Home Sweet Home

Sunrise over my island. This was when I was riding on the ferry back to the main land to go to an agricultural fair.

Taiyo! This is the dog that more or less belongs to my family. He comes to hang out sometimes and I managed to corner him the other day and give him a bath. I'm surprised he didn't do a back flip when I let him out of my shower, he was running around like a maniac. Sadly, he has a very short tail because the original owners cut it off when he was young. This is apparently common here but I have yet to understand why.

My luxurious full sized bed! That's right it's bigger than my bed back home. Although, what you can't see is that the springs inside have all sort of piled up on one end making this goofy rolling lump about two-thirds the way across and causing the end that I get in on to have no support whatsoever. It's quite deceiving and I seem to forget this fact every time I go to sit down on the end of it (actually it's kind of high so by sit down I clearly mean jump) and end up just sliding right off!

The other room in my house that is not the bedroom. Did I mention how much I love my house? The gas stove is awesome! That's it over there on the left, placed on top of the termite ridden old wooden stand. The blue bucket under the sink is for my food waste, which right now goes to the pigs until I get my compost set up. The sink leaks a little, hence the bin down below. The large silver thing on the counter is my official Peace Corps water filter. The posters on the door (I have 3 doors the main one being just out of view on the left) are of the most common food fish in Fiji. Frighteningly enough, many of the fish up there are the pacific relatives of many of the fish back home in the Giant Ocean Tank. The other day in fact, I ate a needlefish that was about the size of an Atlantic needlefish...

The other half of the room. My table is rarely sat at being that the thing to do is eat on the floor, although, unless I have a visitor over I usually sit in a chair and eat at the little pink table there facing out the door so I can yell at people as they walk by. I hang all non canned food to keep it away from ants and rats and mice and everything else...but sometimes it's a losing battle no matter what I do. The table is laden with all the spices I brought from home. I was originally very excited about this and about using them but as it turns out, spending 7 weeks within the same suitcase caused them all to taste the like a combination of garlic and cajun (regardless of how well they were individually wrapped).

My sitting area, complete with maps of Fiji, environmental posters, dead flowers on the shelf and my dear guitar. That would be door number three to the left and is directly opposite door number one. Those blue curtains are the entrances to my bedroom area. The thing I love most about my house is that there is always a lot of light!

There she is! That blue house in the background is my bathroom/shower.

The bathroom/shower. Flush toilet and a large shower with shelving and a tile floor. It's all really great, although no hot water, alas...

Can you spot my roommate? His name is Larry and he and his brothers tend to like that particular corner of my room including all of my hanging clothes. Larry will continue to be my roommate because I am too chicken to kill him. I don't know if you can actually tell but he is the length of my palm (longest leg to longest leg)! You try to kill that as it runs maniacally all over the place!!

One of my sisters crossing the Prince Williams Bridge. It is about 20 ft across, 4 ft high on the far end during low tide and 6 ft high on the near end. Shortly after this was taken the log she was walking on collapsed under the weight of two rather large gentlemen. So there is definitely no safety net anymore since the third log on the other end is too far from the center one. The other day I was crossing it with my sister to go training on the trails. I was a few steps behind her on the wobbling bridge when Taiyo ran up out of no where from behind and knocked me off! I managed to grab the log as I fell and did this graceful roll underneath it while managing to cling on having wrapped my legs and hands around it as best as I could. I then had to shimmy up to where there was land before I could dismount. I've never seen my sister laugh so hard.

Wailevu (ok actually that means big water, but it's only called that because of the river). This is my family's house for 6 months out of the year. In November, they'll move back down and a guy from Austria moves in for the winter. This is where my garden is located.

The view towards the ocean while standing on the bridge.

Sunset towards the main land! That island there is called Naigani.

The black sand beach in front of my village. I went running up the coast the other day to the next village over and nearly died on multiple occasions because once the beach ends it becomes slippery jagged rock. Won't be doing that again soon...

A Day in the Life of a Fiji PCV

Someone recently asked me what my typical day is like. Well then, let's see...

4:27 am - wake up to the rooster cockadoodledooing outside my window without even the hint of a sunrise on the horizon; after banging my tin walls enough he goes away and crows somewhere else. I fall back asleep.

