Circus Mission

Last Sunday (Siga Tabu) Leslie and I went to my village to go to church. Yes, I have become quite the church-goer lately. After the church service we went over to one of the houses in the village for lunch. We found out that there was a sort of party going on that day and a big feast had been prepared. I asked (in Fijian) what the celebration was for. I was told (also in Fijian) that the feast was for one of the boys in the village who was returning from the hospital. I am still learning Fijian, so it took me a while to figure out exactly what was going on. I made out that a 13 year old boy from the village had been in the hospital for the past four days, something was cut, and he's coming back today. The man telling me all this kept sticking his index finger out and drawing the finger from his other hand across it in a cutting motion. " So he cut his finger off?" I asked. " No, his penis!" was the reply. " He cut his penis off?" I asked, shocked. " Yes, just the tip. He is better now. It is our custom." Then I understood that a circumcision had taken place. Here in Fiji circumcision is kind of a coming of age thing and takes place when a boy is 12 or 13.
After this strange conversation we sat around on the patio to have lunch. The boy walked out of the house bow-legged with a sulu wrapped around him. He was holding the front of the sulu about a foot away from his crotch. He looked really embarrassed. All eyes were on him as he sat down to eat. I was glad that I was not in his place.

Cool Pictures Now

Ok, I promised Leslie I would post the people pictures first. Here are the photos I've been dying to post. School of blue green chromis.

Crown of thorns starfish. This guy was the size of a large pizza. They are poisonous and eat coral. Very scary.

Tomato anenomefish. Always fun to see.

Some kind of parrotfish. I'm thinking turquois-capped.

Whoa! Holy crap a shark. White-tipped reef shark. He was only about 4 ft long. I think Leslie peed in the ocean when she saw it, though.

Pictures finally

The choir in Vitawa

Nearly blind kid helped by the free glasses program

Mrs. Krishna's birthday party. (still during training)

Site announcements. Leslie and I are standing on a big map of Viti Levu. This was a pretty exciting day

Leslie and Toad

I don't have a whole lot to talk about today, but I thought I'd share with everybody a few funny stories. The first one is about the cane toads that occur in plague proportions throughout Fiji. Leslie had painted the back door to our house and had left the door open so the fresh breeze would help the paint dry more quickly. We were in our room reading for a few hours as the paint was drying and I walked into the kitchen to get a snack. I saw a big fat cane toad on our kitchen floor, hopping around. I went to pick it up and the thing literally exploded with urine. I mean it was a LOT of freakin' piss. The toad was about the size of a baseball, yet it seemed to produce about a full liter of toad piss. My shorts were soaking with it, and there was a big puddle of it on the floor. Luckily for me toad tinkle doesn't really cause warts....I think.
The second funny story is about Leslie (yay! funny Leslie story!) As some of you may already know, Leslie is quite the sleep talker. I have had lengthy conversations with her while she was fast asleep. Well, this particular conversation was really unusual. I woke up in the middle of the night to hear Leslie mumbling some sort of gibberish. She actually sat up in bed, opened her eyes and said, "John! Will you please pick that meat off the floor? It's going to stink." I didn't know what the hell she was talking about. Meat on the floor? I asked, " Really, meat on the floor. Huh. How do you think it got there?" "It fell off the truck." she replied, in a very annoyed tone. How else would it have gotten there? " So, some meat fell off the truck and landed on the floor. Interesting. Do you want me to eat it?" "No! I want you to pick it up. Stop being patronizing!" Leslie has quite the vocabulary when she is sleep talking. After that she dozed off. I told her about it the next day and she had no recollection.

Getting Involved

My primary project is very slowly starting to pick up. I have visited the club's bee farm to check the status of the hives. We will have our second harvest next month. Checking the hives was terrifying though. During training I just watched as the hive-managers pulled out the hives to check for honey production. This time I had to help! I was the one in charge of the smoke and the bees don't like this person, that is for sure. I was dive-bombed by bees the whole time, yikes. It was pretty exciting though, so much energy buzzing around me, I couldn't hear a thing. Next month will be all that much more exciting as we pull out the honey. I am going to do some research on making bee's wax candles so maybe we can make some extra money at Diwali time.

I am also making myself available to the other groups in Rakiraki. I have joined the Ra District Hospital Board as the Acting Secretary. I have also joined the Inner-Agencies Committee for the Protection of Children and will be helping them as they plan a fundraising dinner and auction......this must be my calling in life. They are thinking about auctioning off some wine from New Zealand and Australia and it wasn't even my suggestion. Finally, John and I have both joined the Fiji Red Cross Society. With them we will visit neighboring villages to talk on our respective specializations. John will do workshops on piggery clean-up and proper rubbish disposal, while I will talk about money management and budgeting. I am excited about this new secondary project as it is something John and I can do together.

Here in Fiji, I have also become an avid reader. Not having any other form of entertainment, books have become my salvation. In the past four(ish) months I have read more books than I read all of last year. Time kept me from getting involved in a good book back in the States. When every minute of every day is spoken for, starting a book is a big commitment. Now, I have nothing but time! The favorites so far have been The Poisonwood Bible (this was a second read), The Namesake and The Red Tent. I started reading Eat, Pray, Love, as many people recommended it, but could not get past page 75. It is the most shallow book I have ever attempted to read. Her style of writing also bothered me, it was much too casual, like we were buddies. After giving it many second chances I decided to put it down for good. Please share any book recomendations you have as John and I are always on the lookout for a good read.

John and I are planning a trip to either Suva or Lautoka in the next few weeks and hope to upload pictures while in one of the two big cities. The internet here in RR is WAY too slow.

Hello Everybody. Sorry for not posting in a while. Things have been pretty busy lately. I've been going into my village almost every day, and Leslie has been working at the local hospital. A group of doctors from the U.S. were doing eye exams in town and Leslie was helping with that. I guess the Lions Club collects used prescription glasses for these programs. Eye exams are only a dollar, prescription glasses are two dollars, and cataract surgery is 30 dollars. Some people were pretty bummed about the glasses they got since some of the donated glasses were truly ridiculous. But I guess for 2 dollars you really can't expect too much. I helped out with this on Thursday. It was pretty hectic. The line of people was out the door.
I've been doing a bit of snorkeling recently. I've been taking a lot of underwater pictures of fish and then trying to identify them back at home. I'm definitely getting hooked on these coral reefs. I'll post the pictures once I get to a fast internet connection. Those of you waiting for pictures will have to bear with us for a few weeks, but once we are able to get to a big city we'll try to upload a lot of photographs.
I built a boat this week. Well, really I watched as one of the guys from the village built it for me. It is called a Bavelo, and is basically a 12 ft canoe made from a single piece of corrugated tin roofing material. It is the most ridiculous looking boat you can imagine. I haven't taken it out into the water yet. I'll probably build an outrigger for it before I take it out. I will, of course, not take it farther out than I can swim and will ALWAYS wear my lifejacket.
A lot of people in my village are excited about getting an ecotourism project going. I think the village is well situated to take advantage of the tourists visiting the north coast of Viti Levu. Of course, my main concern is not really whether or not we will be able to make money, but what the village hopes to do with the money. I'm hoping that I'll be able to convince them to reinvest it back into the community through scholarships and other things.