101 Ways to Make Dahl

The spice vendor at the market recently convinced me to buy his mixed dahl.  The mix consists of a variety of different lentils and small beans and looks very colorful in the re-used peanut butter jar on my shelf.  I asked him how to make dahl when I bought it, “just to be sure I am doing it right.”  Actually I’ve made dahl soup, the spicy yellow concoction usually served with rice, many times – to varying degrees of acceptability – but this has become a bit of a hobby for me and I’m looking for the recipe I like best.

Mixed Dahl on the shelf

The thing is – everyone makes dahl a little differently.  Even at the same restaurant the dahl will be different on different days.  Although this makes it hard to recommend a restaurant based solely on the quality of their dahl, I’ve never had a bad one and I rather enjoy the variety.

I’m in pursuit, not only of the perfect dahl, but of perfection in all of my Indian cuisine.  I am relatively new to this kind of cooking because for most of my life Indian food was something you would order at a restaurant, not cook for yourself at home on par with kung pow chicken, tom yum soup, tempura shrimp and other things that ordinary Americans don’t know how to cook.  Now that I’m attempting to make Indian food on a more or less daily basis I have two stipulations: (1) it must be delectable (or close – based on my tastes) and (2) it should be less than 50% oil – or at least – healthier than the stuff at most of the restaurants.  I realize, of course, that these are are competing aims – but not only am I a perfectionist, I’m picky. 

The difficulty of the task at hand, however, has not stopped my experimenting.  And I must say that I make a lovely bhindi curry (okra) with optional nutrella (soy chunks).  My vegetable pulau is also pretty great and I recently made a wonderful palak paneer – with the paneer from scratch.  This actually might sort of be cheating since palak paneer isn’t a dish that’s usually cooked in Fiji.  In fact, most of the Indo-Fijians I’ve asked haven’t even heard of paneer, though maybe it’s something lost in translation. 

That’s another thing I find interesting and fun – Indian food in Fiji is nothing like Indian food in America – or – at least – there are striking differences. Of course there are differences based on vegetable availability (I’d never heard of taro leaves being used in Indian cuisine in the states) but there are other differences, too.  For example naan is pretty much non-existent here, but is ubiquitous at home to the point that many Americans don’t realize there are other types of bread in India.  Here everyone eats rot – which – if you have to forgo naan – is probably the best thing and in some cases it’s even better than naan since it can be used as a wrap like a tortilla.  One of my new favorite things is to go to an Indian restaurant and order the vegetable curry half rice and half roti and make burritos out of whatever shows up – usually it includes tomato chutney which could sort of compare to salsa.

Taro leaf curry, dahl, tomato chutney, rice and roti ready to be made into burritos!

And this is just the tip of the iceberg!  Living in a traditional Fijian village I am not exposed to as much Indo-Fijian culture and food as I would be if I lived in (or near) a settlement.   I have to rely on other volunteers to invite me to their homes and introduce me to their friends or make some Indo-Fijian friends in town.  Having experienced Diwali I realize I have heaps more to learn.  Indian snacks and sweets, too!  But that’s a whole other ball game – one of overindulgence, pleasure and pain – and can be saved for another time.

Time Warp

Did you know Fiji's right on the international date line?  Well, on the 180th meridian, anyway.  In fact there's a tiny corner in the east of my island, Vanua Levu, where it is permanently yesterday.  Actually the date line was moved in this area of the South Pacific and now passes to the east of Fiji, it kind of jogs around Fiji and Tonga the same way it does to the west of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, but some of the maps show the dateline going right through the island.  In any case, Fiji is supposed to have the first sunrise in the world, though I think it's a silly thing to boast about (Kiribati - pronounced KIRR-i-bas by the way - moved the dateline to ITS east in 1998 or so and now has the first sunrise rather than the last).

While Fiji may be big on it’s premier sunrise location, on the things Fijians are not big on is punctuality.  They call the standard tardiness “Fiji Time.”  But tardiness isn’t the point.  The point is that there are things that are more important than being on time.  Plus, there isn’t much to do today that couldn’t really be done tomorrow, so too brief encounters with friends and relatives or hurrying off to be in another place are unnecessary.

This is something the new Country Director of Peace Corps – Fiji realizes.  He came up north recently to talk with the volunteers and the divisional heads of various government departments.  He kept his schedule very flexible and stressed to the volunteers that he may not arrive on time, depending on whether there were customs he needed to observe (drinking grog) at other sites.  As far as I know he was on time everywhere, but I’ve heard there have been other Peace Corps staff that have missed meetings altogether because of such customs and the notion of Fiji Time. 

At a tikina meeting (like a meeting of all the mayors in a county hearing about goings on at the national level) I was sitting with a newly appointed Roko (a representative from the National Government to the people at the local level) and he told me that he enjoyed the drinking grog and socializing part of the meeting best because he could get to better understand the people.  He mentioned that because of this part of the meeting they never knew when they would get home.  They could drink yaqona for half and hour or for three hours – but they weren’t doing nothing.  At the time I was a little antsy, however, because I was getting a ride with the Rokos to Savusavu where there was a Rotary Club meeting I needed to be at.  In the end everything worked out and I realized I just needed to embrace another Fijian truism: “Maka Leka” or no worries (No wonder “Hakuna Matata” plays constantly on the radio here). 