6 am - wake up to the sound of my neighbor scraping coconuts, dogs fighting, and children yelling to each other

6:30 am - walk to the primary school where I do yoga/pilates with some volunteers from Australia before they go to school to teach

7:30 am - return home; try for the 5th time to make fluffy pancakes; end up with flat rubber disks (sometimes flat rubber disks with bananas) that I force down anyway out of pride (or spite?); invite everyone that walks by to join me for breakfast, as is custom, and wonder what I will actually do if someone decides to come in; give the rest of the rubber disks to the dogs outside my door

8:00 am - straighten up my bedroom area (open windows/curtains, clean up my bed/mosquito net, etc.); hear some pitter-pattering feet noises from my kitchen/sitting room, go into the kitchen/sitting room to investigate, find nothing and return to bedroom; notice that the chicken that strutted in during my absence has flapped its way onto my bed; proceed in vain to scare it off my bed only to terrify it into flying repeatedly into the window next to my bed whilst clucking madly and flinging its feathers everywhere; climb onto my bed and manage to corner it as it continues to attempt evasion; wrestle with it a little before managing to pin its wings down and getting a firm hold of it march it to my front door and hurl it into the open void where it flies (more or less) to the ground and continues its search for food, clearly flustered as to what just happened... yes, this happens almost everyday to some extent or another.

8:30 am - wash  my clothes by putting some in a bucket with water and detergent and pumping them up and down with a piece of pvc pipe; this actually works really well, though if there is a serious mud stain I will indeed bust out the scrub brush and board. I do my laundry about once a week, sometimes twice if I am washing my sheets.
             - clean the rest of my house; kill the hoards of ants that come piling in after the one crumb I missed; fight the absurdly large hornets (that try to nest everywhere) using an old badminton racquet; decide the grass going to my bathroom from my house is far too long and proceed in an attempt to cut it using a cane knife
             - work in my delightful garden (which I just started!) - pulling weeds and watering the beds using a leaky bucket that can hold about 1/20 the amount of water I will ultimately need to have watered it

12:00 pm -ish - lunch either at home or with my family at their house in "wai levu," which means big river (since their house is a bit separated from the village and is next to the big river, over which the Prince Williams Bridge spans)

1:00 pm -ish - go snorkeling on the reef or swimming in the waterfall or do a little work on possible projects/research, etc; possibly meet with some villagers or groups and participate in their activities (possibly a fundraiser event or sewing/dying fabric, etc.); last week the ministry of fisheries came to harvest the first ever fish ponds within the village, for which I took pictures.
    * Side story: When all of the fish had been harvested from the ponds and everyone was up at the big truck in the village waiting to buy some, I went back to the ponds to show another volunteer where they were and what they were about. En route, we ran into my "uncle," who so happens to be one of my favorite people in the village because he is particularly funny but also because he puts in a solid effort to help me with my Fijian and my settling in in general. He stopped us to ask where we were going and why we hadn't bought any fish. In the midst of our small conversation, I happened to glance down and notice that his pocket was bulging with fish tails! I saw it and just started laughing! I couldn't help it - the idea of this particular guy managing to shove some fish into his pockets while all the chaos of harvesting was happening, then, no one having noticed, try to surreptitiously make his way back to his own house without buying any of the fish, though managing to stop and harass me about it just struck me as hilarious. Of course he started laughing and we both had a good humored moment over it. I tried to take a picture of it but he valiantly did his best to hide it...

4:00 pm - train/go for a run with my sister or play volleyball with my cousins in the village; Fijians are incredibly good at volleyball. I've always prided myself on being a capable athlete - maybe not the best out there but at least capable; but man do they put me to shame! I continue to stick it out though and I'm getting better, or so it would seem - they are sending the ball to my direction more and more. It's the small victories...

5:30/6:00 pm -shower; watch the sunset over the ocean; proceed to cook dinner or walk up to wai levu for dinner with the fam

7:30 pm - share a movie with my family on my laptop or go off to drink grog in the village with my cousins or go play guitar with some really good players or just go home to read!

10:00-12:00am - sleep! Repeat!

So there's not too much going on here right yet. I am working on some pre-project ideas but we technically don't start our actual work until after our early service training in late sept. - mid oct. I'm mostly just settling in and integrating at the moment! It's been great so far!

 Next post will be pictures - I have them ready to go but the internet won't cooperate today. Maybe next week. :)

A Real Volunteer You Say? The Rumors Abound...

Pictures from our transition from being Peace Corps trainees to full-fledged volunteers.

