Things are going well here in Fiji. Alec and I are adjusting very quickly and we feel very at home. I think Fijians are the friendliest, most hospitable people I have ever met. Not only does everyone know each other, but wherever you go, there is no one who doesn't say hello. If you walk by someone's house during lunch, they will call out to you and invite you to join them.
There are approximately 17 people, give or take, who live in the house with us. There are four bedrooms, and it appears that Alec and I have the largest bedroom. Yet, somehow the house does not feel crowded. Everything is shared and because the village is so connected people spend much of their time outdoors or in one another's homes.
The past two mornings Alec and I have woken up at 5:30 am due to the banging of drums calling people to church services. On Sunday, the children are in church school all day and the adults attend up to 5 services. We were invited to go, but we said we would join them another time. We were told that 80% of Fijians are Christians. Where we live, there is a house prayer meeting every night at 7:00.
Alec and I really bonded with the children yesterday (there are soooo many children). At first they had seemed somewhat afraid of us, and many of them don't speak English yet because it is learned as you progress farther along in school, but we started making faces at them yesterday morning and suddenly we became climbing structures and endless sources of entertainment for them. It seems that the kids are pretty much always left to their own devices. They play with each other and take care of each other and the adults rarely intervene.
We played a big game of volleyball yesterday and setting up the net was something of an adventure. One of the girls, Rebecca (who I'm guessing is about 8 or 9) pulled out a real volleyball net from a nearby house. However, there were not two poles to keep the net up, so another girl ran down a hill and found a huge piece of wood; we tied the net between this piece of wood and a clothesline, but the piece of wood wouldn't stay standing. Peter, one of the adults, brought out a shovel and dug a deep hole in the grass to secure the wood pole. And, voila, we had a makeshift volleyball net.
Everywhere we go in Fiji is so beautiful. We went to a rugby game yesterday and the field was right on the ocean surrounded by mountains and coconut trees and greenery. The one thing that bothers me is that there is often a lot of smoke in the air due to the many burn piles all over the island.
Our first day on the farm was Friday and we learned how to plant pineapple (pineapple takes 1-2 yrs. to produce fruit and each plant only yields one piece of fruit, so you have to plant a lot of pineapple). We also weeded and raked the area around a huge crop of papaya trees. It was hard work in the humidity! The farm is large, about 2 acres, and it has eggplant, papaya, yams, sweet potato, cucumber, long beans, radishes, bananas, pineapple, and more. Only problem with the farm, and it is sort of a BIG problem: there are coconut trees everywhere. I wore a hard hat and it still felt scary. We are working on the farm alone with a man named Setereki, who like all Fijians, is incredibly welcoming.
And finally, we had our first bug experience yesterday. I was taking an ice shower (which I don't think is something I will ever get used to, especially because it gets relatively cold here at night and in the morning--at least during winter) and Alec screamed for me to get out. I jumped out naked and terrified, not knowing why, and when I turned around there was a huge, massive, thick spider on the wall. Apparently it had been crawling down the shower curtain. Everyone in the house laughed at us and took turns picking up the spider and showing us how "harmless" it was. This thing was HUGE. At least 3 inches in diameter and with THICK legs. But at least we got that out of the way.
Well, I suppose that is all for now. Definitely no need to worry about my being underfed; the Fijians have that one under control. At every meal they repeat over and over: "kana vaka levu," which means "eat more." I don't know if I can take much more kana vaka levu. Especially when it comes to boiled, cold, unseasoned taro (although really most of the food here is actually quite tasty... many curries and fresh fruits and vegetables and soups). I hope everyone is well in the northern hemisphere!
love, alex
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