Thursday, July 28, 2011

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.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

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!