Koro

Koro

[Peace Corps requires this disclaimer: “The contents of this Web site are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. Government or the Peace Corps.”]

My village, my koro, is Namanda.

My bedroom is on the corner of the house, windows on 2 walls. The windows are louvered, no screens, and the trade wind breeze blows through.

One night I awoke to the sound of a woman’s singing outside the home, the vale, next door, and it was so beautiful, and then I really woke and realized it was a rooster.

The roosters commence competitive crowing at 3am. They sound very much like the odd call at the start of U2’s tune End of the World.

Several times a night, the packs of semi-feral dogs that lurk the koro erupt in vicious attack-mode howling, clearly pursuing something, a mystery what. After a while the barking fades, the close packs and those distant, and once again there’s only the distant hush sound of the waves on the reef.

I sleep under a big new white mosquito net which hangs from the ceiling. (There are very few mosquitoes, infinitely fewer than at DINO, but those with white stripes on their legs might carry dengue fever. And who needs mosquito bites anyway?) At 6am, Vava Siti, my host father, calls to my little host sister, age 8, “Lanieta, Lanieta, Lanieta, Lanieta…” The kids, and everyone else, stay up ridiculously late here, I mean we’re talking midnite to even 3am at times, the adults drinking kava (yangona), then they’re up at 6 for work and school.

Afternoon siesta makes up for sleep deficit. “Only mad dogs and Englishman go out in the noonday sun.”

[Spelling and pronunciation note: For purposes of this document, I spell Fijian words as they are pronounced, not as they’re actually spelled. Namanda is actually spelled Namada, as the Fijian ‘d’ is pronounced ‘nd’. ‘b’ is pronounced ‘mb’, ‘c’ as ‘th’, ‘g’ as the ‘ng’ in ‘singer’, ‘q’ as the ‘ng’ in ‘finger’ (‘yangona’ is actually spelled ‘yaqona’). Like Spanish, but unlike English, each letter can only be pronounced one way; the vowels: ‘a’ as in ‘father’, ‘e’ as in ‘bet’, ‘i’ as in ‘field’, ‘o’ as in ‘go’, ‘u’ as the ‘oo’ in ‘moon’. Got it? Pop quiz: say the name of the neighboring koro, Tagaqe.]

The traditional Fijian vale, the bure, is thatch, but the vales of Namanda and every other koro I’ve seen (exception: Navala) are now concrete block wall and corrugated metal roof. Our vale has a kitchen, 2 bedrooms, and a large living room, part of which is divided off by curtains into a sleeping space for Lanieta, plus a ‘devotion’ area for prayer. (Everyone in Namanda is a devout Methodist.) Separated by a curtain from the kitchen is a laundry area, and beyond that space are 2 concrete-walled compartments, one a shower, the other a toilet. There’s a plank door on the toilet, a flimsy shower curtain on the shower. Both are plain undecorated concrete inside. Each have a small metal-grill window, no screen. The shower doesn’t work. Bathing is cold water from a bucket, filled from a tap on the wall, when there is water at all. (Namanda, in this dry season, is experiencing severe water shortage. The water is turned on only a few hours in the morning and evening. The people fill 5-gallon plastic buckets for their water supply during the off-times, and our shower room always holds 3 or 4 of these. Flushing the toilet, if it must be flushed, involves wrestling one of these buckets over to the tank and filling it manually.)

The kitchen contains an ancient greasy gas stove. Only one burner works, lit with a match. The matches are low quality, they’re thin and break, and there’s little sulfur on the head so more often than not they go out instantly. The other burners are stacked with battered aluminum pots. There is 1 cupboard in the kitchen, plus some free-standing shelving, where the dishes go, and a table with 3 chairs, and a decrepit refrigerator that appears salvaged from a fire. Due to the lack of storage, the floor and table are stacked with dishes, cookware, and containers and plastic bags of food. There is 1 window, but the curtains are always closed, so it’s always dark here. At night there is a single fluorescent tube high on the wall. There is no ceiling in this room, so the rafters and underside of the metal roof are exposed, and it’s beastly hot inside during the day. Tiny ants generally swarm over any bit of old food scrap, likewise flies on exposed food, so there is an expanding umbrella-like cover that is placed protectively over food. The floor is bare concrete.

