Home Stay, Work, and stufff
I’m at my first day of work at Mai Life so I’m going to quickly post. The past few days I’ve been settling in with my host family in Samabula, a neighbor in Suva. My home constantly has people bustling in and out – friends, family, and neighbors which I love. But the immediate family is my host mother and her four kids – the oldest brother Naps (23), Jim (who they call Tuti 21), Lucy (19) and Tony (15). All older three are still in college, Tony’s in boarding school, and the two older boys are working as well. Yet also always around is their cousin Christina and her 3 year old son Moses. Everyone is really nice and I’ve been having lots of fun. The first night there we sat around from 5pm until 9 drinking kava, which was really nice. It’s what they do when they welcome new people. Jim and two neighbors and I then went to O’Rielys the local bar. We got back at 12:30ish – I was so tired, but stayed up for a bit with the group who stayed up drinking kava until 3am. Basically they go around in a circle, filling up the bowl, and passing it around person to person. While it takes a while “to work,” it ultimately makes you just really relaxed. But I dare to argue that it is more the setting than the kava that really is inducing the drowsy feel.
One of the most interesting things that happened so far was yesterday when Christina was cooking lunch. Moses was running around screaming as usual (he’s incredibly playful) when Christina wasn’t paying attention to what she was doing. Some oil ended up spilling and she got burnt. One of her relatives was from Banga Island (I may be going there with Lucy during the week she has off). Apparently on Beqa (pronounced Benga) they used to (or maybe still do) firewalk, so there blood is believed to have curing power for burns. So Christina made Moses put his hand on her burn to make it feel better. She then told me a story about an Indian couple that were severely burnt and in the hospital. One of her relatives was there and went into to “heal” the couple, besides their medical treatment.
Speaking of Indians, I didn’t prep myself for just how many there are in Fiji! I’ve eaten Indian food more times since being here than the total amount of times I had it before in my life! It’s really good though. Yesterday I was invited over to my neighbors next door who are Indian. They served me some really good food and then actually my own family made an Indian dish for dinner – chicken curry with dhal soup and roti.
I was assigned to write an article already today, so I must be getting to work on that. Now that I now that I have high speed wireless internet at my work it’s also much relief!
Leave a Reply