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Published: March 5th 2011
I don't know where to start....
After leaving orientation on February 14th or so, we entered a village called Nananu for 12 days. Simply put, the drive into Nananu ( I was in the back of a seperate truck with two Fijian men) was the most beautiful scenery I've seen in my life. All around the community were flourishing foothillls, waterfalls, and neverending trails through some of the most untouched nature I've ever witnessed. I do not recall a day where I didn't go on a hike, be it solo or with others. I found a lot of enjoyment in hikes alone, not feeling like I have to talk to anyone and having personal thoughts to mull over while trekking through deep plains of wet grass or climbing up small waterfalls. Being on my own has never felt so peaceful in my entire life. But enough about that.
The minute our trucks pulled up next to the community hall- and next to the covered area where we would rest during our days of work- the entire community awaited. We all had on our sulus (basically a long skirt,) which we purchased in Nadi, and that was about the only thing we had in common with the Fijians at this point. Shortly after, we were ushered into the community hall for a welcoming ceremony. There we drank kava root, and were formally accepted into Nananu for as long as we wanted. Our contact and fellow community member Kali read us some of their expectations and rules for us, then we were divided up and sent into our host families. Our host brother Seka took David and I (literally, he held our hands) to our Mangu and Nau (dad and mom) home. To my surprise, it was extremely lavish. It had a laundry machine, washer, television, electricity (I was relieved to be able to charge my camera,) and we were each given our own rooms. Our family slept on the floor instead of the two rooms they sacrificed for David and I, but it is considered disrespectful to refuse this kind of hospitality. Nothing however, compared to our views from the house. To see the sunrise over green mountains and herds of goats in the distance only required me to lift up my mosquito net and curtains ever so slightly. Unfortunately, for the first week it was cloudy and rained heavily through the night, but the sun certainly had no problem scorching our skin during the day. This level of humidity and sun was...not as fun as you might think. Dumping water over myself and clothes was a forte, no way would I have made it without water to cool me off. I did however, have as much fun interacting with anyone as I ever could imagine. Each day a few new community members- sometimes from neighboring communities- would come to help build the sidewalk, visit their friends, and meet us. None of them hesitated to tell us about their lives, and always loved hearing about life back in the states (you can guess which of us had more interesting things to talk about.) For some reason conversation was much easier when I was digging trenches, mixing cement, shoveling gravel, or carrying bags of sand up the hills to the worksite. In fact, almost all of these conversations took place in the moments of arduous physical labor. As you can imagine, it made it a lot easier to work and the breaks we took down by the river, were most needed and cherished. A 10 minute break every 1.5 hours was routine, and most of the men rolled up "siga," a type of sweet tobacco inside of newspaper, sometimes a foot long. In case it isn't well known, newspaper isn't the ideal way to smoke , and I certainly figured that out quick. One drag off these little guys, and I coughed for nearly 2 minutes and got a good hearty laugh going...at myself. It's definately a skill of mine, and the coughing wasn't the first or last time people laughed. Whenever I went out for volleyball, I was yanked by someone to get into the frontline and block/spike the ball, but I have nowhere near the hops or strength of some of these short, stout Fijian bulldogs so many times it wasn't too hard to lay one on me, and you better believe people were brought to tears laughing when the tallest guy in the village couldn't stop a 5'2" 16 year old. And if you were really lucky, you could have seen me try and spike a ball off a perfect set, miss the ball completely and land on my ass in a mud puddle...then run to the river crying. Just kidding, but it was a moment of extreme embarrassment, and the only defense was to laugh too. Thankfully, it was almost prayer time. The entirety of Nananu had prayer at 7:00 (fijian time, so being 30 mins late wasn't the end of the world.) Our family was one of 3 families that practiced 7th day adventist, so we went to church on Saturday instead of Sunday. The only downside was, many times prayer would last until 8:30 or later, which is far too lengthy for prayer, especially when David and I could not understand