Ain't No Sunshine

Last Tuesday, when coming out of the school building, I glanced at the sky. It was a clear, cloudless day and was about 1 pm. And the sun was not there. Without even realizing it, I had forgotten to say goodbye to the sun. It has gone behind the mountains and will hibernate until late January. We still have hours of daylight and will so through December, yet the sun itself has gone bye bye. If you forget what time it is and look up at the sky and it is only dimly lit, you can't tell if you are looking at the sunrise or the sunset. Does it matter? Also, I have noticed that it is quite important to look at your watch before you go to bed and right when you get up. With such darkness, you have no idea how many hours you slept unless you make an effort to keep track.

Sunrise or Sunset?

It’s also pretty cold right about now. I know what you are thinking: “Isn’t Iceland the warm, green one, and isn’t Greenland the cold, icy one?” No. They are both very cold.

manage to get in some kayaking every Sunday and Friday with the local sea kayaking club. We paddle around the fjord Sunday mornings and practice rolling in a pool in the nearby village of Flateyri on Friday evenings. Icelanders practice a style of kayaking known as Greenland style, which was perfected by the native Eskimos over thousands of years. Greenland-style rolling uses a lot less energy than the typical North American whitewater style and is more dependent on body form – so its sometimes used as an art form and there are many different rolling competitions here that judge purely on style. So I’m learning a new technique, but until I master it I will continue the roll I’m accustomed to when I accidentally flip in the 40 degree ocean.

Kayaking in Skutulsfjordur

An 8-year old Icelandic girl practices her roll

My buddy Gordo visited me for five days at the beginning of the month. The shitty wet weather didn’t stop us from biking to Bolangarvik village where the swimming pool boasts a water slide. Yet we arrived during “kid’s time” and couldn’t swim so we drank coffee and watched the kids spend their time splashing in the hot tube while we air-dried ourselves. That weekend we drove to Heydalur with a couple classmates with the plan to camp next to some hot springs. While hiking to the hot spring we had to cross a river. I fell on a rock, busted my lower lip, scraped the skin off my fingertips, and bruised my knee pretty badly. I nursed it in the hot spring which we eventually reached, and numbed it with whiskey. But my wounds and the weather led us to the decision not to camp, so we rented a summer house for the night. Not a bad weekend! Gordo and I had our share of traditional Icelandic food (which I typically can’t afford) which included lamb heads, puffin, and rotten shark meat (which Anthony Bourdain described as "the single worst, most disgusting and terrible tasting thing" he has ever eaten.)

Gordo, biking back from Bolungarvik

Clasina, Gordo, Lisa and I at Heydalur

Sheep head and rice - like an edible Leatherface

An Arctic Fox, Iceland's only native mammal (in winter its fur turns white)

I just finished a course on research methodology and currently studying Marine Protected Areas (MPA’s) – basically setting aside portions of the sea for improving biodiversity, scientific research, and fishery stocks. It’s really interesting. It’s a growing concept and practice and has lots of uses globally. I have nothing else to say about school.

To the stateside: I hope everyone enjoyed Thanksgiving and let’s hope the Dawgs win the SEC!

Hiking to a reservoir

Trip to the Southern Westfjords

Me, sitting in a garbage dump

A few days ago I opened my front door and realized that the yard was flooded in pink water. The pink water came up to the doorstep and was about a foot deep. When I looked closer at the water I noticed little shrimp body parts – little legs, little tails, and little heads – bobbing in the pink water. About 20 yards away I saw a busted pipe spewing the shrimp waste. The shrimp factory next door had a busted pipe and shrimp stew was flooding the yard. It found its way into the laundry room, which still smells shrimpy, before the pipe got fixed and the fire department came and sprayed our yard down with a hose.

Shrimp Juice at my doorstep

In our last class, Iceland Environment Natural Resources, we took a bus trip to Bolungarvik, an old fishing village, to look at antiquated fishing techniques, and then to Skalavik, a beautiful beach at the bottom of a fjord.

Having an internationally-focused approach to natural resource management, students in my program come from all over. We have a lot of Americans and Canadians, some Germans and Icelanders, and others coming from Holland, Spain, England, Finland, China, Israel, Australia, et al. Having an eclectic, multi-national mix brings a various viewpoints and experiences to approaches to natural resource management. And it allows us to make fun of each other when we let shine our respective stereotypes.