The going away dinner that our host families in Kasavu prepared for us. The food was delicious!

Most of our families and us. My Na is on the far left in the middle wearing the blue/white striped shirt. The volunteers in the picture are Kim (center), Milli, me, Brian, and Jon (left to right, respectively). The woman behind Brian and I is Viri, our language coordinator.

My Na and I! :)

Tearful goodbyes on the morning of swearing in. In the front, from left to right is Brian's Na, my Na, Milli's Na and Tuvula, her brother.

Swearing in at the Novotel Resort. Sam and Tim are clearly shocked.

The current Fijian president, Ratu Epeli Nailatikau, giving the keynote speech.

A spider eating a beatle that was caught in its web. This was taken in my bure in Nadave during the ICCP conference (after swear-in but prior to site move-in). A group of us sat enthralled by this for a solid 20 minutes, taking pictures and videos from all different directions and angles and under different lighting. I put this particular picture up partly because it looks cool, partly because it conveys the level of entertainment available to us at times, and partly to remind everyone how much of a bio geek I am (and so many other volunteers!).

That's my island! Ovalau! This was while I was waiting for the ferry to come and ferry me across to my new home.

Some of the ladies in my new village. We were standing on the one road on the island waiting for the carrier truck transport to come and take us all into town. It usually comes around 8 AM and brings us home after a long day of shopping some hours later. It's an exhausting affair and so many of these villagers do it more than once a week lugging gas cylinders for refilling or sacks of crops to sell on the street.

This is the boardwalk in Levuka, the only real town on Ovalau (and naturally where I restock from). Levuka is known as the old capital of Fiji.

A church in Levuka.

The main drag.

The Levuka (or rather Ovalau) library! Being that I'm the newest member, the librarian allowed me to take this picture.

Dinner in my house with my new family on one of my first nights in the village. They live in a separate house across the village but they consider me their family none the less. From left to right: Taufa (my Na), Taji (tachi-my brother), Nau (the oldest sister), Nau Levu (in the back, she is my great aunt and neighbor), and Vika (the middle sister). My last sister I haven't met yet, since she is away at school in town.

Look out for more pictures of my house, village, and the absurd bridge that I have now traversed in the middle of the night without light and weilding a pot of soup!

Home Sweet Home!

So here I am at last! After nearly a year and a half of applications, essays, emails, medical exams, training, and travel I have officially made it to my project site for the next two years! I'm a real Peace Corps Volunteer at last.

I have been posted to a village on the island of Ovalau, which is more or less due east of the main island, Viti Levu. My house is modest and adorable. It is a little tin shack that is about 100 feet from the ocean. I am on the west coast of the island facing Viti Levu, so sunsets are breathtakingly beautiful; streaks of red and orange glistening off the calm water and creating a silhouette behind the mountainous islands in the distance. Directly behind me to the east, the land rises abruptly into steep, rugged green mountains; there are trees of every kind all across the land (lots of palms naturally) with lush green expanses sprinkled throughout.

The family that owns my house have stocked it magnificently; I have a gas stove, some pots and cooking utensils, a table and chairs (!), a very nice bed, and a sink! I do not have electricity, although I do have some wires hooked up to a car battery that supplies a enough energy to power a little dome light hanging from my ceiling. That along with a hurricane lantern, some candles, and a headlamp supply me with enough light to get by! I might be a bit of a dork but I can't help but feel a little giddy when I'm lying in bed under my mosquito net reading by candlelight :D.

So some things I've done so far: gone for a run along a small bumpy dirt road (umm... the main road on the island) through the jungle at sunrise; gone snorkeling along the reef outside my house; been chased through the village late at night during the full moon by a dog that started charging me from out of no where only to find out that he is actually "my" dog (or rather the dog that the previous volunteer owned and kept around the house and when he saw me coming out got really excited and ran up to jump on me...); accidentally interrupted the chief as he was introducing himself to me... woops; managed to full on launch myself into an elder woman's house when I went to borrow oil from her with my sister late one night (being that everything is so dark and I mis-gauged the doorstep...); traversed a twenty foot bridge (affectionately called the Prince Williams bridge) over a little river in order to get to my family's house - what made this terrifying is that the bridge was an 8 inch wide bouncy tree trunk and I was carrying every electronic device that I currently have in my possession and given my track record of tripping I was just a little nervous. !! I managed to survive and will be carrying my stuff in a dry sack from now on. :)

Well that's all for now! I will try to get pictures up soon. I am only able to access the one internet spot in the  main town on the island a couple of days a week. And being that it is a 3 hr affair that is fairly expensive I won't be able to come too frequently.

