The End in Pictures

I can't believe it is the end. Here are the pictures from our last few months in Ra. The pictures are ordered from most recent to oldest.

Enjoy!

Washing clothes in our shower/toilet for the last time!!!

Receiving my farewell gift from the Business Incubation Center.

The Namuaimada village clean-up crew.

Children helping at the beach clean-up.

Dirty child cleaning up the dirty, Namuaimada beach.

The parade to celebrate Rakiraki becoming a town on July 1, 2010.

Candles made in Namuaimada village.

Taking out the first candle. Me and Sai.

Showing the women how to thread the wicks through the candle molds.

The first angel from the Nagoro training.

The training group in Nagoro posing with the days work.

Sa oti!

Leslie and I just moved out of the village for good. It was an emotional time for all involved, with people giving gifts, women crying, and endless speeches. We received several small pandanus mats from various people in the village as well as a few quirky souviners. A few days before we were scheduled to leave the village a group of Australians arrived in the village. They were a group of gap-year students who were doing some sort of church program and were spending one month in Fiji. This annoyed us a bit at first since we felt that this would take away from our last week in the village in some way. The aussies ended up being really friendly and were eager to learn everything they could about our experience in the village. As part of their project they distributed bibles and conducted bible studies with the kids. Now, if you ask me, conducting bible classes in Fiji is a bit like importing coconuts to the country. Fijian villagers spend probably around 20hrs a week doing something church related. It seemed, however, that the visitors were promoting a more liberal and peaceful interpretation of the bible than that provided by the local pastor so I encouraged them.

Two weeks before our departure, we had another visitor to the village- a Fiji One news reporter. Fiji One, the major network in Fiji, decided to do a 30 minute special on the Peace Corps. They attended a training with the FRE 8 volunteers in Nausori, and visited our village as well as another one across the bay. Ruth, our Country Director, called us up a few days before the visit to see if the reporters could come to our village. Leslie ended up rescheduling a candle-making training so that it would coincide with the visit. The special turned out nicely in my opinion. They showed some good footage of the candle making process and interviewed Leslie and me for about 5 minutes each. My only criticism was that they didn't interview any villagers to see what their opinion of the Peace Corps was. The special was aired on July 4 at 6:30 pm local time. I doubt it's available online but we will try to secure a DVD of the program for the people back home.

July 4, by the way, was quite a fun day for all us volunteers in Ra. John and Judy had a barbecue for all the volunteers in the area. I went on my last snorkeling trip in Fiji in the morning that day. The weather was cold and very windy, so it definitely wasn't the best snorkeling trip I've ever been on. The food was excellent though, and the booze...well... plentiful.

I apologize for this stream-of-consciousness post, but my mention of my last snorkeling trip reminds me of another noteworthy event. About a month ago Leslie and I went out on John and Judy's new boat. They had just bought a beautiful 19ft, 40hp aluminum boat and wanted to test it out on the local waters. We went to one of the small reefs east of Nananu i Ra island for some snorkeling and fishing. I brought along John Caldeira's spear, which was a hawaiin-sling type, to do some spear fishing. I speared three small parrotfish and was in the process of putting a stringer through their gills in order to hold on to them when I noticed two white tip reef sharks circling me. Now, I'm used to swimming with sharks and being near them in the water usually doesn't faze me, but because of the speared parrotfish there was quite a bit of blood in the water. It was clear that the sharks were not just swimming around randomly but were interested in the fish I had. A few times they swam to within a few feet of me and I had to chase them off with my spear. I made a point of holding the stringer of fish as far away from my body as possible. I didn't think they would attack me, but I didn't want the fish to drift against my leg where it might get included in the meal along with the fish. I started swimming towards the boat. The current was behind me, pushing the stringer of fish out in front of me so I could see it. One of the sharks swam beneath me by about 10 feet, disappeared into the blue water in front of me. It then turned around and made a beeline for me. It bit onto one of the parrotfish (about 3 feet in front of my face), ripped it off with a vigorous head shake, and swallowed it in a few gulps. It circled around to get another, but this time my predatory instincts took over. These were MY fish damnit! I shook the spear in the sharks face and scared it away. I quickly swam towards the boat, threw the fish on board and jumped into the boat myself.

On that note I think Leslie and I will end this blog. We are now in Suva doing our COS (Close of service) paperwork, and will be flying to Hong Kong on the 17th. I don't think we will be updating this blog while we are travelling since Leslie frequently posts pictures and stories to Facebook, and almost everyone we know seems to be on that now. Leslie may have something else to say, but now it's time for me to say Moce Mada.

