Catch up

Figured it was time to let you all know what the score is.

We’re now well into winter here, and it’s colder than I expected. Well, that’s not true – when it’s hot and sunny, it’s very hot and sunny, it’s just the hot-and-sunny days come a lot less frequently now. The rest of the time, it’s windy and rainy and cold. But it’s all relative – often I’ll think “Ooh, it’s a bit nippy today” then look down and realise I’m wearing shorts, a vest top and flip flops. Could you ever wear that kind of outfit in a Scottish winter? Heck, it’s only recent climate changes that have allowed us to wear that kind of outfit in a Scottish summer, and even that’s pushing it slightly.

I am still working at St. James Anglican Primary School, and will be for the forseeable future. I can’t remember what I’ve said about St. James before, so excuse me if I repeat myself. It’s possibly the poorest school on the island, but the staff (all four of them) are all very friendly and enthusiastic, which is more than you can say for the larger schools, not naming any names, cough cough. St. James hardly had any books in their library until about a month ago, when they had a big donation from a cruise ship. And so, my current job is setting up a library for them. After I’m done there, I’ll be doing some painting around the school and making it look pretty, which will be fun. Also please note – the uniforms at St. James are hot pink, and I love ‘em. HOT pink. Even the boys. It’s fantastic.

I was having some accomodation problems, which I won’t go into as I am not into public slander. So, since the manager for St. James is also the manager for Norah Frazer School for Special Education, which is right next door, I am now living in a room at the back of Norah Frazer. Just since the weekend, and it happened very suddenly, so I apologise for not mentioning this to anyone sooner. I love my wee room there. I have those insect screen things against my windows and door, so I can sleep with my windows open without fear of being munched on, and I can actually lock my door. I have my own wee fridge, which is a freakin’ luxury here. I have a large bathroom to use, which doubles up as the boys toilets during the day, so I also have my own urinal. I have a shower which I can control the temperature of (I’d call it a hot shower but that’s kinda stretching the truth). I also have furniture. I love the fact that I’m not living out of my rucksack anymore, which I kinda have been for the past couple of months. I should end up doing some work at Norah Frazer at some point as well which will be good.

Social life still kickin’. The hockey team was fun but gruelling, and kinda fell down the drain when the accomodation drama started as I was too busy/tired after school to face getting my ass kicked by ten year olds. I still go to Tuesday club every week, and I have a good circle of friends to depend on.

And I can’t believe how scary close this is getting to hometime… 

Death of a Chief

(By the way, Death of a President is not an entertaining film...)

So the Tui Levuka died. He was in his 70s and had heart problems, but still. The town was pandemonium all last week as mourners from all over Fiji flooded our poor tiny little town. Before the funeral, the body was held at the town hospital, which I walk past four times every week day on my way to and from school/lunch break. The body was guarded by these great hulks of men in traditional attire – grass skirts, arms and ankles with similar grass bands, and their bodies painted black. Scary, right? Yet every time I walked past they smiled and waved at me, or made coughing noises to try and make me look at them.

It was a bit of an awkward week for me, given that the only wearable items I own that are black are the following:
- Flip flops
- Small canvas handbag
- Hair bobbles
- Underwear

and I felt glaringly out of place in my pink flowery sulu. But my searches at Levuka’s clothing stores were fruitless and no mourning outfit was found, so I grinned and beared it.

The funeral was a lavish affair, but I wasn’t here to witness it, having gone to the gorgeous tiny coral island of Caqelai for the weekend. (Heaven! White beach, turquoise sea, and you can walk round the island in 15 minutes.) But it was pretty harrowing noticing the great respect that’s held for the chief, even in a 21st century town. The clubs were empty all week, children didn’t play outside, cars drove slowly and no loud music was heard. It shows how well Fiji has done to preserve its traditions from the days before European influence, and I say bravo. It’s also really lovely to see a community having real respect for someone like that – when you come from a ned-infested country like Scotland where complete strangers are beaten up as a hobby, it seems unusual.

And that is all.

New address!

which you can find on the How to Contact Me page. For the next few weeks please warn me if you post me anything ’cause I haven’t quite worked out how often the post is collected or where it will appear at my new school*. ‘Naka.

*which, by the way, is well good!

For the record

Home by Westlife is a very popular song here. “I wanna go home, I miss you” – I’ve played with that line a few times in my head, but it never fits. To tell you the truth, if I didn’t already have my place at Durham University, there’s no way I’d be going home this year. There are very few things I miss about home, so, for the record, I’m going to list them here in the hope that I will appreciate them more when I actually have them.

