Diaspora

Diaspora

[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.”]

Thanksgiving Dinner was at the US Ambassador's home. Lots of good food & wine, swimming pool, good company. He has a very nice house, set up for official functions of course. Fine furniture, fine art.

He's a very good and impressive man, knowledgable and concerned with the affairs of Fiji.

Friday was the Swearing-In Ceremony. All the Peace Corps staff agreed it was the best they'd ever seen. It was inside a very large fancy beautiful traditional thatched-roof bure, used for such official functions, open to the breeze on the sides. The Ambassador gave a speech. The Prime Minister gave a speech, and we each shook his hand. A big crowd turned out to observe. Excerpts were on national TV that nite. The newspaper headline read: "The Good People Return".

We are not worthy.

The next day we peace cops all went our separate ways to our separate assignments, spread over, i have not calc'd it, but it must be 1000s of square miles of pacific.

here's a copy of a note i just sent to each of 'em...

6 dec 2003

folks,

it's already saturday. i just washed my clothes in the shower, and hung them out to dry, which caused it to rain, so i brought them back in, which caused it to stop, so i hung them out again, and I keep promising myself i'll study language, but instead i'm thinking of y'all.

Saturday last, Chesa, Katrina, Sam, Atasi, Max, and me, all squeezed ourselves and mountain of stuff into a single van, foolish idea, paid too much no doubt, and distributed ourselves about the south and west coast of viti levu and, i'm told, a certain point west.

I felt disorganized and alone the first couple days.

But the neighbors are wonderful and constantly bring me food, which i try to discourage but that does no good. So i have a variety of fijian kakana when i want it (any excess, i take to work for sharing at tea time), but, living alone, i have the cereal-and-milk-breakfast/peanut-butter-jelly sandwich-lunch/ramen-noodle-dinner options as well.

I have a spacious 2-room concrete apt on the Sigatoka River in Sigatoka Village, next to Adi Joana, a wonderful 70-something old chief. The windows are screened and the wind blows cool thru in the afternoon and at nite. Namada had stray dogs everywhere but Sigatoka Koro has pigs, and occasionally the few dogs and the pigs intersect paths outside my window at nite. Squeals ensue. And there are the sounds of the fijians calling to each other, and children playing, and the disgusting throat-clearing and spitting and the yaqona pounding, and the roosters at 3am. But it's actually a pretty quiet place. When the wind blows the river waves lap on the bank, and late at nite when all's silent i can hear the distant surf on the reef.

There's a real kitchen counter and sink, and a couch and a couple easy chairs which i never use, and a clean frij with freezer that actually makes ice, and a small table which is my desk, and beds, and a clean shower/toilet room with a shower head that works. Much better than i could have hoped for. All's missing is hot water.

It's a 10-minute walk to work.

At the Provincial Office, they don't have an office for me yet. Well, actually they do, but they don't have the furniture, maybe they will next week but sounds indefinite, and then there's some sort of new-wing-dedication ceremony that's another mysterious delay. Whatever. Meanwhile, i'm told to hang out in the conference room, which is where the yaqona drinking starts at about noon sharp each day, which gives the citizens, endlessly waiting to see the Asst Rokos who are mysteriously never around, someplace to go and something to do, at which time i move to the secretaries' office, which has music and pleasant company. The women, all of them, and the male clerk and janitor and etc who occasionally wander in, spend much of the day playing solitaire on the 3 non-networked computers.

What did we all do before computers?

The day starts at 8, ends at 4:30, lunch 1-2, tea at 10 & 3. Not much happens.

Meanwhile i work on my notebook computer on my reports for Namada and Votua water system improvement projects. I'm easing in gently, trying to figure out how things work without pissing people off. There is plenty of time to piss people off later.

The best part is the evenings. I go home, usually late because there are meetings with Ratus, or strange rushed mini-van dashes to remote parts of the province for brief face times between my counterpart and ministry officials which could have been done on the phone, or email if there was such, and i'm tagged along to observe, but when i am back the neighbors greet me, and we exchange the stories of our respective days, and then i'm quiet and alone in my room, and there's beer, and excellent music on my computer, ripped courtesy Cindy and Maj and others at the end in Suva, and i practice relearning blues on my cheap new guitar. It's a good life actually. I'm so lucky.

It's raining again, torrents. Damn. I look outside. The hanging clothes of the villagers all flap in the wet wind. No one seems concerned.

And then it stops.

I have a tourist map on the wall showing where y'all are. It was a cruel trick how they made us all so special to each other and then split us apart. But that's life, eh?, womb, childhood, high school, college, jobs, marriages, dogs, cats, kids: they come and you love and they go.

Can ya believe it, ALREADY, right at about one-tenth of our total time in Fiji is gone.

maikeli