A Month to Go

John and I are wrapping up our work here on the rock. As of today we have one month left in our village. Even with such a short amount of time left we are finding plenty of work to keep us busy.

The Ministry of Fisheries is coming to the village to do a Marine Protected Area workshop. This workshop will educate villagers on Marine Monitoring and discuss the rights and responsibilities of the village in regards the "tabu" they placed last month. John has been working to organize this training for months now.

I have completed my first candle making training with the PCPP purchased, beekeeping equipment I ordered from the States. The training was last weekend as was held in Rakiraki town. The majority of the participants were Indo-Fijian women, the same individuals I worked with in the very beginning of my service. It was wonderful to see all of them again. The women loved the angel mold and everyone got to take one home. The next candle making training is TBD but will be held in my village in conjunction with a small business workshop.

I am continuing with aerobics classes in the village. We now hold the classes outside on the "rara" or community green area. All of the kids in the village join us which is usually okay, although sometimes they drive me crazy and I have to chase them away. It is fun to have everyone together to dance for an hour, especially since dancing is usually "tabu" in our village. In addition to dance classes I am also running every morning (it has finally cooled down!) to get ready for SE Asia. I am trying to get into the habit so John and I can stay in shape while traveling for four months. This week we started an 8 km route.

The first of many farewell dinners took place last week. It was at my old counterpart's house in town. I started my work in Fiji with her and her women's group. When John and I moved to the village I made a point to try to work with them as much as possible. Their group is the only successful beekeeping women's group in Ra. They are doing great! I will have a farewell lunch with the whole women's group at the end of June which I am really looking forward to. I have another farewell lunch this Saturday at one of the communities I wrote a Rotary water grant for. They project was funded and completed this year. Our village farewell is on the 10th of July. They have already made it clear that they will not let us sleep, that we must drink grog with them all night. We'll see if that actually happens....I am going to fight it. After two years I still hate grog!

Busy, busy, busy.

Advanced Open Water in Leleluvia

So Leslie's brother, Matt, and his girlfriend, Kristen, are in Fiji right now. They arrived May 1. We had been looking forward to their visit for a while since they are the last visitors we anticipate having before leaving the country. Matt, Kristen and I just returned from a trip to Leleluvia island for a PADI Advanced Open Water Course. Leslie was planning on coming as well but she was stricken by a horrible illness, the details of which I probably shouldn't post on this blog. So Leslie was stuck in Suva while the three of us were enjoying fantastic diving off Leleluvia. The Advanced Open Water course was, in my opinion, a bit of a joke since we really didn't learn any new skills, but the dives were a lot of fun. The best dive, by far, was a site known as "The Market". We saw at least 6 or 7 white tipped reef sharks, a grey reef shark, a hawksbill sea turtle, and a group of about 5 massive bumphead parrotfish. This was the first time I had seen bumphead parrotfish as they are highly endangered. Matt an Kristen seemed to really enjoy the dives.
I am hoping to take Matt out on the Dadakulaci (my boat) but the wind has picked up considerably in the past week so we may not be able to.
I don't know if Leslie mentioned this in her last post, but we have a definite date for Close of Service (July 14) and have already bought our tickets to Southeast Asia. The plan is to travel for about 4 months to Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Indonesia before heading back home. We are going to visit Phoenix, Portland, and Dallas when we return to the U.S. so we should be able to visit most of our friends and family.
Here are a few fish pictures I took during the dives:




Freckled Hawkfish

Regal Anglefish

White spotted Grouper

Close of service and things to come

April is quickly coming to a close. It is amazing how fast time is flying! My bro will be here in one week!!!

Early in the month I started my dance classes with the women in the village. I originally planned to run one session a week, thinking that would be what the women would want, but it turns out they want to dance every day. So, as a compromise, because I have other commitments in town, we train three days a week. The average turn out for the dance classes is about 12 women (plus way too many children). The average age of the women who participate is 35 (we have a few teenagers and a few grandmas who really skew the average). It is great to see the young women and the older, distinguished, maramas come together and have such a good time. It is hard to hear the music above all of the laughing. The men in the village thank me on a regular basis, saying that their wives and mothers are feeling better. I cannot take credit for the success of this project. The women in my village asked me to start a class because Lydia (a volunteer across the bay) had started a class in her village. She started a trend in Ra. Natalie (aka Nuper) is starting a training class in her village on Monday. Also, the two villages that neighbor ours want me to come and give classes with them. Lydia should be super proud of herself and her village for setting such a positive example!