Meke ni Veli Pictures!

Looking intense ... or confused? Prior to our epic meke.

Lined up and doing the cobo (clapping  part that happens first). So far so good.

Kim and Brian mid dance. I can't tell if they're on the right step or not.

The tall ones in the group have just jumped into the ceiling.

And we lose it...Clearly, I have no idea what's going on. I'm doing one verse while Jon and Milli are looking to Rupeni for guidance on what the hell verse we're supposed to be on.

White powder slapped across the face and candy in the mouth. You try dancing while someone does this and not chip a tooth.

Jon, Milli, and Rupeni... apparently not doing anything but at least they're in agreement about it.

The cobo following the meke. The look of confusion explains a lot.

This was our audience!

 I hope those pictures can convey at least some of the feel of our meke. It was a really fun day and I think that even though we may have completely butchered the dance that everyone was entertained and our village appreciative of our efforts.

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So, this is a completely different day but I just had to post these pictures! A few weeks ago, I discovered that my host brother, much like every other Fijian, has never heard of smores or roasting marshmallows. In an effort to remedy this, my mom and dad lovingly and amazingly sent me two packs of jiffypuff marshmallows. And though it took over a month to reach me, they did arrive and they were intact and wonderfully fluffy. I then proceeded to instruct my brother on proper marshmallow roasting etiquette (just lats night!) and introduce him to the glory of smores (or rather make shift smores being that there are no graham crackers here; we used plain breakfast crackers and it more or less got the message across).

I may have created an addict...I think he had at least 6 of those delicious little sandwiches!

So after getting all hocked up on marshmallowy sugar, we decided to joke around. My brother was wearing a hoody because it was cold out (roughly 65F) and aside from me relentlessly picking on him for it he thought he looked like a regular 'hoodlum' ... so naturally this picture was taken as a result :).

Home-Stay Family Appreciation Day and Our Attempt at a Meke

Sorry no pictures again...The computer doesn't want to cooperate. Separate post I hope.

This past Saturday we celebrated Home-Stay Family Appreciation Day in my village. All of the trainees living in nearby villages brought their host families to our site for a day of food, music, and dancing; and by dancing I of course mean meke’s. A meke (meh kay) is a traditional Fijian dance that usually tells a story through song and acting out the moves. Some are designed to be funny while others are impressive and intimidating.

Our meke was about a dwarf named Veli; he had a long beard, white hair, and was apparently impossible to catch. Sounds intimidating to me but comedic seemed to be the theme that day. The other trainee groups also performed mekes that they had learned in their village. The difference was that we had seen all of theirs before, whereas no one had yet seen ours. Consequently, our meke ni veli turned out to be quite the hilarious catastrophe.

Firstly, because our village meeting hall is directly below our church and because there can be no dancing in the same building as the church, our village constructed an outdoor shed type thing to host the event. Corrugated tin sheets were held up by wooden posts across the lawn and it was open on all sides. This turned out to be an awesome forum for our celebration. Mats were put down over the grass as a floor and everyone was able to crowd in and find a seat.

The height of the roof was reasonably designed to accommodate anyone that was under roughly 6’ 6” but it was definitely not designed for people already over 6’ to be abruptly jumping upwards with all of their might, as we did during the first few moves in our meke. I, naturally, had no problem but the same cannot be said for others in my group…

We had lined up in front of the impressive crowd and looked fully awesome in our bula sulus, leaf skirts, and black war paint. We were stoked and ready to perform; the singers began beating the lali (a sort of drum) and singing the meke ni veli song. In the zone, we all started bobbing with our hands on our hips (the first move), casting around side to side to the quick beat trying to look like a tough little dwarf; then quickly, as if frightened, we all made a forceful jump straight up … and half my group cracked their heads into the tin roof making it warp and clang violently, causing some dazed dancers and some uproarious laughter from the crowd that temporarily drowned out the singers. It was all down hill from there.

