Monday, December 29, 2008

Year in Review, v. 2

2008 is almost over... in Fiji, anyway. I'm pretty amazed at how quickly this year has gone by considering I've spent over half of it here in Fiji. I've been thinking a lot about whether or not this is the new American Revolution for which many of us have been waiting. [Insert: some day i'll expound on this. Think about it, though, is all I'm saying.] We have a new president who is young, liberal, passionate, and yes, black. I've been thinking a lot about race and the conclusion I've come to, without being in the US during the whole election, is that yes, race does matter. Of course it matters. How can it not? I'm not saying I voted for Obama because he's non-white but it certainly helped. The involvement of so many disenfranchised youth and voters this year is astounding. The hope (while I'm getting sick of that word, it can't help but be used) he's brought to so many people is fantastic. The new direction of America is finally happening. I feel like people are awake, finally, now, after so many years of being in a daze, brainwashed and lied to and manipulated. The economy is in shambles. A new president. A new outlook. People seem to care again. I feel good for America. The country is on the brink of utter collapse and now it will (hopefully) evolve into something magnificent that it once stood for. Sermon ended.

What else. My part of 2008 in America feels like another world. I had the best birthday this year that I've had since I was 20. Best (and last) kickball game of my 3 year career. Best live concert to go out on a bang with- The New Pornographers. Best dance parties at the Majestic (Houses in Motion on my birthday, DJ Nick Nice). I could be found at the Orpheum during Happy Hour, Sundance, The Old Fashioned, The Paradise, The 'Bou. My favorite album of the year (out of the maybe 3 that I actually heard that came out this year)... Red Letter Year. How can Ani DiFranco consistently keep reinventing her sound and have it sound so freaking awesome? How is that possible?? My only grievance is that there are too many love songs and the production isn't up to snuff that the first two really strong tracks have... I guess when your partner is your producer and your baby's daddy, the love songs take on a different meaning. Best album I've rediscovered? Another Ani one: Revelling/Reckoning. It's so beautiful, so emotional, so political, so raw and simple. How have I overlooked that for the past 7 years?!?

BOOKS I READ IN 2008:
-The Virgin in the Garden, A.S. Byatt
-Falling Angels, Tracey Chevalier
-Population: 485, Michael Perry (note: I saw this book in the USP library in Suva! It cost something like $28!)
-The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte
-Love is a Mix Tape, Rob Sheffield
-In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan
-The Town and the City, Jack Kerouac
-A Whistling Woman, A.S. Byatt
-Tale of the City, Armistead Maupin
-Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
-Slapstick, Kurt Vonnegut
-Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson
-The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
-What is the What, Dave Eggers
-Down Under, Bill Bryson
-Grace (Eventually), Anne Lamott
-The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
-Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt
-A thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
-The Bookseller of Kabul, Asne Sierstad
-Banker to the Poor, Muhammad Yunus
-The Plot Against America, Philip Roth
-The Monkeywrench Gang, Edward Abbey
-The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell

THINGS I LEARNED IN 2008
-How to ask for help
-How to be helpless
-How to be alone
-How to husk, crack, scrape, and cook coconuts
-How to walk barefoot
-Patience
-How to eat what you absolutely don't want to eat and pretend you enjoy it (tinned fish, beef for example)
-How to hand wash my clothes
-How to cook with the fire (I can actually start it on my own now and have a really successful fire! Usually I can do it without kerosene- whoopee!)

