It’s a week before Christmas and hotter than Hades in the
village. It’s the time of year when everything comes to a standstill as folks are
preparing for the holidays, cleaning houses and yards, and pounding enough grog
to last a month. Instead of being
frustrated with the slow pace, I’m trying to embrace it; take time to reflect
on the past year and return to doing the little things I love about living in
the village.
Solo was admonishing me for planting some
mangrove seeds by myself the other day in the hot, hot sun. “Can’t you just stay at home
and relax for once? It’s a week until Christmas! It is not the time to work. Read
a bunch of books.”
So here I am sitting in my kitchen/office with a fresh batch
of roasted cacao beans cooling on the counter courtesy of the pods we picked
yesterday when we went to swim in the creek, and I’m slowly picking apart my
current thoughts on village life.
Sometimes I get frustrated with it, even after over two years
of acclimating. Sometimes I wish we could do more, or that things would move
along more quickly. But it is useless to get frustrated, it’s wasted energy, and
it’s better to just accept the pace of village life. It seems I periodically
re-learn the lesson that there is beauty in slowing life down, in caring more
about family and friends than work, in making food from scratch, in doing small
things that make you happy, in taking time to notice how elegantly a banana
leaf unfurls itself from the stalk and how the vivid passionfruit flower opens in
the evening.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how American and Fijian
cultures compare and contrast, and also about the current state of traditional
Fijian culture. In the words of a friend, the culture seems “confused”. How do
you keep traditions alive but develop at the same time?
The other week Solo brought over a book, Bula Vakavanua by Semi B. Seruvakula. It
is written in Fijian. As much as I can understand, it was an effort by the
Ministry of iTaukei (Indigenous) Affairs and the University of the South
Pacific, amongst others, to document Fijian traditions as they have begun to
slowly be lost. This book is a gold mine for someone who wants to learn about
Fijian culture. Solo nabbed it from one of the school kids. As he never took
Fijian in school, and since he spent most of his life outside the village, he’s
just now being properly educated in the “ways of the village”. While we might
not be able to stop things from changing, the least we can do is remember where
we’ve come from.
We’ve been going through parts of the book together. It
explains everything about the ways of the vanua,
or the responsibilities of the different people and clans in the village, how
to conduct ceremonies of all levels, and how the land/sea is to be regarded. It
also talks about the changes Fijian culture has faced and is still facing since
the time of colonization. Fijians are great story tellers, and I love hearing
Solo’s explanations and asking questions about it all.
Solo: Isa, it’s not like this anymore.
Buna: Why?
S: Where is your wallet?
B: What?... In my room.
S: (Returning with
my wallet, pulls out two bills.) This is why it’s not like that anymore. (Points at the Queen on the old bill.)
This changed everything. But it’s starting to change again, we’re taking Fiji
back. (Points at the new bill where the Queen has been replaced with some
endemic Fijian wildlife species.)
This simple explanation makes me smile. I ask about the
church, because didn’t that change a lot of things too? What did Fijians believe before the church?
S: There were only two churches, Catholic and Methodist
in the beginning.
B: No before that.
S: Huh?
B: Before the churches came, did people believe in the vanua or what?
S: Yes, they believed in the landlords. But everyone was warring,
warring all the time. Eating each other. When they won a war, they won the land
and their landlord stayed there.
B: Landlord?..... You mean like a spirit?
S: Yeah, I mean like a land spirit.
B: Like the vu?
S: (Very hushed)
Yes…
He then told me quietly about the vu of our village, his name, where he lives, and how he looks after
the village. How he comes to speak thru people at certain times when the
village is not working well together. How he did this just last year. He said all this very quietly and I knew it was kind of a
sacred topic. There are certain things us outsiders aren’t supposed to talk
about or question, so I just listened, appreciating what he was willing to
share. I think traditional knowledge is a beautiful and interesting thing. But
it is not my place to share it here; it is a story that is not mine.
However, in my story I do find myself amidst the convergence
of the traditional and the modern. This is the setting in which I live and
work. I sit here typing on my laptop in my house with no electricity. Sometimes
it is a very confused place indeed; but it is a privilege to experience another
way of life and experience real challenges much of the world is facing.
I know that in the
coming year I will have a lot of choices to make about what to do next and
where to go. Maybe it isn’t about choosing one or the other, but embracing the
best of both.
