Well. Christmas is over.
Honestly it felt like any other day here. I almost didn’t even care that it was Christmas.
Fijians do celebrate Christmas, a vast majority of them were converted by missionaries (starting after some of those first tragic accidents with cannibalism… heres lookin at you Baker…). Holidays here are a very different style though, it is a day for family, good food, and drinking. In a sense, its more true to the meaning of Christmas but when your family is thousands of miles away, you almost wish it was the consumer driven mad house that the states is during this season where family sometimes seems secondary to the Christmas parties, cookie baking, gifts, etc.
All that being said my Christmas wasn’t terrible. It was just like any other Sunday. Ben and I walked down to Tokou to go to Catholic mass and on the way ran into a group of about 7 Fijian men walking out of the mangrove forest taki-ing a beer. Side note- here in Fiji you don’t order a beer and drink it yourself. If you go to a bar, or someones house or anything the bottle is given to one person and a large shot glass is filled up and then passed around to everyone in the group (pretty much resembling a grog session). So they stopped and talked to us as they offered us a glass before we continued to church. It was a really awkward experience to have a shot glass of beer before Church. After the service we walked back up the village and I hung out at my house, this was the hardest part of the day. I have no family here. All the families in the village gather together and make huge feasts that include foods they don’t typically consume like pig, cow and chicken. One family slaughtered one of their pigs for their lunch, some of the boys who had just gotten circumcised got roast chicken, it was basically your traditional Fijian lunch just with real meat rather than tinned fish. My neighbors, bless their hearts, brought over ramen noodles with potatoes, pumpkin and lettuce and vakalolo, a fijian desert made of dalo or cassava chunks in a toffee-like sauce made from coconut cream and sugar. Vuki, one of my neighbors came over with some kids and we played cards and then a few girls came over to drink grog. We drank at my house and played cards until around 9pm. There were 10 people here which is a lot for my little house so that was pretty entertaining falling over each other to switch partners in the game and getting more water for the next mix. After we finished grog at my house I went with Ben over to their vatuniloa at his Uncles house and we drank and played cards there with his family and the Turaga ni Koro until about 2:30 when we went to my house and got a bottle of wine his dad bought for me in town and went to my uncles (momo Cumu) house and had a little washdown (its what they call it when you drink alcohol after grog to prevent next day grogginess). And that was Christmas. No frills. No cookies. No presents or stockings. No hot chocolate or Irish coffees… just a different kind of day.
The 26th, Christmas day for all of you back home, I called my family to wish them a Merry Christmas and talk with all of them which was good for my morale. It has been really hard to stay positive lately and just accept that things are so different here… I never thought the holiday’s would be easy but it was so much harder than I had originally imagined to be an “outsider” on such a family oriented day. I helped one of the clans in the village facilitate a workshop on youth development focusing on SWOT analysis, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. There were probably 30 youth there and it was a really awesome day to hear them talk about their dreams and goals and how I can help them achieve those while I am here. After that I went to a soli (fundraiser) for the methodist church that one of the youth invited me to. So I went and donated my $2 to the soli, and was consequently covered with baby powder (a sign of affection for someone who is special, usually done to musicians or honorary guests etc) and given a tekiteki (flowers for your hair).
December 28th. Kimberly came to my village! This is really my first visitor at site (other than those who have lived here which right now consists of Alex…) I spent the day cleaning up my house and finalizing some things in the village for the work we would do while she was here. She came in on the only transport on the island, the ferry, at about 6:30. I heard the first bus drive by and literally went running out of my house to find her so she wasn’t stranded… I found her walking towards my house surrounded by no less than 15 children pointing and ushering her in my direction. I love them. Well in traditional fashion we had to do a sevusevu (special gift of grog to welcome a new visitor) so we walked around the village for a bit introducing her and then went to one house at the back that called us in for, “Just one bowl” well just one turned into about 10 because we were stuck by a terrifying thunder and lightning storm complete with sheets of rain. This was no ordinary thunder… I have never felt anything so incredibly powerful in my life. We would see the lightning and I would grab kims arm and wait 3 seconds for the LOUDEST crack and continual roll I had ever heard. I don’t scare easily from T&L, in fact its my favorite weather, so this was new for me. Eventually we had the chance to leave and went to my neighbor Momo Vuki’s house to do our sevusevu to Mo Sakaraia, then drink grog with (the now very happy company) of 25 Fijian males. They were so happy I brought them another Kaivulagi (white) girl and I joked with them saying, “What, I’m not good enough for you guys anymore??” And then we all just laughed. Well anyway that night ended at about 1:30 am.
Ill just recap the week of her visit for you… we went swimming nearly every day, collected mangrove seeds sitting on a bilibili (bamboo raft) which were later thrown back into the water while we were busy on shore…, lead a virgin coconut oil production workshop, ate delicious food (think french toast (thank you Vakatawa for the sliced bread), tons of fruit (thank you to all the young men in my village who wanted to impress her by bringing delicious fruits), a fruit cobbler (thank you kimberly for the canned berries from Suva), etc etc., we learned that in Fiji if you are pregnant and don’t tell anybody that everything you do or participate in will go terribly wrong (as evidenced by the VCO not turning out), we did biological monitoring of the Marine Protected Area and got sunburnt, went to Church on new years, lead a water fight in the village, went to grog until the wee hours of the morning every day, drew with chalk on my concrete walls, and went up to the settlement. I also got WONDERFUL care packages/Christmas presents from home which I was super stoked about, tons of dried fruit, trail mix, couscous, quinoa, sun dried tomatoes (!!!), yoga dvd’s, chocolate, notebooks, an REI quick dry towel, coffee cup, real coffee, and a small chopper/blender thing which I can’t wait to try out!
