing, etc ability, the “joiner” will take it upon herself to take the stage along with the accomplished performer and proceed to shake her (large) hips more or less to the music but almost certainly in a lewd and hysterical manner, thereby ruining the performance at hand. For the marching band, the “joiner” decided that she was also the drum major when she found a stick on the ground. As the whole point is to make an ass of herself and spoil the show, she did a very nice job. That is only outdone by the male version of this game where instead of old, fat woman, you have young, well-sculpted man. We will call him “retard” because that is the dance that he does. Now, lest you get up in arms about my use of the term “retard,” I am merely reporting the facts. That is what they call the dance. He gets up, upstages the performers and proceeds to impersonate someone dancing with mental and/or 
physical disabilities. (If you have not read my entry on Fijians and laughter, I recommend doing so now.) I have seen this at just about every performance that is not guarded by security. Then the security guard has to do it.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head
I guess the rainy season started because it has been raining nonstop for 4 days. Seriously, it hasn’t stopped once as far as I can tell. It wasn’t raining on the way to Church on Sunday. It started during and hasn’t stopped since. The worst part is that tomatoes and bell peppers die when the soil gets too wet, and that will be happening when the wet season really kicks in. That isn’t supposed to be for another month though and yesterday we just ate our first home grown bell pepper and tomato from the garden. It turns out that it takes 3 months for tomatoes and bell peppers to mature. Well, we got one anyway. I can’t wait for next year! Back to the rain, this place sure does get muddy. There isn’t anything paved anywhere so all of the roads and footpaths have become a sloppy mess. It is supposed to stay that way from Dec-March. Sounds like Portland, no? Luckily for us, we just had some of our roof replaced where it leaked quite badly.
If you read my last blog, you will remember that we were in the process of stealing a kitten from a 3 year-old. Well, I am happy to report: Mission Accomplished. I am pretty sure that makes us the worst people in the world. Who steals a kitten from a small child? Well, we do. This kitten is going; historically, naming a cat has resulted in an untimely death. To be clear, he is my favorite cat so far because by and large, he does his business outside, and yesterday successfully killed and ate a mouse. I will gladly feed a mouse killer, outside pooper.
The first two weeks of every month yaqona (kava, grog) is not allowed to be drunk in any village anywhere in the Lomaiviti Province. This is a big deal. Yaqona is an integral part of the culture and left to their own devices, Fijians will drink grog every night. The ban on grog is in place so that people will spend more time with their families and clear their heads a little. But, there are a few loopholes to this ban and after some study, I have come to understand the rules surrounding this ban. In the Lomaiviti Province, in the first 2 weeks of every month, the drinking of yaqona is strictly forbidden in all circumstances and without exception, except:
• When you are outside of the village compound, someone is visiting from out of town, there is a fundraiser, someone is born, someone dies, there is a formal function, it is the month of December or
• You really want to.
We just had our first visitors and it was amazing. The Coffmans had plans to visit laid before we even left for Fiji and last month made good on those plans. It was really great to have them here, share a bit of our life, hear about their lives, and travel around a little. Mostly it was great to have them here because they brought us booze. Turns out that you can bring 2.25L per person! Please keep this in mind for your visits. Anyway, they were here for a good chunk of December and managed to time their arrival just right to get stuck on Koro Island for our first cyclone (what you call a hurricane in Fiji). That didn’t exactly play into their hands for their dream vacation, but it meant that we had lots of entertainment (remember, they brought booze), so we were thrilled to have them here for that. We split time on Koro with them between our house in the village and the resort on the other side for some diving. Then we headed up to Taveuni for a couple of days before they flew out. That place is amazing: crazy diving, waterfalls, hiking, AND S
STORES!!
Here is Sally and Brian C diving together. They are dive buddies. My dive buddy is my camera!
We played dress up and took Brian and Heather to village. Brian is wearing a skirt. You don't have to wear them, but we didn't tell Brian that. He seemed a little too eager to give it a try and now Sally is missing some clothes. (Seriously, we want the black skirt back.)
We also introduced Brian and Heather to the finer points of Fijian life, namely husking and scraping coconuts. They got pretty good at it and more importantly, we ate well.
One night we got drunk. Heather is pouting because she was too pregnant to get her drink on. Brian is also telling a story which may be another reason she is pouting.
A real puffer fish! And all puffed up!
We took them to church which is a strange experience even if you know what is going on. You can't see it but Brian is wearing a skirt again. He just wouldn't take the thing off.
Mmmmm, yaqona. Brian, in his skirt, looks justifiably fearful.
Look at this cute little guy. Can you believe this is real?