1. By far, the thing I miss the most is my privacy. For the first two months or so, it was fine. I had my own cosy little room, which I could at least shut the door to. No one came in my room without knocking and expressed permission. Then my hosts brought back their one-and-a-half year old son back from living with the grandparents, and all of a sudden I was sharing my room with two housegirls and had a toddler running in and out and playing with my deoderant. Then I moved house. I’m still sharing my room, the door is broken and doesn’t shut properly, and there’s two toddlers running in and out and playing with my deoderant. Plus, the whole family treat it like a family room and borrow my stuff as they please. Y’know, I love them and all, but it’s driving me a little bit crazy. It’s selfish, but I’ve discovered that I NEED my own personal space, and I swear to Ieeeesha if Durham try give me a shared room for first year all hell will be let loose.

2. Secondmost, I miss piano. Before I left home I was playing at least two hours a day, and to go from that to nothing is strange. I have found two derelict antique pianos since I got here, neither of which are playable, and once I got a few minutes at a four octave non-touch-sensitive keyboard, but that’s it. Guitar just isn’t the same. I also miss trumpet and harp, but to a lesser extent. And thus I am reduced to tapping out Mozart sonatas on desks and hearing the music only in my head. How sad.

3. Sometimes I miss hot showers, more often now that winter is here. Brr.

4. I miss having a reliable phone network. Vodafone Fiji isn’t great. It’s usually vaguely okay within Fiji, if you can get a signal, but outside Fiji? Forget it. I can usually receive texts from the UK fine, but I can rarely reply, and even then only to select numbers, apparently due to random discrimination. Meh.

5. I miss a lack of mosquitos. My skin is now used enough to the bites that they don’t flare up like they did at the beginning, but they’re still annoying as, well, biting flying insects.

6. Sometimes I have weird food cravings. Currently it’s Heinz tomato soup, which you can actually get in Suva, but my desire hasn’t yet reached the level where I’m willing to spend $60 on transport to get a can.

There are a few things that I thought I might miss, but I really don’t. One of them is Scottish people, as a nation, because obviously I miss my friends and family and whatnot. But let’s face it. We’re not particularly nice, and Fijians more than fill up the void. I also don’t miss channel flicking, because Fiji One manages to pack everything that is good about television into one channel, and  they have catchy jingles.

And that’s all I can think of.

Important!

So I’ve just been told that apparently I will be moving school in a few weeks time, to Loreto Primary School. Loreto is the closest primary school to Levuka, 5k away in the village of Tokou. If I have to move to a village, I’m glad it’s Tokou, ’cause it’s as close to Levuka as I can get plus I already have some friends there.

The main thing is that I’m going to have a different postal address, and since it takes a couple of weeks for things to arrive from the UK there’s a chance that if you send me stuff now I’ll be in Tokou by the time it arrives. This is not a problem so don’t stop sending me stuff, it brightens up my day but if you do post me anything within the next few weeks, address to the current Marist Convent address and tell me when you’ve posted it so if it turns out that I’m not there I can go pick it up. ‘Naka!

(of course, this is Fiji, and there’s a chance I won’t move at all…jeez…)

 

UPDATE – 30/5/08

“of course, this is Fiji, and there’s a chance I won’t move at all…jeez…”

Yesterday Sr. Mariana told me that I’m starting at St. James on Wednesday. St. James is a teeny tiny primary school (4 teachers!) at the other end of town, so I’m staying with my current hosts, which is fab. I’m really looking forward to this because I’ve been struggling to find stuff to do the past couple of weeks. So I’ll still have a change of postal address at some point which I will post up later.

 

Kana vakalevu

Fiji is not a place to go if you want to lose weight. Plates are always filled sky high and there’s always a second helping coming. Meals are often eating sitting on the floor. Cutlery is not neccessary.

Breakfast is always carbohydrate-y. We’ll have breakfast crackers (awful dry biscuits, people float them in their tea, bleugh), bread and butter fresh from the bakers, roti (indian flatbread) with coconut milk, or Fijian pancakes, which are like greasy huge thick triangles of pancake and quite yummy. This is usually accompanied by (and dunked into) a hot drink of some sort.

Most days, I buy my lunch in town. One of my favourites is Emily’s Cafe, where they serve the Fijian equivalent of fast food. I can get a fresh egg bun or hot dog for $1 each, or my favourite vegetable roti (watch out vegetarians, it’s usually more like tuna and potato than vegetable; yesterday I found a lump of chicken in mine) for 50c. Sometimes I treat myself to a fantastic sandwich at the Whale’s Tale restaurant. I might have bread or a sandwich from home, or I might make up some noodles.