Apparently, our normal group of singers that we had been rehearsing with (for two weeks prior) had decided that the time was opportune to leave for the day and go into town. Unfortunately, the group that replaced them didn’t really know what they were doing…or maybe they did and just wanted to mess with us…

After the first verse finished and the roof stopped shaking, they moved into the next verse. Instead of being the second verse of the song, what they sang was actually the third verse, but being that none of us are yet fluent in Fijian, half of our group was intently dancing out the moves to the second verse anyway while the other half confusedly took their lead from our meke teacher and did the third verse instead. Then the singers sang the real second verse, which would have been fine but (for whatever dumb reason) I assumed that they would have just played the third verse again (because it was technically time for the third verse I guess) and so I switched to dancing that one instead. Meanwhile everyone else (I think) had actually figured out what was going on by then and was performing the second verse.

To add to the confusion, the singers repeated some verses here and there, making me increasingly suspicious that they were messing up the meke on purpose. So by this point I was so damned lost all I could do was laugh and continue moving my limbs around hoping that I might occasionally get the configuration right. It didn’t help that people were coming up slapping baby powder on our faces and shoving candy in our mouths (as is tradition) while all of this was happening, just to add to the chaos.

When all was said and done, however, it turned out to be quite hilarious; and though we didn’t perform the most well organized meke out of the group we definitely made people laugh! The rest of the day people from our village kept coming up to us and thanking us for the wonderful meke we performed. I’m still not sure if they were being sarcastic or if they were just pleased that we tried (and, more likely, entertained by our fail).

We did perform a second meke after all of the other groups got a chance to run through theirs (and show us up in our own village). This one was called manipusi (translates into mongoose), and though we were definitely more coordinated it still turned out being just about as hilarious as the first one. Perhaps it was because we did it roughly seven times getting faster and faster with each turn.

The rest of the day was really nice. The Peace Corps gave a few thank you speeches and gave certificates to the host families to show their appreciation. We helped serve the monstrous lunch that the women (mostly) of our families prepared. I was actually blown away by how readily they took to the task of preparing the feast for about 75-100 people. All of the fish, cassava, and dalo (taro) were cooked in the lovo (underground oven), and there were huge pots full of chopsuey and chicken curry among many other things. By huge, I definitely mean you could fit a small child inside. No one here ever seems to complain about doing things like this; granted my language skills are limited, but you can definitely tell by body language if a person does not want to do something and I just haven’t seen it. People are happy to share and happy to host. What goes around comes around.

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These are my last few days of training. We swear in as official Peace Corps Volunteers on Monday July 4^th (and celebrate the 50^th Anniversary of the Peace Corps too!). After a brief conference to meet our village contact person, we ship off to our different destinations and finally begin life as a PCV! Wish me luck as the transition nears, that I’m able to pass my language exam, find and buy everything I need for my site (including a mattress?!…traveling could be interesting), pack, and manage a tearful goodbye to a community of people that I’ve grown to love!

Suva, Fishing, Iron Chef, and a New Embassy!

The view of Suva harbor.

The view from my hotel balcony where they had me stay during my time as a sick exile.

Downtown Suva

Kim and Brian prepping our food for the Iron Chef competition. We won with our pumpkin risotto...I'm still not sure how that happened.

The spread at Iron Chef! There were so many delicious dishes - various curries, coconut chutney, mini pizzas, roti, salads, make shift tacos and lentil burgers. There was much more but I can't remember.

Hacking up some thick mud in search of some nice big, juicy earth worms.

My Na walking us down the path to the creek. She's carrying the fishing poles that we would be using. Basically, a rod just consists of a long piece of wood with fishing line tied to one end, a piece of foam tied to the string a few feet from the tip and a hook tied to the other end. The string is just long enough that the hook can snag onto the bottom end of the pole for storage. They work pretty well!

Just look at our delicious catch! All fried up and ready to eat. There were a few different types of fish that we caught but I can't remember their names. The only one I recognized was Tilapia - that would be the big one. They did taste surprisingly good but the bones were a serious pain. Meat and fish are never de-boned here.

The new U.S. Embassy - this was at the official opening ceremony.

The U.S. Ambassador to Fiji (and other South Pacific islands) - Steven McGann

Village cont

Our living room is gecko central at night :)

Scraping cassava root to put in cassava coconut pie.

My brother teaching me how to peel the tough skin off cassava root.

Front of my house. If you look closely you can see the weight lifting bench.

My living room.

Our yard and cooking stove.

Our kitchen.

The communal under ground oven used for cooking called a lovo.