Straight out of a Textbook...Cultural Anthropology 101

We are now back in Nadi, at Azeem's house. However, we stayed the night at a nice hotel down the road in order to clean up and get a good night's sleep.

Here's how it went down:

We arrived at Vusama Village, roughly 45 minutes south of Nadi, two weeks ago. Our arrival sparked the excitment of the village, with Jenna and I being part of the research team, and 4 Earth Watch volunteers joining the expedition. The minute we arrived, we had a Kava ceremony with the chief of the village. This was when it hit us - we are really in a textbook. When we joined the Kava ceremony, we had to lower our heads in front of the chief and sit cross-legged on the floor of the main house, which is how we spent all of our meals and meetings - on a mat on the floor. We drank the Kava reluctantly, but it actually wasn't that bad. The villagers are not allowed to drink alcohol, and Kava is as close to a religious experience to them as anything. It is a drink made from a Fijian root, a narcotic, which acts as almost a sedative and numbs your tongue and lips. We spent many a night drinking with the villagers. When you accept a bowl of Kava, you clap your hands once (in a cupped position), and the person who passes it to you claps three times while you are drinking it. Then, you pass the bowl back and clap three more times. You can either say "high tide" which means you want the kava bowl to be filled high, or "low tide". Jenna and I usually had low tide except for a few times when we had high tide.

Jenna and I were separated and we lived in two different houses with two different families. Our rooms were located in the living room of the houses, partitioned by a curtain. Our beds had mosquito nets (thank god) and sheets that we never used because it was too hot and sticky. It is customary for all villagers and guests to wear sulus (wrap-around skirts) in the village. Even the men wear these traditional skirts. Almost all villagers wear no shoes at all, even when doing work.

I lived in the headman's house. His name was Dedo and he was second-in-command to the chief. His wife, my mother (nay-nay in Fijian) was a lovely woman who took good care of me. They had two kids, Mila (8) and Sana (6), who just started school again. And Dedo's 16 year old brother also lived with us, although he got kicked by a horse early on in the week and broke his leg. Dedo wasn't especially affectionate toward me, although his father (who I was to call Vava, meaning "father") was very sweet. One night the village boys were joking with me and telling me to drink high tide at Kava, and Vava yelled at them "No! Low tide. She is MY daughter." That shut them up fast. Everyone in the village called me Kelera, not Claire. It was my Fijian name and somehow everyone who lived in Vusama knew me and called "Bula Kelera" every time I walked by. The chief's late wife was named Kelera, so I think it had special significance. Very cool.

We went to the washroom in an outhouse, with a pit toilet. We bathed in a three-walled bathing hut in the backyard of the house, using a bucket of water from the well. Every time I had a shower, a group of cows and horses and chickens were always surrounding me. I also had the most active bed in terms of animal visitors. A chicken loved my bed, leaving me presents in the form of eggs on my blanket. A large crab once escaped from the kitchen and made its way into my room and underneath my bed, where I saw him scurrying along, trying to escape death by boiling water. The kitchen was located in a separate hut, outside the main house, so it was a quite a distance for the little guy. We caught him and put him back in the bucket. I enjoyed him at dinner later. Rats made their way under my bed in the middle of the night -- which drove me nuts! To wake up to the sound of one or two of them was awful but luckily they never came under the mosquito net (at least I hope not). Jenna once had a cockroach escape from her bag and crawl up her arm. And ants covered everything. If you left a bag of cookies in your room, sealed in a ziploc bag, you would return in the evening to find ants inside the bag, covering the cookies entirely. And HUGE spiders. They jump, too.

The food was basically the same every day - rice, fish curry, roti, fish, rice, noodles, sausage, fish, rice, lentils, rice... did I mention rice?!!! And we had to drink the water in the village, which was collected rain water and did not make us feel so good all the time.
Also, we were covered in mosquito bites. They really got us. Hopefully we don't get sick. Jenna's legs look like she has leprosy.

The villagers are incredibly religious - they are Methodists and attend church every Sunday. They don't dance or do any work on their Sabbath. Most of the young adults in the village are married or planning on it. Dedo asked if I was married once and I said "No. Maybe before I am 30". To which he replied "No. 25." Oh my.

It is important to insert here a comment about the concept of "Fiji Time". Breakfast and dinner were "supposed" to be served at 7:30 am and 7:30 pm. We never actually ate breakfast until 8:30 and dinner could be served as late as 9 pm. No one wears a watch in Vusama.

