Santa Claus in Fiji?

Well, now I’m just sure that when I say Christmas Party everyone back home things of friends, family or work buddies milling about a festively decorated house drinking specialty cocktails (red and green naturally for the season…) and eating great appetizers, maybe you all even do a white elephant gift exchange? I know my friends from high school and I got together every year for a Christmas potluck and while elephant gift exchange, it has been our tradition for I don’t even know how many years!

Well Saturday morning we had our village meeting (bose va koro) at 10 am in our Community Hall. It was productive (somewhat) but everyone is just getting ready for Christmas. There are a lot of people in the village from other places in Fiji to visit family and a lot of villagers gone to other areas, this means that attendance at the meeting was lower than average and that no one really wanted to get committed to anything big yet. No worries. The meeting ended at a little after noon and I went back to my house to cook up some lunch. Well Mere, the Turaga ni Koro’s wife came up and asked me if I wanted to go down to Tokou (the next village over) for a Christmas party celebration with the kids. Well shoot, a Christmas party? You don’t say… Count me in! I was more driven by curiosity than a real desire to attend an event in the next village over which typically just gets me a handful of project proposals and even more marriage proposals.

Well at 2:30 Mere came over and we walked down to the next village, she brought with her Norman (her son’s) Christmas present (a New Zealand All Blacks rugby ball!) and 2 dishes of food to contribute to the dinner afterwards. We got down to the village and visited with one of the families there before making out way to the other side of the village for Mere to wrap Norman’s gift. She dropped me at a nearby vatuniloa (an elusive structure. Essentially a shed… I will write a whole post on these things later…) with 4 Fijian men playing guitar and drinking grog while she attended to her business. The men all knew me, as is usual on this island of only 8,000 people, and I remember seeing them once or twice at certain events. They all remembered me for dancing at the 100 nights celebration after the death of their Chief. Of course, seems I’m always remembered most for dancing ’round these parts. Anyway, we were sitting there for about 2 hours just singing Fijian songs and telling stories. Mere came back out and had a few bowls and then we decided to head over the community hall (vale ni soqo) for the Christmas party.

Well we got to the hall and there were TONS of people there. Every parents of every child that attended brought 1 wrapped gift that was placed on top of a table at the front of the community hall with their name written on it. There was a Christmas tree with lights and Christmas music playing as well. Well after sitting around for about 10 minutes, a group of dads in the corner decided to start the grog at the hall as well so all the parents clustered on one side to watch the festivities. Well probably 30 minutes after arriving at the hall they decided to start. And OH what a start it was! I had no idea what this whole thing would be like, but man this trumped just about every other possibility for how to spend a Saturday afternoon on Ovalau. Our MC was talking for a while about how the program for the day would work (I got about 3/4 of what she said…) and then all of a sudden, Santa walks in! Well that’s a lie, Santa didn’t just walk in, Santa danced in with a huge bag full of candy. The kids went NUTS. I was so glad I was sitting off to the side for fear of getting smothered by 100+ Fijian kids with sweet tooth’s the size of Texas. Well, this was no ordinary Santa, or Father Christmas as hes known here, no sir. **Spoiler alert to kids under 7** This was a Fijian man dressed up in a real Santa suit, wearing a white T-shirt under the coat that had been stuffed with a sulu to give him a large belly. He was wearing a Santa hat as well but the kicker my friends, the real kicker here… is that this Santa chose to wear a plastic Santa mask. Of a white Santa. Im talking rosy cheeks and everything here folks. We will get back to the mask later, but for now its suffices to say that it was slightly creepy. Especially because you could see the tape sticking to his head.

Alright so Santa dances in, throws candy EVERYWHERE. And I’m talking handfulls of these butter toffee candies (which I’m actually quite fond of here). Kids are going crazy. There is screaming. Running after candy. Insanity at the hall. Well Santa makes his rounds of the room, throwing candy high up into the air so that it rains down upon these little kids so eager for more candy. And makes his way over to me. Now, I expected him to throw a handful of candies around the parents grog bowl ( candies like that are used as chasers here, everyone usually has something at grog whether it be a coconut, mango, or some small candy to chew on after taking their bilo of grog to get the taste out of their mouth) but instead, Santa makes his way right to me. Leans down, shakes my hand, and places a handful of candies directly in my hand. Wow. I felt so special. Well as is typical in village custom, we=hen you have extra of something you share. So I took 2 candies and passed the rest around to the parents surrounding me.

Well Santa finishes emptying his bag of candy and heads to the front of the hall. His fake plastic mask even seemed to say, “It’s present time ya’ll, lets get down to business”.

So one by one they read the names of the gifts and hand them out to the kids. This, my friends, is the best part if the day by far. So the older kids are totally cool with this. I’m sure they have seen this show year after year and know that they walk up, shake Santas hand and get their gift. No biggie. Oh but the little ones? Hilarious.