Yoga to help stretch before dancing.

Tae Bo kicks.

John and I recently spent a week in Pacific Harbor for our COS training. The training focused on preparing volunteers for life back in the States. We fine-tuned our resumes, received our exit dates, gave organizational feedback, and talked about dealing with reverse culture shock. The conference was full of very useful information. The most exhausting session was the feedback session. Our group has been very unhappy with the office for a while now so there was a lot of feedback and requests for clarifications and policy changes. The session was handled professionally but it took two hours. When we were not in session we enjoyed the luxury of The Pearl Resort. We swam in the pool, did beach-side yoga, dressed as pirates at a bonfire and used the media room as our own private Rubrics Cube party location. It was a bittersweet week: hanging out as a group again was wonderful but saying goodbye (for good in many situations) was very difficult. I did not realise what great friends John and I would make in these two years.

Peace Corps Fiji 2008 -2010

The day after arriving back from Pacific Harbor I started the final round of beekeeping and small business sessions for my service. The trainings are two days long with a mix of technical beekeeping skills, personal finance, business finance and basic concepts in small business. The first two trainings went really well, in fact we had over 40 participants at the Namara training....our biggest group yet! The first training was in Narewa village, on the Western side of Ra. The training came at the perfect time as our beekeeping equipment, purchased with the PCPP funds, arrived from America on Monday! The potential beekeepers of Narewa village were the first to use the bee suits on Monday afternoon. The handing over ceremony for the equipment is this next Monday, April, 26th.

Me teaching personal finance in Namara village in the interior of Ra.

Finally, John and I have confirmed our schedule for our travels after we complete our Peace Corps service. We are going to spend four months in South East Asia: Hong Kong, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysian Borneo, and Bali. We plan to return to Oregon on November 12, 2010. From there we will visit John's family in Phoenix for Christmas and our Dallas friends for New Years. Mark your calendars.....the 2010 holidays are going to ROCK!

Booty Shakin' Good Time

So this post is a long time coming. There was not much to report after returning from New Zealand. Other than cyclone Thomas that spared most of Fiji and my mysterious sickness. The first half of March was pretty uneventful.

Update on the sickness: I am pretty sure my respiratory issues were caused by a food allergy. I have now been on a restricted diet for two weeks (of six total). I cannot eat wheat, dairy, meat, sugar or salt. I have been devouring beans, nuts, fruits and veggies. Thank goodness it is avocado season! The diet is not as restrictive as it sounds and the best part is that I feel much better. I have a family history of wheat allergies so I am pretty sure that wheat is the culprit.

Now onto more interesting news. At the end of March John and I traveled to Leleuvia Island off the Eastern coast of Viti Levu. Since our last trip to Leleuvia management has let things go a bit. The food was not as good as I remembered (could have been the diet) and the dorms seemed run down. The weather did not want to cooperate either, it rained every day. We still had a great time though. Four of the Suva volunteers joined us on Saturday. Mid-morning on Saturday we went for a SWEET dive and saw 12 sharks, 3 turtles, a Napoleon Wrasse, and beautiful Gargonian Fans. It was one of my favorite dives in Fiji. The dive totally made up for what the resort lacked. The snorkeling is also great just off the beach. John saw a bunch of Eagle Rays and some huge fish while snorkeling. We are planning to return to Leleuvia in May to complete our Advanced Diver Certification.

I have started a Dance/Jazzercise/Tae Bo/Yoga fusion class with the women in the village. Last night was the first class and it was a big hit. There were about 15 - 20 women and girls in attendance (even my Bubu came!). By the end of class everyone was sweaty and happy...yay for endorphins! I used my American Heart Association donated pedometers so the women could count their steps and figure out how many calories then spent (roughly). Before each class I present five foods and their nutritional content so that the women can also see how many calories they consume.

Yesterday was a busy day. In addition to dance fusion, I also went to Lautoka with my counterpart from the Business Incubation Center to pick up our beekeeping training equipment from customs. To our disappointment we were not able to pick up the equipment. Turns out there is a TON of paperwork you have to fill out in order to clear $4,000 FJD in goods from customs. Peace Corps is currently helping me process that paperwork so I don't have to pay import duties. We should receive the equipment by next week. This is perfect timing as we start the final round of beekeeping trainings on April 19th.

