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.