I hope you're all doing well and looking forward to the Spring, apparently arriving in the UK on Wednesday. Here's another update from the South Seas, land of perpetual stickyness. Why not make a cup of tea - this is a long one (sorry).....
Top of the list in this edition is that I now officially have an actual real job, woop! I signed a contract at the end of Feb and am now revelling in my 5-days-a-week status. My erstwhile employer is the Wildlife Conservation Society, the very same US NGO that I started volunteering with in May last year. I have sort of snuck in, little at a time, and now I am part of the furniture. It's hard to describe the job as it is really varied, but essentially WCS works with remote communities in Fiji (in Vanua Levu, the second largest island) to combine science with community management of natural resources - marine, terrestrial and freshwater - and I help out with most bits of that. Sometimes comms work (yes, I've been (t)wittering, in a rather amaturish way @wcsfiji), sometimes project management, facilitating workshops in villages, writing management plans and lately, performing as a goby in puppet shows! There is also some mapping which is always fun. Oh, and LOTS of drinking grog (kava) whenever we go to the field. It's nasty stuff, but sort of hard to run away from once it has incapacitated you. There is talk of diving surveys later this year, but that depends on funding so I won't get my hopes up yet.
All these work trips mean I've been spending some proper time staying in villages. The most striking thing about Fijian culture is how people genuinely share things and work together. For example, boarding schools will have a rota of families who do the catering for 1 week at a time for ALL the kids in the school. The whole family just moves there for a week, providing all the food themselves. Villagers form small gardening teams who rotate between the farms of each person to share the work more efficiently. Catering for our workshops is all shared out in a complex rota system. It's pretty nice.
On the practical side, village houses are normally wooden with tin roofs, woven mats on the floor, sometimes beds. If there are chairs, no one sits in them, even 80+ year old ladies. Open roofed showers are quite common and nice to look at the sky - also handy if it's raining as you don't have to turn the tap on. (There is actually a Fijian word for 'to muck about in the rain for fun'.) Food is served in excessive quantities, and is firmly at the stodgy end of the spectrum. Usually as a veggie I eat dalo (taro root - the densest carb on earth) or other root crops, and boiled spinach or coconuty greens. Oh, and corned beef creeps in everywhere too. What I lack in the main meal, I make up for with an array of homemade cakes and treats at breakfast and throughout the day. I've learnt it's best to say I'm a caterpillar (katapila) rather than trying to say I don't eat meat or fish, that seems to get the message across more clearly. My Fijian vocab is now an eclectic mix of conservation terms and jargon ('vision', 'natural resource management', 'habitat types' and the like) and food items.
Nick is away in the UK now for 4 weeks, so I snuck off last weekend, across to the north of the island to do some diving in the channel between Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. It was awesome, best diving so far in Fiji and so nice to be back underwater. There were some good sharks, a turtle, barracuda schools, great soft corals. Sadly the camera is with Nick in the UK so I have no photographic evidence. Before Nick left we also spent a good weekend on a teeny island near Suva. There were only 3 of us there, 5 hammocks, no electricity. There is a village tabu area (protected area) just off the beach, which meant the fish were big and happy looking. Sharks however, were bitey looking: the island is right next to the famous shark feeding dive site, and we foolishly went snorkelling at 'lunch' time. A couple of reef sharks were rather too interested in us, and in active hunting mode, so we made a beeline for shore.
In less adventurous news, we bought a scooter. She's bright red, Chinese, 50cc, covered in horrific meaningless (ironic perhaps?) stickers ('hi-motor', 'very fast', 'super power', 'speed'...). Essentially a hairdryer with wheels and a seat. Nick named her Poppy, because he can pop about on her. When she's not broken (so far 95% of the time), she is amazingly handy - although I am still awaiting my Sunday morning croissant deliveries which was the only reason I was convinced to buy her. Hey ho.
Nat bravely leaps from an incredible height at Kila World, on the aptly named Kila Killer Swing. Hear her blood-curdling shriek! Hear Nick laughing! Password argh
I've found a swimming coach who runs a session at lunchtime, so that's fun. The 50m pool continues to be a wonderous thing. Sometimes I see a crab in it but generally it is clean and filled with children who - mercifully - can't swim, so I am safe in the middle of the pool. Fijian school swimming lessons actually involve taking kids to a massive river and making them swim across, with adults posted downstream to scoop them out when they inevitably succumb to exhaustion. It is supposed to help them understand the dangers of rivers, and I'm sure it does. Not sure about it helping them to learn to swim though. I am enjoying lunchtime yoging too, but given the temperatures here at noon it is somewhat Bikramish of late. I'm absolutely terrible as I still find sitting cross legged a challenge.
Any bad news? Well, as I approach a year away from the UK, I miss everyone terribly and think of you all often. And I miss cold weather, footpaths, cycling, jeans, access to wool, cider and just generally understanding the way things work. Neighbourhood dogs continue to terrorise me here, to the extent that sometimes I am up 3 times in the night to lob coconuts at them. Usually around 3am I resolve to carry out Operation Poison Sausage, but then decide against it in the morning. Oh, and it is nigh on IMPOSSIBLE to do a UK tax return from Fiji. My user-id for the clever online system was posted (POSTED??! - haven't they heard of EMAIL?) in January, and I'm still waiting for it, but by now it has expired so we have to start the whole ridiculous process again.
Anyhou, here are some links to assorted photo albums:
Dec/Jan - Christmas with the Coltmen (photos mixed in with slides from a powerpoint itinery we made for them, oddly):
Jan - A very short video of 'Nat's Death Leap' to make you laugh, password 'argh':
Feb - Desert island weekend on Yanuca:
March - WCS puppet shows, with me as Joji Goby:
Hey, while you're there, perhaps you could 'Like' us on Facebook, that would be nice
Months of work - Nick's compilation of ridiculous number plates:
Right, better sign off.
Lots of love - if that's what you normally get - otherwise, lots of very best wishes,
N x
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