Finally, our village has an "official" marine tabu (MPA). It took a year-and-a-half to get to this point but it finally happened. We had a bose va koro (village meeting) on Tuesday and the tabu was voted in unanimously. John is excited to bring out FLEMA and the Ministry of Fisheries to train the village. Hopefully the UNDP grant will also come through to help with the tabu. John is crossing his fingers on that one.

Next week is our Close of Service Conference (COS) in Pacific Harbor. All of the FRE 6 volunteers will be there. I am really looking forward to seeing everyone. We are planning some fun, after session activities including the Rubrics Cube game and Pirate dress up.

New Zealand in Picutres

On the ferry to Waiheke Island.

Crazy dancing skeleton at SPLORE.

Dancing at the mainstage.

Craters of the Moon.

Cliffs near Napier.

Excited to Luge in Queenstown.

Miter Peak in Milfor Sound.

Snow and rocks.

Looking up at the mountains.

The valley crated by the Fiordland glaciers.

Kiwi Adventure

We are on our third and final week in New Zealand. Leslie and I just finished a three day hike on the famous Kepler track in Fiordland National Park. The hike started just outside of the town of Te Anau before circling Te Anau Lake and climbing high into the mountains. The weather was colder and wetter than we expected. It is, after all, the hottest month of the year in New Zealand, but we were still shivering at various points along the trail. We had planned on spending three nights in the wilderness but ended up booking it yesterday in order to make it back to the trailhead a day early. We are currently waiting out a rainstorm in Te Anau.

Before coming down to the South Island Leslie and I spent about a week and a half traveling around the North Island. We rented a car along with Lydia and Natalie, two other Peace Corps volunteers. Our first stop was Taupo, located on a massive lake right in the middle of the North Island. We ended up staying with a couple of really cool guys, Chris and Mike, who frequently host travelers through the Couchsurfing site. In Taupo we did a bit of hiking, hit some golf balls into the lake- a tourist activity, you win $10,000 if you make a hole in one, and browsed through the many outdoor stores. About one in every three shops in New Zealand is an outdoor supply store, and they are all extremely expensive.

After Taupo we headed to Napier where we did some wine tasting and a bit of hiking. It was significantly drier on that side of the island, which makes sense for a wine-growing region. After Napier we drove all day to make it back to the north part of the island where a music festival was about to start. We stopped again just outside of Taupo to hike Craters of the Moon national monument, a park full of boiling mud holes, geysers, and all sorts of geothermal activity. We spent the night in Thames on the Coromandel penninsula. The next day we arrived SPLORE, the three day music festival that was being held just outside the town of Orere. Everyone attending the event had to camp, so a massive grassy field turned into tent city in a matter of hours. It was a bit chaotic, all these tents literally inches from each other. The atmosphere was extremely relaxed and friendly, though, and we all had a good time. The music was mostly electronic- some rap and some techno. It wasn't exactly the sort of music I would choose to listen too on my own, but it was exciting to feel the energy of the crowd at the mainstage. At the end of the festival we were all pretty tired and dusty. Natalie and Lydia flew back to Fiji after the festival was over, but Leslie and I still had two weeks of travel time. We took the ferry to Waiheke island where Graeme, a friend of ours whom we randomly met in our village in Fiji, was living. We spent a couple of very chill days hanging out on the island, doing some fishing, eating some great Argentinian food courtesy of his roomates, and even skinny dipping at a nude beach! The weather was warm and dry, just what we needed before heading down to cold rainy Fiordland National Park.

We've got about another week here before returning to Fiji. I'll post some pictures when I get the chance. Leslie is currently posting some photos on Facebook.

Talking Business (and Coral)

John and I just returned from a very busy and productive week in Suva.

John participated in a free workshop on Coral Identification at the University of the South Pacific. The workshop was four days long and included two snorkeling sessions. The training was designed to test a new scientific manual focused on coral identification. John's fellow trainees were Marine Biology professionals, students, and independent researchers....so he got to meet a lot of people just like him!

