ni sa bula si'a!

My house! From the back. It's a traditional bamboo bure.












My "kitchen"- they built this addition for me. I have a wood fire stove and a gas stove.


















Inside view #1: rest of my kitchen (a real sink!!! and it works!!!) and the door to the bathroom

Inside view #2: my bed

painting of Jesus. I visited another volunteer near Rakiraki and in her site is a Catholic church with this painting. I found out afterwards it's apparently very famous because it shows a black jesus. But of course we all know that Jesus wasn't white, right? White people didn't originate in Jerusalem, Egypt, Bethalehem, or any other biblical "middle eastern" places. Anyway, some French missionaries painted it awhile back. It's a beautiful church and the view is spectacular.

I am up in the North now. It's hot. Bloody, bloody, bloody hot. Stifling hot. I have a cute little bamboo bure (see above picture) that I'm loving. it is actually pretty cool inside, with a nice air flow. I'm replacing another volunteer who left suddenly in October. He had started some goo dprojects so I'm excited to continue his work. It's very different up here, both culturally and environmentally. I'm on the ocean (don't get excited about the beach- it's muck and disgusting) eating fish every single meal outside of breakfast. There are a gazillion coconuts and everything has lolo (coconut milk) in it, which is good but really fattening I had lost weight in Nairukuruku but it's all back, plus some, after my indulgence in Suva and the food here. Yuck. The women don't go to the field, which is really hard for me. I really enjoyed farming. They do all the fishing though so i'm excited to try that and they can keep gardens, which are closer to the village. It's a small village of about 27 houses (I think that's a generous count, I need to double check). It's a Chiefly village, which means it's in charge of the "tikina" (like a county) and very important. It's also really conservative, hence the very dramatic split of gender roles. The sexual politics will be hard to overcome here as women are pretty much expected not to be able to do any labor and to of course cook, a lot (which is really nice if you want a kitchen built so you can, gasp! cook your own meals, unlike many of the male vols. Americans can cook?!?).

The language is very different, too. They drop the "k" sound, which is in some of the most oft used words, like 'lako', 'tiko,' and 'vinaka' (meaning, respectively, to go/come, to stay/reside/live in, and thank you) are now 'la'o,' "ti'o," and 'vina'a" and the "q" sound is replaced by "k." Plus a bunch of different words for other things: 'maka' means no and fish is "koli."

I've also started going by "Alisi," making good use of a rarely used middle name. I decided Taylar was just a little too difficult to say. A new village, a new name, a new start!