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FIELD LETTER #4 FROM FIJI TERM ABROAD
November 11, 1997
written by Steve Leavitt
Topics
- Trip to Kadavu
- Update on Each Student
- Final Departures
- Sudden Death of Tube: Preparing for the Funeral
- Funeral: Day 2, Wednesday, Nov. 12
- Funeral: Day 3, The Burial, Thursday, Nov. 13
- Reflections on the Term Abroad
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TRIP TO KADAVU
About four weeks ago, we took our mid-term trip with the students. We combined our weekly class meeting with a trip to the island of Kadavu. We had in our budget money for a week's trip, but the students were all feeling anxious about their work, so we decided to cut this one down to four days--we had been giving them shorter trips all along, so we didn't feel that they'd be missing out.
We chose Kadavu because it was reputed to be beautiful and because our neighbor and very devoted field assistant Jiu is from there. She set it up with her sister that we would be visiting in the village, and we decided to take along her brother Peni, who has been living here in Rakiraki as well, so that we would have a guide.
So on that Friday we all piled into the van early in the morning and drove to Nadi Airport to catch the small plane down there. I myself always really enjoy these small plane rides as it feels more like flying than those big planes do. We had a beautiful view of the island of Viti Levu on the way down south, and I was thrilled that I could actually look through the cockpit window (by peering through the doorway) as we made our landing on the dirt airstrip in Kadavu. We had some spectacular views of the reef as well.
From there we all took a carrier off to Jiu's and Peni's village, where here sister was waiting for us. Their village, Muani, turns out to be in an absolutely beautiful location. It sits on a point with a long white sand beach and a view of the larger part of the island across a bay. When we got into the village, Jiu's sister came out of her house and immediately asked, "Where's Jonah?"
Jonah is her now-4-year-old son, the one who celebrated his birthday on the same day as Jeffrey. Jiu has been looking after Jonah for some three months, and her sister had been expecting him to come back to her with us. Jiu must have given her that impression.
So, there we were. We had to hold out empty hands and say that no, Jonah had not come with us. We could tell that she was quite angry about this, but she had to be ever the hospitable Fijian, so she ushered us in and proceeded to put together an elaborate afternoon snack for us. We were later told that her father's brother was so upset about our not having brought Jonah that he had to sit for some time in his room composing himself before he could come out and greet us himself.
We walked around a bit, but it was not long before I at least had to go present the sevusevu (yaqona, kava) to the village chief. So Peni, the older man, and I went off to do the ceremony. It was interesting to me because they do the whole thing a bit differently there, and I was particularly intrigued by their straining the yaqona powder in a kind of bark net instead of the cloth bag that I was used to here. So during the ceremony I sat and sat and sat. After we went through the bundle that I had brought, they of course decided to offer a return presentation to me, and this meant mixing up a whole other batch, and we sat and sat and sat again. It must have been at least four hours before I felt that I could comfortably tell them that I had to go (by this time it was nearly bedtime).
There was sporadic conversation during this, but most of course was in Fijian which was little help to me. I had a bad moment when I told them that we were planning to leave for a resort the next day. It went something like this. We were talking about the different and stronger taste of the Kadavu yaqona, and I asked if this was Kadavu yaqona that we were drinking. Jiu's uncle said that no, it was a bit of a mix, and that "tomorrow you will be able to taste the real thing." I said, "Sorry, tomorrow we'll have left off to the resort." He thought this was a joke, that I was joking about wanting to avoid the stronger Kadavu yaqona on tap for the next day. So he burst out laughing. I, of course, then had to say, "No, I'm serious, we're leaving tomorrow." He looked incredulous. Then he said, "What resort are you going to?" I could just see those wheels turning, that "yes, this white guy will sit and drink some kava with us, but in the end, a white guy is a white guy, and this one too prefers the resort and is only visiting our village to humor us." Something like that. I felt bad, and I told him so, and he of course put on that blank Fijian smile and said, "Oh no, don't worry about it. Go ahead and go." There was an awkward silence after that for a while, and eventually I just asked them for my leave and left.
Everyone had long finished dinner and all were now getting ready for bed, but I was ushered in to where all the plates and food were still laid out on the floor, and I sat down alone, though with Jiu's sister and another woman watching, and ate my dinner. Jiu's sister was looking at a picture of Jonah that we had brought, and she kept shaking her head. I tried to liven things up by joking with them about the men and their yaqona drinking, about how they just sit there dozing off, obviously dying to go to bed, but they persist in starting round after round, even to the point that they have to be woken up to drink their next bowl. The two women thought this was quite funny, and they obviously had had similar thoughts themselves. The people from Kadavu, because they grow yaqona as a cash crop, also drink a lot of it because it costs them no money.
We all had a passable night, the three girls without a mosquito net (they plastered on repellent and that seemed to work well enough) and the next day we headed up to the resort. Getting there involve taking a carrier back to the airstrip and then taking an outboard motor boat for over an hour as we headed up to the other end of the island. This was all right except the boat ride (noisy, wet) was a bit tedious.
