path pics

The first half of the cement shipment arrives in the community hall.


Day one. Here, the elders of the village, including the big chief (far left) pour the first bit of cement into the start of the pathway. This was preceded by a grog ceremony to inaugurate the project.


The boys collect sand and rocks from the river.


action shot!



another action shot!


Big chief sits with his granddaughter on a bench outside his house, in front of a new stretch of path.


Big lunch in the community hall.


A completed section! They used some cement to fix the drainage along the pathway too.


Another completed section!


The village insisted on this stand to commemorate the donors. It is in the very middle of the village. The house behind it is the big chief's house. They said, but Lisa, we should get a nice engraved stone from Suva to place on the top. And I said, can we just carve the names in the wet cement? They said, but it must be nice. Then they pointed out the electrical wire they had draped above with attached lightbulb so that when the generator comes on at night, the names will remain lit up. Maybe a bit overkill, but pretty frickin cute -- just shows how incredibly happy they are with these paths!

footpaths!

I have learned that it is good not to get your hopes up for things. I spent a lot of time my first year getting my hopes up, then getting my villages' hopes up, then being let down, then having to let down my villages. Not a fun cycle. That is why I was a bit covert about this footpath operation, not telling too many people in case it fell through. But now that I have seen 340 bags of cement sitting in the community hall, and have seen completed sections of new footpath under my feet, maybe it's time to get excited!

The footpaths were needed for many reasons. During the rainy season mud makes the paths inaccessible. Some just simply stay home, and meetings, funerals, weddings, and children going to school are all affected. In addition, the mud mixes with animal feces which then enters open wounds in feet, leading to skin infections. Footpaths minimize the villagers' contact with the dirt, making skin infections less common.

Plus, they look cool.

Money came from America, from friends and family and organizations through a PCPP (Peace Corps Partnership Program). I still haven't gotten the list of donors, and a proper thanks will come with time, to be sure. But a preliminary thank you to anyone who contributed to this project!

Turns out, the way to a Fijian's heart is through footpaths. And the way to my heart is through a good lunch. So. These past couple weeks have been excellent. Every day the men work on the paths, while the women cook. Around 1:30, the women carry large pots full of breadfruit and curries and cassava and fish, etc, to the community hall. The women set the floor with food and plates and then tell the men lunch is ready. The men come in and eat, while the women fan the flies off the food and sit near the door. The men then leave to go rest for a bit while the women eat what is left over. Then the men get back to work, and the women clean up and then lie down and tell stories.

I like seeing the whole village working together on the same project -- men and women alike. And the boys are learning too, helping after they come home from school. The village is very happy with the footpaths. And that makes me happy.

Pictures to come soon!

the tropics are such a gaudy joke.

"The tropics are such a gaudy joke: people have to live with every other kind of poverty, but a fortune in flowers, growing out of every nook and cranny of anything. If you could just build an economy on flowers. I stayed in a house that had vanilla orchids growing out of the gutters and a banana tree coming up under the kitchen sink. I swear. There were some kind of little animals too, like mongooses."

(from Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver, p.88)

music!

This most recent project I've been involved in is co-producing a CD to be used in the curriculum of a set of schools in Fiji. These songs all teach human values in some way (you know, respect, devotion, etc) and are to be used in conjunction with other mediums (stories, art, etc) to reach the most amount of kids as possible. This CD is another volunteer's main project, and she recruited musicians to help her put it together (!!).

So. Clearly, teaching about waste management in villages, sometimes sifting through mountains of trash while piglets are running about, is incredibly valuable too. But this project, where I am told to play the guitar all day, think up chord progressions to fit the wonderfully cheesy lyrics of these songs, is kind of like a dream.

We recorded 6 songs this past week, and will get together again in the coming months to make up/record the rest. SO. FUN.

frogs.

So it's really tropical here. I had forgotten. And in the middle of summer to boot. Quite a shock to come from a cold dry New Mexican wintery wonderland where I wore wool socks every day and night.