but two or three words they said, so occasionally we elected not to go, which our family understood. Additionally, we would be late for dinner most nights, and the dinner here was not to be missed. Dinner and lunch were fairly similar, and I would describe the cuisine as almost Ethiopian. It consisted of: tortillas, beef chop suey, arugla, other greens soaked in lime and coconut milk, potato curry, rice, marinated chicken, and fruit juice made from local orchards in the community. Lunch was pretty much the same too. We all dined together for 4 meals a day (breakfast, lunch, tea time, dinner) in a small dining house, where our Nau's worked tirelessly every day to put food on the table for us and the workers- for that I thank them a million times. Everyones effort- including our own- really paid off. I was able to observe and be a part of something so simple yet rare- what you put in, you get out. Here is a rough schedule to show what most of our days looked like:
8:00 wake up (for the first few days we woke up at 6 and hiked through the surrounding hills)
8:15 breakfast (consisting of cake, pie, fruit, lemon tea, doughnuts, and other pastries)
9:30 work SUNSCREEN SUNSCREEN SUNSCREEN
12:30 lunch
2:00 work
4:00 tea time (same meal as breakfast, I swear)
8:30 dinner
*during the free time from 4-8:30 is generally when I would hike alone, play volleyball, play with my host sisters and brothers, go swimming and jumping off rocks, and explore.
This schedule leads me to my favorite part of Nananu: how complete of a day you can have. I was able to see the most picturesque scenery, work, make new friends, and be a part of a new culture all in a days time. I want to reiterate how important that is to me, and never have I felt so driven to make each day as worthwhile as I did. I never waited for anyone to ask me to do something, I went out and did it myself. Part of that motivation was from Nananu itself. In a community like so, people have to work for everything, and take pride in it. And their happiness is rooted in eachother, not what they have. It must have rubbed off on me, because my jubilance felt almost unshakeable as long as I had such an environment around me. I really want to make it a goal to delve deeper into what makes me happy, and surround myself with people who understand that kind of happiness.
Moving into week 2.....
Following a weekend of torrential downpour, work resumed on monday and tuesday, then we headed to the beach and the Fiji water bottling plant on Wednesday. Kali accompanied us along with one of his friends in two small trucks. The Fiji bottling plant is something I had never really thought of at any point before or during the stay, but it was quite cool. No pictures were allowed inside, and we were given a tour by the manager on each and every step. Basically, it was unlike anything I had ever seen. It is easily the most mechanical process I have ever lay eyes on. Even the smallest teeny tiniest scratch on a bottle, the computer recognizes it and shoots the bottle into a duct and it is observed by some other machine. It made me a little sick to see how much water we (the U.S.) consume- the biggest importer of Fiji water. But as it turns out, Fiji water does make some recognizable attempts (some business minded) efforts to preserve rainforests and provide services to surrounding communities. In fact, a recent example would be powerlines in Nananu. Then we headed to a diving resort right on the beach, where we swam, kayaked, snorkeled, did yoga, read, and ate. My friend Ryan and I found and snorkeled on a nearby reef, which was vibrant with all kinds of fish I had only seen on Planet Earth and a variety of coral. Not to mention that the water was clearer and warmer than a swimming pool. I was ready to go back to Nananu however, because the resort was full of pompous, wealthy English and Americans who wouldn't last a day in anywhere but a resort. The following night, we had a dance party under our rest area. I must have had 9 or 10 bowls of kava (the stuff tastes horrible,) but fueled me and kept me out till 1 or 2. Needless to say, I crashed hard and waking up the next morning early was a struggle. As the days grew closer to us leaving, the thought of New Zealand became entirely real and became the only conversation piece for a while. It was tough to hear all this talk about it, when we still had 4 full days left and I had gotten so accustomed to taking it day by day and living in the moment. That being said, the weekend was tough because my family felt sad we were leaving, and the group was for the most part ecstatic that we were leaving, so I really couldn't find my place and it was difficult to enjoy my weekend. That isn't to say I had a totally bad time, it just hit me hard how fast time went and how little time I had left. Following the weekend, we took a long horse ride (ANJA