Our Fijian Village (written June 11th)

It’s been six weeks now, since we had our own personal Fijian village move in next door. When this whole project of taking down the house started, we were very familiar with the concept of “Fiji time” and knew that the estimated two weeks would be stretched to be quite a bit longer. I thought, “Ok, double that, and they should be here for about a month”. As it turns out, knowing about Fiji time was not enough. The second rule of Fiji time is that you can’t estimate how long something will take. You just have to be patient and wait for things to happen when they happen. Also, you cannot ask yourself what the reasons are for doing things the way they are done. Western logic will not explain it. For example, I thought our village would move out when they were done with the job of taking the house down. Well, the house was completely down a week ago, and the consensus was that they would be leaving on Monday. Well, then they wanted to stay here this week because there was a special activity going on at church. Then Saturday we’ll have a lovo, Sunday is church, and they’ll leave next Monday. It’s really starting to feel like they have moved in permanently. Wais (one of the guys) asked this morning if he could borrow the truck to get a sofa from town to bring up to the house. I said I would tell Miles about it, but in my head I was thinking “why do you need permanent furniture if you are done with the job and are supposed to be leaving in a few days?”

We’ve had some very good times with our village. They are always very nice, they constantly feed us, we have learned a lot about Fijian culture, language and food, and they keep an eye on Jasper when he plays outside (particularly nice when mama doesn’t want any more mosquito bites). But it’s hard to get away from our American ideas. We are very much American, after all, and we highly value our privacy. We want to be alone, free to do whatever we want and not feel observed or pressured to share everything all the time, as is the norm in Fijian culture. The other night, we were watching rugby, and not five minutes went by before we had the whole village in our living room watching with us. Which was fine—if they want to watch while we watch, we’re not going to say no (that would be pretty silly). The problem for us, is that around nine pm when Jasper is starting to melt down and needing to go to bed, it’s very hard to tell Fijians, “hey, could you guys go now please?” It’s just not done. And since everything is communal, no one bothers to return anything. We gave them a grog cloth (a special bag used to mix kava for drinking), and I have no idea where it is now (along with many other things we have let them “borrow”). Like I said, they are super nice, but the cultural disconnects are starting to wear us down.

Miles took Jasper to Suva last week for three days to visit the dermatologist regarding his skin rashes (I’ll get to that later), and while he was gone, it was clear that the neighbors felt really bad for me, being here by myself (in the village, you are NEVER alone). The first night (Thursday night), I went to bed right before they got home from church. I heard Mereani call my name, but I didn’t want to get out of bed, get dressed, and interact, so I just pretended not to hear. The next morning, she said she had called me because I was alone, and she thought they should come in and sleep with me so I wouldn’t be alone. I’m not kidding-they felt really bad for me. It was a nice gesture, but well, the way I see it, I’m NOT alone. They are sleeping on the back porch, not ten feet away from me. That’s not alone! They didn’t push sleeping in the house with me (though I’m curious if they meant in the bed with me or what), but they did continue to call me out of the house every few hours to eat or drink tea, and to make sure I wasn’t too lonely (I wasn’t).

Sometimes I feel guilty about wanting them to leave. They are so nice, but it is really tiring sometimes (figuratively and literally—they often start hammering on things at dawn/5:30) to feel like you have to force yourself to smile and say good morning and go out and have tea when you’re really feeling grumpy about being woken up at 5 and paranoid about walking around in your pajamas because you don’t want to offend anyone (Fijians are VERY modest—a holdover from very strong, strict Methodist missionary influence). They seem to have no issues with us, though I’m sure they do think we’re really weird (and they are right—white folks are quite weird). They talk about how they will be sad to leave and how they really like staying at our place and comment on how much they will miss us and we will miss them when they go. It’s hard to tell what they think about us actually—they don’t speak much English, and they’re always cheerful no matter what. A few weeks ago over the kava bowl, there was a small argument about whether I looked more like Princess Diana or Mary (as in the mother of Jesus). It was really a toss up, and in the end they compromised and decided that I look like both. Miles, on the other hand, was definitively stated to look like Moses (dead giveaway with that beard!). It was so weird. I kept asking myself if these comparisons meant something, or if they really just had so little contact with “Euros”.

Update June 23:

Well, things did not go as stated (did I really think they would?), but we finally have our privacy back. We did not have the lovo—Steven says we will have it at his house another weekend—and Monday everyone went down to the beach for a picnic. Tuesday they moved the last of the construction materials down to Steven’s and Tuesday night, our village returned to their real village. I can’t say I’ve really missed them in the week since they’ve been gone, but I am starting to think more positively about the time they spent here now that there’s some distance between us. I’m sure in a year I’ll only remember it as a funny story that took place during our crazy year in Fiji.