I’m still exploring the area on foot and bike – finding new things to do when not studying. Right now the weather is cooperative enough to hike where I want and camp, but that time is coming to an end. Fortunately the views are good enough to make a hobby out of sitting on a bench in town with a pair of binoculars.

Last weekend a group of students and me went to a lady’s farm an hour and a half away from Isafjordur to help her herd her sheep. She has around 300 sheep that she butchers and sells for meat once a year to feed her small family. The sheep are free range and graze throughout her very large valley. This requires lots of man labor to round them up. We camped there on Friday night. It was nice to test the durability of my sleeping bag in Iceland for the first time, although the weather was quite nice and wasn’t completely representative of a typical September night in the Westfjords. Anyways, we had fun sipping beer and whiskey around a campfire (a rare occasion in a treeless land), playing guitars and harmonicas. The next day we spent divided up into herding teams and spent the next six hours finding and moving sheep. My team was assigned a very steep mountain/valley where a few sheep had wandered to. I made a video of the day, which you at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3K6hdxsgdg. It was fascinating, interesting hard work that I really enjoyed but felt all through my muscles the next two days.

Sarah, Scott, and Clasina, during sheep herding campout

Following my final exam in Oceanography – my first exam in seven years – our class took a field trip to the Southern Westfjords. We went for practical reasons; visits to a salmon farm, a calcareous seaweed business, a museum, and a meeting with a municipality mayor. But we got some good exposure to Icelandic natural phenomena as well; a visit to Dynjandi (one of the most beautiful waterfalls I have ever seen), hiking in Látrabarg which is a future national park with 100 meter cliffs and a seasonal breeding ground for puffins, gulls, and other seabirds (this is currently not that season), and a walk among a vast coastal delta/beach called Rauðisandur.

Dynjandi

Traditional Icelandic Fishing Gettup

Latrabarg - cliffs and bird nesting

Raudisandur Beach Survey

We stayed the night in a nice but lonely hotel. We partied pretty hard that night and then at 2:00am we jogged twenty minutes down to the shore and jumped into the numbingly cold North Atlantic breakers. I decided not to shower and woke up salty and sandy.

Now its Monday and I’m in my third course – Integrated Coastal Zone Management – taught by a professor from British Columbia and I find it quite stimulating.

In Isafjordur

Welcome to my new blog. I previously blogged about my two-year stint in Fiji as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I am now living on a different island – the island of Iceland. This new island is probably as opposite as you can get from the island of Fiji. It is on opposite hemispheres. The weather is consistently 18 degrees (as opposed to Fiji’s 81). People’s hair colors are opposite. Everything is different. Everything here is expensive and everyone is rich. (Everyone in Fiji is rich too, but a different kind of rich).

View of Reykjavik, from the plane

I will be pursuing a Masters in Natural Resource Management (MNR) at the University Centre of the Westfjords for the next year and a half. (The program is one year of course studies followed by however long it takes to complete a research project, or thesis.) The University is located in Isafjordur, Iceland. Lonely Planet describes the town as “the most isolated town in Iceland” and if you look at a map you will concur. The town has approximately 3,000 people living literally on a spit of sand in the middle of a fjord in the northwest corner of the country. We are only a few hundred miles to the Arctic Circle. So it is always windy and cold.

Some buildings in my town of Isafjordur

A coastline in the Westfjords

I live in a little yellow house made of corrugated iron. The house is next door to a shrimp factory. On weekdays, when the fishing industry going full steam, the entire town smells of fish. For some reason I find it quite pleasant. It makes me think of hard work, tradition, and culture.
So anyways I will update this blog as long as I have something interesting to say, which, considering I will be doing little else than reading text books in a cold, dark, isolated corner of the world, may not be often.

My House

Isa Levu

Due to a family-related matter I have decided to leave the Peace Corps. I left Fiji on April 1st, a few weeks before our Close of Service conference. I feel really good about my time spent in Fiji, in the wonderful village of Dravuni. Fortunately a FRE-9 will be coming in July as a replacement, so hopefully the projects will have continued success and support.