The resort, called Nukubalavu ("long beach"), was very pleasant. We were put in traditional style bure with lights and water--even hot water. They were not mosquito proofed, though, so we slept under nets. The place was bought some years ago by an American named Tony (from Connecticut, originally from the North Shore of Chicago) who had gotten tired of his life as some kind of investment banker or lawyer and had decided to start a new life in Fiji running this small resort. We soon realized that this guy seemed to rely on his guests for social contact, as he was quite a talker. He was quite proud of some of the things that he had managed to have on hand, including a large collection of novels, real bagels for breakfast, and--his prized possession--a recent Sunday New York Times, City Edition. I was told I could read the paper all I wanted but that I could NOT do the crossword puzzle.
Within the first half hour or so, Tony had told us about his version of beach golf that he likely forces guests to play and about a special Idiot's Trivia game that he always has his guests do. IN the middle of all this he also mentioned that we could take a day trip out on the boat for snorkeling, and we scheduled that with him for the next day, Sunday.
The snorkeling trip was really fun. Tony was not with us. Instead, we had a few of his employees, including a woman and her two-year-old boy and a young man actually from our village of Rakiraki. We rode in the boat to a secluded beach and then set out our mats in the shade. The young men went off to catch our lunch in the deeper water, and the girls, Karen and I all took turns doing some snorkeling over the reef just offshore. The snorkeling was nothing short of spectacular! Never had I seen so many varieties of coral, and there were also many more fish than we often see. Highlights for me were chasing a sea snake (which I later found out was venomous) through the water and catching a glimpse of some kind of fish some four feet long.
The young men caught some great fish for lunch and roasted them over some heated stones. We all had quite a feast, with tomato sandwiches as well. Then we all piled back into the boat and headed back to the resort, and on the way, just to add punctuation to a great day, we were escorted for some time by a small school of porpoises! They jumped out of the water in front of us and then swam along with the boat, apparently attracted by the sound of the engine.
Tony's crew also had prepared a great dinner for us, and we ate soon after we got back. We were all exhausted by our day, but Tony insisted that we all do the Idiot's Trivia after dinner. This comprised twenty questions that we each had to answer on our own, on paper, and then we had to grade each other after it was done. The questions quickly showed themselves to be a whole series done on the same model dealing with ambiguities in wording in English, example:
Question: "You have two US coins totaling exactly 55 cents. One of them is not a nickel. What are the two coins?"
Answer: "A fifty-cent piece and a nickel." One of them is not a nickel, but the other one is.
Because I caught on relatively early to the premise, I ended up missing only two out of the twenty, one of them being an early one, before I had really figured out what was going on:
Question: "Six months have 31 days and 5 months have 30; how many have 28?"
I had put down "none" thinking that February sometimes has 29 days, but the correct answer of course is "twelve," since they all of course do have 28 days in them.
Anyway, that was Tony's Idiot Trivia. He helped ingratiate himself with the students by making a big deal that both their professors did better than they at the game. We were all beginning to think that Tony himself was this resort's largest drawback.
Our mood was not helped when he started balking at the idea of turning on a generator for the students to do work with on their computers (they had planned to use this vacation to catch up on some of their writing). In the bure he had only solar power, which was direct current while al our computer adapters required alternating current. He finally did agree to let them plug themselves in for a couple hours to charge up their computer batteries, so they all sat down to work and then left the computers plugged in during dinner.
When we went over to pick up the computers after dinner, we discovered that his generator had all but melted our surge protector! AND we were later to discover upon our return that the thing had in fact fried our adapters, so that in essence our computers were not functional! Debbie had fried her own adapter the week before with another generator, and so she had borrowed my computer for the trip, so even though I was not doing any work in Kadavu, my computer adapter got fried as well! AND, of course we did not discover this until we were back in the village of Rakiraki and some distance away from anything even remotely resembling a computer repair shop. This was not exactly what we needed when the students were all desperately trying to keep up with their work.
Luckily, later in the week I did use a really great computer repair guy (Indian) in Lautoka, and he managed to repair all the adapters (he had repaired Debbie's earlier) and in addition he sold me a spare one just in case. In the meantime I asked Sarah to ask her parents to buy us a backup for our Macintosh, thinking at the time that the repair person might well have more trouble with the Mac adapter than the others. It turns out that he did not, and Sarah's parents did indeed come through, so we now have a couple of spares, which is fine with me.
So that, in short, was our trip to Kadavu. Jeffrey had a good time at the beach collecting shells, and we had a wonderful walk with Peni on the beach at Muani and then some spectacular snorkeling. Tony from the North Shore notwithstanding, we had a great time.
The rest of that week was taken up with trips to town for computer adapter repair and then hours on end in the house printing and then reading all the students had written for me.