But it is difficult for me to give up my notions of finite time.  This, I believe, has much to do with latitude (and climate and other stuff…) Besides in the cities and towns where people have schedules, jobs and deadlines, time passes quite differently in Fiji than it does anywhere I’ve been.  Days seem to roll into one another; weeks and months glide by without being accounted for.  And suddenly I’ve been in Fiji for six months.  It’s my theory that being so close to the equator and with no real distinction between seasons (at least not like the planting, growing, harvest and rest cycle of the North) and with the same staple foods available year round, it would be easy to oblivious of time.  If food is available, if you have no need to make stores for the winter and if everything is good – then there is really nothing that NEEDS to be done at any given time, nothing that couldn’t wait a day, a week, a month or 15 years (which is how long it took to build the church in the village).  And so Fiji Time is born.

Being from a land twice as far from the equator with distinct seasons, time here feels stale as if it has been summer too long.  And I feel like I’m constantly waiting for fall.  Yesterday I heard a Christmas song on the radio and was shocked to realize the holidays are right around the corner despite having Thanksgiving plans for next week.  I’m not sure if time here sneaks up on Fijians as it does me.  But as far as I know there are not traditional seasonal celebrations (at least there weren’t before Methodists brought Christmas and Easter).  It leaves me wondering what time was like in Fiji before Europeans brought their calendars with them.

The Gourmet Meal for the Peace Corps Volunteer

What a lovely Sunday evening!  Breezy cool weather, quiet in the village, great songs on the radio and delicious seared tuna with a pineapple teriyaki sauce and a citrus cocktail.  Ok – it’s orange crystal lite, but I really did have sushi grade skip jack tuna for dinner.  This is how it happened:

One day in Savusavu I talked to a guy who was having trouble printing something from his iPad (not a Fijian).  Turns out he (Jeff) and his wife (Susan) are from New Mexico and live near my village, well, a long walk away involving swimming across the mouth of the largest river on the island, but close.  They gave me the business card for their guesthouse.

Besides seeing Susan once from the bus I didn’t see them again for four months.  In the meantime I planted a decent garden and built and stocked an AWESOME kitchen (by Fijian bure standards).

Last week another PCV and I finished a proposal for improving the library at our local school and wanted to present it to the Savusavu Rotary Club.  It turned out that they weren’t having their weekly meeting but a party instead and we were invited.  Of course we saw Jeff and Susan there.  In fact they invited me to come over some time and also offered advice and help on a couple of projects I’ve been contemplating.

In typical fashion, it was only when I got home from the party that I found my parents had emailed the dates they were thinking of visiting (they had wanted to stay with me in the village for a week, but I wanted them to stay at Susan and Jeff’s guesthouse… for innumerable reasons…).  I ended up calling Susan about dates the next day and she repeded her invitation to come over.  I, of course, took her up.

And o it was that Bubba and Michelle (the two PCVs from neighboring Wailevu Village) accompanied me in swimming across the river and trekking (literally through the jungle at one point) to Susan and Jeff’s.  Their property is as different from the village as you can get and I’m very happy that I’ve convinced my parents to stay there!  Plus Susan and Jeff are great hosts.  Before we left (to go home the right way – which does not involve trekking through the jungle) they’d invited us on a deep water fishing trip the next day.  I had to decline, but Bubba and Michelle went and this afternoon they stopped by with their catch – 4 skip jack tuna!

After a quick fillet lesson Bubba left me with one fillet of tuna – much more than I can handle in a night – but the cooked fish should last until tomorrow morning (I hope).  Bubba and Michelle had sushi for dinner, but I didn’t have wasabi or pickled ginger or mirin for the rice, so I improvised with some leftover pineapple from lunch and concocted a lovely teriyaki sauce.  It would have been even better on a bed of brown rice and with a different vegetable, but the only thing I had in the garden was green beans.  It sufficed.  Yeah, I’ve had better seared tuna, but I’ve never had a more gourmet meal in Fiji!

This is the kind of thing that makes me think I don’t have the stereotypical Peace Corps experieonce.  I may live in a rural village, but I have the opportunity to meet up with generous expats (whom support Peace Corps projects) whenever I feel like it.  Just living so close to other Peace Corps Volunteers is unusual, too, and I feel spoiled.  But I feel like it’s also affecting the way I integrate into my village.  On the other hand… if there wasn’t a generous local Rotary Club I wouldn’t be able to apply for assistance improving the school library or to pick their brains about previous projects that are similar to things we’re working on in the village.  So I continue working on integration and maintain my friendships with my fellow kaivalagi (foreign people), too.

Bubba With a Skip Jack Tuna

Halloween

What do you think it’s like never to have experienced Halloween?  Is it like never having seen the ocean or snow?  No, I don’t think so, because most people know those exist even if they haven’t seen them.  It’s probably more like me never having heard of Diwali (see previous post).  And I think that’s even better because when you do find out about it you are filled with wonder at all of the other awesome things that probably exist that you know nothing about.  It makes you want to explore!  Or – it would make me want to explore, anyway.

The children in my Saturday Kid’s Club had never heard of Halloween.  I spent a week trying to build hype about costumes and lollies.  Still, I wasn’t sure how it would go over, as they didn’t have much time to get costumes together.  I went out and bought candy and pumpkins in Savusavu (if any of you have ever carried two big pumpkins plus candy and other stuff for half a mile on a dirt road, I applaud you.  It’s hard work!).  I gathered knives and basins, I passed out candy to ladies in four houses and I hoped I was ready.

Pumpkins Pre-Carving

At 8 in the morning Saki came by and asked, “It’s ok I wear girls sulu (clothes)?”  “Yeah, of course, that’s great!” I said.  “I’m going to be a pufta!” he added, excitedly.  Wow – a little more wild than dressing as a girl, he was going to be a transvestite.  I’ll have to tell you all about puftas sometime.

Anyway, I emerged onto my steps at 9:55AM and children were milling about in all kinds of costumes waiting impatiently for Halloween to start.  I started snapping photos of my favorite costumes and, as always happens when a camera is around, they mobbed me.  Here are a few good costumes.

