Maqo Diary

Maqo Diary

[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.”] [Dollar amounts are F$. Exchange rate: F$1 = US 60cents.]

//17jan04

Saturday, marine survey at Warwick Resort.

I was to arrive at Erami’s house at 7am. Instead he arrived at mine at 6:50, complete with a van driven by a large bald Ratu from across the Sigatoka River. This I took as a good sign.

We proceeded to his place where we proceeded to do gunu-ti, which did slow the process down but I’ve come to accept slow, especially when it involves eats.

Then we were off, Erami, his wife Wainikiti, and me and the chiefly driver. Stopped at Malevu to pick up Jo, a diver we’ve worked with before, good man. Stopped at Tagaqe to pick up Chesa (she amazed we on-time) from her new digs – she’s living alone now, really happy to be finally on her own. Then at Mike’s Dive picked up Kini, a diver & very articulate spokesman, and a pile of wetsuits and misc minor gear.

Arrived The Warwick. Somehow security let us mere rabble in. I credit Erami.

Met assembled throng of ratus whom Erami had invited for talanoa. Privately, he advised our crew should divide into the ‘survey team’ & the ‘grog team’.

I can’t understand but 10% of what he says, but sometimes that man is so fucking brilliant.

So Kini and Wainikiti and Erami made the ultimate sacrifice, while Jo & I sought out Warwick’s sewage line and Chesa basked on a beachside lawnchair. We all have our priorities. We found the pipe at the end of the last jetty, where it crept out from under the rubble, made a very abrupt turn, and extended laterally thru a trench excavated in the coral to finally empty a long way’s off in front of the neighboring village’s lagoon.

Bastards.

We returned to the conference room to find the grogging still in progress, Somehow we got sucked in, but surprisingly it was not bad. Erami was running a productive meeting. He is well respected, and he was telling the chiefs about MPAs and water pollution, and Jack, a clued-in local member of the neighboring vill (recipient of warwick shit) was asking all the right provocative Qs. Of course all this was in Nadroga dialect, but between what erami was writing on the butcher paper, my poor Fijian, and Jack’s private English explanations, I was really impressed with the process that Erami had orchestrated.

Good for him!

He signed up 3 more koros for marine surveys, and started a process which will, I believe, someday clean up Warwick’s crap.

Then we suited up and went out and did our survey. The chiefs all went out too and watched with enthusiasm.

Like everywhere I’ve seen on the ‘Coral Coast’, there’s almost no live coral out there. Someday I must travel to someplace and snorkel where there’s some left. While it’s still there.

After the snorkel we returned to the conference room for a fine Warwick-supplied lunch, like Bolshevik guests of an unknowing Czar.

As the group started to dissipate, I noticed Erami had disappeared. I went looking for him, finding him at the beachside bar. Privately, he told me: I have the landowner buying drinks here, go get Chesa.

I got Chesa.

It was about 2pm. For the next maybe 5 or so hours, ‘the landowner’, well actually the fijian landowner’s relative, but close enuf, bot Erami, Wainikiti, Chesa, Jo, & myself (Kini had responsibly acquired other transport) beers and rum/cokes beyond count.

I’m a little ashamed to admit that, but, gawd, there next to the awesome reef-crashing sea, sun going down, amidst the luxury and the austrailians wandering by wondering at the half-drunken Fijians & bad-fijian-babbling kaivavalagis – what an experience!

Another ‘hardest job’, eh? Ya gotta love it.

//20jan04

Finally they let me into my office last week, and the furniture arrived a couple days later, and nice furniture it was! Not only an excellent desk, but a real office chair, 2 plainer chairs for the visiting public, a 4-drawer file cabinet, and a pedestal fan, all brand new. Trouble is: now everyone hangs around in my office – even when I’m not there. I mean: like the asstRokos bring their customers into my office & hold their conferences in there, because the furniture’s first class, & there’s that excellent fan.

Weeks ago, when I first found out I’d someday have an office in the new (but empty) section, I asked one of the asstRokos if the four of ‘em’d be moving in there, & was told no, they liked it where they were, especially since the high ceiling there makes it so much cooler than the flat ceiling in the new section. OK.

