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.
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| Bubba With a Skip Jack Tuna |
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