We're almost done with our bread oven. First project: completed! Next we're on to getting septic tanks for all the houses in the village, a completed and upgraded footpath, and a market by the road while continuing to battle erosion. ***We're done with the bread oven and I wish I could get pictures up!! Next up is building a kitchen so we can start the bread making business and bring the women some dough (bad pun)!***


Christmas is over and I'm glad. Was it even Christmas? It felt like just another day. Here are some things I miss about Christmas in Wisconsin:
-Snow, and feeling cold then going inside and getting all warmed up
-Jewish coffee cake, truffles, creme de menthe squares, sugar cookies
-The smells: snow, pine, cooking
-wrapping presents
-Christmas carols- especially Amy Grant
-Christmas Eve... visiting with the Rowleys, cooking, finishing up everything, our family dinners
-All the awful symbols that make American holidays what they are: Santa, Rudolph, bells, holly, etc
-All those things we only get once a year, like the Christmas movies on TV and the books and decorations and ornaments

I decided to stay here for New Year's because there's a lot happening in the village. There's a wedding next weekend and then I'm thinking I might be do for a vacation.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

If anyone is planning on sending anything to me in the near future, I'm wondering if you could possibly include some trashy tabloid magazines.

Yesterday I made chocolate chip cookies. They actually turned out! I didn't burn them on the fire!!!! I consider that a great accomplishment. They're the first baked good I've actually made that tasted yummy. I think people here are so used to eating crappy processed desserts and overly sweet sweets that they don't quite get the perfection of a simple chocolate chip cookie.

I'm getting used to picking ants out of my tea or off my bread, grasshoppers hopping around my lantern and mosquito net, finding insects and creepy crawly creatures in my bread and veggies, fruit flies so massive I can hear them from inside my house, mice in my cupboard, geckos in my cupboard... it's weird that this is normal now to me. Weird in a good way.

Thanks for the holiday cheer! I think of Wisconsin often.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

reality

It's almost |Christmas... wow... it sure doesn't feel like it here! In church though they've been singing some carols- "Oh Holy Night" and "O Come all Ye Faithful" for a couple. They're beautiful sung a capella and in Fijian.

I got stung by another bee last night, this time on the toe and just sitting on a veranda drinking grog. It hurts but hasn't swelled up nearly as much as the other one did. This one kid got stung by three on his ears this weekend. They're really vicious.

Last night I blew out my lantern, laid down in bed, and those 20 seconds something plopped down next to me. Not to much surprise, it was a big old cockroach that I couldn't seem to get rid of.

I sometimes go to the Catholic church services which are held in one of the villager's houses. It's a simple service but I find that I enjoy the ritualism of the Catholic service. I don't know why I was surprised at some of the similarities; religion is religion wherever you go. it's been so long since I've gone to mass though that some simple things I can't remember, like the Apostle's Creed or even the prayer we used to say before eating.

I went to my first Fijian wedding this weekend. It lasted about 4 days. It was in a village not far from my mine, only about a 30 -45 min walk or so. I went Thurs. for the ceremony and went back Friday and Saturday nights for grog and dancing. There were a TON of people there and needless to say I did a lot of Fijian dancing. And grog drinking. The wedding isn't really that different: there's a church service, eating, gifts, and then a party. Men and women actually got to drink grog together (!) and it was family/villagers who cooked and served the food. One of my biggest surprises was the turtles. I couldn't bring myself to eat them. They look so helpless, these giant sea turtles on their backs killed mid stroke.

I guess that's about all. We start building the bread oven this week (I hope...). I'm here to buy supplies today. Things are moving along... If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if I'm going to marry a Fijian or told me I should stay here forever, I would be so unbelievably rich. Every mother wants to marry me away.

I really want to post more pictures but this time it's the computer that is the problem. I haven't had a problem opening my camera up before but the files are showing up as hidden every time I try to open up the folder. So... no pictures of the dead turtles, the wedding, my house, or my creatures.

If I'm not on here before, have a very merry christmas, make some snow angels for me, drink lots of apple knockers, and have a happy happy new year!!!!!!!!!!

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Hello hello hello from the Friendly North!

All is well up here in my new village. I'm adjusting to life near the ocean and in a bamboo bure. By that, I mean I'm enjoying the company of my new friends, Susan B Anthony and Lyndon B Johnson. Respectively, they are a giant black hairy spider and a toad. My other friends include cockroaches, bees, a gigantic gecko (seriously, it's enormous and eats my food!) and a buttload of flies. I want to post pictures of them but my camera battery just died and I can't.