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UPDATE ON EACH STUDENT
The following week we were greeted by Sarah Ahart's parents, who were out here in Fiji for a week's vacation before going on to Hawaii. Sarah seemed delighted to have them here, and I am sure she was proud to show them around. On their first night we had a feast in their honor in Rewasa, Sarah's village. Her host father had been busily trying to finish up the bathroom so her parents can see it--he of course wasn't able to finish (remember the $455 bill he gave me on Week 1 to build something that would make Sarah more comfortable? Well. she has now left the country and the bathroom was never finished). Sarah was herself concerned that her host father would try to ask her real father for some money, and they worked out a plan that would be saying, in effect, that all the money has to go through Union College, and that it would be unfair for them to be giving him money when the host parents of the other two students won't be getting any of it. In the end, though, he never asked. In fact, he comported himself quite well, and Sarah's parents were genuinely touched by the hospitality that he and his family offered. They went with Sarah to her church in the village on that Sunday, and it was apparently quite emotional. Sarah said that her mother cried and that she herself had trouble keeping her composure when asked to give a short speech.
Sarah's mother, a school teacher and a Girl Scout mom, came bearing all sorts of just-right gifts for the children. For Jeffrey she brought children's binoculars which everyone had fun with. She brought assorted books and games for the children in Sarah's village. On the night we were over there for the feast all the children sang songs for Sarah from the next room as we sat around after the meal. It was genuinely affecting. Fijians sure know how to demonstrate their affection.
Sarah's parents also generously treated all of us to a couple of meals at the nearby resort where they were staying, so we had some good conversation and some good food. Jeffrey was on his best behavior both times, once falling asleep and the other time entertaining himself while all the adults talked (with some help from Karen and me, of course). I think her parents were quite impressed with him, and it is true that he has recently been behaving very well at all the various functions we have to attend.
I think in the end they had a very good visit (in spite of a stretch of bad weather following them throughout the week). They did manage to get over to Nananu-i-ra Island for some spectacular snorkeling (Sarah reported it as better even than Kadavu because there were many more fish). They met some interesting people at the resort, and they got a good taste of the kind of hospitality we have all enjoyed since arriving here.
I myself enjoyed talking some with Ed Ahart, Sarah's dad. He's on the board of trustees at Lafayette College, and he was very much interested in the situation at Union. Apparently at Lafayette there has been some discussion of kicking out the fraternities, and he indicated that if the president and even the board thought the college would survive, they'd kick them out tomorrow. They are convinced that fraternities are the largest factor inhibiting the education there. BUT, they won't do it. He said that fraternity connections are the one thing that brings alumni back to the college, and when they come back, they give money. Lafayette is in the middle of a large capital campaign, so nothing will be done for some years. Anyway, not an earth-shattering revelation, but I'm always interested to hear how our peers are handling things. Lafayette, by the way, has a considerably larger endowment, so they have some more room for maneuvering I suppose.
Following on the visit from Sarah's parents, I thought I should give you a sense of how things went with the students in their last couple weeks. I can only say that I have been immensely pleased with how well they have all three handled themselves. Not only have they done what they need to do (with the exception of some of the final writing up), but they have also done it all with a degree of enthusiasm, through good times and bad, that I could not have possibly expected. Each produced some 200 single spaced pages of notes and two 60-page papers as well.
In previous letters I have already told you a fair amount about Amber, so I'll concentrate on the other two first. Sarah has in the end managed very well with her more difficult homestay situation, in part because for her individual project she started getting out to talk with other people. She has ended up doing a comparison of two local high schools, one for the higher performing kids and the other for kids who have not done so well in the earlier grades. There is a marked difference in philosophy between the two. In the better school, Penang High School, there is an emphasis on the basics in Western education, and there are many more Indian students than Fijian. In the other school, Nakauvadra, the philosophy seems to be more to set the children up to be as happy as possible in a village setting, giving them vocational skill and teaching them some about Fijian tradition.
This contrast seemed natural enough until Sarah attended a workshop three weeks ago during which the invited speakers stressed that at present nearly NO ONE from rural areas like this is doing very well at getting middle class jobs. The speakers said that if a parent really wanted their student to get ahead in that area, they should send their kids to high school in Suva, where they will learn a lot more about the "fast-paced" life in town and will develop their English skills to a degree sufficient to give them a chance at entry into the University. If this analysis is correct, then the whole approach of the better school, Penang, may be misguided.
There is also the complicating factor that even if these kids do get enough education to take them to middle class jobs in town, it is far from clear that this is the ideal toward which the school should be striving. Throughout the developing world there is a real problem of the "flight" from the village by people, educated or not. The fact is that village life is still the backbone of this country, and it is now getting to the point that so many people have left some villages for town that they are hardly functional. At the same time, who is to say that this or that child should not strive to become as well educated as possible and to be as "successful" as possible?
