Riding the Bus

Riding the bus here has been a sometimes confusing, strange, and hilarious endeavor. To get to and from work, we generally drive the truck (“the Mazda van with the open tray”) down the hill to the Waqa’s, park the truck and drop Jasper off, then catch whatever transportation comes along into town. I say whatever transportation, because it’s generally not a bus. The first day I decided to take the bus, I was riding in by myself because Miles’ ankle was still healing and he hadn’t started working at the store yet. Now, there is no office or visible oversight that runs the bus system, someplace you can get a bus pass or ask for a schedule. There are no written bus schedules. People just know when the busses run. There are also virtually no bus stops (I think I’ve seen two).

So that first day, I decided to walk down to the only bus stop around and just wait until a bus came along. I was encouraged to see people standing at the corner. Of course, I thought it was a bit strange that they were standing at the corner, instead of at the actual bus stop 50 feet away, but there were people waiting, which was a good sign. I asked one of the women there if she was waiting for the bus (she was) and if she knew what time it came. She said 10. I waited a minute, then looked at my phone to check the time. 9:10. What?! These people were waiting in the hot sun a whole hour before the bus came? I wasn’t wearing any sun block and didn’t have any with me, and the sun was already scorching hot. After about five minutes of fretting about sunburn, a truck with a canopy on the back drove up and stopped. One of the women jumped in the back of the cab like she knew the people. Then the woman in the passenger seat nodded at me. I looked around at the other two ladies and some men standing around waiting, then back at the woman in the truck with a questioning look. She nodded at me again, and I decided to jump in. I wasn’t going to miss a ride and have a nasty sunburn to show for it. I got in and the truck sped away. No one said a word. I really, really hoped they were going to town and not some other random place. Sure enough, the truck went to town, pulled over, and everyone got out. I saw the other two women give the driver some money, so I followed suit.

The next day, I went out to the same corner. This time, no one was waiting. So I stood there by myself, and after less than ten minutes, an empty taxi stopped. I didn’t wait for the nod, I just jumped right in. And that’s pretty much how it’s been most mornings. Just walk down the road, and eventually someone will pick you up. Usually it will be a taxi or “carrier” (the trucks with the covered bed; people sit in the back too), but we’ve also gotten free rides from the police and from a tow truck. I think the longest I’ve waited is 15 minutes, though Miles says one of the days he went without me he had to wait half an hour. And on one day out of the last two months, the first thing that went by was the bus.

Now in the afternoons, we almost always ride the bus. The bus costs 70 cents (which is also what a “return” ride into town costs), but a taxi home costs $3.50 (or so we’ve been told, we’ve never actually taken one). The buses leave from the bus station at roughly the same time every day, so we can plan when we leave the store. And I have to say that riding the bus is often one of the highlights of my day.
Things just happen on the bus. One day, the bus was still in town when a woman pulled the stop cord. The driver stopped, but nothing happened. He turned around, not looking surprised or annoyed, just neutral, and the woman who had pulled the cord pointed across the street and said, “My sister, my sister. She’s coming.” So the sister made her way across the street, had a short conversation with the woman on the bus, and then the woman on the bus passed her maybe three year old daughter to her sister through the window (there is no glass, the windows are just open holes). Another time, the bus stopped by the gas station and the guy getting off told the driver he just needed to get some gas really quick, so the driver just waited for him to get his gas and get back on the bus. And then there was the time that the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere, and in the distance I saw a girl walking toward the bus. I thought maybe she wanted to get on the bus, but she was walking really slowly for that. Eventually she made it to the bus and handed the driver what I’m assuming was his lunch through the window. He said thanks and we drove off. Riding the bus is never dull, that’s for sure. And then there’s the feeling of careening out of control as it takes sharp curves going downhill… yep, never dull.

Get your Goat

There is only one TV station here in Fiji, and a serious lack of programming for those who would like to watch. I'm ok with that, since we don't have a TV, and aren't really interested. Sometimes, though, we do watch the news with John and Barbara.

The local news (which is the same as the national news) is on every evening at six for between 20 and 40 minutes, depending on how much is going on. Here's a quip to give you an idea of average reporting:

"There’s a new form of soccer being played in Fiji. It's based around penalty shots, and is played with three players per team. Led by esteemed coach blah blah blah..."

The money quote at the end of the segment:

“The winner gets a goat, which proves the game is from Labasa.”

Ah Labasa, what a strange place.