One of the coolest things in this rural village were the wild horses. These horses would come running through the village or stop and eat grass some nights. One night, my friend and I were watching the stars and having a chat and the wild horses came in to eat. We were watching them, when all of a sudden some of the village dogs started barking at them and spooked them and they started running at full speed toward the mat we were on in the grass. I have never run so fast in my life!!! We laughed about it after but it was a really terrifying moment.

Now on to the dig. The excavation was located on the South West coast of Fiji, which was a 5 minute bumpy drive from Vusama (in the back of pick-up trucks) at a site called Bourewa. We worked with the University of the South Pacific and Jenna and I were part of the research team. The dig was run by the Professor of Geography at USP, Prof. Patrick Nunn, or Paddy as we called him. Most of the excavators were students from USP, including students from Fiji, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Guam. We learned so much about the South Pacific. The students were so nice and had such a culture. The girls from the Solomon Islands had dark skin and natural blond hair - they were beautiful! We learned about the terms Polynesian, Melanesian and Micronesian and all the cultural differences and similarities. They were really hard workers but they weren't archaeologists, or even archaeology students. Mainly, they were geography or geoscience students. The excavation methods were different than what we are used to. The site was 3000 years old and was based on the Lapita people, who traveled from the West Pacific islands and colonised Fiji around 2900-2850 BP. The site was mainly characterized by decorated, dentate-stamped pottery sherds, stone tool implements of different types, and shell ornaments and jewelery. It was a VERY rich site - we found stuff almost every time we screened dirt or moved our trowels. One obsidian core was found during Phase 3 excavations a few years ago, but it hasn't been found since. There were lots of layers of shells, which is known archaeologically as a shell midden, for the people here were eating lots of shell fish and discarding them all over the place. We found a skeleton too, but it wasn't Lapita age, as it was discovered in the upper layers and is probably 700-800 years old as per the earlier radio-carbon dates from previously found skeletons at Bourewa. Jenna and I had an awesome time excavating him/her.

Jenna and I were also invited to be part of the excavation team that traveled 45 minutes north of the site to a really cool cave site. We had to climb half an hour up this very steep, rocky hillside and just when we thought we were going to die, we reached a cave opening. Probably the coolest thing I have ever seen in my life. Bats were flying in and out of it and we had to wear masks while we excavated because of the bat guano (poo). There was literally a 20 metre bat guano pile at the back of the cave. There was an opening in the roof the cave, which poured light into one area of the cave that also happened to have a stone-lined fire hearth area. This prompted the archaeologists to investigate here. We found pottery and lots of shells (which is very interesting because we are so far away from the sea). We dug with headlamps attached to our foreheads and masks on our faces. The ammonia from the bat guano was really strong. Also, the entire time you are digging, there are hundreds of bats flying above you. I was nervous at first but got used to it quickly. For me, the cave excavation was the highlight of the two weeks.

We worked 6 days a week and on the 7th day (sunday) we went to church (which was in Fijian) and then ate a big lunch. Then we spent the day at Natadola Beach, which is known as one of the 10 most beautiful beaches in the world (those of us who didn't have Sabbath went swimming).

The last two days we were there, the village celebrated our departure by having a big dinner feast (with lots of rice, haha) and lots of Kava drinking. The best part about the Friday night festivities was the village young men, who entertained us with a traditional Fijian dance of short sulus and no shirts and grass ankle-skirts. I have never seen something so masculine and sexy in my whole life!! Jenna and I were giggling like little school girls. Fijian boys can dance - unlike Canadian boys ;)

Our group presented Kava roots to the chief on the last night and they had a ceremony for us. It ended at 12 am, because Sunday is the Sabbath. However, the men still stayed up and drank Kava until 4 in the morning, cross-legged on the floor - in silence, as per usual.
The morning we left, my nay-nay (mother) made me a beautiful lei (lay, necklace) from some of the flowers in the village. She also gave me a new sulu and presented me with it before breakfast. We then had a family portrait in the living room of their house.

We had a wonderful and very different experience in Vusama and we have very fond memories of our Fijian family and friends. We will post the link to our pictures as soon as we upload them.

Vinaka (thank you) for reading our blog!!

Moce!! (pronounced 'mo-thay' - Goodbye!!)

written by  clairejenna on February 1, 2009 from Vusama, Fiji
from the travel blog: Claire and Jenna Do The World
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