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.