All of this makes for a healthy tangle of issues for a term paper. There is certainly no easy answer, and Sarah tried for the most part to just tap into the ideas that are currently here, in the heads of teachers as well as students, and then she made some tentative conclusions about what might be a better kind of policy to follow at a national level. I was so impressed with how she handled the work throughout. She tried to get ahead in anticipation of her parents' visit, and she managed to turn in final drafts of both her papers within days of their departure! This was a great help for me as I was concerned myself about having to reformat and print everything out at the very last minute before we all headed down to Suva for our presentation to the Department of Education there (more on that later).
I know that at times Sarah envied the easier and more comfortable relationship the other two had with their host families. But also, Sarah, as a person, is not as outwardly gregarious herself, so perhaps she was not bothered as much about "missing out" on something as much as someone else might have been. The real danger lay in blaming herself for the difficulties she encountered, and I think she pretty well kept away from that. It has taken a strong sense of self to do that, and she has shown much more fortitude and flexibility than could be expected. It may be flattering myself to say that I sensed this when I asked her to come here, but maybe on some level I sensed that she would be strong. I certainly knew she was capable of keeping her head to her work, and that she did. I think in her case she took some real pride in her projects, and that made all the difference for her. I myself was grateful that she was the one there dealing with that situation in the village, as she handled it all as a professional.
Debbie Cederbaum, for her part, worked on attitudes about learning disabilities and physical disabilities. At one point a couple weeks ago, she came to me to ask if it would be OK for her to work in the lobby of the hotel for a while, since she was having trouble getting free time in the village. So she spent the day there. When I went to pick her up there in the afternoon, she told me that she was very upset in that she had suddenly discovered that she had been going about her project in all the wrong way. She understood that the anthropological side of the project was to work on how people think about the issue of disabilities, and she had been interviewing teachers and headmasters, etc. to that end.
But then just that day, as she was working in the hotel, she had an interview with a woman who works there, a woman from her village of Vitawa, and now she was seeing the whole issue through new eyes. The woman told her in great detail how disabilities of all stripes are in fact caused by curses levied on families because of some moral indiscretion, such as infidelity or trying to abort a pregnancy. She was told about a few very specific examples. Debbie had been vaguely aware of this dimension to the issue in people's minds before, but now suddenly she was seeing just to what extent it completely colored their thinking about disabilities of all types. She told me she found this very distressing, and that she was worried about her whole project as a result.
I tried to explain to her that having an interview like that was nothing but good news, that in the end all it did was give her a new dimension in thinking about these conditions. For example, it can explain why families are reluctant to send their children to special schools when there is no physical manifestation of their disability (such as with many learning disabilities). This would explain why the school has had such trouble recruiting people of that type. If your child APPEARS normal, in that it can "run and play," then it is very tempting just to give them the standard education and pretend that nothing else is wrong. This way the family as a whole can avoid the stigma of being "a family with a curse," subject to all sorts of speculation about just what moral failing they have as a family.
Then that same night when Debbie returned to the village she had another long discussion with her host father about the same issues. He cemented in her mind how significant all these beliefs about curses and spirits are, even though they are not on the surface as they were in New Guinea. He gave her some very New Guineaesque comments about back-biting and competition in the village. He said, for example, that his own brother put a curse on him (or enlisted the spirits to harm him) because he build the foundation for his concrete block house before the brother did. The brother got jealous and, according to Debbie's informant, tried to kill him with sorcery so that he has twice been paralyzed in the last few years and has almost died. He went on to say, "They may have a smile on their faces, but you never know what they are really thinking." He told her that one of the main reasons indigenous Fijians have been so slow to build businesses on their own is that they are concerned about the jealousy of others, that in the Fijian view everyone must be on the same plane when it comes to financial success. Needless to say Karen and I found all this fascinating, and it just cements in our minds the need to stay longer than we are to get a real sense of things.
Anyway, while I tried to sympathize with Debbie in her concern over a mis-focused paper, in the end I could only see it as good news that a) she had found out about this added dimension to the issue, and b) that she cared about the information enough to be concerned as a result. I saw all of this as further evidence that Debbie was doing very well in her thinking about her topic. I suggested that she recount in her chapter on the topic just how she stumbled on this added dimension, that it would add a little drama to her story, and it would underscore what kinds of conceptual problems advocates for the learning disabled are likely to face. She wrote it up that way and ended up with a really interesting account of it all.
Debbie was interested in this topic in part because she herself has a learning disability relating to her use of language. Writing is for her a very difficult process--she has to go through several drafts, ferreting out all sorts of errors that you or I simply would not make. At one point when she had about a week to go she had become completely demoralized because she knew she simply did not have enough time to get things into the shape she needed. I decided to let her put off her final draft of her ethnography so that she could concentrate on the independent project instead. With a clearer, more doable goal in mind, she applied herself with renewed energy, and she came up with a paper of around 75 pages. She also has a 1st draft of most of the ethnography, so it shouldn't be to hard for her to get that into shape later.
