We time traveled. Teleportation was on our wish lists for Santa, but alas, the highlanders don't have conventional chimneys. Instead, Garrett and I teamed up to form our own family unit this holiday season. In desperate need of R&R, we decided to see the side of Fiji that makes people drool: the beaches.
And a flying fox in a palm tree: Day 25
Our rosy-nose expectations of the twelve days of Christmas made the final week leading up to the big day a little anticlimactic. How do we prepare for the event? What's going to happen? The rest of the villagers were jolly as ranchers but had no advice for us on how to infuse ourselves in the mix...aside from purchasing four sugar sweets and three Fijian hens for every child in town. We learned quickly that the children didn't know of Santa, nor did they receive presents for the occasion.
Climbing mountains for funerals: Day 21
Prior to entering the home housing the wake, the women were all smiles, picking their fluffy hairstyles round and rolling mats to present to the family of the deceased. Crossing the threshold, these same women crouched and sat in the closest space (the proper Fijian way) and began wailing into their handkerchieves. The sound was odd; I looked behind me subtly to see what it was. It didn't sound like crying - more like the way my brother used to mock me when I would get upset as a child. Someone flipped a switch, and these normally stoic and collected ladies were a mess. It was their time to mourn audibly. I don't think they get many opportunities.
Two (extra)ordinary days on the Luva river: Day 20
Stir at 7:30am to the sounds of giggling children, bossy dads, and falling billiard balls into play. Emerge from half-slumber at 9am to eat a pound of crepes and cups of lemongrass tea. Wash face. Brush layer of cane sugar off teeth. Contemplate what today will bring. This was our morning routine during those first few weeks in Fiji, when we had a host family and the sole mission of experiencing Fiji before our classes began in the afternoon. Some days we scribed on our computers until they died. But what we usually opted for were outings with our host mother or the children, and these trips always centered around satiating that primal desire to cool off.
Breaking up 2009: Day 17
Traditional Fiji is all about formalities, paperwork, and figurative curtseys. Sitting next to the Turaga ni Koro (village spokesman) one rainy afternoon, he invited us to come to the youth break-up party on Friday evening. The official invite came one hour later in the hands of one of his children. On a sheet of college-ruled paper, fit with addresses (and the village homes don't have addresses), full names, and dainty language, he asked us to be "honored guests" at the annual event where the youth members talk about their accomplishments and downfalls.
Wai wai everywhere: Day 16
The aftermath of Cyclone Mick kept the skies gray and misty for the following three days. Nearby villages sent word of their damages; Nakavika was one of the luckier communities, thanks to their relocation. For decades, Nakavika sat in a nook of a river bend, level with the mighty Luva, until the mid 1950s when a massive storm flooded the entire inhabited plain. The new location had me feeling quite safe - surrounded by the cover of mountains, sitting above the ravines, and relatively out of the bush. Normally Nakavika was a sunny, colorful paradise (forget the swarms of flies), but this week, it presented its difficulties by the bucket load.
Mick chicken: Day 14
Garrett and I, both equipped with our arsenal of cameras, sat atop propane tanks and cracker bins documenting the horizontal palm fronds. While everyone else was enclosed in woven bamboo walls, we found relative shelter under the awning of the billiard area, with a concrete floor and an opening behind us facing the belly of the beast. And with every hearty gust, my pigtail braids split over my shoulders and flopped in front of me, flanking my face. My all black gear coated with a thick layer of mist, I avoided touching my clothes in order to keep the rain from penetrating to my goose-bumped skin.
Bracing for the cyclone: Day 13
Various news publications reported Cyclone Mick as a battering, vicious storm, causing a lot of devastation to Viti Levu in December of 2009. BBC showed disheartening video footage of the aftermath. Al-Jazeera accentuated the death count. The Telegraph wove together an anthropomorphic description of Mick using beastly adjectives galore. All of these articles were factual, but, for the highlanders, they certainly didn't incapsulate the energy and emotion of the experience. Oddly enough, the village of Nakavika seemed to find the Category 2 storm amusing.