Holidays without family suck. Let’s be clear about that. The Coffmans left on the 20th and we headed back to our house a couple of days before Christmas. Luckily for us, Christmas is a pretty low key affair here. Basically you just build these outdoor bamboo huts and hang out in them for a couple of weeks, eating as much as you can and drinking yaqona when you are not eating. Lot’s of folks came from out of town to be with their families here so there were lots of new faces, but there are no isolated family units and no exchanging of gifts. So, we didn’t feel lonely or isolated at all. Sally and I just pretended that it wasn’t Christmas. We are working under the assumption that Christmas has been canceled until 2011. If you would all comply with this, we would be grateful.
Now it is January and there is no work. Everyone is still traveling for the holidays and people who are here are committing themselves to drinking yaqona full-time. It is also pretty dang hot so hunkering down in the afternoon is pretty much de rigeur. That being said, I think that we are both ready for school to start back up so people remember that we are going about the business of making Koro Island a better place to live. Until then, we will be working on making naps better.
If you read my last blog, you will remember that we were in the process of stealing a kitten from a 3 year-old. Well, I am happy to report: Mission Accomplished. I am pretty sure that makes us the worst people in the world. Who steals a kitten from a small child? Well, we do. This kitten is going; historically, naming a cat has resulted in an untimely death. To be clear, he is my favorite cat so far because by and large, he does his business outside, and yesterday successfully killed and ate a mouse. I will gladly feed a mouse killer, outside pooper.
The first two weeks of every month yaqona (kava, grog) is not allowed to be drunk in any village anywhere in the Lomaiviti Province. This is a big deal. Yaqona is an integral part of the culture and left to their own devices, Fijians will drink grog every night. The ban on grog is in place so that people will spend more time with their families and clear their heads a little. But, there are a few loopholes to this ban and after some study, I have come to understand the rules surrounding this ban. In the Lomaiviti Province, in the first 2 weeks of every month, the drinking of yaqona is strictly forbidden in all circumstances and without exception, except:
• When you are outside of the village compound, someone is visiting from out of town, there is a fundraiser, someone is born, someone dies, there is a formal function, it is the month of December or
• You really want to.
We just had our first visitors and it was amazing. The Coffmans had plans to visit laid before we even left for Fiji and last month made good on those plans. It was really great to have them here, share a bit of our life, hear about their lives, and travel around a little. Mostly it was great to have them here because they brought us booze. Turns out that you can bring 2.25L per person! Please keep this in mind for your visits. Anyway, they were here for a good chunk of December and managed to time their arrival just right to get stuck on Koro Island for our first cyclone (what you call a hurricane in Fiji). That didn’t exactly play into their hands for their dream vacation, but it meant that we had lots of entertainment (remember, they brought booze), so we were thrilled to have them here for that. We split time on Koro with them between our house in the village and the resort on the other side for some diving. Then we headed up to Taveuni for a couple of days before they flew out. That place is amazing: crazy diving, waterfalls, hiking, AND S
STORES!!
Here is Sally and Brian C diving together. They are dive buddies. My dive buddy is my camera!
We played dress up and took Brian and Heather to village. Brian is wearing a skirt. You don't have to wear them, but we didn't tell Brian that. He seemed a little too eager to give it a try and now Sally is missing some clothes. (Seriously, we want the black skirt back.)
We also introduced Brian and Heather to the finer points of Fijian life, namely husking and scraping coconuts. They got pretty good at it and more importantly, we ate well.
One night we got drunk. Heather is pouting because she was too pregnant to get her drink on. Brian is also telling a story which may be another reason she is pouting.
A real puffer fish! And all puffed up!
We took them to church which is a strange experience even if you know what is going on. You can't see it but Brian is wearing a skirt again. He just wouldn't take the thing off.
Mmmmm, yaqona. Brian, in his skirt, looks justifiably fearful.
Look at this cute little guy. Can you believe this is real?
Holidays without family suck. Let’s be clear about that. The Coffmans left on the 20th and we headed back to our house a couple of days before Christmas. Luckily for us, Christmas is a pretty low key affair here. Basically you just build these outdoor bamboo huts and hang out in them for a couple of weeks, eating as much as you can and drinking yaqona when you are not eating. Lot’s of folks came from out of town to be with their families here so there were lots of new faces, but there are no isolated family units and no exchanging of gifts. So, we didn’t feel lonely or isolated at all. Sally and I just pretended that it wasn’t Christmas. We are working under the assumption that Christmas has been canceled until 2011. If you would all comply with this, we would be grateful.
Now it is January and there is no work. Everyone is still traveling for the holidays and people who are here are committing themselves to drinking yaqona full-time. It is also pretty dang hot so hunkering down in the afternoon is pretty much de rigeur. That being said, I think that we are both ready for school to start back up so people remember that we are going about the business of making Koro Island a better place to live. Until then, we will be working on making naps better.
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