My garden doubled in size, vines growing all up in each other such that it will take one very large morning to sort through through it all. Maybe two large mornings. I haven't had the energy yet, still getting my Fiji legs back.

At night I have been taking my mattress off the bed and putting it onto the floor so that I can feel the breeze from the cracks beneath my misfitting doors. I did this last year, but what is new this year is waking up to frogs jumping on me. They usually don't make it over me, but they sure try. This summer it is a lot rainier and walking down the road around my village I have been noticing miniature frogs, smaller than crickets, jumping out of my way. They. are. everywhere.

You know, as a kid, I loved frogs. I had a big poster full of beautiful poison dart frogs splashed in different neon colors. Driving home sometimes we saw toads hopping across the road after a rain. My mom would stop the car and I would hop out, scoop them up and place them beside the road. They were always these special, mysterious, reverent little creatures to me.

I remember my first dinner in my host village I was shocked to see a frog hop across the floor with neither mention nor regard from my host family. Did they not see this frog? They did, they didn't care, how strange. After slowly getting used to that, one night I saw my little host brother kick a frog across the living room like a soccer ball.

And now. I not only have frogs hopping around my house, having to clean up frog poop twice a day, but I also have them hopping on me at night. And when I see a frog, it is like seeing a grounder in baseball. I dive on it and throw it out of the door in one swift motion (my neighbors once laughed at the sight of frogs flying out of my house, but they are used to it now).

* I meant to say in the last post how much I loved seeing all my fam/friends while I was home. What a wonderful blanket of comfort and happiness and warmth that was. I had such a great time. Love you all! SO MUCH!

America is still here!

I've been home for the holidays, which has been wonderful, and a bit confusing, but overall wonderful.

I walked into my house after 1.5 yrs and the first thing I saw was Rocky, the family cat, who could have eaten my scrawny Fiji cat for a light snack. Actually all the cats looked distorted, like someone had come up to them, grabbed their furry cheeks and pulled them outward. I thought they were sick, and was genuinely concerned, until I realized that it was me who was projecting the distortion, so used to seeing only undernourished, mangy pets running about.

Also, lots of buttons here. For coffee, radio, cars, ovens, microwaves, ice. I don't have to tell anyone that. But man, I have a new appreciation for all of them. The first few days I walked around the house asking if anyone needed to do laundry. I wanted to be the one to press the button, and having been home only for a few days, I hadn't amassed enough dirty clothes for my own load. What a trip. And how easy it is to forget you have started! The clothes just sit there quietly in the washer, waiting to be moved to the dryer, and then just sit quietly in the dryer, waiting to be folded and put away. This is quite different than going to wash dishes and realizing crap the clothes are still soaking in the sink and then scrubbing them and hanging them before you can start the dishes. And then, as night settles in, hearing nana outside reminding you to bring in the clothes off the line because, as she has explained to you in the past, the night wind brings scabies.

People go really fast here, and don't like to wait. And being slow-paced to begin with, it has only gotten worse for me. Hell, I remember one night in Fiji I finished up dinner and just settled into the night, sitting in my chair, watching ants run across my table. It was mesmerizing, how they were individually so erratic but collectively so static. I watched, watched, and maybe read a little bit and bam, time for bed.

Driving. So, I now drive very, very slowly. Maybe because of the whole island time thing, maybe because I don't have a job or appointments I'm rushing to because I'm on VACATION. Also, when I see construction zones, I get excited instead of frustrated because my goodness, there is an active, healthy, organized push toward improved infrastructure. It is incredible.

Grocery stores are so spread out, bright, calm, and plentiful. Especially the produce section. It is less personal, for sure, which makes me miss my jam lady and my onion guy who always offers me a cup of grog after I buy something from him. But it is relaxing to not be constantly watched while you buy things, like, oh look, the white girl is buying mint, let's ask her about it along with why she is in Fiji, what her name is, and where she lives.