But now they see the furniture (which arrived for all 4 empty offices), and THREE of ‘em want to move. I guess the 4^th,Kam, the newest Roko, can’t – because *I’m* here.

So I’ll talk to him & hopefully move myself over to one of the old small dinjy offices with the old bare broken furniture. It’s only right.

It was, very briefly, very nice.

//22jan04

Director of peace corps visited. The ceremony at the office went very well, then we had lunch at the Fijian Resort, which of course was beautiful and nice, but it turns out the guy is not the jerk republican appointee I thot he’d be – instead he came off very well, really really seemed interested in us and what we’re doing, and of course most importantly, in his job. He clearly believes in the mission of the peace corps, and managed to re-inspire even cynical me in same. OK, we all believe in what we’re doing, it just helps to be re-reminded why, frequently if possible.

Katrina, Chesa, Sam were there (Atasi had other commitments, too bad!) – and yes, Sam really did cut her hair EXTREMELY short.

Each of us might feel like we’re accomplishing absolutely nothing and it’s all frustration, yet when we all related our various stories to the Director of what we’re doing, damn it sounded so impressive, and there was no exaggeration.

Tho’ the director did at one point betray his republican roots – I was telling him about how sure it was a beautiful sight out the Fijian Resort window, but, murdered by global warming, coral harvesting, water pollution, and over-fishing, the reef in fact was dead,. And he asked me, quietly, meekly, because he really didn’t know the answer: “please, tell me: that’s a bad thing because….?”

//24jan04

Ho hum, another Saturday, another marine survey in paradise, this time at komave. Cast of characters same as last week. This time we go right to work. The place is a marine wasteland, nothing but sand and algael slime, because, Kini tells me, the coral harvesters got it all. And then they made this an MPA? The theory of the MPA is it generates fish that slop over into adjacent areas, improving the ecology and making the fisherpeople happy. But no fish is gonna live here unless they really like algae AND they don’t need a place to hide.

The only significant fish are 3 baby sharks scooting like high speed menace in the shallow water. Cool!

Tho’ as we got way out by the opening to the sea, where the coral had been unmolested, suddenly it was like a giant aquarium museum, clouds of every variety of colorful ika.

But Kini reined me in – we were being dragged by the current out to sea.

And into every good day a little or lot of grog must fall. Back at the tanoa, Erami & Kini did the talking, & it was all in fijian, but from what little I could gather, all folks wanted to know was: how big were the fish? In other words, after the year or so it had been around, was the MPA working its magic yet?

So I made a little speech about how big fish depended on a healthy ecosystem, and that coral harvesting, plus erosion from logging and roads, and water pollution from the resorts and villages, and overfishing, all occurring for decades, had essentially destroyed the ecosystem, and that one MPA was not going to erase all that, that it would take a very long time and a lot of concerted effort to get it back.

Someone asked what should be done, and I said the 3 big things were to use non-phosphate detergents, the resorts must treat their sewage, and the villages must clean up their sewage act as well.

It seemed a sort of gloom settled over the valenisoqo, and in fact it was the first time, suddenly, I realized the enormity of the damage, and of the work, and the utter hopelessness of it all.

And not just here in Viti.

I’m reminded of Pita’s translation, on water safety training day, of the orange plastic panel one displays at sea when suddenly, unexpectedly, without a boat.

“<We’re><fucked>.”

Erami’s plan was to hit Namada on the way back to talk to folks about piggeries and hospitality (resort) training, but he’s yaqona’d out. We head straight home.

Back in Sigatoka Village, seems everyone I see has a maqo in his mouth.

//25jan04

Sunday. We’d agreed yesterday that I’d meet Erami and Wainikiti at their place at 9, and go together to church at Namada. At 9:10 or so I arrived to find Wainikiti in her night clothes and Erami poring thru piles of papers. He passed me a so-oft-photocopied-to-unreadability piggery design diagram to help me pass the time while they got ready. For some reason this day they were not getting along, Kiti claiming she was not going, Erami insisting she would. No one was offering gunu-ti, which I considered a severe breech of fijian protocol, but whadya do? I’d skippd breakfast, counting on it to manifest here. Instead, there was an open crumpled bag of residual vinegar-and-salt potato chips in the center of the room. It looked lonely. I offered it my company.