I was in Suva to co-facilitate an Alternative Livelihood training for Peace Corps volunteers and their community partners. There were twenty four participants from all over Fiji. John Caldeira and I designed the training based on our experiences in Ra. We incorporated a lot of the same materials and lessons that we have used to train beekeepers in business management. The first day of the training covered brainstorming and developing business ideas into financially viable business opportunities. The second day focused on business plan development, while the third covered basic bookkeeping. Each of the participant groups left the training with a financial plan and business plan for their communities. The businesses developed in the training ranged from bread kitchens and piggeries to coffin boxes and virgin coconut oil. John C. and I had a great time facilitating the training and learned a lot about the different Peace Corps projects going on in Fiji. To unwind after the training I joined the rest of the volunteers in Suva for a night of dancing. I had a little trouble getting into to one of our favorite dance clubs because the bouncer decided to be mean to me - he wouldn't let me bring my empty water bottle in! As an apology the manager gave me a pitcher of pink-colored booze! Score! All-in-all a pretty good week :)

Tomorrow John and I leave for New Zealand for a three-week vacation. Updates and pictures to come.

Making History

So according to the Fijians in Ra, the Peace Corps Volunteers (+ one visitor) in this region made history last month by swimming across Viti Levu bay! The swim was exactly two miles. We paddled John's outrigger to a small beach on the other side of the bay where five of the volunteers met us. Once we were all assembled we swam to the other side. We swam in two groups of three. Each group had a boat spotter, the boats carried life jackets, water and sunscreen....better safe than sorry. Lydia and I made the swim in one hour and thirty minutes, with John coming in just behind us. The other three volunteers finished in two hours and forty minutes as they decided to chat for most of the swim :)

Here are a few pictures from the swim.

The Ra Group (from Left: Joe/spotter, Lisa/spotter, Victoria/spotter, Natalie/swimmer, Lydia/swimmer, Me/swimmer, Kara/swimmer, Choney/swimmer, John/spotter. The low, grassy hill across the bay was the point we swam to.

Still got the form :)

John spotting me from his kayak (note the extra life jackets strapped to his kayak).

I have started writing the Fiji Beekeeper's Handbook. I have finished the first draft of part one. I am hoping to have the book finished in a few months. John (Caldeira, not husband) and I are preparing for the Alternative Livelihood training we are leading for Peace Corps next week. We are using the same format for this training that we used in April for the beekeepers. Hopefully the Peace Corps Volunteers and their community partners will find the information useful and at least remotely interesting. It is hard to make bookkeeping fun....but John and I are sure going to try. While we are facilitating the business training John (husband) will be attending a workshop at USP (University of the South Pacific) on Coral Identification. He is attending the advanced session. He is really excited because the training includes a free dive. I am a bit jealous.

Two days after our respective trainings John and I head to New Zealand for a 20 day adventure. I can't wait to get out of this heat!

Ask and you shall receive!

I asked for life in the village to start moving again and it is....a bit too fast though!  This always happens, I will have no work and be dying of boredom for one week and the next week I won't have a minute to catch my breath.  

The village has decided to try to organize another clean up.  They scheduled it for a day that I will be in Suva working.  The villagers also placed a tabu (no fishing zone) on the reef in front of the village.  John has been trying to get them to agree on this for a year now and they just decided Tuesday at a meeting.  John has completed his proposal for funding from the UNDP Small Grants Fund to help train the village in maintaining and properly marking the tabu.  He should receive the funding in the next few months.  A portion of the fund will also go to alternative livelihood projects, specifically beekeeping development.  This helps me!

My PCPP (Peace Corps Partnership Program) is completely funded as of last week!  Right before Christmas I received a large donation from Friends of Fiji, a group of returned Peace Corps Volunteers who served in Fiji.  While the remainder of the funding came from the North Texas Peace Corps Association, a group of returned Peace Corps Volunteers who served all over the world but live in Texas (yay Texas!!!).  I am so excited to move forward with this project.  Next step is to place a large order for beekeeping equipment from Mann Lake Ltd.  Then we will catalogue the equipment and it will be managed by the Business Incubation Center and the Ministry of Women.  We should then have three series of trainings (1 business and 2 technical) before John and I close our service.  A lot of the trainings planned out in my project timeline have already taken place, so the majority of our work is behind us.  

Next week I will be in Suva writing a beekeeping handbook for Fiji that will be translated into Fijian and Hindustani.  I will also be meeting with customs concerning my Mann Lake order.  Finally I will be preparing materials for the Alternative Livelihood training that John C. and I are facilitating in February for Peace Corps Volunteers and their counterparts.  Busy, busy, busy.  Praise Jisu!!!

