Vakamau!

I had the amazing opportunity to be in my friend Asenaca's wedding on Kia island last week. I had been to a Fijian wedding before, but this time it was way more memorable. Not only beacuse I got to wear the traditional masi cloth, but because a good friend was getting married. A whole bunch of us from my village piled into 3 boats to go to Kia island for 48 hours where we drank kava, swam in the ocean, danced and got very little sleep. We had so much fun that our boat must have sensed that we didn't want to return and decided to catch on fire. Never fear, my ever resourceful host father had it fixed and we were on our way only 3 hours later.
Besides the wedding, things are normal here. Still waiting for my footpath and UNDP money to come through. Both projects have had the "Funded" stamp of approval since July but we have yet to see any money enter our bank account. Pending a phone call later today, I could be starting with a 3-day waste management workshop on Sept 8-10. I haven't started planning so if we get the money today I will be uber busy until then, but then again we could not get the money and I will have another month of occupying myself with fishing, card games and village fun. So thus is life in Fiji...although I'm not technically busy yet the prospect of work is stressful. Time is flying by and nothing has started yet...things are looking like I might be here longer that I originally expected.

Outside My Kitchen Window

Until today I never really thought about the view out my kitchen window. This is due to the fact that Peace Corps Fiji requires all volunteer houses to have mosquito netting, hurricane screening and anti-theft barriers on all windows. I guess I just always focused on the layers of steel between me and the view to give it any thought. Today was different. For whatever reason, I was thinking of an old commercial about a builder deciding how to orient a house so the best view was out of the kitchen window. That prompted me to notice the difference between this particular kitchen window, in a tropical paradise, as compared to the few I’ve previously had in Mediterranean SoCal. While nothing spectacular when compared to some of the sights to be seen in Fiji, my view is good enough. At dinnertime, you can see the sunset through a grove of coconut trees in the background, and duly located in the foreground is my neighbor’s shed used for drying coconut to make copra. Some days there will be goats grazing, something I really look forward to because my neighbor is also a “goat talker” and they often bleat in beat. And now I must stop my window into the life of a PCV (pun intended) because all this content contemplation has caused me to burn my rice. Coupled with the bean dish with an excess amount of salt, I’m not looking forward to dinner...so much for flying solo and not consulting a cook book.