 

Then it was pumpkin carving time.  I showed how to cut the tops and scrape out the guts.  They took it from there – basing the faces on drawings each group had (one by me and two copies by some industrious girls).  There were rookie mistakes, like getting the mouths too low on the pumpkin, but it didn’t matter, later that day I passed out the pumpkins to some families and they were turned into soups and curries.

From carving we headed off to trick-or-treat.  I gave them two rules, knock and say, “trick-or-treat.”  I should have given them more.  It’s one thing to dole out candy to 5 or 6 kids at a time over the course of an evening.  It’s something entirely different to organize 40 screaming kids in order to give out candy without being bowled over!

Everybody got candy, though, and everyone had a great time.  Saki’s pufta costume was admired by all as the best costume.

Saki on a normal day

And then on Halloween

There will be adjustments next year – more organization, more pumpkins, more candy and a costume contest!  I know it’s a year away, but I can’t wait!!

Can you tell what my costume was?

Diwali Day - or - Why Labasa Rocks

I know some of you (probably most of you) have never heard of Diwali.  I had no idea that it existed before I came to Fiji, which is ridiculous because it’s AWESOME.  But then there are only 10 countries where this festival of lights is an official holiday.  Here in Fiji Diwali is a one-day holiday that signifies the end of the old and the beginning of the new year for Indo-Fijians, but it’s also a religious holiday in honor of Lakshmi.  Even though the holiday is based in Hinduism, in Fiji’s multi-cultural society, most people commemorate the day in some way and everyone enjoys a day off from work.

Diwali Things

 For the Peace Corps Volunteers who had invited me to Labasa, the holiday was very laid back, social and entertaining.  We got up late and struggled to wrap ourselves in sarees until we gave up and went next door to have an expert help us.  Aunti is a cheerful and motherly grade school teachers who looked lovely with her short frame wrapped tidily in a saree.  Her daughter, Jiijii , an enthusiastic teen with her heart set on becoming a doctor, quickly arranged a plate of Indian sweets for Folami and I to snack on as Greta turned and held pleats and was pinned into Indo-Fijian perfection.  I was next and found the process a little daunting.  In fact my saree was one of the most difficult parts of my Diwali as it constantly seemed to be in disarray.  While Folami was being twirled into her lovely attire, we were casually invited to return in the evening to celebrate with the family and we were delighted to add another house to our tour!

The Girls in our Getup

 All gussied up we headed out to our first stop, picking up two more Diwali dressed girls on the way.  Monica hadn’t had help with her saree and forgot the pleats making it almost impossible to walk.  Luckily the daughters at the first house were able to sort her out.  Chris was the luckiest of all wearing a shalwar kameez, a tunic and pants set that is much easier to wear but doesn’t have quite the appeal of being draped in yards upon yards of soft silk (or in this case polyester or something).  We chatted for hours with the family and ate our fill of both the sweets and savories presented.  My favorite is a savory snack  of taro leaves prepared much differently from anything in the village.  Before we could leave we were presented with lunch: potato curry, puris (a small flatbread) and rice with nutrella (a spongy soy product).  It was delicious, but I was already full from the sweets!

After Lunch

We visited four more houses of Greta’s coworkers, neighbors and friends, everywhere happily chatting away, drinking tea or juice and eating sweets and other Indian snacks.  Diwali is more than just food, though.  As the festival of lights, each house is decorated with strands of electric lights (like Christmas lights), candles and tiny oil lamps.  Many houses had rice paintings on the porches where colored rice (died with crepe paper – if you can figure that out) is arranges designs with a lovely simplicity.  In some neighborhoods each house tries to out do the next as there is a competition for the best display.  Everywhere you go the air smells of sulfur and black powder with the hundreds of fireworks going off all around. 

Lighting oil lamps

Rice Design

And the fireworks are GREAT!  There is no organized firework show like we have in the US for the fourth of July, but Fiji doesn’t have the restrictions we have in Oregon, either.  If you have the money you can buy the fireworks to make an awesome show in your own yard.  Little boys hold fireworks that sprout those large twinkly displays that you see over Disneyland and something that seems like just a little twirly thing on the street will suddenly shoot off a major display.  The cab drivers are extra cautious and ask us to roll up the windows, but I’m suddenly hit, again, with my long held secret aspiration to go to China and apprentice myself to a firework master.

Just sitting on the porch of a friendly neighbor’s house bundled up in my disastrously (by now) draped saree, snacking on halua, enchanted by the fireworks, I feel like I am exactly where I should be.  Walking home from the last house, where a newspaper photographer took our picture, I couldn’t help but thinking how much I’d love it if Diwali were everyday.  Of course if that were the case I would never get anything done, would be enormously fat with all the sweets and would always be tripping on my saree!  Still, far and away it was the most fun I’d have in Fiji in a long time – the best festival I’ve seen in my six months here.  Probably one of the best festivals I’ve been included in ANYWHERE!  So if you see me, somewhere down the line, dressed in strange clothes and peddling Indian sweets one day in late October or early November – it must be Diwali – join in and have a great time.

Our Labasa Diwali Adventure

Ura things, Large and Small

So much has been happening recently that choosing a topic for this blog was a tough decision.  Ura, though, has been an overarching theme for the past month or so.  They’ve grossed me out, intrigued me, nourished me and have been an endless source of amusement for various villagers.