Wawa Mada

One of the things John and I have mastered in this country is the art of waiting. We are smart to wait for all sorts of things: buses, the water to come back on, the electricity to come back on, the tide to rise, mail, meetings to start, meetings to be rescheduled, night to fall, etc. Currently we are waiting for life to start moving again. Everything stops during the Christmas/New Year's season, meaning that life in Fiji is even slower than usual. No meetings are taking place, many offices are still closed and school is still out.

Villagers spend this time visiting with family and friends. Kids are sent to visit grandparents and other relatives. There are always new faces in the village now. As these faces are new to John and me, so too are our faces new to the visitors. As a result, almost every day there is a pack of children in front of our house staring in at us. Usually one of the kids from our village is their escort. I imagine that the kids from our village are saying to their cousins, "Hey, come check-out our white people!" I thought we were passed this! 

There are many other behavior changes that I have observed in the village during this holiday season (side note: we did not live in the village at this time last year). 1. Villagers are allowed to make noise, a lot of it! Every night since Christmas the youth have been shooting bamboo guns (same concept as the potato gun, except the point is just to make a loud noise). I was telling one of them about how in America we have the potato gun. He was shocked that we would shoot a potato out of pvc pipe instead of eat it....."Americans are wasteful" was my response. 2. Young people in the village openly drink alcohol and roam around the village drunk. They drink methylated spirits, i.e. rubbing alcohol (for the poor youth this is the preferred alcoholic beverage). John has explained the health risks of drinking rubbing alcohol. The argument he gets back is...."yes, yes, but Jone it is the holiday and we are young". 3. The village is one big water fight! Maramas, turagas, gones, and youth alike wield make-shift water guns (usually just pots filled with water) and are allowed to soak anyone in their path!  

I have enjoyed being in the village for all of this, it is very different from our experience last year. However, I am ready for life to go back to normal. John and I only have six months left in Fiji and we still have so many things we (and the village) would like to accomplish.

While this may seem contradictory to what I just mentioned in terms of getting stuff accomplished in the village, John and I just bought tickets to New Zealand!!! We will be there from Feb 15 - Mar 6. It turns out three other PCV's will be there for part of that time as well. We are all going to meet up at SPLORE, an outdoor arts and music festival near Auckland. In addition to SPLORE, John and I have made reservations for a three-day 60 km hike in the South island.