Kana vakalevu.

Finally Kiti decided to get ready. It was about 9:50. Church starts at 10:15 or so, and it’s 20+ minutes distant. I’d be tense about this, but it’s fiji, whadya do?

Erami wandered off down the road, I assumed in search of transport. We followed when she was ready, carrying a very nice tote bag from some university in Rhode Island where Erami had done training in Gender Rolls in Integrated Coastal Management or some such. We headed off in a different direction. I told her which way Erami had gone, but she said to follow her, so I did, and sure enuf Erami appeared telepathically after a while, carrying not a taxi but bags of yaqona.

Priorities.

Well as I said he’d done a lot of grog for the cause the previous day, and hadn’t eaten since lunch in Komave. We stopped in at Raj’s. BULA! cried Erami, about 6’5 and 300 pounds, as we entered, frightening a meek young austrailian couple, the only customers. He ordered chicken & chips, and asked me to pay. He also borrows my phone card. He seldom has any $$, but he does a lot for me. It bothers me. But giving him shit about it bothers me more.

The 3 of us share the greasy meal.

Done, we head the wrong way. Where are we going, I ask. He mumbles something, I can never understand, so I follow along, whadya do? Wainikiti disappears. Erami knows everyone, talks to everyone. We stand on a corner doing that, til Kiti reappears with shopping bags full of groceries for Namada. We walk to the roundabout at the edge of town, there join a group of likewise-waiting-for-a-fortuitous-van people, and… wait.

The bus goes by, but no one makes a move to flag it.

I swear we wait for 20 minutes, tho’ maybe it was more like 15, then suddenly someone waves down a van with a red ‘P’ in the window, they negotiate a price, and finally we go.

We arrive at about 11. I’ve given up on church. We get out. Erami tells me to pay the driver $3. I give him $3 and he takes off.

I mention to them that if I’d come alone it would’ve cost me $1.30 and I would’ve been on time.

They apologize.

Wainikiti heads for her prenuptial home, and Erami & I wander thru the iteitei talking about responsible piggery waste management. The gardens all look uncharacteristically overgrown with thick tall grass. Erami’s conclusion: “Too busy coral-harvesting.”

We come upon the clearing of a home beyond the Namada boundary. We go in. In the mood I’d been developing since 9 this morning, it was a wretched hovel of forest-dwelling nadrogavians. In the custom of the country, we drank grog. Yech.

The woman of the house was nice and tried to teach me fijian. ‘Sa maca na wai i namada’.

Namada has no water.

But tho’ she was trying to be helpful, I was in no mood for it. The trouble was that, as is so oft the case, I had no idea what we were doing here, or why, or what would happen next, or next, or for how long, and all I could do was go along with it, exactly as I’d done all morning.

And, finally, it was pissing me off.

So I excused myself.

“Maikeli, wawa”, Erami urged, and I feel bad about that, because he’s been good to me. But I left, hitching for home, mobility & independence, regained.

The driver was an Indian real estate guy and taxi company owner from Suva, so he claimed, but he could’ve been a pimp, his interest it seemed lay mostly in Chinese and fijian prostitutes, and in marrying me off to some friend’s Indian daughter whom I’d take to America. Yech.

Back in the koro, finally, I talked pleasantly in the shade of her front porch to Adi Joana. A child, sent from next door, shyly invited us to kana. Lunch was big prawns and crabs, and ika in lolo.

//26jan04

I have the greatest house. It’s big, clean, furnished, etc, but the best parts are the excellent neighbors, and it’s on the river. It’s heaven to sit on the porch as the breeze blows in, and look out over the water.

But it’s supposed to be only temporary.

The provincial office is to provide me housing, but of course things didn’t get ready in time, so Bill Aalbersberg, USP, legendary Peace Cop, offered to lend peace corps this place, which he acquired with Adi Joana some point in the distant past. But only until Feb, to give the ProvOff time to get its act together.

Well, I like it here, especially since the alternative is an allegedly poorly maintained apt on the main Queen’s Hwy in commercial Sigatoka, upstairs from a pool hall and next door to a 24-hr yaqona sales joint.

