All those years ago...

One fun result of living on campus is I feel like a student again.  A much, much older student.  I've certainly adopted my lifestyle from 20 years ago when it comes to eating.  Cooking on a stove is not a thing I have been brave enough to try at the guest house. The burn marks on the stove and the charred counter beside it are very foreboding.  Also, I can't find any pots or pans.  But I'm too scared to open one of the cabinets where they are likely located.  Did I mention I have some issues with bugs? Thus far I have managed to reheat leftovers from lunch and cook ramen using my roomie, the Ethics professor from Hong Kong's, microwave.  However, two glorious things happened this week.  First I found mayo at the supermarket! They don't do condiments here... no dressings, no ketchup. (I know, no ketchup!) But hiding in a corner I found mayo!  In case you're wondering why this is exciting it means I can now make tuna sandwiches!  And the tuna here is especially tasty.  This single find doubled my capacity for feeding myself at home.  And today I am so happy to report that I bought a toaster! I found butter and now I'm in business. I did have a little scare trying to get the butter home on the 100 degree bus before it became a puddle. But I made it! It will be interesting to see what happens to my body after eating like this for two months.  But there's lots of fruit, so I probably won't die. Back to the important topic of ketchup. I have only seen it at one restaurant and they charged 15 cents per packet.  You and I know that a single packet only covers about 2 french fries.  Which brings me to another food related issue.  All of the restaurants in town cook either Indian food (which I eat for lunch every day) or fried chicken and fish and chips.  So if I hop on the bus to town for dinner it's deep fried yummy death - minus the ketchup.

Further evidence that I'm living like a college student can be found hanging on the clothesline in my room tonight.  I managed to wash a maroon shirt with my whites and you know what that means. It has been years since I made such an amateur mistake. I believe Leonard and Junior both found that hilarious.  By the way, Junior now lives with Leonard and I.  Here's what happened.  One night another lizard, I'll call her Loretta, came to visit.  She and Leonard made such a cute couple! Then I'll let you guess what happened the next day.  Yep, a tiny new little lizard was perched on my laptop when I got home from work.  It doesn't take an expert in lizard-husbandry to figure out what happened!  The thing about Junior is he's not a shy as Leonard, which has led to a few unexpected freak-outs on my part. But they continue to do their job and keep my room relatively bug free.

Here are some pics...

Everyone dressed up for the Diwali tea at FNU yesterday.  

Sangeeta brought me a traditional top to wear.  So thoughtful!

Pics from my walk along the shoreline in Lautoka today.

These guys I met on my walk made me promise I would take a picture of them 

and show it to my American friends back home. So there you go.

 

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.

Some awesome things about mongoose

Everyone, this here is a mongoose.

I didn't take this picture, but wanted to share it in case you have no idea what a mongoose looks like. I was in the same boat until my trip to Suva on Monday.  What a trip!  I got to see three of these little fellers running across the road in front of our car.  The first time I spooked the driver I was so excited.  They look like giant rats with super-long bodies and a bushy tail that comes to a sharp point at the end.  I dig mongoose!  Sometimes when I'm here it feels like I could just as well be on another planet.  Seeing a mongoose running for the first time was one of those times.  Also, looking up at the stars... I can't get my bearings because I'm upside down!  Anyway, the mongoose... I'm thinking my excitement about mongoose is akin to someone coming to visit in Wyoming and falling in love with with a ground squirrel and then freaking out every time they see one.  I get that.  But mongoose are WAY cooler.  Here's what I've learned.  Mongoose kill snakes.  They used to have lots of poisonous snakes in Fiji, so some geniuses released a bunch of mongoose here and the nasty snakes are all gone. Yay mongooses! Mongeese?  Now they are thriving, and they are vicious hunting machines! But anyway they also sometimes kill chickens.  So that's one strike against them.  Turns out if a mongoose crosses the road in front of you when you're driving that's a sign of bad luck.  That's strike two.  And, I can vouch that this is a thing.  Three little mongoose, and before we got home on Monday night our car died.  We got stuck about an hour away from Lautoka, which was an excellent adventure in and of itself.  We ended up at our driver's "sister-cousin's" place for about an hour until our ride home got there to save us. We started the day at 5:00am and were still waiting for our ride at 9:00pm.  It was a long day!  Sangeeta and the driver had neglected to mention the whole "mongoose crossing = bad luck" thing until after the car died so as to avoid dampening my excitement earlier in the day.

The trip was incredible.  I now have a pretty clear picture of how the university politics work here, which is useful, but not as exciting as the rest of our trip.  My general giddiness about everything I saw led my driver and Sangeeta to decide to take us home around the other side of the island.  That way I could say I drove around the entire island. It was incredible!  The southern part of the island is along the coast where all of the resorts are. This part of the island, between Lautoka and Suva, is where most of the population lives. It's how I pictured Fiji before I came. This is a really cool spot where people like to stop and have lunch -  the tide was out.  

The north side of the island is mountains and rain forest and is now on my list of most beautiful places I've ever seen.  The driving was really slow, which was great! We went through about 20 villages or so along the way.  At the risk of sounding too melodramatic... oh you all already know  how melodramatic I am - it was an experience that changes your soul!  I hope the whole experience of the place it is permanently embedded in my DNA now.  This pic below just shows how every single inch of the place is covered with life.  There's a pic of a traditional Fijian hut below as well.  But those aren't really found anywhere any more.  

We stopped at this beautiful waterfall and pool.

 There is a HUGE river that we passed on the way home and the fresh water mussels from it are a culinary favorite.  If I had a way to keep them fresh or cook them I would have totally bought some.

Some parts of the drive were terrible as well because we saw what remains from the destruction of the cyclone.  Whole villages were destroyed.  The hillsides are dotted with broken tin huts and UNICEF tents.  People are still living in them after all of this time.  Lots of schools are still in tents too. These places have not recovered but the people are so resilient! Whole mountainsides of trees are still flattened and broken.  It's crazy.

Anyway, I'm determined to get back to the mountains before I come home.  The rest of this week I'm starting the work of cranking out 10 new ECE courses.  We'll see how that goes.  When you all google "mongoose" - which you know you're going to do when you finish reading this - you'll find that lots of people enjoy recording mongoose fighting snakes. This should make for a fun distraction for your day!