Amber Johnston, for her part, had some trouble extricating herself from village events (many of them arranged explicitly for her) over the last couple weeks. She also had some logistical problems the others did not--in particular, without general electric power in the village she had to rely on the whims of her host mother Jio's generator, and she had to keep hours that would not disturb others too much. I offered to put Amber up in the hotel where she could work in peace, and she did do that once, but in the end she was still not able to finish her drafts of her papers.
Her real problem was that she was really enjoying all the events in her village, and people there were really making efforts to set things up for her. I can't really begrudge her her dedication to village life. I had indicated to all three students that I would accept incompletes for some "final revisions," and I think on some level she took that to mean she could make some choices with her time. In the last week I had a long talk with her, telling her that I was simply concerned that she would not later be able to produce the same quality of work, that she had, in effect, made some choices, and that she was going to have to live with them. I think she was wondering if I was going to dock her grade specifically for not finishing on time. I would be a hypocrite if I did that, but I did suggest to her that I thought it likely that she would not be able to focus as well later, and that the paper might well suffer as a result. I am still confident that she'll come through, and in many ways her actual field work was the most penetrating (or most personal) of the three. She'll have plenty of material to work with.
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FINAL DEPARTURES
For the students' final days we arranged to have a collective feast here in Rakiraki on Wednesday, thus freeing up the students to each have a final night with their respective host families in their villages. The Rakiraki feast ended up a bit of a flop as the dinner got delayed unduly because of not enough women around to help, and the students were not all that anxious to spend an evening away so close to the end. I had invited the host families as well, and two of the three sent a designated attendee (in each case a teenager), so it was clear they were not anxious to attend either. It could well be that local protocol requires that if they visit they make some kind of presentation to the hosts here, and they were deterred by that. Who knows. We did have a good enough time, though Amber was in a rush to get back for an event on her behalf in her own village.
On the final day before we were to leave for Suva, Debbie's homestay parents invited Karen and me to attend their final farewell feast for Debbie. I had resolved to myself that since we had had our own feast the night before, I would not attend any of these individual ones since it was impossible for me to be at three places at once, and I also knew that I would be having to do some last-minute work on Debbie's paper before printing it out late that night. But something in Debbie's father's voice was adamant. He was very polite, but he did mention that I had stood him up once before, and that this would mean a lot. He managed to get his message across. I told him we would try to make it.
And I'm glad I did. Karen, in the end, could not go because Jeffrey fell asleep. I, however, was treated to a meticulously planned and executed farewell--everything was done just right (and this in contrast to our own feast the night before which didn't come off until somewhere around 10:00 pm). As I drove up about a half hour late, I knew immediately it would have been VERY bad to have missed this. Everyone was seated there, waiting for me. I was thankful I had remembered my sulu. As I stepped out of the car, one man came up and greeted me, saying something like, "Good evening, I am so-and-so, and I will be acting as your matanivanua (talking chief) tonight. We will be offering a sevusevu for you." I felt like I should be tipping him! But I was thankful that he took the time to tell me who would be speaking on my behalf. We walked over to the kava circle, and there Debbie was seated, with the most beautiful lei I had ever seen already around her neck. A child brought out another lei for me, a simpler one, but beautiful smelling, and I sat down. I whispered to Debbie that I would be needing the bundle of yaqona we had bought earlier in the day "just in case." She sent her host sister Ili inside to get it. When she came back I whispered to my talking chief, "Here is my return sevusevu," and I felt proud of myself for getting to the point that I can do this sort of thing right.
With great ceremony they did the two sevusevu presentations, the one for me for visiting, and the one from me in thanks. Then it became clear that one of the men had prepared two speeches in English, one for me thanking me for having the students here and for choosing Vitawa as a place for one to reside, and one for Debbie thanking her for being who she is and for befriending everyone. After this, they asked me to speak. I talked about how important this all had been in the students' lives, how they would take it with them as a lesson in human dignity and hospitality, that the would now live their lives knowing that deep down we are all the same. They asked Debbie to speak. She was, as you'd expect, very emotional, but she managed to pull herself together enough to really convey a heartfelt appreciation for all that they had done for her. She showed, through her words, that she had truly come to love them deeply. It was touching and impressive.
After that, we ate our feast, and I ate a lot. The food was great--they had obviously gone all out, slaughtered a pig, prepared an earth oven, the whole works. After dinner I sat around and told stories with the men while we were all serenaded by singing and guitar playing. They brought out gifts for Debbie, having a little two-year-old girl be the one to actually present them to her. As I said, the whole thing was very professionally done, and I couldn't help reflecting that it may have something to do with the fact that this is the one village in the four that stages regular events for tourists. But they showed Debbie that they were truly devoted to her. It was moving.