So some information on how we celebrate New Years… its way different. We went to church in the next village over with Ben and Joe at 10pm until 11:15pm and then walked up to the village. Kim told Ben that he shouldn’t be ashamed to date me (we hadn’t really gone super public about it in the village) and so she made him hold my hand on the walk home. Well as irony would have it as we walked home we passed the Turaga ni Koro’s wife… so now the whole village knows after the Turaga ni Koro essentailly made an announcement at grog one night stating that Ben from the settlement and I were dating, slightly awkward. When we got back to the village we went to grog at the community hall. Since it was technically Sunday (Sigatabu- day of taboo) we couldn’t sing at the hall so it was just a ton of people there celebrating the new year quietly… Well Kim knocked off around 2am and I stuck around until 5am. Officially my latest night at grog. The next day was relaxed until the afternoon (after the afternoon church service) when we had an intense water fight which is how we celebrate the new years here. Me and Kim switched off filling buckets and glasses with water in my house and dousing the kids that ran by. Monday was the day we could really celebrate and we went crazy. There was water and kids banging on tin everywhere… I got literally picked up from my stoop and carried over to a spicket by Naca until I was soaked. These types of imprompteau baths occur all week long.
The first week is also called the renewal week for the Methodist Church and so they have church service every night. After church each night a different Mataqali (clan) hosts grog at the community hall and decorates it with their clan colors, balloons etc. Its really quite pretty. I went to every night of this. It was a lot of grog. On the last night of this, last night, Mataqali Cake (no, not cake… cake- said thake haha) was hosting which is the clan my neighbors are part of. It is the spokesman clan of the village, those that speak at special services and for the Chief and the clan that I have been… kind of… adopted into based on my work and familial relations. So since this was my mataqali’s night I could participate in ways I couldn’t before… meaning I could go up to my tevale’s (a joking cousin relationship you have with the kids of your uncles and aunties from your mothers brothers and your fathers sisters. Your mothers sisters are your moms and her kids are your brothers and sisters, your dads brothers are your dads and their kids are your brothers and sisters as well…. Ill write about this later) So I could go to my tevale’s and take off their shirts, and dress them up in women’s clothing and put baby powder on their faces. It was hilarious and I really enjoyed myself doing that, not to mention all the women in the room seemed proud that I was participating amongst familial ties. I also served grog to people that night. After the chiefly guests are served in a traditional manner a group of people stands up and fills bilos (cups made from coconut shells) to distribute to the rest of the group. I got a lot of people saying “Vinaka Ru” Thanks Ru. And it was honestly just really fun.
Well this week was also my birthday. I’m 23! It was fun to celebrate on my real birthday here, and then the next day on my real birthday back in the states. So on January 4th here I was 23 in Fiji yet still 22 in the States. Odd. So on January 3rd we were at the hall for grog for the renewal week and at midnight the band played happy birthday to me which was so special. There were literally 100+ people singing to me and it was really special. I was given a candy salusalu (necklace) and Joeli danced with me to celebrate. Well we got a late start that morning after recovering from grog, made pancakes and then Ben called me and told me to go up to the settlement. Well we were so okay with that because for the 2nd time this week the water in the village ran out. So we packed our bags and headed up to the settlement about 2 miles up the road. Well we sat on the porch all afternoon eating pineapples, bananas, mangoes and ladies fingers while Ben, Joe, Tomasi, and Weis made a lovo (earthen oven) for me for lunch. They made palusami which is rorou leaves (the green leaves of the dalo plant) layered over each other with coconut cream, chilies, and onions inside and then folded up and put in banana leaves tied together with a strip of bark. They also cooked dalo. It was pretty fantastic. We just played the guitar and cards all day. Went back to the village around 6pm and ate, got ready and went to grog at Tomasi’s house to celebrate. There were 14 people there and we just had a basin. Then Sevo came over and said he had a little birthday present for me… which turned out to be a bottle of whiskey. So we all rounded up on got the 2 shot glasses and taki’d the whiskey. Everyone basically takes a half a shot and it keeps going around until the bottle is gone. Well since it was my birthday everyone wanted to toast with me and it was… harsh. Whiskey here is no good. And I don’t drink at site. Ever. So this was highly entertaining. After our whiskey adventure me and Kimberly went to the community hall to attend that Mataqali’s grog night, I was there until 2:30 and Kim left that morning on the ferry at 4 in the morning… it was a hard day haha!
Well that has been the holidays here. As fun as it sounds, it’s a really hard time especially having my birthday mixed in with all those events. Im very glad that the holidays are over and that things are settling down into a more normal pace of life. I am taking a tabu week for grog (meaning I wont be drinking grog this week) and focusing on work which hasn’t really been at the forefront of my mind these past few weeks.
Cheers to a new year, a new perspective, and new opportunities.