Carolina graced me with her presence the last few weeks of my stay. She was a good sport and drank in the good, the bad, and the ugly of rural village livin'. We did a bit of meandering - a weekend trip to Caqalai Island (which was interrupted by a tsuanami warning which we had to evacuate to a larger nearby island and hike uphill through the jungle at 3 am), a weekend trip along the Coral Coast, and a few days in Colo-i-Suva National Park. But for the most part we were just village people together.

Carolina and I on Caqalai Island

In the Caqalai Island dive shop: Looking at a map to determine the possible course of the tsunami to determine whether or not we should evacuate

Very isolated rain showers off the Coral Coast

My departure was kind of on short notice so I didn't have time to tie things up with strings and bows, but I was able to patch some holes. I attended an agribusiness workshop with our women's group leader to jumpstart the village's proposed chicken coup. I also had some good meetings with the Dravuni Village Committee to identify short-term and long-term plans concerning the crab farm and tree nursery. I also held a final discussion with the village youth about the solid waste management issues in the village.

Joana and I presenting our project at the Agribusiness Workshop

The final farewell ceremony was pretty tough. Lots of tears. I gave a 8 minute goodbye speech on the fly in 100% Fijian so as to excersize my Fijian tongue one last time. Then the elders took turns saying really kind things, and thanking me for my presence and help for the past two years. Then we feasted on blowfish (my favorite), oysters (which I had gathered), and taro. And of course this was all washed down with approximately 37 bowls of grog. The next morning I packed my bags, said some final goodbyes and walked the mile long Dravuni path to the road for a final time as the villagers stood and sang the Fijian farewell song to me.

Me, Kuli, and Carolina the night of my farewell ceremony

Fiji was gracious enough to send me off with one final boil - which made my right elbow Popeye-esque

I am now back in 'Merika. Things are comfy and plentiful here. I will be here in support of my brother through his ongoing treatments until his health improves. I appreciate all of those who have offered their prayers and thoughts. We are optimistic that the path to recovery is underway.

A final shot of Dravuni Village, Tailevu Fiji

So until my next adventure... moce.

Hot Ratz

Kuli, Jesse, and Bill; swimming in the bay

My bathroom has a leak in the ceiling directly above the toilet. When the toilet is sitting idle there could not be a better place for an overhead leak. Yet when it is in use there could not be a worse place.

I’m currently growing cabbage, radish, papaya, bananas, spinach, and some root crops. I’m eating healthy food but am losing a good bit of weight which I don’t want to do.

Some papayas beside my house, not yet ripe

Let me tell you about a funny thing the villagers do: They smoke a lot of cigarettes and the cigarettes, like the ones in the States, have big warning labels at the top of the pack. Some labels warn against heart failure, some against lung cancer, and some against harm to unborn babies. The cigarettes don’t have distinct flavors, but nonetheless the villagers refer to these cigarettes by these different labels, saying something like “I’ll give you .20 cents for two heart attacks” or “Can I borrow three unborn babies.”

I haven’t done much travelling the past couple of months. I’m trying to hang on to my money for after service-life. Prices in Fiji have been steadily increasing the past two years without an increase in our living allowance which means I travel less and less. I am making weekly trips to Suva however, which I didn’t used to do, so that I can research grad school and job opportunities.

I’m working a lot with the Dravuni Development Committee to help manage our agri-business activities; I’m spending most of my time in the tree nursery and trying to find some buyers for our seedlings. We are reforesting our watershed with some good fruit trees. I’m also doing a little more experimentation on the crab farm. The municipal government is really interested in this project and encouraging us to continue with it, but the unstable results are frustrating for the villagers, understandably. We might be getting a local guy to fund the project as a research opportunity – I’ll send updates on that later. While digging up on a hill a couple weeks ago some friends and I found a skull that still had hair on it. It was pretty weird. We put it back where we found it and just kept digging.

Cutting the village compound

Digging a grave. Seconds later we found a skull with hair on it.