Volukaka and Kana

Well, this wasn’t supposed to be a chronicle of Fijian medicine, but I keep getting sick, so there you go. This time around, I had something I wouldn’t call a flu, but it had muscle aches, headache, stomachache, nausea and diarrhea as symptoms. Once again, Eseta was concerned for my well being, and told Miles when he dropped Jasper off that she would pick some leaves for me to use. She also reiterated that I really need to be careful about being out in the rain. If I get caught in the rain, I need to wash it off. When I went down there today to drop Jasper off, she told me this again, and I said that I couldn’t remember being in the rain at all recently, and she said it happened when I walked home the other day. I said I didn’t think it was raining, and she replied “only a little bit, it’s still not good.” Maybe there was a slight drizzle. Being from Oregon, I couldn’t remember feeling any rain. This time, she gave me leaves from the volukaka or Simple-leaf Chastetree to pour boiling water over and inhale the steam. This time, I couldn’t find any good information online; even Wikipedia was not much help, but I went ahead and tried it anyway. I didn’t really notice any difference in how my stomach felt, but it did seem to help my head, and it felt refreshing. Good enough for me.


Yesterday we received a feast from Eseta’s family. A complete lovo meal (food cooked in an earthen oven with heated volcanic rocks), with two kinds of fish, dalo (taro roots), lolo (coconut cream sauce), palusami (dalo leaves stuffed with onions and lolo), chicken, lamb curry, and chop suey. Every time they have a lovo, they really load us down with food, enough for several nights’ dinners. This particular lovo (or more appropriately "kana" or feast) was in honor of Asenaca’s (Eseta’s next youngest sister) getting her first period and her transition into womanhood. There were probably fifty people over for dinner at the Waqa’s, and I have no idea how many others they gave food to. These people know how to throw a party, and I think it’s really awesome to celebrate this particular life transition in such a beautiful, life affirming way, surrounded by friends and family. What a gift to give to your daughter.

Look Ma, no Novocain! A dental horror/love story

Well, I meant to go to the dentist before we left the country, really I did. I had been having intermittent tooth pain for months, especially upon eating sweets. But somehow, there were just so many things going on, and I never got around to it. So we’d been in Fiji for maybe two weeks before I started asking John about dentists: specifically, were there any in the country that would not give me nightmares. My tooth was hurting, and I was afraid that I might have to remain in pain for a year or two, or pay a lot of money to fly over to Australia if I got desperate. Turns out there was a recommended dentist in Labasa (1.5-2 hours away depending on if you get stuck behind a bus and how much it’s raining). So I called and made an appointment, though I wasn’t exactly sure what kind of appointment I had made.

me: “I would like to make an appointment with the dentist.”
receptionist: “mumble mumble, [something about a] clinic.”
me: “I don’t know about a clinic. I live in Savusavu and I would like to come to Labasa to see the dentist.”
receptionist: “mumble mumble, what are you having?”
me: “I would like to have my teeth cleaned and examined. I am having some pain, and I think I might need a filling.”
receptionist: “mumble mumble, tomorrow?”
me: “How about Thursday?”
receptionist: “mumble mumble, [the only audible time I hear is] quarter past two.”
me: “OK, quarter past two. Thank you.”

So I go to Labasa and show up at the dentist’s office at the appropriate time. While I’m waiting, I look at the posted price list: tooth extraction (top of the list) $5-15, scaling and polishing (which turns out to be cleaning) $30-45, on down to root canal for a whopping $250. Well, I’d better not need one of those, because I didn’t bring $250.

I go into the dentist’s area and sit in the chair. Everything looks pretty normal: the chair with automatic raising and lowering, that light that’s always making you squint no matter how they adjust it, the tools and instruments. My first surprise: there’s no hygienist. The dentist does the cleaning himself. Normal procedure. Then the exam: the pain is apparently caused by a cavity and it just needs a simple filling. He gives me a mirror so I can see, and says “It’s a small one, I’ll just go ahead and take care of it right now.” I’m relieved I don’t have to come back. Then he gets out the drill and starts right in. Wait, no shot? No topical gel? No, I realize. There’s not going to be any of that, he’s just going to fill it up the fast way, and I get to sit there squeezing the hell out of my skirt and making fingernail imprints in my palms. And I get to watch. I still have the mirror, and I can see the whole thing. Somehow, though, seeing it is so fascinating that it helps with the pain. I’ve never seen a filling being done before, and I know exactly when it’s going to hurt. So he fills it up, using all the same high tech dentistry as in the US, giving me a white composite filling. It’s done, and then comes the clincher: “Well, it looked small, but it was really quite deep.” “No shit.” is all I can think.

I go back up front to pay, and it comes to a grand total of $70: 35 for the cleaning, 35 for the filling. Well, considering that that’s about $35 US, and that it probably would have cost 10 times as much to get it done in the States, I’m glad I waited and had it done here. Overall a positive experience, even without the Novocain.

Flickr Photos

Thank you, thank you to Chantrelle for buying us a Flickr Pro Account. Now there is no limit to the number of photos we can download and you all can view all of them, anytime. But it's probably still a good idea to download the ones you want, since as we have seen, they can unexpectedly go away.