How to plant a coral garden

Collect pieces of coral...

glue the pieces of coral to a metal table...

put the table in the water...

make sure everything is secure...

and watch your corals grow!

Photos from our Marine Protected Area

Crown-of-Thorns starfish

Our giant clam farm

Collecting corals to plant

Giant clam

Congratulations Jessica and Akuila

Last weekend I went to the wedding of one of the volunteers from the group before me. After all this time in Fiji, this was the first Fijian wedding I've been to. The cloths they're wearing are traditional wedding dress made from the bark of a certain tree. Before Europeans came to Fiji with their textiles, this was the kind of thing clothing Fijians wore everyday, though not so elaborately decorated. Now they're just worn for special occasions. All of us volunteers were happy to represent the brides family since they couldn't make it all the way to Fiji for the wedding.

Some photos...finally

Drinking grog after youth day

New Years Day, 10am, drinking since midnight

Me and my friend Dji Eta on New Years Day, everyone gets covered in baby powder, I don't know why

Yaqona

It's time I finally explained this. It's most widely known as kava, though I'm not sure where that word came from. Here in Fiji it's called yaqona. I had it once when I was in Hawai'i and they call it 'awa. The English slang word for it is grog. What is it exactly? It's the roots of Piper methysticum, a plant in the pepper family. Traditionally it was only drank by chiefs and only on specially occasions. It was traditionally prepared by a young boy who chewed the roots into a pulp then strained them with water through cloth made from coconut husks. Nowadays, anyone can drink grog anytime. The roots are pounded into a powder then strained through a cloth to make a thick liquid that looks like muddy water. Grog is an important part of any special occasion. Baby namings, first birthday, first menstration, 21^st birthdays, engagements, weddings, and funerals all take place around the grog bowl. Meetings are also held around the grog bowl. The dried roots are presented as an offering for visiting someone's house, talking to the chief, for apologies and thank yous, really just about anything. We also just drink grog just for fun, and indeed we do almost every evening in the village. It's a social thing, like having coffee or a beer with a friend. Even when just drinking for fun, there's a proper procedure that must always be followed when drinking grog and it varies by region and I'll spare you the details. Now what does it do? It's always been interesting to me that grog is used for meetings and for social gatherings because after you've had few bowls, you can't really talk much anymore. One bowl makes you mouth numb and dry (that's why we always eat sweets when we drink grog, and maybe part of the reason why Fijians tend to have bad teeth). After a few more bowls, the numbness spreads (not complete numbness, just a kind of dull feeling), your muscles relax, your mind relaxes, and it becomes difficult to talk in anything more than simple sentences. I've never reached the point where walking becomes impossible, but I've seen it happen to others. What are the side effects? There was as study done once that showed that in causes liver damage, which is why you don't find much kava in the US or Europe. But it was later discovered that that study wasn't done very well, and it was funded by the rival of a pharmaceutical company that was using kava to develop anxiety medication. So there probably aren't any serious permanent side effects. It does make you lose your appetite temporarily, and if you drink it regularly, it makes your skin scaly and peel. But that goes if away if you take a break from drinking for a while. It makes you sleep really well, and some say it makes you lazy the next day. I guess that just depends on how much you drink. Some say it negatively effects sexual performance and sperm count. I'm not sure if there have been any clinical studies on that. So why do we drink it? I don't know. I guess every culture has it's intoxicants and social lubricants. In the US we're addicted to coffee and beer. In South America it was yerba mata. In other pacific islands it's betel nut (also in the pepper family). Here it's yaqona, and I really like it.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

In Fiji Christmas really starts when the schools get out for their two month holiday at the end of November and lasts untill they start again at the end of January. This is when people that have moved away from the village, or never actually lived in it, come back to visit family and relax. I say relax because everything slows down during these two months (as if things weren't slow enough). Then as Christmas gets closer, the parties and marathon grog sessions begin. For Christmas Day I spent the morning in my village, then I left after church and went to another volunteer's house in a town nearby. There were four of us that spent the afternoon together cooking and eating and drinking and talking. The next morning we went to the beach and then I returned to my village. The week between Christmas and New Years was pretty much non-stop grog drinking, occasionally washed down by some rum. Now it's normal for me to drink grog everyday when I'm in my village. But usually just for a couple hours in the evenings. But around this time of year, the grog starts flowing first thing in the morning and doesn't stop. Then comes New Years Eve. After drinking grog all day, everyone goes to church from 11 - midnight. Then the water fights start. It's the village kids' responsiblity to fill plastic bags with water and throw them at anyone who walks by. This lasts for about the first week of the new year. Besides that, after church everyone starts drinking grog...again. There's singing, guitars, dancing, baby powder on everyone's faces (I'm not sure what it means, it just always happens), and small groups of people sneaking off to drink rum in the bushes before returning to the grog session. Yes I took part in all this, until about 4:30 in the morning when I couldn't take anymore and fell asleep. 2 hours later I woke up and they were still drinking grog at my neighbor's house. So I went back and we finished at about 10am. Since then the grog drinking has started to slow down, but only a little. It'll still be a holiday in the village until school starts again. It's been a lot of fun, especially since I still enjoy drinking grog unlike most volunteers, but I'm about ready for things to go back to normal. Working on any projects during this time of year is out of the question, so I'm really hoping to get something started as soon as things settledown. I've been in my village about half a year now and I feel like I don't have much to show for it. I hoping that 2009 will bring a little progress. I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays.

hurry up and wait

So that meeting I was really excited about didn't happen. Our new committee (the one that includes youth and is motivated to start new projects in the village like our ecotourism project) was supposed to meet with the chief and the old development committee last Saturday. Our chief was going to ask the old committee to step aside and let our new committee run the development projects in the village. This is really important because the last time our committee tried to do something (the Serua Day fundraiser), the old committee came and took over. So now we're afraid to start any new projects because they might shut us down. That's why it's good that the chief supports us because he has the final say in everything so the old committee should listen to him. But the old committee didn't show up for the meeting on Saturday. So I guess we just have to wait until they decide to come. What I really want is to have the support of the old committee. I hate to think that I'm part of something that will divide the village into two sides. But this process was started before I even came to the village so I'll just have to wait and hope everything ends up ok. Wait, wait, wait. That's what I spend most of my time doing...waiting.