Ura are Fijian indigenous freshwater prawns (Macrobrachium lar), not unlike the giant Malysian prawn commercially farmed in many parts of the globe.  I think these Fijian prawns tend to be a little redder and denser of flesh, but maybe that’s just me.  I first heard about ura from another volunteer.  I had heard that there was interest in farming freshwater prawns in the area and he informed me that there were already local prawns.  As I was in the mood for some tasty shrimp, I did some research.

Ura - Not only delicious in Fiji

Asking around the village I quickly ferreted out the best shrimp hunter in the village – a woman named Ateca who grew up in a village by the big Nasekawa river.  I have since befriended Ateca (pronounced ah-Teh-tha) and discovered that she is the best fisherwoman, the best broom maker, the fastest mat weaver, the most industrious cottage industry entrepreneur, a grower of outlandish flowers and a very good cook.  Basically she’s the closest thing to a renaissance woman there is in my village.  However, I have yet to convince Ateca to take me prawn hunting.

Ateca weaving a mat in her home

My first taste of ura did come at Ateca’s hand.  Her husband, Domoniko, another of my good friends, was having a birthday party.  In Fiji this is basically an excuse to drink a lot of kava and get your friends to bring you Bula shirts (like Hawaiian shirts, but we’re not in Hawaii, yo!).  We drank from about 3 o’clock in the afternoon until nearly ten.  It was my first experience getting really grogged.  I was sort of a guest of honor, so I served some of the grog.  It was quite a party and everyone was sad when the grog ran out (well, I wasn’t too sad – I was already feeling grog-drunk).  Ateca had packed up some dinner for me to take with me, and after stumbling home (I fell in a ditch because I was looking at the stars and not my feet) I treated myself to delicious prawns with noodles.  I instantly knew this local prawn was a lovely thing and that I had not had my last of ura.

My next ura experience came quite unexpectedly on the day we went up to the dam to clean out the silt.  We’ve had water pressure issues in the village and were trying to find a solution.  Personally my shower doesn’t do more than trickle, so I usually bath with water from a tap about two and a half feet from the ground and sometimes I don’t even get anything coming out of my tap.  The dam was in a bad way – it turned out silt and mud had covered the pipe that supplies water to the village – so we were on a mission to clear it out.  Honestly, our effort didn’t do much for my water pressure, but it was a windfall of prawns!  When about half of the water had been drained from the reservoir a bunch of guys jumped in and started grabbing prawns.  They tossed a bunch up at me that I kept in a bucket.  The things were squirming all over the place and snapping their big pincers at me.  I have no idea why, but some of these prawns have REALLY long spindly pincers on one side.  In any case, I took them home.  

Cleaning out the dam and hunting for ura

So – what do you do with LIVE prawns?  I didn’t know.  I tried calling my mom and dad, but they were in Canada.  I tried another epicure, but he was in Canada WITH my parents, so that was no help.  Finally I tried Michelle because she’s smart, but she said what the Fijians had – boil them.  I didn’t really want to do that because I was planning on pan-frying the things so she had another option – just pull their heads off.  Ick.  By the time I got around to preparing the shrimp most of them had suffocated, but two were still squirming and I got to experience the decapitation of live prawns.  It worked really well – even if I felt like I could hear them scream.  I peeled the tails, didn’t worry about deveining them and made a delicious shrimp fried rice.  (Further research has revealed that the appropriate way to kill freshwater prawns is to soak them either in ice water or chlorinated seawater.  I might try seawater next time – minus the chlorine – since there’s about an ocean’s worth a few steps from my house.)

My association with Ateca and Domoniko has led to a fair number of random and fun events.  Ateca gave me a frozen half-fish (tail half, luckily) which I turned into lovely fish tacos, Dominiko occasionally brings me seeds for my garden (bell pepper and passion fruit, among others), and the two of them accompanied me on a lumber-buying excursion to town (to build my new kitchen cabinets – my first attempt at designing and building a kitchen from scratch – possibly also my last).  Ateca had been looking forward to this Friday, though, for almost a month.  And, really, I had, too.  

It was the ura soli (fundraiser) in Nabalebale (Ateca’s home village).  We got up early and took the eight o’clock bus to the village where Ateca’s sister hosted us for breakfast before the soli.  At eleven we headed over to the village hall for the ceremonial opening of the soli, an offering of a huge heap of raw kava from the village to the chief followed by the most traditional kava ceremony I have seen – with the pounded kava root filtered through dried plant fibers rather than cloth and a religiosity to the presentation I’ve never seen.  After the ceremony and a bit of tea, the regular grog drinking started in earnest as the village head man called each man up to donate the expected FJ$50.  By the time lunch was ready they had raised $2,914.  I didn’t stay till the end, but I know they made it past $3,000.  I had chipped in ten bucks. 

Ura wasn’t the only thing on the plate for lunch.  There was giant sized eel (known as tuna), chicken curry, fish curry, fried fish and a whole heap of taro, more than most people could comfortably eat (though if any of you know Kory Rice, I bet he could have handled it).  This wasn’t my first soli, though, and I knew by then that most people take home leftovers from this sort of thing, so I’d brought a Tucker’s ice cream box for the leftovers.  Little did I know that when I left Ateca in charge of the leftovers as I roamed around taking pictures that she’d fill the box full with a whole new plate of food!  And so it was that I had dinner for both my dog and me that night.  

Ura Lunch at Nabalebale Day Soli

We left the soli before the grog was gone, so the music was still going full tilt.  Two groups of men with guitars and ukuleles were having a good-natured battle of the bands with an island lilt.  Domoniko was one of the singers, and we left him to drink grog, sing and make merry as we headed home.  It was the end of the day, but not the ura, and definitely not the fun.  Ateca has promised to take me with her to catch ura one of these days, but not before she, Domoniko and I head out again for more good food in the village and around.  Sunday I was treated to another big plate of prawns served with fried pumpkin!  It’s good to have friends.  It’s even better if they feed you prawns!