So I told Eileen I wanted to stay put. She was very supportive.

So was Bill. But he didn’t want to let the ProvOff off too easy. He proposed a deal where the ProvOff would pay Adi Joana $100/mo rent, basicly just to make them accept a little responsibility for me and the job I’m doing.

And Joana my good neighbor was fine with it too.

So Eileen & I brot it up with the Roko Tui. His response was unclear.

Today, I brot it up again, in the context of an MOU with IAS, Bill’s org at USP. We went over it all in detail, and one of the items to be added was that ProvOff would pay $100/mo rent to Joana so I could stay where I am. He agreed to it completely, saying that staying in the village would better fijian-ize me, tho’ he did want to talk to joana. I emailed Eileen that it was a done deal “unless there’s been some misunderstanding.”

About that moment, the R.T. shows up and tells me lets go talk to joana. So we race over there in the ProvOff pickup, meet on her front porch, and he does a quickie sevusevu, fondling a tabua, all in nadroga of course, and then everyone’s happy & smiling, and we get up & go, and he tells me that she’ll let me stay thru march, the month my parents are coming to visit.

Huh?

I think what happened is that, no, he did not want to pay $100/mo, but is too Fijian to say that outright. And I believe that the thing he did with joana was to ask her if I could stay for free an extra month. And since she’s 74 and everyone including me is smiling, she figured all was on the up & up and went for it.

Screw it. Whadya do?

So our next stop is the ProvOff apt. Til now I’ve only viewed it from the street.

We go in the narrow dark entrance hallway, and there’s sheets of water flowing down the concrete steps, and I thot: this is great, it’s classic, someone’s toilet is overflowing in this slum, and we’re walking thru sewage to my new home. But no, fact is someone was just washing it all down – to keep the place clean. Oh. Good.

My place is on the 3^rd floor. On the 2^nd floor, one of 2 units is occupied, by a family. I meet the hubbie and he seems like a nice responsible guy. In the states I’d see his kids and think: shit, noise! But after the village that comes to be expected and it’s nothing. Here, I actually think, good! It’ll be like a little vertical village here. (The other unit will be filled soon by a social welfare department office.)

Upstairs, we visit my soon-to-be-apt.

It’s huge. Big central room, open to the spacious kitchen, plus 2 big BRs and a bath. Light. Airy. Certainly nothing fancy, indeed the bathroom’s a bit on the cruddy side.

But there’s also a back porch that faces toward the river. No I can’t see the river, but there’s the breeze, and in fact we’re up high looking over the tops of the trees. Below I can see the glimpse of a corner of what from up here looks like a creek. (Down on the street, it’s revealed to be a ditch flowing with white slimy crud and trash.) Overall… it feels… ok.

I ask the R.T.: can I just stay where I am now?

“We’ll talk about it in march,” he answers.

Yeah right. Whadya do?

This new place will be fine.

//27jan04

Yesterday, Ratu Natoba told me he needs a report from me.

Narata is a koro up the Sigatoka river. It has been building a church with its own funds for a long time, but now the folks balk at spending any more, so they’re going to the gov. Now the gov won’t usually pay for a church outright, but by calling it also an ‘evacuation center’ in the event of flooding, it’s got a damn good shot, especially if fijian & methodist. So it’ll be my job to write the report. Can I do it today, he wonders? Today!? Ok, he says, tomorrow. We’ll go there tomorrow? No, he explains, they will come to pick up the report tomorrow. I haven’t seen the place yet, I protest. Oh, ok, we’ll go see it tomorrow.

So then I had to arrange the transport.

I go to Qase, the ‘transport officer’. I thot he was a ‘clerk’. I guess he has multiple rolls. He can’t find the form. He goes to the computer in the secretaries’, finds the electronic version, prints 1, copies more. I fill out the form. Return to his office. He isn’t there. This is another example of why every single little fucking minor thing takes FOREVER – where do I put the form? He has 5 wooden paper-form-holding trays on his desk, all overflowing with papers that have the appearance of having been there since this place was a colony, none of the trays labeled. And then there are the loose stacks on the remainder of his desk. OK, I could drop it right square in the middle on top, and hope for the best, except for 1 thing: this is the tropics, there are trade winds, all the windows are open – it WILL blow away. So I search for something, anything, heavy, a paperweight. There is nothing. I look behind his door – oily AUTO PARTS. No, I won’t do it. I go looking for him personally. Not to be found. This would be such bullshit except that it’s typical, daily, hourly.

