aftermath...

Well, the worst is over. Remember how I joked about hoping the roof was still on my house?? When I left Savusavu Wednesday, I immediately saw the effects of Tomas. Town didn't get hit too hard, but as soon as you got out of town, you could see where the storm hit. The road along the ocean was covered in sand and debris. Trees were down the whole way up to K. Death was everywhere in the foliage. Surprisingly, there was very little structural damage, save for a few lost roofs. The wind and salt from the sea killed most breadfruit trees, blew down banana and vudi (like a plantain, the 'big brother' to the banana) and coconut trees, and has basically taken out our main food supply: dalo, cassava, waci (a.k.a. rourou, or dalo leaves), breadfruit, eggplants, bele (a spinach like leafy green)... Everywhere are downed trees. It looks like someone took a 'spray', some kind of weed killer, and aerially sprayed for miles. It was depressing going back to the village, seeing some really, really big trees taken down. But I was definitely glad when I saw how much was intact. Then I got closer to my house.

My house is still there, yes. But the boys had moved everything, everything I own in Fiji, into Tui's house. Half my roof lay in a pile on the ground and in the compounds of four other houses. (I asked Kanu one day, "Who cut down the dridriwai [the leaves my roof is made out of]?" He looked at me and laughed, said, "That's your roof; no one cut it down." The insides were moved, pushed in by the force of the wind. Debris and dirt and leaves littered the ground, the shower, the sinks. It smelled of mold and rot. In short: my house in uninhabitable. And everything I own is now parceled out between three different rooms and everyone else in the village. I guess now is as good a time as any to clean house.

So I moved in my Nana and Maku, in my my sister Leti's old room. The rest of my things are in Tui's room and in Pita's room. (To further complicate things... Pita moved into Tui's house because his house was taken over for the kindergarten, which is now not going to happen either, in the foreseeable future.) Let me back up...

Here is my Fijian family:
-Nana and Maku (short for 'tamaku', which means my father. Half the village calls him this): my parents
-Tui, their son, my brother, who's the same age I am (There is another son who lives in Suva and a daughter, Leti, who got married a few months ago)
-Pita, their nephew, my brother, who's 27-ish and whose parents are deceased
-Kiri, who was married into the family whose husband died last year
-Koro, Kiri's brother-in-law, a perpetual bachelor

We're a family of orphans.

Tui stays in the house next door to Nana and Maku's. This is Maku's uncle's house (I think?), who lives on Viti Levu. Tui has stayed there for years in this three bedroom house. Pita just moved in a few weeks ago. The third bedroom, which would be ideal to be mine, is full of paint, nails, windows, and other things for the building of the church. My belongings share their time between both Pita and Tui's rooms. This is the place I spent the most time anyway, prior to the storm. Really, not too much has changed. I've slept many nights in both the houses, in Leti's room and with the boys as one big slumber party. But, I will admit, it is a change being in the house 24/7. Especially the bathing part. In my bure, I had the shower and toilet right inside with me. Now, everything's outside, across a lake of mud. I shower wearing a sulu wrapped around me, in an open to the sun with no door shower. I feel like I am seriously on my way to being a Fijian woman. My role in the house has changed, too, and no one feels bad having me pull my share (washing dishes, hauling in buckets of water, serving the boys/Maku).

It would be nice, in all honesty, to have my house back. I miss my autonomy. But, this is good too. The problem is, it could take weeks to fix the roof and floor, especially because the storm took out all the dridriwai, so there's no way to fix the roof even if we wanted it done ASAP.

What else... We just got cell service nearby (as close as it can get) yesterday afternoon but landlines are still down... Friday I went with Pita and we collected coconuts, well, I did and he cut what dalo was left. Saturday I went fishing with a couple of the women. That was a trip, because we actually went fishing with our lines out in the reef. We walked out there and had to catch our bait (small prawns) in a stream before heading out to the sea. We walked out across the coral to where the reef drops off and then we cast out our line- literally fishing wire with a hook on the end and a small weight wrapped around an empty bottle- and reel it in again. I have some problems actually 'casting' my line out and usually S had to do it for me. I ended up with about 8 really small little buggers and a horrible sunburn. But it was fun. Uncle Bruce would have been so proud of me! I had to take the hooks out (when they swallow the hooks, we have to bit the top of the end, essentially killing the fish, in order to pull it out) and I even de-scaled and gutted them!!!!! Imagine... then I went to choir practice and drank grog until 2:30 am. And then I got sick. Now I'm in town trying to get a whole plethora of things done and it is hot hot hot.

By the way, do I think it was necessary to be in town during the cyclone? No. The guys keep telling me all the stories from their side- how they played rugby Monday morning, drank grog every night, talked about how I should be there experiencing this with them... all I could say was, "I wanted to be there!!!!!"