I left early, and they were gracious about that as well. Lele, Debbie's host father, told me that they had wanted in fact to drive in to Nadi to see Debbie off on the plane on Sunday morning (at 7:00 am!), that being short of money was all that was holding them back. Right then I knew that once he saw the contents of the envelope I would hand him privately the next morning, he and his family would, in fact, use some of that money to hire a taxi to take them into Nadi early Sunday morning. They had showed themselves to be truly exceptional people.
I went home and worked on Debbie's material later that night and early the next morning. Then I went off to get Sarah first, and things were generally quiet as she just got in the car and said good-bye. She reported that they had had a very nice feast the night before, that the family had loved her final gift to them, and that all was good. Next we went to Vitawa to get Debbie. The scene was a bit different. Some thirty people had gathered to see her off, and there were tears and blessings. Debbie had stayed up all night with them; the guitar players were still playing. As we stood around I noticed some little kids fooling around with the back of the car, and I guessed what they were up to. When we got back to Rakiraki I looked at the back of the car, and there, written in the dust on the window, was a whole series of farewell notes to her: "Teb, uro, sa moce, I love you" etc. (Roughly, "Debbie, you beautiful dish, good-bye, I love you."). When we arrived later to get Amber at nearly 9:00, she had a very emotional good-bye as well, with Jio telling her to "be strong" as she departed. Amber also had accumulated a whole slew of gifts, including mats, several hats, and some personalized mementos.
The Suva stay turned out to be nothing special. The Department of Education, of course, citing not enough notice, begged off on the student presentations (this had been Cakacaka's fault as he had forgotten to mention this to them the week before). The students didn't seem to mind much, and they were glad to be able to get in some final shopping in Suva before leaving. For our part, we were happy to get out, and we managed to finally find the famous elusive Fijian-English Dictionary that we had been coveting since our arrival. It turns out that the only place to get this in the entire country is at the government print shop in Suva, and we were lucky to find them at all as they were hidden away in some obscure part of town, and then we were very lucky indeed to find them OPEN on Saturday morning! So we were happy (we had been helped by Debbie's host brother who works as a taxi driver in Suva). We spent the night in a nice hotel, had a real hot shower, shopped the next morning, and then set out for Nadi that afternoon.
The students left the following morning on schedule at 7:00 am. And, sure enough, there was Lele and family, along with a couple other Vitawans. They had gotten up at 3:30 am, hired a taxi, and driven in to Nadi Airport that morning to see Debbie off. Debbie was delighted and honored to see them. She took a picture of Lele in his brand-new San Francisco 49ers t-shirt. And then the three boarded the plane and were off.
Karen, Jeffrey and I had an uneventful drive back to the village. I felt a cold coming on, and Jeffrey was still fussy from his own cold (he had had a terrible time on the trip because of his cold--at one point on the way down to Suva he cried straight for an hour because he was stuck in his car seat, uncomfortable, and unable to sleep. Now, with the way I have been feeling the last couple days, I can sympathize with him, poor guy). We arrived back here at around 1:00 pm, unpacked, and resumed our work.
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SUDDEN DEATH OF TUBE: PREPARING FOR THE FUNERAL
Just yesterday, real tragedy struck our village as a young man in this twenties who lived next door to us died suddenly following an attack of epilepsy. For us, it's the first death of someone we actually knew. Jeffrey's trying to grasp it. In the last 24 hours he has witnessed a lot of deep grieving, so he knows that whatever death is, it is painful and significant. He keeps saying that they should have given him some medicine, which is not all that different from what others have been saying too. They're wondering if he could have been saved had he been rushed to the hospital. We should get a coroner's report tomorrow.
All yesterday the mataqali worked on gearing up for visits from relatives and other mourners. Three sheds were hastily built to house them, and last night a cow was slaughtered (to be cooked today) to provide food. It's of course a real opportunity for us, but it is so sad to be working in this situation. This morning we woke up to the wailing of Andi next door, as she undoubtedly began thinking of him as she prepared to make breakfast. Many people are walking around in a state of shock. His father works at Castaway Island Resort with our house-owner Eremasi. Eremasi was phoned last night, and he was the one who had to take a bundle of yaqona over to inform the father. They will likely arrive here today.
Just after returning from seeing the students off in Nadi, we were informed of the sudden death of Tube from next door. The village has been reeling ever since. They did some hasty preparations yesterday, and last night Karen sat with the women as they presented the first set of mats (they have to get these in before any visitors come to present theirs). There was a lot of talk among the women about their various "omens" that something like this would happen. Va said that some muscles in her leg were twitching more than usual and for her that is s sure sign that someone close is going to die. Sulu said she had a light bulb fall out of a socket right in front of her. Jiu said that she and her husband heard some strange rustling inside their house one night, crinkling of newspaper, etc., and this Karen and I knew to be the local cat who, having found no more good food from us (we had been irritated at the nightly presence and rustling ourselves), had gone to find food elsewhere. One man had a dream that some boy, face unknown, had come and gotten him and led him to a grave. And so on. Jeffrey and I stayed at home playing "talking games" and "store" until around 10:15 when he finally went to sleep.