Eggs here do not have to undergo the float test. They are always good. And furthermore, since they are constantly refrigerated, the yokes never break when cracked into a pan. Amazing.

I don't have to constantly check expiration dates. Things are so rarely expired.

Pants, pants, pants. The freedom to move your limbs! How fun.

Snacks in America are unparalleled.

The air here. So dry, but crisp and smelling of familiar trees and grasses I have missed. I breathe more consciously. My first breath of New Mexico air was unbelievable, and I might have shouted and hollered a bit, overcome with joy. I hadn't noticed it before, but I noticed it then, how unique and wonderful and clean and fragrant the air is here.

Sometimes conversations here are hard to contribute to. It's like trying to go on a bike ride with friends, and wanting to keep up and notice the things they are noticing along the road, but for some reason, you were given an uncouth pony to ride, and the pony stops at random places along the path to smell flowers and look at random things so you are way behind, all the time. Like, the other day a conversation about refrigerator organization ostracized me, because what am I to say? Am I really supposed to reroute every topic? I could say, well, I don't have a refrigerator. But I still buy things that need refrigeration, sometimes, like cheese, and I make my own refrigerator by putting the cheese in a bowl partially filled with water in the coolest corner of my bamboo house and hoping the night cools off enough to not turn it into a breeding ground for bacteria. No one cares, and a comment like that just makes me 'that girl', and it would get a "hm" and a change in topic. Not always, but a lot of the time.

I guess now that my foot fungus is gone, along with my tan, maybe it's time to go back to Fiji and finish this thing out. What a comfort to be home, and it's silly, but sometimes in the depths of this experience I doubted America still existed, so entrenched in differences and so removed from everything I knew. But it does exist. America is still here!

farming mada.

When I was on my way back to my village, 3 hours into my bus ride, I realized the key to my house was in my ever-elusive backpack. So the rest of the way I patched up a plan: 1. ask tata for spare key 2.see if i can shove one small child inside the house through gap over my door to open side door from within 3.somehow break lock.

I get to house and tata says the spare key to my house is at the school in a locked box. The key to the locked box is with a man named Suli who is cutting sugarcane somewhere near Rakiraki. I looked around for a small child, and while Sinu was willing and able, the crack above my door seemed to have shrunk, and a small baby would be the only thing that would fit. And it would probably just rock back and forth and cry, not open the door from within. Unhelpful. So up came Sisa with a file, and after about 30 minutes, he sawed that lock right off.

I am still putting the pieces all back together, but things have improved a lot.

Also. Do I dare say I love not having a computer? My God, my life is so simple. I just whittle away the evenings in the hammock reading. No longer frantic when and if the generator comes on, not having the self control not to watch a show (just like how i don't have the self control not to buy ice cream in town -- when will i get the opportunity again? perhaps not for awhile). But electronics and Fiji have always been incongruous. Why follow a path that meets so much resistance.

A few days after going through the motions I went outside with my cane knife and started whacking at weeds. I went to a piece of land i often stare at from my window, thinking to myself, that could make a good gardening plot.

The next day I got out the pitchfork and went at it again. I upturned the soil and threw it around, loosening it bit by bit.

The neighbor boys soon came to help me. God they're so sweet. Sisa, the same brother who chopped my lock off, climbed into the lemon tree and started hacking the branches with a cane knife, so that my new garden would get more direct sunlight. Huge branches came crashing down. Avi and his brother Dile got their pitchforks and knives and helped me turn the soil over better. I had to snap myself out of just watching them work. They are so adept with knives. Maybe there is sense in giving the little kids knives to play with. Little farmers in training. They just sweep the grass away like a leisurely frisbee toss. And then we came to roots. Some roots as thick as a few cans of soda. With one whack they cut the thing clear through, and then would delicately lift it like a piece of spaghetti. Meanwhile, I would be wrestling with it, clutching with both hands and jumping backward trying to elevate it.

Planting starts tomorrow.