The Festival of Lights

This weekend is the Hindu festival Diwali, the "Festival of Lights".  It's a celebration of the Hindu God Rama's defeat of this really bad dude, Ravana.  What everyone here says is that it is a celebration of light overcoming darkness, good over evil, that sort of thing.  My friend Dropati has lots more to say about it than just that, but I won't be able to do it justice.  Dropati is on the early childhood faculty here and is one of the most settled souls I've ever met.  She looks right into people and figures you out in seconds.  Or at least that's what she did with me.  I have no doubt I'll be writing about her more in the future.  Anyway, she is a Hare Krishna - a member of a devout sect of Hinduism. (Think George Harrison - "My Sweet Lord".  In fact, why don't you just listen to that song because it's awesome.) She doesn't eat meat or sugar or eggs, doesn't drink alcohol or coffee or tea, etc... we're good company for each other at events since we're the only ones not drinking.  Her husband died of a heart attack 10 years ago (she's 49) and she had to pick up the pieces and reinvent her life in the aftermath.  It's hard to explain what a big deal it is here for women when their husband dies.  It's like Nepal in that way.  She left her small island and left her grown son and his wife to take care of their sugar cane farm, and she came to the big island with her daughter to go to school.  Now she's a FNU faculty member.  She's crazy smart and gentle and kind and wise and I pretty much love her already.  

So the coolest thing about Diwali is that everyone joins in the fun, even if they are not Hindu. Houses, shops, the streets, and pretty much everywhere is decorated with lights.  Everything is already all lit up, but I hear it's WAY cooler on Sunday night. I have been invited to celebrate Diwali at a FNU faculty member's house, so I'll take lots of pics.  It's kind of like Christmas in the U.S. in that everyone has a party and you end up going to an event every day for a couple of weeks, and you gain 10 pounds.  We celebrated with the children and families at the play group yesterday, and in the student services office today.  There's a big shindig for all of the students on campus tonight and a bigger party for faculty tomorrow.  I have eaten more Indian sweets that I can't say the names of than I can even count. Things last through Monday which is an official government holiday.

  

On a related note, I've been thinking a lot about this since I got here, the way people just openly discuss, observe, and share their religious views here is so different from the U.S.  My first couple of days here I was shocked because we started every FNU meeting with a prayer.  FNU is not a religious university.  They pray before lunch every day.  They pretty much pray any time a group of people get together.  And the cool thing is that in my meeting with department heads that began with a prayer there were Christians, Hindu's, and Muslims all present.  We are pretty much always in mixed religious company.  They asked me to pray yesterday before lunch, and I froze for a minute while I processed what was happening.  I've spent most of my life avoiding discussions of religion at work and just generally in public, and just yesterday when I met the office cleaning lady for the first time she asked my name, and the next question was if I believed in God.  The thing is, there isn't judgement behind this stuff here.  Just a lot of happy people wondering what you believe.  She also asked if I was married... why I wasn't married... and if I wanted her to set me up with someone while I'm here.  My singleness is frequently a topic of conversation here as well.  I dig how the conversation goes though, because all of these Fijian women tell me I'm too beautiful to be single.  Awe, shucks.

And for the tropical pic of the day:

The lovely man that cleans the guest house brings me hibiscus flowers every morning.  Here's a pic of this morning's beauties.