You ever seen a little kid get their picture taken with Santa at the mall and no matter how hard Santa’s little elves try they just can’t get the kids to stop crying? Well this is like that, but 100 times better. So the first little kid gets her name called. She’s probably 2. So the mom takes her up to Santa and you can just see it in her face. “What the hell is going on here?!” kind of a look. Well about 5 feet away from Santa the kid starts screaming. Screaming bloody murder. Kicking and flailing her little arms in fear of the creepy white, plastic mask clad man standing before her. Well, Santa does something here that I’m sure scars these kids for the whole next year. Not only does he force them to shake his hand, he leans down and kisses them. Kisses them. These screaming little kids so afraid of him already. The room erupts in laughter and clapping for the little kid that just had to endure probably the scariest thing in its little life. Then all of a sudden, a lot of things started to make sense to me… You see in the village kids are, for lack of a better way of explaining it, communal property. They are transferred from person to person throughout the day and roam around with whoever is around at the time. So when I first got here, and still to this day, parents will thrust their small children at me. I learned very quick that this was a very bad move indeed. The kids screamed and flailed and tried to get back to whoever was holding them previously. At first I took it personally, I mean I have never been super good with little kids, they kind of freak me out a little bit, but screaming? Now that’s just not necessary. Well anyway, sitting here watching these little kids go up to Santa I realized that that is the only other white person a lot of these little kids have ever seen… and I would be the second (I mean the first real one… but still) and it all made sense. To them, I look like this crazy-creepy fake Santa that they are forced to kiss once a year.

Anyway. The present giving continues. The party is concluded and dinner is served. Grog moves front and center in the hall. I was requested to sit in front of the tanoa (grog bowl) which is a place of high respect so I obliged and watched the people in the hall eating their dinner and playing with their new toys. After about another hour I decided to head back to the village and cook myself some good old vegetarian food (because that doesn’t exist at big celebrations and gatherings such as this). So I walked back to the village and did just that.

After dinner I went to my yaca’s (namesakes) house because I heard of some betting game they were doing. A lot of soli’s (fundraisers) are going on this time of year and my yaca and the families that live up at the settlement, to make some extra Christmas cash, baked a cake with pink frosting and sprinkles, purini (this cake that looks like chocolate but then you bit into it and are sorely disappointed that its just brown, not actually chocolate) and a custard pie (shortcake topped with lemon custard, condensed milk, peanuts and peaches). So what they do is make up 8 plates of slices of each of these deserts. And call the gamblers. So they take out all the cards of one suit in a deck of cards, 2 through Ace and place them face up on the floor. It costs you a dollar to buy a card. So I walk in and buy 2 cards, 2 dollars. And sit there with my cards waiting. They wait until all the cards have been purchased by the gamblers. Then Ben shuffled the cards very very well, handed the deck over to someone present to cut, and then turns over the top card. Ace. Damn. I had the 4 and the 9. Mine and my sisters numbers when we played water polo. That’s okay, someone else won a plate of huge pieces of deserts. Well it continues like this until all the plates of deserts have been one. On the fourth round, Ben and I each put in a dollar and we picked numbers 4 and 8. He shuffled. Handed the deck over to me to cut, and then hands the deck to one of the little ones to turn over and see who won. Koli turned the card over, it was an 8! Ben and I won a whole plate of deserts… delicious delicious deserts. So I sat there with our prize until the rest of the rounds had finished. Brought the plate of goodies home and split it up between the two of us and kept them covered at my house while we went and returned the plates. On our way back we passed the house of Josaia whose wife just left with the kids to go to Suva for the holidays so some of his friends went over to drink grog at his place to make sure he didn’t feel lonely the first night she was gone. We were all joking around with him that he doesn’t have to cry, that were here to help him through, shell come back… we promise. Etc. etc. just spoiling him for fun. So Ben and I were invited in with the common phrase, “Mai, dua na bilo” (Come, just one cup!) so we did. After a few bowls there and about 40 minutes of discussing chicken farming as an income generator with the men there I left and went to Dave’s house. The place I usually drink grog at. I got there and there were probably 15 people inside, my “family” here. So I walked in and sat in the back where they were playing cards, Trump 10… but everyone calls it troop 10. It’s a really awesome game and I’ll explain it one day. Enough to say Fijians are amazing at it. I am still developing my strategy… so I kinda suck. So I sat there for about an hour playing cards and drinking a few bowls. Na yaqona sa maca a tinikadua na kaloko, qai keitou sa lako I na vale ni Lite kei lose levu. (The grog was finished at 11, then we all went to Lite’s house and mixed more grog). This is Christmas time and everyone in the village is drinking more than usual because, well its like what all of you do during the holiday season I’m sure. Go to different parties and drink socially. That’s exactly what it is here, families are reuniting in the village, people want to be a part of a bigger family so they drink together. Tell stories. Share their lives and enjoy each others company the one time a year they all can. So we were at Lite’s until about 1 am.

It was all in all, a really wonderful day. I had expressed earlier to some people in the village that right now, it’s a really hard time to be away from home. Away from my vuvale dina (real family), and they really went out of their way yesterday to make me feel like a true part of this village family and all their crazy holiday celebrations. It really helped me a lot to get into the holiday spirit and just enjoy being here at this time of the year.

I hope wherever you are, you are all spending time with your families this holiday season. Don’t take it for granted.

Happy one week until Christmas :)