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FUNERAL: DAY 2, Wednesday, Nov. 12
Yesterday most of the day was taken up with presentations from various visitors. I sat with the men intermittently, still not feeling well. It was all rather grim. At around noon the young man's father Samsoni arrived back from Castaway Island Resort where he works. He showed no emotion all afternoon. I had a brief talk with Bill (Va's husband and chief of the village) as we sat in the kava circle. I said all the faces were here save one. He said it was a tragic thing, that Tube had been a fun-loving man, that he was friends with many others, and that he was not one to be "wild." Karen had told me earlier that the women had said he had a reputation for a quick temper. Bill also told me the results of the coroner's report, as he heard it. He said that they said Tube's brain had been "damaged" by a life of so many seizures without medication. I suggested a stroke, and he said, "Yeah, maybe something like that." I asked him why Tube had not taken medication, and he indicated that so often the people see no use, and he implied that it was just ignorance. This is relevant because there are others who have epilepsy as well. I wonder if this tragedy will make a difference in their thinking. I told Bill that it simply was not right for a father to lose a son, and he said, yes, his brother Samsoni was a very unlucky man (he had lost his 1st wife to cancer and a young daughter some years ago to an accident in which she was hit by a car). I could not tell if Bill's comment about his brother's being "unlucky" was an oblique reference to a curse or something on that order.
In the evening I was pulled away from the kava circle by Va, who asked me if I'd mind driving some people down to the morgue so they could dress the body. So I took them. I decided to myself that I would try to watch the whole thing, if possible. When we got to the hospital a whole slew of mostly young men from the village was already there. All the men crowded into the small anteroom where the body would be laid out. They took the body out of the refrigerator, and the men began spreading salt (or was it sugar?) over the body. They followed this with talcum powder. Then they began the laborious process of getting the body into a set of clothes. Everyone was for the most part subdued and restrained, though I could tell there was a certain fascination over looking at this thing that once was their friend. (I had a high school teacher who referred to this kind of thing as "the fascination with abomination"). They commented on the incisions made by the autopsy. At one point Jerry turned to me and said, "He looks just like he's sleeping." As I watched them work to get his clothes on, I was touched by the tenderness they showed towards him. When they were done, each man filed passed and quickly kissed the body on the cheek. Only two were weeping quietly, one of them Tube's elder brother. They invited the women present into the room, and they each kissed him as well and wept softly. Then they hoisted the body into the casket and closed it up, taking care that his face was properly visible through the casket's window.
The casket was then taken outside and loaded into a waiting carrier. We were escorted back to the village by the police. It was a caravan of four vehicles: the police jeep, the carrier, a taxi, and my van. We all drove very slowly, flashers blinking. I was touched by the behavior of the other drivers on the road; two respectfully drove behind us, not passing, and cars we encountered from the other direction all pulled over to wait for us to pass. We pulled into the village, unloaded, and I drove on up to our house.
I went back to the group of men gathered around the yaqona. They had seen us drive up, and now all was very quiet and still. Many looked already fatigued, and I knew they still had the whole night ahead of them. After sitting a little while, I went home and to bed.
The last couple nights have had an eerie quality to them. Everything has been very still, save the solemn and rhythmic clapping of the men around the yaqona and the intermittent solitary weeping of a woman. I've had very strange dreams, dreams taking me back to my earliest memories as a child. An event like this has a way of affecting everyone.
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FUNERAL: DAY 3, The Burial, Thursday, Nov. 13
Yesterday we had Tube's funeral itself, and it all went off very well. The church service started at 11:30 am--early--and the church was packed with people. Karen stayed with Jeffrey while I attended. I always love to hear the choir, and this time there was special meaning because Tube had himself been a choir member. Everyone mostly kept their composure. Three people spoke on behalf of Tube. First was Eremasi ,the owner of our house and Tube's father's brother. He was designated by Bill to speak on behalf of the mataqali. Bill later told me that he could not do it himself because he would be unable to stay controlled, that losing a "son" from the mataqali was just too much for him to bear. He then said it would not have mattered nearly so much if it were a daughter since it would not really entail the same kind of "loss" to the mataqali. I thought this interesting, that he was looking at this so strongly from his "official" position as head of the mataqali. At any rate, Eremasi's speech seemed good (I got it on tape but of course didn't understand it at the time). Next came Tube's mother's brother, speaking on behalf of the "vasu", the mother's people. Finally, the third speaker, and the most moving, was Tube's best friend, the Tui's son, and he spoke on behalf of the "Youth."
The minister then gave an over-long sermon and we were done. There was a slow procession up the road to the graveyard up on the hill. It is a beautiful spot for such final farewells, and it is common Fijian tradition to try to locate the cemetery on the top of a hill. I tried to take photos unobtrusively. Most poignant of course for me was the quiet grief of Tube's elder brother Joe. I thought of my own brother, only a year younger than I, and of all that we had done together growing up. After the burial was completed and the gravesite dressed with masi and flowers, Joe walked over to the front of the gravesite, paused just briefly, and then turned and walked away. The pain on his face seemed for just a moment to be unbearable.
