Kartiking

Thursday this last week caught me by surprise when the USP decided to host a little competition called the poetry slam. Being the little poet I am my attendance was necessary. The little I know about poems is that there is some kind of formation that I don’t understand, because nothing ever usually rhymes, I’ve tried to count the syllables and that doesn’t seem to work, so really what I have noticed is it happens to be pretty much just writing. Well Fiji style I feel means can you curse and can you throw in a little potty humor, you have a winner. The winners were definitely a little, different, in terms of writing a meaningful poem. In second place we had a little thug Indo Fijian with dark curly hair down to the end of his back who talked like a hip little street thug. But once he started rapping, because he refused to conform to the rest of the styles, his lyrics weren’t really all that good. I remember him talking about how large his member is when its limp, apparently 8 feet long, and then, the best rhyme of the night, “taste my paste!” That got them, the people couldn’t handle themselves. When you speak like this mixed with about 10 F***per minute to a crowd who can’t even take their shirts off when swimming its too much to handle. People roared in their very high pitched laughter and pretty much fell off their seats. The victor of the competition really blew their mind when it came to thoughts many may have never heard verbalized before. First he began by saying this poem isn’t for any of his students, and being the wiz I am at critical thinking I concluded he was a professor. Well the title was “Eating Mangos” but after hearing what he had to say about supple things and squeezing what have you so delicately between his thumb and forefinger I don’t think he was eating a mango anymore. This was critical thinking gone wrong, so so so many bad images, but somebody thought it was pretty creative. The only thing I think the innuendo’s needed to be a teensy bit more subtle to even try and make it a metaphor. More like a how to poem, and not quiet what I was looking for in my poetry competition.
So for a synopsis of an Indo Fijian weekend will be difficult because I could talk about the food and issues that come along with it forever. My friend Kartik invited me out to his house at a place called Cuvu. I must say the family was really awesome. Grandpa Gagarj, which means mighty elephant, pretty much just moves from the porch during the day to his mat on the floor of the living room. The other two who live there cook curry all freaking day, and while they do that they constantly offer this little piggy samples of it, which usually is about eating a plateful. His younger sister happens to be going to beauty school, so I offered her some practice and she filed my nails and painted them with protective layer of stuff so they were really shiny and pretty. To make the rest of me look good they offered to play Danny dress up with an Indian formal outfit called a Sharwini, and some really slick shoes called Mogiri. One problem with the whole outfit though. They were pretty much the skinniest skinny ankle pants ever, because if they got any smaller they couldn’t go on, and I even broke off a scab after putting it on, ooww. Hopefully I didn’t get any blood on them.


Oddest part of the weekend came when Kartik wanted to show me the Fijian Hotel which is located about 2 km down the road from his house. Great news to me! The water pressure at his house was very weak and many times unable to make the toilet flush, so I found that it would have been a bit awkward to drop one and leave it sitting in their toilet. Well since the Fijian hotel is a 5 star resort the toilets have to flush, and therefore it was an ample opportunity to relieve myself. I entered the facilities on a mission nothing was going to throw me off. When I plopped myself on the seat I heard footsteps follow me into the bathroom. ‘No way did he just follow me in here?’ So I listened. The footsteps sort of just were waiting next to the sink near the far end of my stall. I think he must have felt a little awkward because he first washed his hands waited for awhile, and then went to the bathroom. Because of this odd order of bathroom functions I concluded it was indeed Kartik. Well, since you don’t just follow someone into the bathroom and wait for them to do their business I decided to mess with him by seeing how long he would wait for me. My business was done and I just sat there snickering to myself about my evil intent waiting for the results of my test. Another person walked in and yet he and I were in a stalemate. Finally I got really board and began to unseat myself from the wasting position, and he asks “Danny are you ok in there?” catching me totally off guard. “Well I’m asking because you haven’t been making any noises for awhile.” Completely blown away by the awkwardness I needed to regain footing by attempting to make him realize he was just listening to me in a bathroom and how odd that was. During this time an Australian tourist was using the urinal as I explained no one follows people into the bathroom and listens to them poop, but he felt well justified because there was a group of white people showing up to the resort and thought it would be weird. Something I think I couldn’t really argue, so he justified following me into the bathroom, and I couldn’t argue it.


Time has proven I feel that girls get much more attention wherever they may go, and I have just broken that. Walking down the main street of Nadi and someone bumped my arm. I glanced back and didn’t recognize the person who was looking at me so I ignored them. As I walked away I heard a call “Hey Baby!” ‘what was that?’ I thought and again I heard again “Hey Baby!” oh boy! Stick it to the world, because no more just cat calls but now buck bleats, hot stuff. Suddenly Kartik whispers over to me, that was a prostitute. Aww man ruins everything! I wasn’t getting just a legitimate call, but it was for personal monetary gain, lame. Just another minor blow to the self esteem.



I would like to just throw a thank you out to my mother for being so great and providing me with some great support while I’ve been in Fiji by supplying me with a constant supply of sweets and yummy American goodness, and some homemade baked goods. I am also glad that there is such a business in Fiji that through rain or sun or tsunami and cyclone my parcel will cost me $2.40 and be beaten to a pulp until they know there is no meat within the package. There were pieces of my bocks falling off, and I had to go through the process of opening it and seeing the bag of chips exploded throughout the box and then the guy points to the Little Debbie asking “what is this?” “that is oatmeal” he glares at me to the cream pie and nearly shouts as his face begins to turn red, and holding back a shout says “MEAT?” finding this a little amusing I decided to be a little smart. “No its an oatmeal cream pie” he didn’t quite get it I could tell. “It’s made by Little Debbie” I lean in for a whisper “they’re my favorite.” I then was allowed to package it back up. Luckily his subordinate was much more reasonable and saw what happened to my bag of chips and offered to close it back up for me. I held it up and bam three staples across the top of the bag, good as new. The Fiji Post willing to go that extra mile to make life good for everyone.
Well a week behind and one more to catch up, so look forward to it and hopefully my crappy writing won’t deter anyone from reading. Unfortunately I am a week behind on the life events, but right now I have reached the one month left period of my adventures and am really looking forward to enjoying an action packed end to this whole ordeal. It saddens but excites me to be nearing the end. All I want is to leave with no regrets and feel that I made the most out of my time. Right now I think things should be pretty good upon return where things are complete but we shall see as events unfold.