Eve, they’re unloading kerosene tins into the provincial bure – for a funeral in Ba for the Adi Tui, and I think: there’s no way we’ll have transport tomorrow: it will be usurped for the funeral.

But I’m wrong.

3 asstRokos accompany me to Narata. Why? I SURELY DON’T KNOW. But whatever – I like having ‘em all around – if one doesn’t answer my question, maybe another will.

I love to get out into the country.

We drink a lot of grog. The water comes straight from the river, but heck, what’s giardia but a weight-loss program & 10 days of no alcohol? I’m beginning to understand that from the provincial rokos’ POV, ‘looking after the people’ means that whatever they ask for, you write a report that says it’s an urgent priority and pass it up to the D.O. [but only if the koro has paid its provincial levy, whose exact name escapes me at this point – if it hasn’t we would definitely not be here]. But me, I ask a lot of questions, things like – what’s your accounting like? Well, duh, there ain’t any. I’m definitely not a bean-counter, but in Viti I have for the first time gained an appreciation of the roll of the accountant, and in my opinion what this country needs morte than ANYTHING else is good accounting.

The asstRokos all are looking at me, as if this is all up to me, and they clearly are imploring – this village NEEDS this thing, they are counting on ME. And my own thot is: every vill I’ve ever been to needs something severely, and no one anywhere seems to give a fuck til someone shows up in the office and drinks some grog, and even then nothing happens. So why is it suddenly national priority #1 that this particular quite-typical koro gets to complete a church that they embarked on without plans, without sufficient funds, with no accounting, no doubt with missing $$ which they don’t want to talk about, with contractors who did shitty work/left early/absconding with funds, etc/etc/etc?

*I* don’t know.

Maybe the rokos do.

In 1993 a cyclone happened to correspond with high-tide and the stuff eroded off the over-logged/over-burned/over-farmed hillsides upstream all piles up at the mouth of the Sigatoka River, and the river rose something like, hell, maybe 12 or 20 feet, and the whole damn koro was underwater, and if that wasn’t bad enuf, when the waters receded, the place was STILL underwater because a sugar cane railroad embankment acted as an earthen dam and, culverts hopelessly plugged in silt, retained all the water. The place, their home, was a reservoir.

As if that isn’t all bad enuf. 1987, some gov ministry spends $60k and Narata gets a water system so they don’t have to carry buckets from the polluted river. Except the motor that powers the pump burns out the 1^st day. So they fix it & it burns out again. And again. And so they say screw it, because they’ve paid out $500 in repairs and still no water. And that was 16yrs ago, 16yrs of buckets and polluted river water, and $60k gone to waste. Because no one knows what to do.

And I do not know what to do. I’m out of my element.

And any koro you go to: they’ll tell you a quite similar story.

//28jan04

They tell me I should write the ‘project paper’ for Narata. But no one can find the form.

Fuck.

After work each day I go with Inia to what they call ‘the Island’ downstream from Sigatoka Village. We farm. It’s completely satisfying. We accomplish something.

//29jan04

Last nite I dreamed that I was fighting fire with my old Weaverville Fire Dept. A house was burning. It was very detailed – I touched the window glass with the back of my hand, and I could, in the dream, feel the heat. But only myself and 1 other person, my old good friend Don Palmer, were DOING anything – all the other guys were just laying around, watching, mildly interested. And I kept going to ‘em and saying: hey! This place is burning down! And the other firefiters were like eating and drinking, pleased, and showing no concern at all.

Today I visited my host-mom Nina, and we were talking about that weird Nadoga dialect, and she asked me, as an example in Nadroga, “how did you sleep last nite?”, and I, of course in english, told her my dream, and, gawd, so perceptively, considering the vast gap of our cultures and experience, she said: “it’s like you in the Provincial Office”.