GTB...

It stands for “Grand Theft bilibili” and is quite similar to Grand Theft Auto except it is my own Fijian version of getting my recently crafted bamboo raft stolen! There are not many Americans who can say they have a bamboo raft, and now I can’t either. That being said… Life is pretty good here. I have settled into island life pretty well, as is evident by my slow pace of posting blogs. And, let me tell you I am sorry about that. I am hoping to keep a strong following on the blogosphere and I know I’m not helping my case by posting so infrequently.

I just got back from a much needed weekend away on a little island called Cagalai. This is exactly what you picture a tropical island with sandy beaches to be. The only difference is that there are no three, four, or five star resorts on this island. There is a quaint set of bures (one room traditional Fijian buildings with thatched roofs) and shared bathrooms and showers. After being in Fiji for four months, the food is great for the most part. However, recently another volunteer’s dad visited Caqalai and couldn’t stop complaining about it. What I’m trying to say is… if you are going to come visit me, this might be our few days of “roughing it” before we head to the real resort (not talking about you… mom and dad), BUT it is so worth it. The water is a gorgeous aqua and clear. At high tide, there is plenty of sandy area where you can horse around in the water, just beyond which is a strip of fantastic hard and soft coral, fish, and marine critters. I will be posting some photos on facebook so please reference those! From now on I will post all/most photos on facebook because it is insanely faster to upload.

Here are photos from Caqali: http://www.facebook.com/katie.coyne?v=photos#!/album.php?aid=3142705&id=2037529

I go into Levuka (the historic capital of Fiji) a few times a week to eat real food, drink beer, use the internet, and take a break from the village. There is actually a place that has pretty decent pizza about 75% of the time. But again, I have been in Fiji for 4 months. I need to slowly start preparing everyone for the low standards I will have upon returning to the states regarding booze, food, and more generally, just what a good time consists of. Another example of my already low standards is my recent intake of toxic waste (kind of smelled like motor oil) cleverly disguised as rum and coke in a can. Speaking of booze… There is actually a pretty hoppin’ night club here on Ovalau Island in Levuka that is conveniently located in the same building as the place that has pizza. Friday and Saturday nights are fun and some pretty awesome dancing occurs. It’s not like the states where you just keep dancing through all the songs. After each song, everyone sits down again and gets up when another one comes on that they like (unless you happen to be the one or two lone gay men on the dance floor who just can’t help themselves with all those opportunities for flamboyant dance moves). The only downside to a bar or club in a small town in Fiji is that Fijians aren’t used to drinking booze. They are very used to drinking kava…grog…yaqona (all the same thing) and with grog, you can continue to drink a full bowl every ten minutes for hours on end and you just get more and more sleepy and lazy. SO, the problem with booze is that they try to drink it like grog and it is a disaster (not meaning to make a sweeping generalization here…but there are enough people who make it a disaster to say this…).

Here are some photos from a night out at the Koro Makawa night club: http://www.facebook.com/katie.coyne?v=photos#!/album.php?aid=3142728&id=2037529

Not sure if you all think I really am eating seafood all the time….BUT… lately I’ve been making myself a lot of eggs-in-a-hole. This just requires a piece of bread with a hole in it, butter on the bread, and an egg cracked right into the hole. It is delicious, but has proven to be an art form to get the whole thing flipped without breaking the yoke. Other than that, my awesome neighbor brings me food all the time. For a treat I’ll get some cheese while I’m in town and make grilled cheese sandwiches that night with homemade creamy tomato soup. The problem with this event is that I have to consume an obscene amount of cheese in a relatively short amount of time before it goes bad. It is pretty often that I just have a can of peaches for dinner. I can’t wait to get back to the south where I can get fresh peaches! Speaking of coming back to the United States… I’ll be in Jupiter, FL from December 19th until the 23rd, in Alabama until sometime after Christmas, and then back to Jupiter until the 4th. Since I’ll be spending the New Year in Jupiter I was hoping I could get some sort of get-together brewing. I would love to host some Gainesvillians and any other non-South Florida friends in Jupiter for a few days around New Years. Hopefully we can make our way out to New Moon bar in Ft. Lauderdale or somewhere else since you all know I have been seriously lacking in the bars-of-that-orientation department.
So far I realize that it seems like I am just partying all the time, but I’m not. A few weeks ago the district got together enough money to do a tiny marine survey that I was to head up. They got a boat, scuba gear, the whole shebang. I coordinated with the Ministry of Fisheries so that I would have a dive buddy and someone to help with the survey. We did line-transect surveys of benthic cover. All of this, and all the rushing around to get it done, was to try to get it done for a meeting with the Ministry of Environment and this local fish factory. The villages near the fish factory are claiming that the factory is dumping waste into the ocean that is negatively affecting their fishing grounds. SO…two weeks of rushing around and then two days before I am supposed to leave for Suva for this meeting and it gets cancelled. I can’t say I’m sorry about it because the amount of data we have is just not enough to really say anything decisive on the environmental impact. Fijian word of the day: vosota = patience

Other than that, I just started working with one of the women in the village on going around to houses doing a socio-economic survey that is geared toward finding out the village’s use of marine resources. That combined with some marine surveys I am planning in a few weeks will be great background information to include in a grant we are applying for to do some conservation (mangrove planting, coral farming, etc.) and ecotourism.

In my house I have had a pretty decent amount of pests and critters. Some of which have become permanent residents like the geckos, while others cause me to yell over to the neighbor’s son to come remove (like the fist-size spider that I have seen twice in my kitchen). I recently had two non-Peace Corps friends over, one from Suva and the other from my island around the other side. They are both doing different kinds of research here and are both American. In about a two hour time period as we were playing cards on the kitchen floor, we had multiple intruders including a mouse, cockroach, and a crab! I sat there calmly thinking, “Well, this is normal.” Nicole from Suva jumped onto a chair each time screeching… and in recognizing her distress Lisa (who also lives in a village and is probably used to these things) chased each one out. Consider this fair warning. If you are coming to visit, be mentally prepared and perhaps request Lisa’s presence because I have apparently lost all semblance of a normal American’s reaction unless that critter happens to be a large spider. :-D

The language barrier hasn’t really been a problem in most situations and my Fijian is actually getting better. However, little kids don’t understand English because until they go to school, they only speak Fijian in the home. I was on my way back from someone’s house the other day in my village and these two young boys were collecting tadpoles from the creek, putting them in a pile of about 20 other tadpoles and watching them writhe around on the pavement. And so I ask, what would you do in this situation… Do you make hand gestures to tell them they shouldn’t do that? Do you say the one word in Fijian that you know that applies to the situation which is ‘tabu’ and means taboo? Do you just start chucking them back in the water yourself? Do you call for an adult who understands English but would then probably think you are just that weird tree-hugging American who actually gives a crap about little tadpoles? OR… Do you just try multiple of those options and eventually decide that there are bigger battles to fight, that the kids will probably just start doing it again when you turn the corner, and you should just keep walking? SO…as you can see, it’s a constant battle here.

Parade photos, Fijian haircut, and other random stuff: http://www.facebook.com/katie.coyne?v=photos#!/album.php?aid=3142743&id=2037529