Attempts at Integration

Now, you might not think I’m a shy person, but I’ve always felt that way about myself.  No matter how much I might talk or approach a perfect stranger for directions or suggestions for good restaurants or whatever – I have a hard time getting up the courage to go interact with a new community, find it difficult to make new friends.  This could be considered a problem given my choice of occupation for the next two years.

After a good five weeks I realized that I’ve been spending a lot of time in my nice, comfy little bure and still haven’t gotten to know many people in the community.  I decided to take action.  So, one Saturday after sweating through most of the exceedingly hot day, I decided to take a walk in the cool of the evening.  I didn’t get far before being invited to a grog party, and, considering the motive of my walk, I really had no choice but to accept.

Actually it turned out that we got in a bit of trouble.  I was drinking mostly with the youth, some of whom who had been drinking beer since lunchtime.  We were talking and laughing and making fun of the (exceedingly) drunken boys.  Some boys were playing guitar and singing.  Even though we were on the edge of the village, we were making enough noise to attract the attention of the Turaga ni Koro who came and gave us all a talking to.  That was the end of the music.  Oh well – didn’t stop the party!  I’m planning on joining in again, but honestly, I’m not the biggest fan of kava, so it might be an occasional thing.

On Sunday I’d planned to take family photos of people in the village.  Mostly this was an underhanded selfish attempt to learn people’s names and family relations, and a nerdy attempt to make an age distribution analysis (population pyramid).  Unfortunately, I had other things going on, too, and didn’t really get much done on the photo taking front. 

I got up at five to help Na, Ta, Cabe and Vili with the lovo (earthen oven) and the palusami (taro leaves and coconut milk), vakalavalava (coconut and tapioca sweet) and taro we would cook in it.  The lovo is easy enough to start – you make a small fire with coconut shells and husks, then build a frame of sticks around and above it on which you place a bunch of river rocks.  As the fire consumes the sticks, the flame-heated stones fall through; this is the base of the oven.  We put a metal grate on the stones, then piled the food on top, covering the whole thing with first coconut leaves, then really giant leaves from a plant they call “mother of taro.”  The whole time I was thinking about how I would recreate a lovo in my parent’s back yard without the tropical flora.  Seriously, what is with my family and collecting traditional methods of cooking with fire?  The neighbors already think we’re pyromaniacs.

Piling stones on a flaming tower of sticks

Covering the lovo with leaves

 Well – I almost didn’t have time to eat breakfast between getting the lovo ready and heading off to church.  Luckily I made it work – because church was LONG!  The weekly decision is not so much whether to go to church or not – like it can sometimes be in the states – but which church to attend, since it’s a given that everyone will attend somewhere.  I picked this Sunday to head up to the Christian Methodist Fellowship with Vili, partly because my cousin from my training village was going to be there.  This was my first chance to see Tubuna who had lived with my host family the whole time I was in training and I wasn’t going to pass it up.  I liked the CMF service.  It was upbeat, included singing and dancing, and, at times, had side commentary from the German couple who regularly attend there.  But it was after noon by the time I had a chance to chat with Tubuna and after one by the time Vili and I got home to have the lunch we’d worked so hard on in the morning.  I’m not sure I can make CMF a weekly thing considering the distance to CMF and the length of the service versus the village’s Methodist church which is close by and has a short service, but I’ll definitely be back.

Considering the lateness of our arrival back in the village, most of the other families had finished lunch and were off doing various Sunday activities (limited to not-work and not-exercise) with friends.  This made taking family photos quite challenging.  In fact, that day I only successfully got three family photos.  But I haven’t stopped my efforts.  Every day I get a few more photos and write down heaps more names and ages.  Sometimes I even get invited to lunch or dinner.  By far the best idea I’ve had since moving to the village, these photo-taking sessions start all kinds of interesting conversations.  It’s still a challenge to get out and talk to people every day, but it’s getting easier, and hopefully soon it won’t be a new and different community but my village, my community, my friends.

One of my families in the village

Learning to Think like a Fijian

Sometimes I wish I had taken at least one class in anthropology.  Actually – a lot of times I wish that.  Maybe if I’d taken anthropology I would be better able to analyze another culture, compare their values to mine and understand those things that confuse me.  Maybe I’d be better able to emulate them, better able to make friends, better able to communicate. 

But I didn’t take anthropology.  Instead, I took microeconomics.  In microeconomics I learned nothing about how people actually behave but I learned a lot about how they (theoretically) aught to behave.  For instance: if some random person (who has taken microeconomics) has a choice between fishing on the riverbank for three hours and catching, on average, two small (hand sized) fish (to eat for dinner) or, alternatively, engaging in an income generating activity for three hours which will allow that person to buy enough fish for a family of four for a week, the person would take the latter option because the opportunity cost of fishing is too high.  If you haven’t taken microeconomics, you should look this up.  It could change how you make decisions.

No one in my little village has considered microeconomics.  And they take me fishing.  This is Fiji time.  And I’m regretting not taking anthropology, again.