Things the rats have eaten in my bure: my shampoo bottle, toothpaste, a drum, my antibiotic medicine, aspirin, my underwear, lids (and only lids) to bottles of vinegar, oil, and hot sauce, a book cover, and a shoe. I tried to catch them in a sticky glue trap. One got stuck but just dragged the trap all around the house getting glue on everything before he finally escaped with a gluey tail. I set the trap in a pile of trash outside and the next morning I found a bird stuck in the glue, flapping and gawking like a bird stuck in a glue trap. I tried to pry it off but that was only hurting him. The only solution was to delicately and peacefully cut the bird in half with a machete and throw it in the ocean.

A rat I killed. This has been one of the happiest moments of my service. I fucking hated this rat.

So as not to end on a gory note I will explain what I did yesterday: I sat on a log by the sea with an old man named Inia and talked about fish and the weather and the mangroves and school fees while he cut open coconut after coconut and we ate them all. All day.

Boating and Beddings in January

The hot, wet months are here. Keeping clothes and beddings clean and dry is difficult. It rained for two consecutive weeks earlier this month which meant no sun to dry clothes which meant no doing the laundry which meant stinky clothes and bed sheets with bedbugs – but a sunny week this week relieved us. Summer vacation just ended which means all the city folk that spend the holidays in my village with their families have returned to Suva, meaning no more volleyball, much less grog, and time to get back to the crops. It also means I can continue with my projects which have been on standstill for two months because of the holidays.

Drinking tea on Kuli's porch, watching volleyball on a Tuesday afternoon

Kids in my bure with mouthfuls of breadfruit

Junior and Alewa in my bure - after the electricity went off

I recently went on a long paddling trip with a fellow PCV. We paddled out of my village, crossed Dravuni Bay, and went up the Savu River for about five hours. The scenery was pristine – all mangroves and jungle with critters and flora I’ve never seen in Fiji. We didn’t see a human being or even signs of people until we reached Savu Village. We reached Savu, got out and walked uphill to the village. The villagers were shocked to see two white guys – and that we had paddled that far. They had never done it themselves (we had to bushwhack our canoe path at times because the river was blocked in places by dogo trees). At the first house we came to a fat lady who lived by herself made us come in and eat pineapples. Then some local boys took us to a nearby waterfall which was absolutely beautiful, and we swam and relaxed there for an hour then left so that we could make it back to my village before dark.

Lucas clears the brush as the Dadakulaci pushes upstream along the Savu River

A woman does laundry at a waterfall in Savu Village, an isolated village established for forestry workers and their families

Speaking of boating, about two weeks ago I paddled the Dadakulaci (my boat’s name) up a different river that runs beside my village. About a mile upstream I saw a dorsal fin gliding across the river. Surely enough it was a bull shark, about 4-5 feet long. I couldn’t believe it. I knew they could live in freshwater but didn’t believe I’d actually run into one in a river. It swam right up to my boat, just out of curiosity it seemed. I swung my paddle at it and it swam away.

My villagers are interested in starting a seawall to help protect against rising sea levels. I am game to work on this but they haven’t been very organized the past three months and I’m not sure if there will be enough organization to get the project up and going before I leave. We currently have 3 projects in the village up and running with the crab farm, tree nursery, and the water project, and I’m not confident a fourth will be started before July (my month of departure). I am already looking at my future; my next move. I’m studying for the GRE and researching jobs on the internet when I get such opportunities.

I kind of adopted another stray dog this month. But I left my village for the weekend this past week and when I came back it was gone. Pretty sure someone killed it and threw it in the ocean. The ocean disposes of many “problems” in Fiji.

RIP - Skipa

Good books I’ve read recently: The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde; Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon; The Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond; The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway; and Netherland, Joseph O'Neill.

Another Fijian December

December is a fun time to be in the village. Visitors and villagers that have migrated to the big cities come back to spend the holidays in the bushes. The village is loud with children and wood chopping but its a welcoming change from the usual silence. All work stops and that's fine with me. Nobody wants to do anything but sit around, mingle, and drink grog. It rains everyday and its very humid, so I spend about an hour everyday just sitting in the stream that runs behind the village. We had a funeral recently and killed two cows and four pigs for the occasion. Also had baskets of fish and quite a few chickens to eat. All is well in Tailevu.