I have decided that Joe and his wife Wati are two of my favorite people here. We had a brief scare in that Wati herself has spent the last week in the hospital, an apparent victim of food poisoning. She appeared yesterday, looking very frail and thin. Could you imagine losing your brother and your wife within days of each other? (I guess that sort of thing does happen with car accidents and such). Anyway, Joe's English is good enough to do a life history with, so I may try to ask him. Unfortunately, he does not live in the village but works instead on his uncle's farm a few miles away.
After the burial was lunch, and our mataqali had to feed some 200 people. The afternoon was taken up mostly with the distribution of meat, valuables and other food for all the people who had made presentations to us upon their arrival in the past couple days. Three more cows were slaughtered for this purpose, and their carcasses were laid out on the grass for much of the afternoon, and Jeffrey was quite interested. He seems to have grasped what death means, and I suspect that looking at the dead cows helped. The cows were cut up into chunks and divided into assorted shares, and this part reminded us very much of New Guinea (they even had the cans of tinned fish to go along!).
We had a bit of a controversy in the afternoon in that the men came over and presented yaqona to the women, asking them to give them some of the mats to distribute to guests. This got Va really angry. She was supposed to be in charge of the mats. She agreed to do it, of course, because she doesn't really have much choice, but she was angry. To her thinking, all the valuables should remain separate, the men with theirs and the women with theirs. Karen suspects that Va had been looking forward to distributing the mats as she saw fit, and now she was being pre-empted by the men. In reality, the women had a bit of a surplus of mats because no one had performed the "bikabika", the four-night vigil usually performed by women. This usually entitles these women to a big share in thanks. Since there was no four-night vigil (the body was buried on the fourth day), there was no need to give out those large shares. But it seemed to us that the men ended up taking ALL of the women's mats to distribute, so that Va's role had been completely pre-empted. She got a small touch of revenge, though, by quickly pulling out three mats and a masi (tapa) for Karen so as to deprive the men of at least a small portion of the overall. This of course made Karen's share all out of proportion to what she was entitled, and a couple people came up to me later in the afternoon and said something to the effect of, "Just what was your share of mats, anyway? One?" I would say something like, "Oh, three or four," to which they would say, "Oh, really?" In truth, we don't feel bad about this as I had quietly given Joe $100 to help out with groceries earlier, so while Va was probably not aware of this, she was likely giving Karen just about the right amount as it was.
I spent much of the evening ferrying people around, and then later I had some time to sit with the men and their kava. There was a certain ease and playfulness among them this evening, as the day had been full of human sharing and had gone well overall. Bill took a certain pride in the number of people that turned up at church. He said that for many mataqali this would not have happened; he said that so many had come on this day "because of the way we treat them." He was proud of the general level of respect that they show to others. I had expected him to say that so many came because of the high status of this particular mataqali, but that is not what he meant at all. He was talking about simple human decency. I went home last night reminded of just how satisfying funerals can be for people (though not often for those most grieved by the loss). I lecture on funerals in my intro class, and this one fit right in with the general points I make there--that societies use funerals to reaffirm their central values with one another at a time when order seems threatened by the loss.
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REFLECTIONS ON THE TERM ABROAD
In the end I enjoyed supervising the students much more than I had thought I would. It could be that this was an exceptional bunch, but we really had no attitude problems (what in the abstract I had feared the most). It was very time consuming, and with a larger group I simply would not be able to give them the kind of individual attention I gave here, and I also think there are some logistical limits on how many we could house properly at once. There is a limited number of villages, and it would be simply impossible to have more than one in a given village. There is the intriguing possibility of housing some with Indian families as there are many here, and they are an integral part of the local scene, but this would really make for some dramatic differences in the kind of field situation each student would have, and there would likely be limited sharing of experiences since the Indian culture (of which I really know very little) is very different. There would have to be a whole different set of field assignments as well. My guess is that any Indian homestays would be much more difficult (in spite of likely better facilities) because there is not the same kind of ready-made community in which to place oneself. Still, it would be better not to ignore the Indians as they are as much a part of the fabric here as are the Fijians. I would feel much better placing students in Indian homes if they volunteered themselves to be placed there in advance after being briefed on what they are likely to expect in each situation.
My impression is that the three students this time all found this to be a profoundly transforming experience. I was so impressed by the consistent level of curiosity and interest they showed, and their discussions in class toward the end showed a level of penetration one rarely sees from undergraduates. And none of them is an exceptional student by Union standards either--good, but not exceptional. I think that even in the ten weeks the term abroad did for them what a term abroad is supposed to do. It will be interesting to talk with them once their back at Union after they've had some time to take stock.
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