Christmas/ New Years

Leslie and I just got back from a week and a half long whirlwind tour of coastal Viti Levu and the Lomaiviti group. Our traveling companions were Nuper (of course) and Kiva, a volunteer from Lautoka. Our travels began on December 26 since we decided to spend Christmas day in the village this year. I had my doubts about staying in the village for Christmas day since Christmas is generally a "party day" in the village, and village "party days" usually involve sitting around motionless and drinking buckets of grog. There were certainly people sitting around all day drinking grog, but I was lucky and found the group of people sitting around and drinking....BEER! Yay! The beer drinking actually took place just outside our village in this "nightclub" like place that is only open during Christmas. To make things even more interesting, most of the people drinking were women! In between takis (shots) of beer I would be pulled up by some marama to dance. Leslie, Kiva, and Nuper likewise were asked to dance multiple times. It's amazing how just changing the beverage being consumed can completely alter the mood of the party. Of course, grog is probably better overall for the Fijians to drink since beer is expensive and often leads to brawls. On that day, however, it made for a lively party.
The day after Christmas we waited by the main road for the bus that would take us to Korovou from which we would take a taxi to Natovi Landing, from which we would catch a boat to Naigani. While we were waiting for the bus we saw a couple of young men from the village dragging a large pig by its hindlegs. The pig was squealing loudly and bucking its head violently in an effort to rip someone's kneecaps out. I moved in to watch closely. About three guys held the pig down. They all seemed nervous while doing this, probably because the animal's three-inch long yellow fangs could easily do some serious damage. Once they had the pig immobilized, Dan, the matador for the day, pulled out a twelve-inch knife and sank it between its ribs. You can't imagine the terrible scream that came out of the animal. I couldn't believe what happened next: Dan drew the large knife in and out thus enlarging the wound in the pig's chest. He then plunged his hand into the opening and twisted it's heart to kill it! Altogether the slaughter took about two minutes, even though it seemed like a long time - to me and certainly to the pig. Talking to other volunteers it seems that this is a unique way to kill pigs. Most villages slit the throat or bash the head in. From what I hear, these are much quicker ways to get the job done. Nuper, Kiva and I enjoyed the opportunity to witness the pig slaughter, it was after-all a cultural experience, but Leslie was not amused. She sat on the side of the road, ears covered, eyes closed, rocking back and fourth. What a wimp!
The bus ride to Korovou was quick and uneventful. The trip to Natovi Landing ended up taking most of the day, however. According to the people in town there was a bus that regularly came through Korovou on its way to Natovi Landing. Though we ended up waiting about two and a half hours in town, the bus was constantly " about 15 to 20 minutes away" the entire time. Eventually, we broke down and hired a taxi to the landing. At the landing we waited for another hour and a half for the Naigani boat to leave. A group of Australian tourists who had rooms booked on Naigani were driving around Viti Levu hopelessly lost, making our boat late.
Naigani island ended up being well worth the effort it took to get there. The island itself was beautiful- hilly and mostly forested- and the snorkeling was phenomenal. The only place I have experienced better near-shore snorkeling was in Waitabu, Taveuni. We saw sharks, sea turtles, Napoleon wrasse, blue spotted ribbontail rays, and a whole mess of other fish. I'd list the species but I think that would be boring for the non-fish dork. We affectionately titled Naigani, "fat camp" because we started each day with yoga (lead by Leslie) and then proceeded to snorkel the rest of the day. We were also forced to eat from the resort's meal-plan which did not satiate our Peace Corps size appetites.
After Naigani it was Levuka, the old capital of Fiji. This was the one place on the trip that was unequivocally boring. We were there for a public holiday and literally everything was closed. Ovalau is a nice enough looking island, but there really isn't a whole lot that makes it different from Viti Levu. We decided that one night in Ovalau was enough. We could now check it off our list and head back to Viti Levu.
Transport to and from Ovalau is a bit tricky. There is only one scheduled ferry, which leaves Viti Levu at 10:00am for Levuka and leaves Levuka for Viti Levu at 6:00am the next day. We had no desire to get up this early in the morning and load onto a slow and crowded ferry so we looked into other options. We ended up finding a village boat that would take us from Rukuruku on the West side of Ovalau back to Natovi Landing in the afternoon for LESS than the price of the ferry. This was almost too good to be true. All of us had our life jackets so we had no qualms about taking a small boat across the relatively calm strait between Ovalau and Viti Levu. The boat ride was fast and scenic- way better than chugging along in a big ferry. We had even more good luck when we arrived in Natovi Landing and found a taxi driver who was planning on driving back to Suva. We paid him what bus fare would have been and enjoyed fast, private transport all the way back to the Peace Corps office. It was a day of easy transportation....a Christmas miracle!
We relaxed for the rest of that day and most of the next in Suva and then proceeded to Club Coral Coast in Pacific Harbour. The next day (New Year's Eve) was the highlight of the entire trip...the SHARK DIVE! Steve, a volunteer from the coral coast joined us for this, making us a group of five. We had managed to get a discount rate on this dive from Beqa Adventure Divers. The dive takes place inside a Marine Protected Area owned by Beqa island. The Dive company has been chumming this site with dead fish for years to attract big fish. When we got in the water we couldn't believe the abundance of large predatory fish we saw. At times it seemed the water was just a churning mass of teeth and scales. The giant trevallys and the red snappers were the first on the scene. On the outskirts of the feeding frenzy were smaller fish species like scissortail sergents and ruddy fusilers. After a few minutes the sharks came. We saw bullsharks, blacktip reef sharks, whitetip reef sharks, and grey reef sharks. When the big sharks would circle around and come in to feed the smaller fish would quickly dart out of the way. There were times when I swear I could feel the vibrations through the water. Unfortunately, the tiger shark that sometimes appears on these dives did not show up. We did see a giant grouper, which was larger than any of the sharks and is probably the largest fish I have seen to date. The thing was at least 12 feet long and sat lazily on the bottom the entire time. Sarah Taylor, another Peace Corps volunteer, was kind enough to let us take her underwater camera on the dive. Unfortunately I do not have the pictures with me right now, but I will post them as soon as I get ahold of them.
After the dive we loaded back into a bus for the short trip to the Beachhouse, near Sigatoka. Here, we were met by a group of about ten other volunteers who had come to have a new years celebration. I can't really talk too much about this night since this is a public blog. Let's just say that Peace Corps volunteers know how to have a fun (AND SAFE!) time.
That ends our last Christmas and New Year in Fiji. 2010 is the year we return to the land of unemployment. Yippee.