Girls feasting after the funeral

Men relaxing on a boat

Jone butchers a cow

Sunset in my village

Palm tree in the village

Halloween and Truckin On

Halloween was crazy just as I expected. About 20 of us volunteers got together at a backpackers resort for the weekend. Costumes included four Lady Gagas, a Catholic school girl, a girl scout selling cookies, Jesus, a beer bottle, Spider-Man, Santa Clause, a construction worker and others. At night we drank and danced and built a bonfire and at day we did beach stuff.

Halloween: Dancing at the Beach House

Halloween: Lydia, Christa, Lisa, and Natalie as Lady Gaga

Back in the village now. My first days back in the village after a weekend off involves nothing but cleaning. The ecosystem in my bure takes over and I spend 24 hours cleaning rat and gecko shit, knocking down spider webs, sweeping dust, and generally reclaiming the bure as my own.

My environmental class I teach for the 7th and 8th graders once a week is getting out of control because they have figured out that I am fake grading them. I "grade" them to motivate to do the work I ask, but because my lessons are not in the mandatory cirriculum the grades actually mean nothing. So now I have to come up with a reward system to encourage their work ethic that actually works better. I still really enjoy the teaching - I think the kids are learning a lot and they like me and the class. We do a lot of hands-on stuff outside and get dirty and that's where Fijians excel.

My 8th graders identify insect habitats

Life in general is still really good. It's no longer "fresh" and a lot of aspects have become very mundane, but that's the case wherever you are after a year of living - you just have to keep finding things new to try. And that's pretty easy to do when you live in the bush by the sea. I have approximately seven months left.

Bill and Kini, cousins and my neighbors, go spear fishing just outside my bure

Parent's Visit and Completed Water Project

Mom and Dad on Caqalai Island
Dad shows some village kids some pics
Mom chats with the women in my village

My parents just visited me for about eight days… it was a great vacation for them and me. They spent a few days in my village and were treated like royalty which was not the least bit surprising to myself. We did some hiking around my village and enjoyed a few rounds of grog with the locals. Everyone thought my dad was younger than I was. Then we had a little dance in the community hall where my parents’ dancing had the villagers on the floor laughing. When they left some villagers shed some tears, including my counterpart who was so saddened by their departure that he couldn’t eat for two days. My parents and I then travelled on some smaller islands off the east coast, and then headed back along the Coral Coast where they departed from Nadi – back to labels and airplanes. Thanks parents!

One sad reoccurring behavior on the part of villagers in Fiji is that they poison dogs. To them dogs can be pests that mess with livestock, steal food, and shit all around the village. So they set out little trays of poison mixed with some tasty fish rubbish, and next thing I know I am trying to sleep with the sounds of dry heaving outside my bure for four consecutive nights. Last week I watched a child crying while digging a grave for his dog, all the while watching his dog vomit himself to death. The issue will be brought up at the next village meeting.

Sorry, that was very depressing. On a lighter note – our water project has been funded! The project involves a borehole to be dug (which has been completed and we hit fresh water about 30 meters deep), reservoir tanks placed on top of a hill (see pics – I thought we would all be squashed by a rolling, out of control 10,000 liter water tank), and pipeline to be laid from the borehole to the tanks to the village. Most of the work has been completed. All that is left is to connect the piping. We have been working on this project since I got here so it is quite a relief to have it done with. Now the villagers will have drinking/bathing/cleaning water come directly inside the house.

Preparing to haul a one ton, 10,000 liter tank up a 300 foot hill, we contemplate whether its a good idea or not.

Etuate, Momo, Lase and I haul the tanks using a rigged up pulley system

The crab pond continues to struggle due mainly to the villager’s lack of interest. I’m not going to force it down their throat but I am going reorganize the management of it to stimulate the involvement. It really just needs some TLC and attention like the tree nursery has, which is generating a good bit of income and will be the foundation of improvements to be made to our watershed. We will start reforesting locally very soon.

I am traveling further and further in my boat. I have to really time it well with the tides and weather if I want to go anywhere outside of the mangrove forest that I live in. I also have to make another paddle because I flipped the boat recently and my paddle broke so I’ve been using a shovel.

Dolphins in the channel between Moturiki and Caqalai Islands