After a week long adventure scouring the island of Taviuni for adventure a fair amount of time was needed to recover injuries that I have incurred, or maybe I was all adventured out? Either way life has been slightly less action packed unless if you count literary adventures in the USP library as an exhilarating exhibitions into the unknown world of infinite knowledge in a library. Unfortunately I found a great time to actually enjoy reading and learning things, because seriously why would I read Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles in 3 days when I’m in Fiji? I guess it’s just one of those things.
I had a test one day and it turns out Fiji time is allowable for that also. One of my classmates happens to be a middle age Tongan woman named Angie who feels the strange need to be the class clown. Every day, even 15 minutes into the test, she comes waddling in huffing and puffing and exclaims how she has to rush everyday to class, and then the punch line comes in her nasally voice I cannot understand “WAH WAH WAAAA” and the entire class bursts into a hysterical laughter. Not wanting to stand out I usually chuckle right along and throw in a few stomach pain motions in there and look around to close classmates whom I totally sell I’m laughing too. This time though I just was dumbfounded by the indifference to being late to a class, and the professor doesn’t say anything. I would also like to commemorate Monday to being the first class my real professor has taught a class. Before, for whatever reason, he seemed to be stuck on the Solomon islands for two whole months.
Another life event has occurred this past week. I have become renowned throughout the American students in Fiji as one who can really pack away a solid amount of food, so being the competitive group of individuals we are things turned competitive. I was put to the challenge. 6 people 6 large Pizza Hut pizzas and one hungry afternoon brings about a very slow moving evening. Well turns out this Pizza hut was incapable in baking more than one pizza simultaneously, so each person began at their own time. Fortunately I was the last one to receive my pizza only a fantastic way to establish my dominance. 20 minutes late to begin, and the first to finish I think was winning in style. The only problem I found was that sure I finished, but so did a 5’2’’ 100 lbs Annalise, sure she slipped into a Pizza coma for 24 hours, but I think that pretty much gives me defeat, because wow I think she almost died, and that much heart and dedication should be commended anywhere. Sure I walked around and munched off other people’s pizza’s but I just never imagined eating slice to slice with one smaller than I.
Next memorable expedition was to Wailotou Snake God Cave. After a 2 hour bus ride down a lovely 3 years in the making gravel road, soon to be paved at the end of 2010, we arrived in the village. As we walked around, as in the Roaches, Edgar and I, we suddenly heard some yelling from one of the shacks and out came a teenager clad only in a tiny towel barely wrapping around him, and might I add it looked as if he just climbed out of the shower. Odd enough, but he added to it when he constantly held his crotch when he talked to us. Well, showing the Fijian hospitality I have grown so accustomed to we were invited into their humble abode, which for a village house it was rather very nice; Large living room with three separate bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom all inside. Well, also in true Fijian fashion, we were asked to wait awhile. 45 minutes later after just plopped down on the floor waiting for our young guide to return with kerosene for the lantern. In the meantime we hung out with his dad who actually changed his clothes by taking the shirt right off of his sons back, which I found quite fun.
We made our way down the road to the chiefs house. En route we discussed proper protocol, which was pretty much just saying Dua OH before we approach him. Funny thing is later we found the name for bat poop / guano sounded very similar to Dua so I’m not exactly sure what we said that was so respectful, but after receiving the 25 dollar entry fee he allowed our entry. It was nice because I always imagined the Chiefs to be big power hungry brutish men, and very strict with their rules, but that is very far from the truth. Turns out the chief is just a gentle old man who seemed very nice, and humble. In the beginning of the cave it is just a low ceilinged crack in the mountain. After about 20ft in the guide said going barefoot would be beneficial due to the slick rocks ahead. Well everything was fine and dandy with our single shadow cast lantern and a homemade torch, which just reminded me of a molitove cocktail, being just some kind of cap on a glass bottle filled with kerosene. Fortunately I was so blessed to be the one who got to carry it, sounds fun except I think the whole blinding effect of a fire in your perifs really hinders vision in a cave. Needless to say my walking skills were lacking on the slimy floor, and whenever rocks would show up somehow I would end up stabbing myself directly in the healing infected foot I am so luckily still healing from. Needless to say I was getting a bit frustrated tagging along in the dark hurting my poor foot constantly.
Well finally the ground began to get really really soft, and the cavern became huge. If you looked really hard with the lantern light you could see thousands of enormous fruit bats circling the cave. Very exciting until you find out you aren’t walking on the greatest dirt ever, but instead we happened to be standing ankle deep in Guano. Later up the cave the terrain became rough so I needed to use my hands and plop goes my hand in a enormous pile of dung. Well after a while and a number of mishaps my entire body was completely covered in guano from head to toe poop everywhere. The worst part was my infected foot made a nice little circle of dead skin which was popped open on the hike. My nice little pocket foot didn’t waste any time in being useful because it instantly began to scoop up poop and squish inside yummy. I don’t know exactly what sort of odd diseases you can get from dealing with other things poop, but bring it on ringworm!! Since everything was just pissing me off I went back to the basics and began to sing. My only defense against a blood rage of murder was sticking to my guns and hummed out a few church hymns, and topped it off with a good ol’ Davy Crocket song.