Witnessing the termination of babe: Day 8
The size of this young animal called for the termination technique of the slow choke, the slicing of the neck, and the severing and tying off of the trachea. The whole process took three or four minutes, all the while I sighed, "There's got to be a better way." Staring into the open mouth and fully opened eyes of the swine, I imagined her entire body pulsing with adrenaline and terror, her meat turning acidic from the surge of chemicals, her mud-splattered life flashing before her eyes.
The boys said, "This is the way we kill the piglets."
Getting comfortable in the highlands: Day 7
Lemon leaf in the morning: tea that surpasses all other attempts to comfort the soul. There's no better way to begin a new phase of life in Fiji. We awoke from our personal bedroom slumbers to a Fijian breakfast, sitting Indian style around a tablecloth near the kitchen. With all the logistics configured with the village authorities, we were free to begin finding our place among the rest of the community. The kids offered to take us swimming, relieving the discomfort of the hot, humid daytime, and along with this experience came our first hike through the clay-like mud, rock jumps, pebble skipping and the singeing of our first layers of skin.
The acceptance of The Nakavika Project: Day 6
It was 9pm in the Fijian highlands. The glow of candles and fluorescent lights shone through the windows and spaces between woven walls. Kamikaze frogs darted in and out of our path as Garrett, Abel and I lugged our huge bags toward Fane's house where half the village men and children were waiting, TV ablaze with violent American movies, and kava mixed for the ready.
The long road to the village: Day 4
I can't imagine a better way to enter a village than the way we did - in the bed of a truck with two laughing kids, standing and facing the glow of the headlights, singing into the wind while the last peak of sun rested onto the distant hills, rolling up to a sleepy village where our friend and contact, Abel, walked up to greet us as the government Land Cruiser rolled to a stop.
The first steps into Fiji: Day 3
First glimpse of Fiji
A blending of India's food and occasional putrid odors, Uganda's smoking fires and Hawaii's humid sweetness, spices and diesel exhaust, dust and flowers, fresh air infused with very specific whiffs of soap and oils - I can't explain Fiji's air any better than this. I wriggled in anticipation for Garrett's first smells of the island. After sitting/contorting in our seats for 11 hours across the blue Pacific, we stomped onto the tarmac . Garrett immediately cheered for his arrival to a country he instantly loved. The weather was uplifting, the people light-hearted, and all we had to do was pass through immigration to merge out of limbo into the South Pacific.
Even though we are planning some trips to scattered islands and are technically just visitors to Fiji, we decided, in our sleepless stupors, that we were teachers and should present ourselves as such to Fijian immigration. And so began a sweaty pursuit for an extension to our now limited visas.
Landing in Fiji
While Garrett ran downstairs to exchange some money for the visa payment, I worked with the officials and made a hand-written document explaining our intentions for volunteering and where we would be staying. I had no idea what wording was expected, so I pulled out a few lawyer phrases I learned from TV.
That simple letter with an address for Nakavika was apparently all we needed…that and a letter from the school we claimed to be helping, only to find out in a couple hours that we had planned to be in Fiji for the exact days of the big nationwide school break. All these things we had to hurdle were mere technicalities, which we eventually figured out thanks to our friend and contact in Lautoka and another immigration office in town. Though we could have sidestepped the initial troubles by saying we were just tourists, it seemed we were being more honest with our intentions, and it really wouldn't be too hard to get a letter clarifying our acceptance and intent from the village when we get there.
A half hour on the Queen's Road got us to Lautoka, and since Sugar City is the only city I know in Fiji, we came back to a familiar (cheap) hotel, shopped at a familiar (colorful) market and met up with Kimbo at a familiar volunteer house - to tap into the Fijian mentality and become better acquainted with the savvy of an expat.
Running around in the [near] equatorial sun after a day of flying gave us a beautifully rancid stench, and there seemed no better remedy than taking a dip in the hotel pool. December 4th, 2009 and we were swimming outside. We couldn't help but laugh and splash and entertain ourselves with challenges from childhood, all the while feeling the disbelief in our current location.
I couldn't believe we actually went through with it. We came to Fiji.
Wandering town yet again for our last meal of the day, we found some great Chinese and moseyed back with plans to watch Star Trek on my laptop and take an evening swim. We fell asleep immediately upon getting back from dinner. It was 7:30pm in Fiji.
Next came the long, long road to the village of Nakavika.