The livingroom is likewise dark, hot, and ceilingless. A finely woven palm-leaf mat covers the floor. There is a glass-fronted cabinet containing misc trinkets and photos of family. Geometrically stenciled cloth a foot high lines the upper edge of the wall all around the room, the only decoration. Often, clean but unfolded clothing, or my host mother Nene Nina’s books and papers for a sermon she’s composing, clutter the floor. There is an ironing board in the corner, plus one of those electrical extension things that convert one outlet into many, the only source of electricity in the house, so extension cords run from it in all directions.

My bedroom is by comparison light & airy, because of the 2 windows’ cross-ventilation, and cool because it has a ceiling. The walls are a single layer of bare thin unpainted fiberboard. At nite, I clearly hear Vava snoring in the next room, if he’s back from kava. There is a thin rug on the floor. There is a good bed, with Peace Corps-supplied sheets and thin blanket, an easy chair, a floor lamp, a bedside table, and a sort of coffee table. (I think the family moved all their various furniture into my room, for me. When I first arrived there was also an outdoor-type lounge as well, but I convinced them that could go back to the front porch.) When I first arrived, the doorway to the room was secured by only a thin curtain, but per Peace Corps regs my hosts added a locking solid door.

But in this koro, I do not feel insecure.

There are 47 vales, all of similar but non-identical construction, arranged in loose order around a central grassy parade ground. Despite the severe draught, all is green and lush. There are banana and coconut trees, flowers, and assorted other bright tropical vegetation. The koro borders the main coast road, 2-lane, paved, but there are no roads within the koro itself. The place is completely pedestrian-oriented. Foot paths wander among the closely-spaced vales, thru back- and side- and front-yards, among the clotheslines and trash heaps and half-dug septic pits and the outdoor showers and outhouses, the outdoor taps and backyard gardens. A walk thru the koro is always a social experience, people washing clothes, hanging clothes, cooking on outdoor fires, digging a trench, sweeping leaves, burning rubbish, chopping wood, or likewise walking by, and everyone, everyone, greets Yandra!, (lit. ‘Wake’) in the morning or Bula! (lit. ‘Live’) at other times of the day. And you stop and shake their hands, and they ask O lako i vei?, ‘Where are you going?’, and you answer, and they tell what they are doing, and report on the comings and goings of others, and inquire as to the comings and goings of Vava and Nene and the other Peace Cops.

Yes, ‘Peace Cops’. Many of the Fijians have trouble with the ‘r’ in that particular context, and of course they pronounce the ‘p’ – why wouldn’t you? There are 5 of us Peace Cops in Namanda, each adopted by a host family, and when I say ‘adopted’, that’s exactly what I mean. After 3 or 4 days of training at the resort on the beach after arrival in Fiji, they lined all 26 of us along one wall of a meeting hall, lined 26 Fijian mothers or fathers along the other, and matched us up.

It was an extremely emotional moment. Nina and I bonded instantly. She’s the 2^nd best mom I ever had.

We are true members of the host families. They took us into their homes. They feed us, care for us, worry about us, exult in our small triumphs. In short, they each love us, and we them.

The Fijians are the most unquestioningly loving accepting people I could ever imagine.

And we are true members of the koro as well. When we arrived, there was a solemn yangona ceremony, a sevu-sevu. Reading from a text in Fijian prepared for me by our language trainers, I asked that they would forgive us the mistakes we would make.

Of course the Chief responded in Fijian, and, after, I asked the trainer what he’d said, and I was told, “He said you are already forgiven.”

Every time I think of that, I get all blubbery.

Because it really is hard for me, life in this idyllic paradise. Everything is different, every moment. Language, customs, dress, food, the weather, the intensity of the sun, the odd vegetation and barnyard animals everywhere. Etc. But the hardest part, for me, is the feeling of always being ‘on’, as in ‘on duty’. One cannot take a simple walk without being continuously confronted by friendly strange folk talking in tongues. One cannot sit on the porch without likewise friendly people continuously arriving with any variety of questions, reports, and requests. One cannot relax quietly in the evening, for there are meetings, dinners, late yangona sessions. Attendance is expected. There is no rest.

The Fijians are social bees. The koro is a hive of activity. They are all related, they all get along, as they must, because they’re born, live, and will die here.

Every eve, the lali (bell) tings across the compound, answered by deep drumming of a large hollowed hardwood log from the distance. Soon there will be the sound of the choir from church across the darkness, thru the wind in the palms, over the hush of the breakers on the reef, beautiful, ethereal, heaven brought to earth.

I am Maikeli, Peace Cop. My village is Namanda.