Well once out of the cave which I with the lack of contemporary lighting devices I didn’t feel I saw too much a top largest caves in the world. But having poop smeared all over my body made things very easy to cheer up. Afterward the Fijian family who took us on the trip fed us a superb lunch, and I finished off by falling asleep on their floor setting me up for one heck of a bus ride home.
New story. Well due to the attempts by USP to bring the campus together as one and forget about the ethnic differences that have always sort of separated the campus they decided to have 3 nights of socials in a row. Thursday we had the ever so popular indigenous Fijian social, Friday the USP social where everyone is invited, and then Saturday there was an Indian Fijian social. Well I can’t imagine why all three would be straight together.
First the Fijian social. I find out that they have a mandatory dress code apparently which consists of a dress sulu and a bula shirt, also known as a touristy flowery shirt which have turned into a dressy shirt here. Obviously because I can’t say I’m much of a fan I didn’t have a bula shirt, so I was in desperate need. All the shops were already closed, so options were limited. Luckily some of the more outgoing locals in class arranged for me to meet them at the Copper Chimney where they would lend me one. Turns out Edgar didn’t have one either I find out when I was leaving, and what luck they brought two. Perfect, well party starts at 7 and it happened to already be there. Figuring it would be rude to borrow a shirt and bolt we decided sitting and watching the six Fijian girls finish their pitcher of Bounty and coke. When they reached the end another appeared, and so on and so forth 8:30 and they were on their 5th pitcher or so, while I watched them take a picture of 5 people swap the camera snap a photo switch the camera with an alternative person, and take another. Either way every person was in a picture with every combo of people possible making which seriously seemed like an endless amount of possibilities. Either way I wasn’t too thrilled. Luckily Edgar had an ace up his sleeve. With some quite 100 texts and an hour too late Arti and Natalie show up and take gave us a reason to head to the social.
It was great to get out of there, but the unfortunately the line was probably 40 minutes long Fiji time hour and a half. What didn’t help was our respect for order and control as the line moves forward. I believe we were #56 in the line, but somehow 278 people entered before us because there is just such a huge disregard for the integrity of a line. My favorite was watching them seriously walk right to the front of a nice organized line and get an arm between the wall and the poor individual attempting to guard their position. Slowly through the use of force, and a little face squishing against the wall and a shoulder they would pop through. The goofy thing was I was the only one who was upset. Everyone else accepted their inability to do anything about it and gave up. Being super hungry I got angry at my inability to control something so simple as my place in line. To demonstrate the desire for segregation at this “Fijian” social they had a list of all Fijians on campus, and would check everyone’s name off as they went through. Being white they sort of just push me ahead and don’t care. Edgar had his name looked up until he specified that he was American, because they can’t tell the difference.
After entrance was permitted there was an equally long and slow line moving towards the table of nearly infinite food. I didn’t want to wait so I ate the scraps of the American’s who were already there luckily some of them didn’t like the sweet and sour chicken. The meals were enormous, and really soupy, especially to be used with two thin paper plates to hold it. This was all sorts of lovo food cooked in lolo (coconut milk) and it sort of either spills or seeps through the paper. When the line thinned out, and I was the last one in line I moved slowly to the mountain of cassavay goodness, and as I meandered in a starving haze the floor sort of left out from under me. Luckily my dance moves were capable at keeping the feet up, but only after a 10 second improvisational dance. Well I got to the food and slop splash I was ready to go. Since there was no good reason to keep things clean, I dumped her on the walk back to the table. Also did I mention that this is a classy event? Well after everyone was done eating the free beer began, yes free beer at a school sponsored event. 36 kegs to be exact, so not only is it sponsoring drinking, but also binge drinking too, because there is no way that many kegs were going to disappear without a little over doing it.
The next night was the USP social and pretty much the same except more people and not free beer. There also was live entertainment from different student groups. Each group represented a different island nation, and they would perform a traditional dance, which none of them really look too terrible difficult. Except one took a lot of courage because the extra burly beefy Samoan men decided to dress in drag which included some tight spandex and a sports bra, and give a little scandalous dance for the people. Lovely. The next night I went and got food and left, go me for taking advantage of socials!
Well that was my social weekend. Though it didn’t sound like I was very social I did give the whole “How’s it?” “Good, U” “Good” awkward silence “Well I’ll catch you later” a good run plenty of times. I also really hurt a guys feeling though. I was talking to some guy in the food line at the Fijian social and then someone I thought was just his friend came up and stuck his hand out for a good shake. Not recognizing him I said “Danny” he responds “I know you met me a long time ago with Pesa” and a sad face came over his face. “OH yeah” oooooh ouch sorry Tom, but I really didn’t think we hit it off that well anyways. I’m sure he understands.
Well I think I covered most everything that has occurred in the last who knows how long, but I know I missed stuff, for example I went to an island out off Suva point, and we hung out on Sunday nothing spectacular, except I did my first double climb of a coconut tree in one day and daily picking was up to 7. Huge numbers accumulated. Unfortunately the ones we opened with a rock was completely barren of any moisture or meat. How lame. So now you know everything Moce!
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