(Noodles, by the way, are a staple here. And not fresh noodles, instant 2 minute noodles. In fact, you don’t even need to cook them, people sit on the street eating dry noodles like crisps (actually, chicken Chow noodles dry are delicious!))

At dinner time, if we have meat it’s usually lamb or chicken or fish, and you always have to pick out the bones yourself. Otherwise, it’s tinned fish or the hugely popular corned beef. We’ll have it in a stew, chow mein, or curry. It’s always with mixed vegetables or with greens – bele or roro, both of which are yum. (Although if roro isn’t cooked properly you get an itchy throat, ew!) It’s served with a starchy thing on the side – rice, dalo, cassava or breadfruit, for example. I’m not a big fan of the root crops, to be honest. They don’t taste of much and they’re difficult to chow down, but I’m starting to not mind the odd bit of cassava. My favourite Fijian dishes are the ones in lolo – coconut cream. It’s always absolutely delicious, unless they put chili in, ’cause I’m a wuss with the spice.

(They love their condiments here – chili, lemon juice and ketchup will be smothered over everything, and I mean EVERYTHING.)

Drinks are often hot. Fijians love tea, and quite often it’s black with tons of sugar. I still don’t like tea, but I am absolutely in love with lemon leaf tea. It’s fab. All you do is go to the nearest lemon tree, pick a few leaves, put them in your mug, pour boiling water over them, et voila. A delicious lemony yummy yum yum drink. I’ll also drink Milo or Vico, chocolate malt drinks that taste identical and apparently differ only in price and packaging. Cold drinks are fruit juice (always from squash or powder, never fresh) or water or beer, usually Fiji Gold or Fiji Bitter.

My sweet tooth is quite flourishing here, and not just because everything has more sugar in it here (and I mean everything – tea, bread, Coke, ketchup, etcetcetc…). I love Oreos and ice lollies for a treat, or cream buns – only 30c for a “small” one! Mandarin season has just begun, and I can buy a pile (usually about 4) for $1 to keep my vitamins up. Chinese sweets are huge here – dried mango skin or pawpaw skin, but I’m not a fan. The ones I like, nay, love, are “monkey balls” – dried red peaches. Oh, they are delicious.

When I go to Suva, I treat myself with goodies that you can’t get in Levuka – fresh lemon juice from the market (20c a glass!), or sliced pineapple, pawpaw, or bila. Bila smells and looks like cheese, is long and thin and is packaged in leaves. It’s grated cassava with coconut and is much nicer than it sounds/looks.

It’s a miracle how I’m not obese already, I swear…

We’re all going on a nearly-winter holiday

Holidays are over. Today I went back to school. This is a shame, so I’m going to immerse myself in the two weeks past and tell you about my break.

Firstly, here’s a rough map of my route:

School finished on Friday. We celebrated on Saturday and didn’t finish celebrating until I had to get the bus at 4.30am. Two kamikaze bus drivers and a prompt boat meant I was in Suva by 8am, which is something of a miracle. Met my fellow volunteer, Chris, and we did the touristy things that I’ve never had time to do in Suva before – ie, taking pictures in town and wandering around the USP campus. On Monday, we met Helen and David and spent the day in town, and on Tuesday morning we flew up to Labasa.

Labasa is the main town of Fiji’s second island, Vanua Levu. It’s an Indian town, so everything is extremely businesslike, and it’s very very effing hot. Like, unbearably hot. (It’s weird getting your head around the concept that North is now hot and South is cold.) We didn’t spend long in Labasa, it’s not got much for visitors. We went to see the growing rock snake temple, and would have gone to the beach if it hadn’t been for sudden rainfall. The next day we took a fantastically scenic bus journey down to Savusavu, which is now my second favourite place in Fiji.

Savusavu is almost like a bigger verson of Levuka, save the lack of colonial buildings, with a big bay on one side and mountains on the other (smaller, further away mountains, but whatever). The ground is hot and natural hot springs are all over the shop, hot enough to cook vegetables in, and the place is filled with expats and yachties. We stayed in Savusavu for three nights, and went trekking in the rainforest reserve, kayaked in the bay, and just generally absorbed the town. I also had my hair cut by a transvestite and was asked by a German bloke if I’d plait his mullet, but that’s neither here nor there.