ANJA!) through some terrain that I hadn't hiked through with our mangu's. On the horse ride up, I rode on the same horse as my Mangu and David rode alone. It was silent for the most part, but he is the kind of man who is more present with his energy, rather than his words. He did however, say a prayer for a man who let us pass through his village on the way to the waterfall, and though I can't understand Fijian, he speaks with great passion. Once we got to the there, it was nothing short of paradise. A waterslide ran perpendicular to the giant 20 foot deep pool under the waterfall, and there were all kinds of jumping spots surrounding it. I saw and did everything from diving headfirst down the waterfall (got a nice cut on my hip,) to diving off the 27 foot high rocks around, to playing volleyball on the surrounding small cliffs, and roasting fresh caught fish over the fire. After spending the entire day there we galloped off into the sunset, just in time for volleyball and a good night sleep for our last full day in community. Tuesday was a family day. For the first time we all had breakfast, lunch, and tea with our families. All meals were absolutely delicious, its hard to say that my Nau was a better cook than Arceli (my mom in Nicaragua,) but there is certainly some competition there :P Around tea time, David and I presented our gifts as well as received ours. David's mom sewed an American flag quilt, and I gave them the card games set, blink, and some Oregon postcards. They loved them all and repeated "vinaka" (thank you) for around 5 minutes, they were thankful not only for our gifts, but for us staying in their home. Following our gifts, they presented us with homeade fans and brooms, made from dried coconut leaves. I still have them with me, it wasn't easy getting them through NZ customs, but they are getting home with me! Following tea, our family walked along the footpath in our sulus to the dinner hall for our final meal. We said our prayer, and marveled at the absurdly large feast that had been cooked for us. For those of us who know Harry Potter, it looked almost exactly like that minus the floating candles. On the table I discovered some Fijian fried chicken, which if Im not mistaken, was the only thing I ate at dinner. Then with full bellies, we went to the tarp for a final night of dancing where we drank Kava, danced with everyone in the community from kids to Naus to strangers, and barely got any sleep. That final night in the community, I went to bed with a sense of completeness...and also I didn't have a cobra under my bed like my last night in Nicaragua. Saying goodbye was the final thing to do, and that we did after a final stuffing of cake and other morning food rituals. Many of the community cried, including our family even before the goodbyes. Many pictures were taken, and David and I were gifted with two homeade shirts to wear out of the village. I think I cracked when I saw my Mangu sitting on the rocks next to the community hall where we had been welcomed only two short weeks ago. I told him I would be back, but it in was just something I wasn't able to do. All of the beautiful flower necklaces and other items they put on us, the prayers they said, and the image of them waving goodbye as we turned out of the village for the final time, is something I will remember vividly for as long as I live. Here I sit in the International Backpackers hostel in New Zealand trying to remember all of the times I had in Nananu, but there is just no way to describe it in a single blog post. My hope is that anyone who reads this can try and visualize some of the things I've mentioned, because I have done my very best to try and tell you what an honor it was to be a part of such an incredible culture and community, and subsequently share it with you guys.
Thank you all so so much
NEXT BLOG POST: Sometime between the 6-12, when we are on the organic farm (WWOOF) and I get a little while to blog.
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Dad and Perl
non-member comment
Sat AM bog read -
Dear Dylan - Perl and I just read your blog and marvel at the clarity of how your words deliver the experience to others. I am so grateful you have taken the time to re-imerse yourself in service far away from the US, and allow yourself to steep in a new culture without judgement. You are a human "tea bag" who genuinely takes on and shares the moment and environment: and I can feel echos of our own journeys and times past in Africa and Norway seeping back out of my mind's vault ... pushing for more room in the present. So I love your idea of a family trip and can't wait to hear more, see pics, and sit in the back yard in May. All our love ... "To know someone here or there, with whom there is an understanding in spite of distances or thoughts unexpressed, that can make of this world a garden." W von Goethe -