Waiting for excitement

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Something I forgot to mention last blog was the “qiri kava” in Lydia’s village. It turns out around New Years there is a tradition of banging tin drums with sticks up until a week after the New Year. For some reason my village did not participate in this obnoxious, but sometimes melodic form of racket (I can only assume it is because of the funeral on New Years and the 10 days of respect). It is a tradition held by the children and they get such a kick out of making as much noise as they can during the one week that it is not restricted. I admit that Lydia and I had our own little jam session as we belted out an American nursery rhyme. The children were soon all enthralled and insistent about showing us their talents. Here are a few pictures behind the curtain…


One of the drummers.


The crew.




Monday, January 11, 2010

I was really hoping for there to be a meeting this morning, but it turns out there wasn’t enough notice so the village rescheduled for the last Monday of the month. No problem, as long as I can attend it I am content.

Since there was not going to be a meeting I spent most of my morning cleaning up the house and watching Mogli eat lizards – four today!

I spent my afternoon up at my namesake’s house playing with the baby and baking banana bread. I followed the recipe exactly, but I can’t say I would ever make it again or recommend it to anyone. My namesake’s scones are sooo much better.

After lunch time I was so hot there was no way I was walking out into the sun. I stayed inside most of late afternoon reading “Brisinger”, “The Tenth Circle”, and “Marine Conservation Biology”.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Another day I was supposed to have a breakthrough meeting, this time a women's club meeting, and it didn’t happen. I am getting quit used to disappointments. There are two visitors coming from America that are going to be staying at Sio’s house and they are supposed to walk into the village sometime tomorrow. They work for an NGO for beekeeping in the US. I cannot believe an NGO can send people all the way to Fiji for two weeks.

We were also supposed to have a kindergarten committee meeting about the uniforms, start date, enrollment fee and term fees. Of course, this one did not happen either as the main people in the committee were not around to discuss the topics at hand.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Today is the day the volunteers/NGO visitors were supposed to come visit. I got a call last night letting me know that they were not coming. It turns out there were all kinds of plans made for them and then they dropped out last minute appearing to be more of tourists than NGO workers. Man, I was so excited to host some visitors and teach them about the Fijian culture! Oh well, definitely their loss. If I was going to a far away country I would be delighted if someone had made plans for me to visit the real culture of the land and stay in the homes of locals. They missed out on such a good opportunity!

So instead I went to the swimming hole. Floated in my raft for a while. Hiked up the river until I reached the big waterfall. Sat there and enjoyed the scenery for about an hour, then I heard some kids up above me giggling. I followed the sound and found Buka, Asina, and Pio playing in the watering hole at the bottom of another large waterfall. They were scared of the eel that lives in the pool. Lol. The last time Buka, Buka Jr., and I were up there we saw one circling the bottom. Anyways, I had brought up my pampason float and blew it up so the kids could float under the water fall. It was so neat to be out in the middle of nowhere with no worries but a harmless eel.

The next thing you know we are hiking up to the top of our mountain looking for the dam. I had looked back a couple of weeks ago and never found the end of the pipe. I was only about 15 feet from the dam when I had turned around and went back down! The dam is really neat. It was build over 20 years ago and is still holding strong. The water comes out of a natural underground aquifer/spring. It literally looks like the water comes out of a small rock. There are two filtration systems. One of sand and small stone, the other of small stone and large stone, plus the way it filters into the concrete dam somewhat assists in catching sand grain. It is such a beautiful thing. The only problems with our water are people wasting it as well as melted pvc pipes that we plan on replacing soon.