On Wednesday I went out cutting copra with Na, Ta and Vili.  Everyone in the village goes cutting copra at least once a week.  Well, pretty much once a week.  Copra, if you don’t have a dictionary handy, is the flesh of the coconut, which is dried and then cooked into coconut oil.  This is one of very few income generating activities in the village.  Ta had gone out on Tuesday and collected a bunch of coconuts in piles so when we hiked out Wednesday morning we just set up camp at one pile after another and got to work.  When the coconuts come off the tree they don’t look like they do at Albertson’s.  There’s a thick husk that makes cracking them open fairly difficult.  In order to crack the coconuts Na brought a hatchet.  She can crack them open in one swing.  It took me all day to get down to one swing, and I still couldn’t do it consistently and my back was seriously aching!  We tossed the halved coconuts in a pile and Ta and Vili cut the copra with special knives.  Since they do this every week they’re super fast and can get it out in one whole piece.  I could barely get my knife through the copra, so I was relegated to cracking open the coconuts, which was fine with me.  After we finished a pile we’d pack all the copra into a bag (about 40kg after one pile) and head on to the next pile.  After 5 hours we headed home, piling the bags on the road to be picked up and hauled to the dryer.  At 40¢ per kilogram we wound up with $72.80 FD.  It was quite a payday!  That’s more than enough money to support a family of four for two weeks.  I estimated the rate to be about $3.50 FD an hour.  But there aren’t enough coconuts to do this much every week so you can’t always go cut copra instead of fishing and there’s not really much that pays as well as cutting copra in the village.

I heard once that ceremonies are important to anthropologists.  I think that’s because a ceremony is like a concentrated dose of a culture.  There’s a lot more to analyze in a small amount of time.  Personally I think that makes it harder.  It’s easier for me to take in one thing at a time.  At ceremonies there’s so much going on that I get confused and end up tuning out most of the “noise” which is probably the important stuff the anthropologists look at.

Last week there was a ceremony in the village.  I’m not entirely certain what it was about but I know it had something to do with a girl from my village that got married to a boy from another village without asking permission from the girl’s parents first.  Someone was apologizing to the girl’s parents, but I’m not sure if it was the couple or the other village.  In any case, an old man from the other village presented a tabua (the tooth of a sperm whale tied on a cord, an ultimate honor in Fijian culture and worth more than a pile of money) to the elders of our village.  He gave a speech and clapped in the traditional manner.  The elders from our village accepted the tabua and gave speeches, too.  What confused me was why neither of the girl’s parents were involved.  The father is the headman of the tribe, too.  You’d think he’d be the one accepting the tabua and giving speeches.  There was a lot of congratulating, some crying and, of course, tea after the ceremony.  Then we went to drink grog.  At this point the traditional relationships started coming out.  There’s this thing called “Tau” in Fiji which allows you and encourages you to play pranks on people from certain other provinces depending on which province you are from.  Similarly, “tauvale” means your joking cousin, the child of your mother’s brother or father’s sister.  One of the women I was drinking grog with saw her tauvale playing ukulele for the singing and the pranks began!  Tossing baby powder on each other’s hair and faces, making them wear funny clothes, serving them undrinkable large bowls of kava, it was craziness.  But it was late, too, and me being a lightweight grog drinker, I headed back to my bure wondering what would happened if I did that at home.

I’m not sure what an anthropologist would make of all of this.  After all I’ve never taken anthropology.  But what I think is that people in Fiji enjoy life.  Maybe they’re going fishing to chat with their friends and spend a few hours by the river.  If they need some money – they can go cut copra for a day, but they’re not going to spend their whole lives worrying about bills.  And if they have the chance, they’ll go out of their way to play a joke on you.  So be prepared.  If you’re like me and haven’t taken anthropology, you’ll wind up in the middle of joke not having a clue what’s going on.  My advice: Laugh.

Reading List

I’ve been reading this book about the Zombie World War.  It’s pretty diverting for those times that I don’t have the energy to go out and meet more new people.  I’m having enough trouble remembering the names of the ones I have met!  Anyway, zombies basically invade the whole world and everyone is scrambling to get away.  A lot of the book is devoted to how people survived without transportation, communication, electricity and supermarkets.  You know, the stuff most of us take for granted, well, that is, unless you’re living in a bure by the beach in Fiji!

I’ve only been at site seven days and really haven’t had a ton of time (or energy – got another head cold) to explore, but one thing that’s impressed me is how little you really need to live (sort of) comfortably here.  Yeah, the water pressure might be low, but we all have toilets.  Why do you need a gas stove (which I have) when you can cook on an open fire (which I don’t have).  The kaivalagi wants a compost pile?  Send some boys over to make one from spare bamboo poles (took them less than a half hour!).  Not sure what to have for dinner?  Go fishing, gather some clams, pick some eggplant from the garden, have it with some taro leaves (delicious!) and some cassava.  All this within 100 meters of my house!

There is electricity in my village, but not every house has it.  I don’t yet.  Cooking in the dark with a kerosene lamp is something that’s not quite routine for me yet.  Nor is washing dishes in a plastic basin and going outside to dump it.  I can’t say I’m anywhere near good at fishing – let alone cleaning, scaling and cooking the fish!  But these are those minor adjustments that make the Peace Corps awesome.  I wouldn’t change it – especially when living this life means I get to live here!

I finished the zombie book and am trying to decide what to read next.  Compared to training I’ve got a ton of fee time and I’m not feeling particularly productive – especially as much of my energy is devoted to learning this new style of housekeeping. I’m thinking about picking up the Peace Corps issued book on community assessment.  That’s what I’m supposed to do these first 3 months anyway.

Until I finish my assessment: my initial impression coming to the village was the overwhelming generosity they showed to a complete stranger.  My house, a one room traditional thatch bure right on the beach was so lovely I couldn’t believe they’d built it just for me.  The welcoming celebration lasted all night – fueled by grog (kava), music and dancing.  Since then there has been no end to the random gifts of bananas, papayas, cakes and full meals, and it seems every day someone is coming to make adjustments to my house.  The children are curious and always eager to play.  Everyone else is curious, too, just not so openly.  I know they’re all waiting to see what I’ll do.  I’m just curious to see if I live up to their expectations!