On Saturday, we got a minibus to Buca Bay on the Eastern side of the island, the journey to which was extremely bumpy and would have been horrible had we been in a local bus. From there, we took a ferry over to Taveuni, then a speedboat back to Vanua Levu to Dolphin Bay Divers Retreat. (Seems like a roundabout journey, doesn’t it? But there’s no road to Dolphin Bay and it takes way way longer to get a boat straight from Buca Bay, so there you go.) We stayed there for two nights and I loved every minute of it. Gorgeous setting, with only the barely-there lights visible on Taveuni shattering the illusion of complete isolation. Dolphin Bay operates in their own time zone, one hour ahead of the rest of Fiji, to make the most of the daylight for diving. It’s a tiny resort, with Swiss/German owners and staff so friendly you want to pack them in your rucksack. All the guests eat together and this made for two lovely, boozy, guitar sing alongs, which was fab. I should probably mention that I did an introductory scuba dive. I don’t want to do a PADI course - it’s far too expensive a hobby for me to get into, plus I did have a little trouble equalising at one point due to my crap ear, so this course was perfect for me, allowing me to, y’know, have a shot without spending megabucks. It was fantastic and I was pretty sad to leave.

From there we went back to Taveuni, which many Fijians assert is Fiji’s best island. It’s gorgeous, too. There’s not much to do there that doesn’t involve exercise, so we spent three energetic days walking down Des Voeux Peak (yeah, only down. Go figure.), visiting two of the three famous waterfalls, and kayaking and walking and swimming the Lavena Coastal Walk. I was pretty glad for the peace and quiet that are your only option for Taveuni evenings, which gave us a chance to relax. I also shared a taxi with a dying chicken, as you do.

On Friday, we flew back to Suva, and spent an hour or so in town before spending the night at the fantastic Raintree Lodge. It feels almost like a themed Disney resort in the Animal Kingdom, but the place is just gorgeous and so cosy (an impression probably helped by the free upgrade from the dorm into twin rooms, woo hoo). Fantastic food and drinks made for a lovely end to the holiday (marred only slightly by the presence of the German mullet man from Savusavu. Creepy…). The next day, I took the boat back to Levuka, and found that my house had been broken into, but that’s another story for another time.

I have a new camera, and maybe one day I will upload and post pictures from this holiday. Until then, cheerio.

General update

I’m moving house today. Around the corner. I assume this is because one of my hosts is giving birth soon, but no one has told me straight why I’m moving house, so you never know. I can’t remember how much I’ve mentioned of my placement issues so far so apologies if I repeat myself. Basically, I was told when I first arrived that I would be moving to a village for the second term, and with no reason why, but it’s Fiji. Tomorrow is the last day of the first term and the village school’s headmaster still hasn’t spoken to his committee, so the headteacher of my current school found me new accomodation in Levuka so I will be staying at my current school at least until the Visoto people sort themselves out. I am a little apprehensive about moving - I’ve really loved living with my current hosts, they’re fab. What if my new hosts, I don’t know, own a dog? Or my new bed has a squishy mattress and I can’t sleep? (Some of us volunteers have gotten so used to lying on the floor all the time that we love solid beds) What if the kids don’t like me? But hey, whatever happens, I’ll take it in my stride, I don’t have the choice to do otherwise really!

Which brings me to my next point. Isla cleverly asked about my postal address. Until further notice I am still at Marist Convent so the address is the same. No worries.

My holidays are next week so I’m heading up north to do the tourist thing in Labasa, Savusavu and Taveuni. Can’t wait.

That’s all, folks.

Just a day, just an ordinary day

I get up sometime before 8am. I have a (cold!) shower and a quick breakfast, and if it’s a weekday I go to school.

My work at school is different every day, and that makes it hard to describe what exactly I do. Firstly, you need to understand that there are plenty of teachers, all of whom are much better at teaching than I will ever be. What right do I have to barge in, all high and mighty, the rich young British kid, and say, “No, I’M going to teach”? Secondly, all the work I do is my own initiative. If I waited for someone to actually give me work, I’d spend 98% of my time sitting in the staff room playing with my phone.

So I took up a bunch of projects. I went around the school looking for things I could do that would make it a nicer place to learn in, and I settled on my first project – fixing up the library. I finally got all the books away last week and so this week I’ve put the timetable into practise, and have been acting librarian. In between, I’ve been working on my second project, which is fixing up the science cupboard, and preparing for the mural I’m hopefully going to paint. I only have two weeks left at this school, and there’s no volunteer following my post, which is a shame because there’s so much that will never get done otherwise.

