A DiAmOnD in the Rough: Salasimede (Footpaths)

Major Progress

My Peace Corps experience took a 180 turn this past Monday. At the community meeting we ushered in a new village development committee, which means, we voted for new people to run the projects in the village and every person on the committee is a great worker, with ideas, organization, and leadership skills. My projects just received a major boost! On Tuesday, February 8, 2011, the men started working on laying the footpaths! Within one day they had a 50 meter frame built, started filling it in with rocks, and had an assembly line for the reinforcement rods. Now this is what I am talking about! Everyone is so excited to see so much progress that they wanted to work every day this week to see how far they can get. Whew. Huge stress off my shoulders.

The first few hours of my village's new footpaths!

First day's progress.

Putting together the reinforcement one rod at a time.

Making the rods into Fijian style reinforcement.

Lysiosquillina maculata

The weirdest thing happened to me today. I was looking at the fish posters on my wall and telling myself that I should leave them behind for the village to enjoy. I know that I will never be decorating my future homes with posters. Then, the common banded mantis shrimp stares me in the face with its beady eyes that can see 100,000 colors (10 times that of the human eye). I realize I have never seen a mantis shrimp besides on tv and in my invertebrate biology textbook, but ever since learning about their marvelously sensitive eyesight I have been fascinated.

I carry on with my business, collecting my snorkel gear, hammock, and book for another Sunday Fun Day at the beach. (Sundays are religious here and no one does anything except attend church and sleep. Really, I am not supposed to do anything either.) I lock up my house, answer every inquisitive Fijian’s questions about where I am going, and head out into the intertidal zone as the tide slips out. As I round the cliffs dripping with runoff from the recent tor r entail downpours I am startled by a small, odd-shaped fish. As I peer closer I realize it is a mantis shrimp, none other than the common banded shrimp I was just studying in my bure. He continuously scuttles under different rocks as I try to get a better look. Finally, I corner the little bugger, reach down with an open palm behind him and two fingers just in front, and WHAM! He rears back his little club (technically a smasher) and smacks me in the finger. I start laughing, realizing that I forgot they could swing with a speed of 23 m/s, about the same speed as a .22 caliber bullet. Thank goodness he was a baby, only about 5 cm long, or else I could have been streaming blood.

When I stand back up to begin walking I reminisce about all the other times I made this simple mistake:

1. When I went to pet a lemon ray and got sliced between my fingers by his stinger,

2. The time I found a fireworm on a wreck dive and started to pick up the beautiful red flames, only to be rudely awakened by sharp pains in my fingers and red needles that refused to dislodge, and

3. All those times I thought it would be fun to play with a sea cucumber, until I was surrounded by its sticky intestines it had expelled to keep me away.

And another update on the footpaths…

Mixing the coral, sand, and cement.

Each step is done by hand.

Covering the footpaths in preparation for the oncoming rain.

One week down and 200 feet of concrete has been laid. Only problem, they tried to sneak in dead pieces of coral into the cement. I wanted to scream! Not only was it just collected from the beach that morning, but it is organic, and porous. We quickly put a stop to that. For some reason they thought it was OK to work without one of our two designated carpenters and so they continued to lay with a carpenter that I have never seen in my village. In other words, they asked someone from another village to come in and help us, who in turn gave the men crooked advice. Sometimes I do wonder about people’s intentions. Anyways, we made a compromise to crush the coral and wash it thoroughly before mixing it in with the sand, gravel, and cement. Hopefully this does not hinder the quality of the footpaths. I wish some of you could experience the conversations I have sometimes with Fijians. You would be appalled!

Tea time after a hard day's work. Man we have a lot of men in this village. EVERYONE has been contributing! Lunch and a tea are provided by the women every day of work.