busy busy busy

I heard the crying first. Initially, I thought it was a child screaming and crying. Then the crying intensified and I started to get worried. I was in my bure, it was around 10 am on a Saturday. I stepped outside and women were coming over to my family's house across from me carrying their kids, grandkids and hankies. My first thought was the family's son who is a soldier in Iraq. I had just talked to him on the phone the day before. But when I asked what happened, they said, "Tata Kimi sa mate" (Daddy Kimi died). "What?" I had to ask, just to be sure I heard correctly. Apparently he was returning from the farm when he had a heart attack and died. I cried, and went to join the rest of the women. Mourning is very public in Fiji. I haven't decided yet whether that's a really good thing or not. On the one hand, everyone gets it all out at once and then moves on. So all the women gathered to cry together, loud wailing and sobbing. But this was such a surprise. Everyone was- still is- in shock. He was 53 and in fine health. His wife, who is much younger, is pregnant with their first child. This is a man who is hugely involved in the village. He is a carpenter and I was working with him on many projects. His biggest project is the church. He is on the right hand side in the picture above. So, last week was spent preparing the village for the funeral. It was a huge funeral. Mon- Wed we cut the grass, raked, weeded, prepared the eating hall. Thursday we started cooking and guests started arriving. Friday, more cooking, the funeral and serving all the people. I was so tired. I had to do most of the food serving (I was assigned that area), which is fine because people are fascinated to see me and see me working like a Fijian girl and they want to speak with me and gawk. It was fun. Sunday things finally got back to normal, sort of. I think all the guests left yesterday. It's put everything else on hold.

What else... other than that things are going well. Busy.

Last week I FINALLY got to go fishing with the women! They didn't actually tell me we were going fishing but I got so excited to go swimming in the ocean and it was so hot that I jumped at the chance! We rode the bilibili (bamboo raft) out to sea and there they set up their net. I went with two women. Each one holds an end of this big net. Then they make a circle, stir up the water, and close the net to capture the fish. Then they wait, and check to see what they got. I held the bag while they bit the heads to kill the fish. I decided I have to be a vegetarian for real again and I can't eat fish anymore. And I don't think I want to go fishing with them anymore!! I probably will, because it's the only time I can really go to sea. Let me tell you, it is so gorgeous. So amazing! We went as the sun was going down. The view as the sun sets behind the mountains and the glare of the sun lights up the village, and clouds come into view through the forest and the coconut palms wave... spectacular. And in the other direction, there's water. Blue blue water. Waves and sun and sky and fish jumping. It's really h ard to imagine the rest of the world somewhere out in that expanse of water. It was an exciting end to the day, though. We caught seven big ones, kanace (the Fijian name) and a another smaller type. A pretty good catch. But it was nothing like the really huge, I mean HUGE, fish they caught from out by the reef for the soko.


This is at the funeral- we say it's a soko- and Mela is fishing. The Catholics here also don't eat meat on Fridays during lent, and the 7th Day Adventists don't eat meat either so there was a shortage of fish. So, the women sat on the river (we did all the cooking right there, too) and fished and then fried it up for dinner.



At the burial

It was a Catholic funeral.


The meat that the men slaughtered and the women stayed up all night cutting/ preparing


Taking a break after all the animals (7 pigs, 2 cows, a bunch of fish) have been slaughtered.


This is one of the pots- seriously, you could fit like five kids in here. The witch that would've cooked Hansel and Gretel, would have had a pot like this. Sorry the pictures look so bad- there was so much smoke!!!



Cutting the meat


Baking pie for morning tea

This is called waitai: scraped coconuts, water, sugar, breakfast crackers.



Pounding scraped coconut to make lolo, a coconut cream used in just about everything here.


Weeding


My kindergarten (kidi) kids and Fruit Roll-ups


Kasa finger painting.

The older kids


My gang


Waiting for the school bus

short

Fiji is a constant surprise, both good and bad. It was a funny scene this morning on the bus when two women from my village tried passing a box of tea to another woman in another village. The bus was moving, mind you, when the box of tea was flung out the window and the women were yelling to a kid about who to give the tea to. Lets hope the tea made it there, but I'm a little skeptical it's not stuck in a ditch somewhere.

It's so hot, I don't even have words to describe it. I hope next year I'll be better accustomed to the heat but do you ever get used to this?

We just wrote a five year action plan for the village. Can you believe it???

I visited a village in the mountains yesterday. Sooooooooo beautiful!! Everything's so lush and green. And of course it included crossing rivers/ ditches on a 2x2 piece of wood or a bent coconut trunk and, surprise!, swimming across a dirty river/pond/stream/mangrove stand.

another one bites the dust

This weekend we lost another Fre-6er. We started out as 32 in the group and are now down to 28. Al of us made it through PST and were sworn in as Volunteers, which has to be some kind of Peace Corps record. But we've lost two people to medical separations and two people have "ET'd", Early Termination. It's sad when we lose people and usually I don't find out until weeks after it happened. We're still probably an anomaly of a group but... it's sad to lose one.