Last Days of Training

We finally got site announcements!  The staff surprised us with it a day early and it was truly the most exciting day in Fiji so far – beating out even the opening ceremony of the new US Embassy and meeting the Ambassador (last Tuesday).   It turns out that none of us are headed for Kadavu or the Yasawas or Lau.  The 25 of us are spread out over Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, the two main islands, with three on Ovalau, a smaller island between the two (and the site of the former capital of Fiji).  I’m right on the coast on Savusavu Bay (Vanua Levu).  I’m the first volunteer at my village (most people are replacing a volunteer), so no one knows anything about my site!

Embassy Opening - Some of my PC friends are visible in the audience.

This morning when I went for a long run (for which I got disapproving looks with pursed lips – girls aren’t supposed to run alone – especially when it might still be dark out), I headed up to Toboniqio where some other PC trainees live.  Dan and Colin had already left on their run for Naikawaqa Koro to watch the sunrise.  A week before they’d presented a Sevusevu to the village headman for the privilege of running there and watching the sunrise.  By the time I arrived, the sunrise was in full glory mode, shining rays of light through the clouds onto the ocean below.  We sat around on the cliff overlooking the mangroves the outer islands and the Pacific watching fruit bats glide down below and talking about leaving for our sites on Monday.  This was the last chance we’d have to visit this amazing place.  In a few minutes we headed back down the hilly, muddy track, just a twenty-minute run back to Toboniquio not looking back at the small town we may never see again.  We’ve been here only six weeks and I already feel like I’m leaving so much behind.

Sunrise in Naikawaqa

Yesterday I borrowed a phone and called Bubba.  He’s the Peace Corps Volunteer serving with his wife in a village near where I’ll be heading next week.  When I called he was on a bus with the village head man of my new village and had some news about my house.  Apparently they’d just finished tatching the roof and walls and were hanging the doors that day.  Bubba went to have a look today to make sure I’ll have electricity.  Most importantly, I hear there’s a beautiful white sand beach just 10 yards from my bure!

I’m being torn in two.  I can’t wait to get to site!  Can I take pieces of Naitasiri with me?

At a grog circle in Kasavu

Where the heck is Fiji, anyway? (and a few other stories)

The other day Sia came over to the house to hang out with my Na.  She is a really cool lady – originally from Kandavu, she moved to the United States for law school and passed the bar.  She moved back to Fiji, though, and is lawyer here, one of the best if you ask the magistrate I met in Nausori last week.  Anyway, Sia invited me over for drinks at her house and we got to talking about her experiences being the only Fijian in a big state school in Alabama.  She couldn’t believe the things people thought about Fiji.  Once a girl asked, “I know Fiji is a really small country, so do you all live in caves?”  Guess what?  Nobody lives in caves here, but Fiji is a really small country in the middle of a big ocean.  Sia couldn’t even find it on the map when she tried to point it out in class to her fellow students, so she had to draw it on!

So, here’s the map of the world that I use to show people where I’m from and where other places are.  See – Portland’s there!  (It’s got Eugene and Medford, too, but not McMinnville).  Can you find Fiji?  Here’s a hint: it’s more than 15˚ south.  Here’s another hint: the embassy in Fiji also serves as an embassy for Tonga, Kiribati, Tuvalu and Nauru.  Do you know where those countries are?  No?  Never heard of them?  That’s O.K. I don’t think they usually cover the South Pacific very well in High School geography.  A close up of my area of the South Pacific is down below.  It’s got all of them on there if you look closely enough.

Being in the South Pacific is awesome.  Really.  However, there are some things to watch out for.  The other day I went for an afternoon walk with Kim and Christine, two of the other Peace Corps trainees in my village.  I thought it would be a short walk down the road and back, so I just put on some flip-flops and headed out.  Soon, though, we were climbing a muddy trail up a steep incline through the jungle and the flip-flops had to go.  I hiked the rest of the way barefoot (and cautiously).  We figured we’d loop back to the road, so we kept on, up and up, further into the jungle, having a glorious time.  Along the way we met Ta Jack, an old farmer tending his cows.  He mentioned some people from our village were ahead of us, so we continued on.  Later, rather than sooner, we realized we weren’t going to get back to the road, so we turned around and headed back.  When we met Ta Jack again, he opened some young coconuts for us to drink from and invited us to come back some time, earlier in the day, and he’d show us the other trails.  We sang and joked on our way back, getting really muddy and having a blast.  It wasn’t until we reached home and related our adventure to our local friends that we realized the danger we had been in.  “The danger,” they said, “the danger is that it is evil!”  We hadn’t known that there are evil spirits lurking in that part of the jungle, lying in wait to possess young girls and turn them mad.  Needless to say, we’ve been forbidden to return to the jungle on our own.

Regardless of your beliefs, there are more tangible threats than spirits.  Yesterday I heard a story of a Peace Corps volunteer in this area being harassed by sharks while kayaking in a river.  Yes, bull sharks can swim up freshwater rivers.  People keep telling us that there are sharks in the Rewa River here by the village.  But that doesn’t keep us from swimming in it!  Actually, our first time in the water, Kim and I were more scared of bacteria than sharks, but it was hot and we jumped in anyway.  Yeah, the water was brown, but it was great!  We bailed out an old boat and rowed over to the opposite shore, Brian joined us, paddling over on a bamboo raft called a bilibili.  The shore was pure mud, the kind that you sink into to your thighs.  When a few more friends from the village showed up with a rugby ball we had quite a time thrashing around in the mud for a game of touch rugby.  Later we “cleaned off” by playing a very poor game of water polo before swimming back across the river.  What a spectacle we made!  Half the village must have come out to watch.  The other half asked if I really swam across the river.  Anyway, Kim’s been swimming in the river every day since and has yet to see a shark OR get sick.  I guess we’re just lucky.  :)

Life in the Koro

Would it be disingenuous to say life in Fiji is not that much different from home?  From outer space you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.  It's the day to day realities, big and small that set it apart.  I mean, did you know there's not one zoo in Fiji?  None of the kids here have ever seen an elephant, tiger, or any kind of monkey!  I get asked every day if those kinds of things are real (or Dr. Doolittle or vampires).