School is from 8am to 3pm, with a break at 10.30am and lunch from 12 til 1, although since I schedule my own day those hours are pretty flexible for me, and I usually stay late after school finishing my personal target for the day. On Mondays and Fridays we have morning tea. Morning tea is fantastic. You are presented with a massive plate of sandwiches, cakes, biscuits, and whatever food we can get our hands on – once day we had doughnuts, a baked bean sandwich and cold fish fingers in ketchup, which was a strange combination on a Monday morning, but there you go.  Everyone else takes a cup of tea, or, as is more common, lemon tea, made from leaves freshly picked from the school garden. Some days we also have afternoon tea, if there’s a meeting or special occasion. There’s a tuckshop every break time as well where you can get ice lollies, ice cream cones or little packets of mixed bhuja or spiced peas. I’m well fed here.

After school, I usually go home and take a quick nap and another cold shower, before proceeding to whatever activity I have planned for the evening. Sometimes I drink grog with people, sometimes we drink beer. On Tuesdays nights I go to the aptly named Tuesday Club, which is a non-formal gathering at the Ovalau Club. Most people that go are expats, and everyone donates $1 every week to the fund, which is used for good deeds in the town. Other than that, we drink and socialise and it makes for a good night. I have been trying to go to the Tidy Town meetings on Wednesday afternoons, but it never seems to be on when I’m available to go. When I was going to the hospital every day to get a new dressing on my boil, I got chatting to the nurses, and thus I have a standing invitation to play volleyball with them, which they play every day after work. Occasionally I go swimming, or to town to buy a few things. If I have nothing in particular planned, I might go for a walk around town, where I will usually bump into someone I know and have a nice chat, or buy an ice lolly and sit along the sea wall. If I’m really tired, I might just stay home and play my guitar or learn some Fijian.

At night, I might come to use the internet cafe like I am right now. Sometimes I watch television. There’s a really good program on Monday nights called Noda Gauna that I try to catch. It’s a documentary in Fijian with English subtitles, and each week they focus on a different interesting aspect of Fiji, Fijian culture, a specific island or person, and it’s a really good way to learn a bit more about this country. If I’m at home and it’s 8.30pm on a weeknight, I’ll probably watch Shortland Street. Hey, it’s good.

Today I joined a hockey team. We practise 6 days a week, from 4.30-5 on weekdays and 8-9 on Saturday mornings. We start tomorrow. I am scared.

Sometimes I go away at the weekend. I have been away three times so far – to Beachhouse on the Coral Coast (the location of Celebrity Love Island – wooow), to Volivoli beach in Rakiraki which is the northernmost point of the mainland, and to Lautoka, Fiji’s second city (out of two). This weekend I am going away to Leleuvia, which is a small island near Levuka, for an art exhibition and some lazing about on the beach, which I am looking forward to.

Sometimes people come to visit us here at the weekends, in which case we hang out.

Sometimes I go to spend the day in the village, which is fun.

At night we might drink grog or beer or go to the club. Sometimes I go out for meals in the town, which I enjoy.

On Sundays I sometimes go to church. Sundays are very lazy days. Hardly anyone seems to leave the house, and everyone spends the day napping. Hey, that’s Fiji for you.

Last Sunday, I was bored. It was really, really freakin’ hot. Sometimes, some of the shops open for a couple of hours on a Sunday, so I went into town to see if anyone would sell me an ice lolly. An Indian lady approached me and after a little small talk asked me if I wanted to go with her to a fair up at the SDA church. I agreed, and we had a really nice chat on the walk up. When I arrived, they made me the guest of honour, gave me a massive plate of cakes and biscuits and a glass of fresh kumquat juice, and put a flower garland, around my neck which they insisted I kept. I met loads of new people and had a really nice afternoon. That’s what it’s like here, and it’s why I often don’t bother planning anything, because fairly often you’ll be invited to do stuff just by bumping into people on the street, and that’s much more fun.

Anyway, I’ve rambled on long enough. Ciao for now.

A present from the Easter Bunny

Turns out Good Friday ain’t so good after all. Introducing…

A tropical boil!

Which swelled my knee up to the extent that I couldn’t walk and cried a bit

But then I went to the hospital and they gave me a bandage and some pretty pink pills.

Don’t worry folks, I’m on the mend. Still going to the hospital every morning for a new dressing, but I’ve finished my pills and (excuse me) most of the pus is out. Thank you.