And I realized, after reading the articles, that I did know Dan Thompson. I remember him mostly from band. (I think. Was he in band?) Anyway I know I remember him and that makes me sad. Will it make people actually think a little bit more about what's going on in Iraq? Did he really give his life to make you or me or anyone in the US more "free" or "safe," as if we weren't already? I mean, the war in Iraq has by all measures restricted Americans' freedoms and intensified/ instigated/ encouraged terrorist activities and violence towards Americans. So really, what has been gained, again, by this bungled mess of Iraq? I don't feel quite as hostile towards Iraq as I did with Bush so come on, Obama. Make us peaceniks and rational thinking Americans proud.

I also forgot, in my movies list, to mention the hilarious Tropic Thunder. For those people who think I don't have a sense of humor, I laughed like crazy at this movie. Hilarious. Tom Cruise? Who knew he had it in him??

I'm back after a week in Labasa, in the north, and I can't wait to get back to the village! I think I'm the only Volunteer who likes being in the village more than being in town. everything's expensive and the food's totally fattening.

latest and greatest

I finished The Confederacy of Dunces (LOVED it!!!! so funny!) and I've moved on to movies, bolstered by my engrossment in the top lists of 2008 (thanks mom, Morgan, Kelsey!!) and the Oscars. Where to start?? Lets see... I've watched The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, of course, made another unbelievable movie and Mickey Rourke was so awesome. This was so powerful to me.), Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, again of course, also made such a fantastic film! I was surprised by how much I loved this and how obsessed I've become with it! So glad it won!), Gran Torino (a big surprise by how much I loved this one and it's commentary on race in America), Ghost Town (okay, Ricky Gervais is hilarious no matter what role he's in!), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (this left me with such a strange feeling; I can't quite describe how I feel about it. I loved Cate Blanchett, especially as an older woman. I didn't really get the whole Hurricane Katrina thing- was that necessary? I suppose it was, being born with a bang, dying with a bang. For the most part I give this a thumbs up. Then again, rounding out my favorite directors is David Fincher.), and Burn After Reading (maybe I need to watch this again but I was a little disappointed, and sick.). Some of the other big ones of 2008 weren't available yet but I hope to get to Milk, The Reader, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Revolutionary Road, and who knows what else. And, the more I read and the more I thought about it, let me comment on The Dark Knight. I saw it, in the theater. I loved, loved, loved Batman Begins. But The Dark Knight was totally disappointing. And one of the best films of 2008? Hardly. Yes, Heath Ledger was terrifying and gave a powerful performance. But I'd argue his performances in Brokeback Mountain, Candy, or even I'm Not There were just as good. TDK had too many storylines and too many big blow 'em up action scenes. It was too long and wasted really good actors, especially Christian Bale. It focused too much, I thought, on Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gordon and was just all over the I get Nolan was trying to be dark and philosophical but I don't think it worked at all. I think the hype overshadowed the reality.

Whew. I've settled into a routine here and there isn't too much more that is shocking or surprising about the culture. I feel like I've adapted and life is just what it is here. We have a lot of projects going in the village, or ideas for projects, so I'm excited to delve into them. No, not all of it necessarily pertains to environmental stuff or even to land use/ planning but I'm here to work for the village. The village wants a prawn farm and beekeeping and a new footpath and so I'm here to support that and make it happen.

Animal updates... Princess Buttercup, my kitty, is doing okay. I think she might be sick and I think it might be because I gave her a bath. But the bath really helped! She was dirty. She looks healthier than other kittens except for some gunk in her eyes and I think she's losing hair. It seems I have a never ending zoo parading through my bamboo house. I had a mongoose that kept coming inside my house last week. That was kind of gross. There are so many frogs here in Fiji it's ridiculous. Seriously, they are everywhere. And they don't move when you're walking! I've kicked/stepped on so many frogs it's disgusting. I'm still surprised though by how few animals there actually are in Fiji. Another PCV told me it's probably because Fiji was formed by volcanoes and its ecosystem is still young. The nights are really quiet and the forests really safe. Mongooses were brought in by foreigners as were rats, dogs, and cats but if not for those, there would no mammals, just birds, sea life, and insects. And the mongoose eat all the birds.

Sorry for the short update! All's well and good here. Hot, of course. Rainy sometimes. I drink a lot of kava. The kindergarten kids are crazy. Avocado season is almost over. I made some banana jam that was really good. I'll post more when there's more to say!