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. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment