PST Week 3 : June 6 – 12

Each week, one of the five training villages plays host to the other trainees and our entire group (the 25 of us known as FRE-9’s – that’s all of us that came to Fiji in 2011 with Peace Corps) convenes at the host village for an afternoon of cultural training and activities. This is called, rather obviously, Culture Day and occurs every Friday. The event becomes quite a big deal in the host village as the families plan and prepare the day’s festivities. As the weeks have ticked by, Culture Day has taken on a competitive quality as each successive village works to outdo the previous weeks’ hosts. This week, my host village took our turn and I can report with no embarrassment of excessive pride that we blew the lid off the event.

Let’s start with the food. Now, Fijian food, by my account and experience thus far, is pretty decent, all things considered. There are some requisite oddities in the diet and preparation of certain things (like mixing canned tuna with pumpkin) that one would find in any international travel and there is an excessive amount of dalo (a bland starchy root crop staple that has little flavor to my taste).But the climate produces an abundant variety of fruits and vegetables; the pig and the chicken are decently prepared and consumed (forget about the cow – they don’t know how to do beef here for some reason [insert show leather metaphor here]); and lots of seafood, of course. While the previous Culture Day hosts certainly provided admirable feasts, our village went the distance and prepared a traditional Fijian “lovo.”

The lovo is an earth oven. (Google the term and search for it on You-Tube to see how it’s done). Basically, a pit is dug in the ground and a wood fire is built. Once the wood burns down to embers, large rocks are placed on top. Once those are hot, food is placed on crates and layered on the rocks. One can roast whatever one desires – we had chicken, dalo, and dalo leaves (the edible part of the dalo plant that grows above ground). Then, banana leaves are used to cover the “oven,” followed by, in our case, a plastic sheet held down by rocks. After an hour or so, the layers are removed and therein lies the roasted/smoked bounty for your feast. I discovered a new-found respect for the ubiquitous dalo once I tasted the ones roasted in the lovo. No more boiled dalo for me if I can help it! 

Now, most of us had heard about the lovo even before we arrived in Fiji. It’s one of those cultural benchmarks you read about once you decide to travel (or, in our case, get assigned to) these islands. But we’d been here just under a month and surprisingly had not yet experienced it. SCORE for my village - the bar has been raised! 

We also did something that no other village had done on their Culture Day as of yet. The villagers set up stations where they demonstrated some of the traditional crafts practiced by Fijians: fan and basket weaving (from coconut palms); broom making; and mud-lobster trapping. Several days later, I had the opportunity to test these new-learned skills and I made a broom – albeit a rather thin broom but functional nonetheless. I use it sweep my room out at least a week (probably should do it more frequently but I am really quite busy these days).

Each Culture Day culminates in the presentation of a “meke” by the host trainees. As I have previously written, there are six of us here in my training village and we had been practicing for this since the week after we arrived. A meke is a traditional form of dancing with movements that act out the formal words of song and chanting. The songs usually tell of some historic event or legend. The women of our village taught us 3 or 4 meke’s and we rehearsed several evenings over the past couple weeks at one of their homes. The rehearsals were a village event unto themselves as swarms of villagers (women, children, youth) would hover around the vale doors and windows to sing, clap and cheer us on as we learned and, dare I say, perfected our technique. The Culture Day performance was no less impressive by all accounts (not just mine, thank you very much). That’s right folks: I’m still in show business! (and getting my best reviews ever).

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We had our first language exam – a mini mid-training oral test – and I was pleasantly surprised to find I could string together enough Fijian vocabulary to stammer our a few coherent phrases. The challenge is retention: if I let even one day slip without reviewing what we’ve learned, I risk forgetting even the most basic things. But I was encouraged. Until I went home for lunch and my host father said something simple (in Fijian) like “lunch is ready,” and I stared at him like an imp. Oh well… baby steps.

I had another experience of the “now this is Fiji” category. Our village is just a few miles inland from the ocean although the coastline on this part of the island is mostly mangrove swamp. No white sandy beaches of the postcard variety. We got a tip from a villager for a hike that lifted us up into the hillside. After traversing some dirt roads and muddy pathways we emerged atop a clearing that held one solitary tin-roof shack overlooking a spectacularly picturesque view of the pacific. The lone farmer that lived up there kindly allowed us to loll about his property where we stood (and then sat) for about 45 minutes just staring out at the distance palm trees, blue skies and water, other islands in the distance, birds, and cool breezes. I said out loud to my friends, “I have to make it through training so I can get to more of THIS.” We all nodded in agreement.