I live with a host family in a pretty decent sized village.  My Na (mother) and Ta (father) are a bit different than your average Fijian family: both have jobs (primary and secondary school teachers, respectively) and they're both in Master's degree programs.  I've got two host brothers (Tuvula - 13 and Tuisoa - 3), a host sister (Dilama - 11) and a cousin (Tubuna - 18) living in the house.  Each morning is a whirlwind of getting everyone off to school on time (which usually doesn't happen), getting Tubuna out of bed and to the teitei (small farm) and Una coming over to take care of Tuisoa.  Usually somebody - or everyone - is late - a symptom of "Fiji Time."  You get used to it after a while - even the Peace Corps events rarely happen when they're planned to - things just happen when they happen.

Our village has about 85 houses jam packed into seven acres.  That's 12 houses per acre, and that doesn't even count the church or the open space around the church!  Technically 500 people live there, but a lot have apartments in the capital, too.    We're lucky to have municipal water from Nausori.  It's always cold, but it's so warm here that cold showers are refreshing!  The pressure is more of an issue as it can vary wildly and your nice shower can become a trickle or a raging torrent in just a second.  There's not a waste treatment plant, so most people have home made septic tanks...  And grey water goes into drainage ditches around the village and out into the river.  The trash does pretty much the same thing...  Needless to say I'm a little hesitant to swim in the river!

We're also lucky to have constant electricity - that is - if you remember to "re up" your account.  It's similar to pre-paid cell phones.  Everyone has a tv, dvd player and radio.  Electric ovens, kettles, blenders, irons and washing machines are not uncommon, but they're often too expensive to use.  My family even has a computer, but they keep it locked up.  It's really hard to have stuff that's much nicer than the neighbors because of "KereKere."  Literally meaning "please," this is how people refer to the practice of indefinitely "borrowing" from family members - which could be anyone in a village or even visitors.  Most of the time the borrower doesn't even ask.  Luckily it usually doesn't extend to Peace Corps volunteers, but I do keep my peanut butter and coffee in my room, and sometimes my snacks for tea break, because if I don't they'll just all disappear before I get a chance to use them!

In the village family is very important, and all Fijians have to be tied to a village somewhere, even if they live in a city.  The way this works is through mataqalis (clans - pronounced matangali).  Our village has seven clans - the different clans have different traditional land holdings which cannot be bought or sold.  They have different responsibilities in the village, too.  They are part of the governing system of the village with each having their own head man who speaks for the mataqali in the village meetings.  Most people live around other people in their clan, so that's mostly who they interact with, too.  This system is partly responsible for a bunch of different extended family relationships that I haven't quite grasped: some people aren't allowed to talk to other people based on their family relationships, others are required to have joking/taunting relationships!  This extends to different provincial relationships, too.  I haven't got it all figured out, but I do know I'm in the highest cheifly clan in the village!

There are always a ton of people in the village.  Most people don't have real jobs.  They might have some role in the community, like taking care of other people's children or running one of the village stores (more like a very small, necessities only, market), but more commonly the women make money diving for and selling kai (freshwater clams) and men grow and sell dalo (taro), tavioka (cassava), roro (taro leaves), vudi (plantain), jaina (banana), ota (wild fern) or other vegetable, fruit or animal products.  There are youth (18-35) in the teitei, mowing the lawn with weed whackers or making a new volley ball court, children under 5 running around all over, women cooking in the houses, and men sitting around sharpening their isele (machetes) or telling stories.  Everyone knows everyone and everyone invites you over for tea.  It's a very interactive existence!  I'm doing my best to make friends: telling stories, drinking grog (kava), going swimming, playing volleyball and more.  I'm always hearing, "Milli!  Lesu mai vei?" (where are you coming from) or "Lako i vei?" (where are you going).  I've just recently gotten quick enough to respond!

Welcome to the Peace Corps

Months after my nomination to serve in North Africa/The Middle East I received a phone call from Washington informing me that my program had filled and could I swim.

A few weeks later I was invited to serve in Fiji!  I never really believed it until they sent me the information for staging in LA and the itinerary for the flight to Nadi.  But here I am, nearly a month "in country."

After a one day orientation session in LA we boarded a non-stop flight to Nadi, Fiji.  Arriving at 5AM, we walked off the plane to be met by the Peace Corps country director for Fii who helped us pass immigration and customs.  A long bus ride took us to Pacific Harbor and another 2 day orientation, immunization and water safety session.  On the afternoon of the second day we packed up again, this time headed for four days of training in Nadave, a technical (mostly ag) school near Nausori.

With all of the whirlwind training sessions, new friends, new foods and new environment, I hardly noticed I was catching cold until it kicked me on my butt.  Instead of meeting my host family that first Monday, I was the first in my group to travel to Suva and the Peace Corps office.  The adventure was a bit wasted on me, though, as I slept through the whole thing!

A good rest was all I needed and I headed to my host family's home and back to training the next day.  Since then I've been living and studying in a Fijian village by the bend in the Rewa River just a few minutes drive from the "city" of Nausori.

More soon!  Happy Queen's Birthday!