Lets see, I eat fish every day. I'm ODing on fish, seriously, because it makes me sick after I eat so much. I eat a lot of crabs. We're not talking little crabs from Red Lobster; no, these things are the size of about three or four of my hands. They're huge. The pinchers are enormous and delicious.

I had my first big adventure last Friday. The village is nestled along a river which opens into the ocean. Along the river to the ocean is a mangrove swamp. It's big, but not too big. I've been going running in the mornings and how nice does it feel to take a swim after a hot run (I've had to start getting up closer to 5:30; by 6:30 the sun is too hot and too bright to be active!)? I decided on Friday that I would go to the ocean. I've swam in the ocean before and while it's not really cold (it's really, really warm and the sand in some places is so hot it burns your feet), it's refreshing and I think the salt does my skin good. So I decided I would go through the mangroves this time, a way that I went with one of the guys from the village a week earlier. ONly this time I went alone. And this time it was high tide, unbeknownst to me. I start trucking through the mangroves and guess what, I get lost. I try to stay along the river but it's so wet that I can't or I'll get stuck in the muck. It's fine and I'm lively as I climb over and through the trees and then I realize that it's actually not going to happen that I'll get to the ocean. So now I'm a little nervous and tired and hungry because I hadn't had my breakfast yet. I'm trying to make my way back but everything looks the same and I'm in a thicket of mature trees and young saplings. Oilei. And then the most awful striking pain hits my forearm under my elbow. It hurt like you wouldn't, wouldn't ever believe. Now I'm mad at myself and the pain in my arm is all I can think about. That and the sweat dripping off my face and how in the world could I get lost in the mangroves right at the edge of the village? Who does that?? I finally get out, far from where I started but coming in through where the church is being built. I show my arm to one of the women, because by now it's started to swell and it hurts ot move my arm, and she tells me it's a bee sting. By Saturday my arm had swelled up and there became a huge red welt. It itched and kept getting bigger. The redness persisted and the swelling did, too. It's finally going away but the redness is still there and it still itches. It's been awful, but of course has been a great way to get integrated into the community and something for us to laugh about. It's been quite the entertainment for everyone who are used to getting stung. But I've been stung before and never had this problem! No one seemed concerned; I even went to the health center to see the nurse who just said to put hydrocortesone on it.

Not having electricity is something I'm getting used to. We have a generator from 6:30- 9:30 pm but I don't actually have an outlet. Everyone who isn't drinking grog watches movie after movie at ridiculous speed. Then we light our lanterns and it's pitch dark.

I'm starting a project (already) that was started by the other PCV. We'll be building a bread oven for the Women's Group to take over. The village is giving us the money, compliments of a logging decision, and the other guy had already done the ground work to getting it built. So next week i get a $1000 cash and get to buy the materials. It's pretty exciting to get something going so soon! We have a lot more to do that I feel good about over the next two years. Including reparing some of the damage from the logging decision. It's so frustrating to see this but given the choices, and actually being here seeing the choices made, it's a sticky situation. The village clans own a huge amount of land up here. They decided to allow a logging company to come in and clearcut. They got a huge sum of money but now they're seeing landslides and increased erosion problems. And, there's this pool that everyone likes swimming in over in the next village ( just a 10 min walk). It's amazing: the water comes all the way from up in the mountains and it's cool and clean. The pool is in this natural rock creation and there are little waterfalls and the kids jump in from up high on the rocks and it's a great little place to be when it's hot (I'm getting a reputation for going there!). Except, I keep hearing about how it used to be much deeper. You can see where the water level once was. Then they tell me it's because of the logging. The logging company is taking the sand out and they moved some of the rocks to lower the water level so they can get the sand easier. Then, yesterday I went to two villages to bless the construction of two new churches and I see that the sand from this pool is being used for these churches. Apparently the logging company is paying for and helping build the churches and houses in these villages. Shit. The money is really helping people but the long term problems aren't yet being considered. It's really frustrating to see.

Have to go now; a bunch of us in the area are having lunch together in Savusavu and I have another quote to get on prices. Hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving!