Lee - Week 3 Notes

Note Index | Megan Lee

Megan Lee Week 3 Field Notes excerpts - Kinship and Social Relations

Thursday, September 16, 1999 (written 22/9/99)
VITAWA WOMEN'S CLUB

This afternoon Louisa, Nana, Nina, myself, and two other women from Naivuvuni traveled by bus to Vitawa. Each month the women from Naivuvuni, Narewa, Vitawa and Vunitogoloa gather to donate money to the women’s clubs of the other villages. Every month they gather in a different village and donate to that village. This month the women went to Vitawa. The event lasted the entire afternoon. We arrived around 3:30. The women were gathered in the community hall. The Vitawa community hall is larger than the one in Naivuvuni. There is a small kitchen at the front and then one large room with a large cupboard in the middle of the end wall. There is an unfinished addition that is almost the same size as the large room.

There were 53 women seated in the room when we arrived. Several others came and some left during the time we were there. The women gathered were of a range of ages. Nina, at 20, appeared to be the youngest and there were some who looked like they were in their 70s. There were four or five small children running in and out of the room. Some of the women were separating yarn for the edges of mat. It was very noisy as everyone talked and gossiped. At the front of the room was a big kava bowl. We sat for about ten minutes and then one of the women began passing the kava around. As she did the leader of the Vitawa women’s club began speaking. She welcomed everyone and thanked them for coming and welcomed me to the group. After she finished another woman spoke, explaining what the money that they earned would be used for. The money they collected would be used to finish the addition on the community hall as well as to pay for another cupboard and to buy dishes and spoons to be used in the community hall. As the women spoke the rest of the women talked amongst themselves and didn’t really seem to pay attention to what was being said.

Next the treasurer spoke about the amount they had actually raised. Louisa told me that they usually expected to raise between $200 and $300. The treasurer read the amount contributed from each village. The women from Naivuvuni contributed $33; from Narewa $14.50; from Vunitogoloa $20; and from Vitawa $83. The total collected equaled $150.50. Louisa said that each woman contributed $2 but I never actually saw anyone give any money.

As the treasurer spoke, some of the women from Vitawa passed around heaping plates of rice and mutton curry. They also served everyone a cup or bowl of tea. No one ate until everyone had been served and grace was said. The treasurer asked Louisa to say grace. Some of the women were smoking and when everyone had finished eating they served another round of kava. The women passed Semesa around and laughed and talked together. There were never any men in the building.

When everyone had finished eating the women picked up the dishes and took them outside to wash them in big basins. Some of the women got up to leave but most remained sitting inside talking and drinking kava. Around 5:30 four of the women from Vitawa sang a thank you and farewell song. After they had finished the women who were still there got up to leave. Everyone got up and moved outside to wait for taxis and trucks to take them back to their villages. The women sat in the grass and talked just as they had inside. Everyone seemed to know everyone, no matter what village they were from. We waited about half an hour for a truck to come to take us back. The truck bed was covered with a green tarp to make a roof over the back of the truck. Six women climbed over the tailgate to ride in the back of the truck.
PERSONAL REACTIONS

The women’s club is the only time I have seen a group of women gathered together that did not in some way involve men, or working for men. There were no men anywhere near the women’s meeting and the women seemed happy and talkative without them. The women joked and laughed together. The women’s club seems like a good way for the women to get together and not have to worry about being wives and mothers. They can relax and enjoy each other’s company without needing to worry about taking care of anyone else for once.

I tried to picture my mother and her friends sitting on a hard concrete floor drinking grog from a community bowl and eating rice and curry with their hands. Somehow I couldn’t quite imagine it. But even though the setting might be different, the basis for my mother and her friends gathering and these women is the same, they use it as a release from the everyday work and stresses that they face in their lives and their work.

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Wednesday, September 22, 1999 (written 22/9/99)
SUMMARY

I woke up late this morning, at seven, because I couldn’t sleep very well last night, I kept waking up because I was hot but I didn’t want to get out from under the mosquito net because I was afraid that the cockroaches would attack me. I knew that they really wouldn’t do anything but I didn’t want to take any chances in the dark. I did kill a bunch of them last night with the Mortein ( I love Mortein!!) but I’m sure there are still a lot more. This morning we had a breakfast of rice and bean curry and tea and breakfast crackers. The curry was pretty good but not what I want to eat first thing in the morning. I washed the breakfast dishes while Nina swept out the house. I read for a while and then took a bath. At ten we walked down to wait for the bus to go to Vunitogoloa. Semesa had an appointment at the health clinic there. We met Wati and her baby waiting for the bus and we rode to Vunitogoloa with them. The bus was almost on time for once. Nina is always in such a hurry to be on time for the bus and then it never comes on time. We took the babies to the clinic, I carried Semesa in the baby sling. The clinic was small but very clean. After we left there we walked to Nina’s parents’ house. They live a little outside of the town in a bright green house. We went to see her mom fishing across the road and I slipped and got my foot stuck in about a foot of mud. I was so scared I was going to get leeches all over me but I think I’m okay. We went back to the house and had lunch of (what else) fried fish and kasava. I fell asleep on the couch after lunch with Semesa. Nina’s sister-in-law has a six month old baby who looks just like Mesa. They could be twins. We stayed there and talked and played with the babies until four and then we took the bus back to Naivuvuni. Vika was here when we got back and she and I went for a short walk and talked for a while. Nina asked me to go to the shop for corned beef and noodles and I stopped to talk to Villie on the way back up the hill. He is going to meet me tomorrow when he gets back from school to help me with some interviews. Nina, Vika and I ate dinner together, Tata and Akini went to church for Bible Study and Nana is at a funeral until Friday. After dinner I talked with Vika for a little while and then went to do work.

VUNITOGOLA NURSING STATION

We arrived at the health clinic at 10:15. The building is new, it is located in the middle of the village. The clinic is open every day and serves people from the villages of Vunitogoloa, Naivuvuni, Narewa, Vitawa, Draunivi and Togovere. It is small, there are only two rooms. It is divided in half and one room is used as a waiting area and the other is an examination room. The walls in the waiting room are covered in posters promoting good health. Several of them explain how to reduce the risk of malaria by doing simple things around your house. There are several promoting safe sex and healthy eating habits as well as the risks of stroke.

There were two nurses stationed at the clinic. They both worked together in the examining room. They work through the RakiRaki hospital. One of them is from New Zealand. The other is an Indian woman.

When we arrived at the clinic we took a number. There were only two people waiting in front of us when we arrived, by the time we left the entire waiting area was full. Nina said that it was not very crowded today, sometimes there are so many people they have to wait outside for hours. Most of the patients at the clinic were young mothers with infants. As we left an Indian woman arrived with four children. There was a teenage girl there as well who limped with a bandage wrapped around her foot.

When our number was called Nina took Semesa into the exam room. Even though the rooms are separated by a wall, there is no privacy in the clinic. People walked between the two rooms while they waited and the children ran around in both rooms. The exam room consisted of a make shift exam table, a desk covered with paper and it had a scale on top of it. There was another table behind a curtain that the mothers used to redress their children after their exams. There was also another desk that didn’t appear to be used for anything. Nina undressed Semesa and placed him on the scale. It took about five minutes before they could get him to be still so they could actually get his weight. After he was weighed, Nina dressed him again. The nurse looked over his record, which Nina had brought with her, (there are no records kept at the clinic) and recorded the date of the visit and his weight. She asked Nina if he was having any problems and she said no. The exam was over. The nurses did not examine him at all. The entire visit took less than 10 minutes.
TAO

Nina’s family lives less than a quarter of a mile outside the village of Vunitogoloa. The name of the area where the house is located is referred to as Tao. Tao means stop in Fijian. It got this name because many people used to stop at the house before they went into the village. The house is painted bright green. Part of the house is concrete but there is an addition that is tin. The added room is the living room. There is also in this room an altar. Nina’s father is a minister and they hold a church service in their house every day. I did not see the rest of the house.

There are seven people who live in the house. Nina’s mother and father live there as well as her two brothers, an adopted sister and her sister-in-law, and a six month old baby girl, Mili, who is called Buna.

Across the road from the house there is a field of mud. The area is very large, probably the area of five or six football fields. In some places there are man made ditches that have fish in them. The government is working with the people of Vunitogoloa to dig more of these ditches. The people in the village can then fish in the ditches. The small fish that they catch will be sold to the government for two cents a fish and then the government will sell the fish to a Japanese company that will use them as bait on their fishing ships. Nina’s mother and another woman were fishing in one of these ditches. The water was dark and muddy and the women were covered in mud. The water came up to their thighs. They wore handkerchiefs over their heads to keep their hair back and out of the sun. They walked side by side through the narrow ditch. Each one carried a net in front of her to scoop the fish up as they walked. The fish were very small and it looked like they each had about five in their net. The fish would jump across the top of the water in front of them as they walked. They would try to catch them but usually they couldn’t. Four underfed dogs walked down the side of the bank with them. There were other women fishing in a different ditch across the field. The area where they fished was supposed to have more fish in it.
VILISI

Vilisi, Nina’s sister in law has lived at the house with the family for less than a year. She is from a village on an island far from Vunitogoloa. She is married to Ruta, Nina’s brother. Vilisa is twenty years old, and is very thin. The other women urged her to eat but I never saw her eat anything. She looked very tired all afternoon; she was very polite and friendly and she speaks English very well but she did not look happy, even when she laughed she didn’t look like she was having fun. Her daughter, Uli Mili, is six months old. She held the baby in her lap all afternoon, except when she was in the other room, making lunch.

She told me that she liked living here but she didn’t sound very convincing about it. In the past year she has only been able to see her family at home three times. She said that when she is alone she often thinks about them and misses them. She is glad that the family lives outside the village because the village is noisy and people get into fights. She said that at home there are white sand beaches and hotels and when the tourists came to the area they would go hiking through the hills with them and play outside all the time. Here she said she has to stay in the house all the time and do housework and look after the baby. She misses the beaches, here there are no beaches, only mud everywhere.
PERSONAL REACTIONS

I think that Vilisi will be a very good person to talk to to get some information about women’s roles, particularly daughter-in-laws. She did not seem happy at all and I wanted to ask her more but I didn’t really know how appropriate it would be or how to bring up the subject the first time I met her in the short little conversation we had.

Nina seems very happy at home. I think that she really would have liked to have stayed there a lot longer than we did. She seems more relaxed and comfortable there. Her family speaks English very well, her mother especially, which surprised me. They are very nice and I want to go to see them again.

The trip to the nurse’s station for the baby’s checkup seemed like a joke to me. They didn’t do anything but weigh him. I always thought the exams we get in the states for sports were pointless but this was just ridiculous. We rode the bus all the way there so he could get this exam and then they didn’t even check him in any way. It was very important to Nina that he go though. I think its a good reassurance to her for the nurse to tell her that he’s healthy. She made sure that she made another appointment for next month. Of course it's good that they’re making the effort to offer free health services to the people in the villages but it seems to me that if they’re going to have the expense of doing it they would make it really beneficial and worth the effort.

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Thursday, September 23, 1999 (written 24/9/99)
SUMMARY

I got up at about 6:30 this morning. Vika made breakfast today, I watched her but of course I wasn’t allowed to do anything. I was excited watching her because it looked like she was making what we would call cinnamon buns except with coconut cream. I forgot that there is no oven though so they were boiled instead of baked. They were really chewy and tasted like boiled dough. After breakfast I did my laundry, which took forever and in the middle of rinsing out my clothes the tap was shut off. It was so windy that I couldn’t get all my clothes to stay on the line and Amelia sat next door and laughed at me. Nina doesn’t even argue when I tell her I will do my own laundry now, she tells me she will do it, I say I will do it myself and she says okay. I don’t blame her, she does laundry every single day and I’m glad that I can actually do something to help her out a little. I read for a little while when I had finished and then went out to start my censusing. I asked Nina which houses spoke English well and she seemed relieved that I was going by myself, even though she apologized for not being able to go with me. The first house I stopped at I ended up staying for more than two hours. They are very nice and overly interested in America. The husband and wife both speak English very well and I think they will be a good source of information; unfortunately the husband drives a taxi in Suva and is not in the village that much.

I went back to the house to have lunch and by the time I got back everyone else had eaten. Vika made lunch too. We had vegetables in coconut cream, (it was so good to eat vegetables!) and fish that looked really disgusting so I wouldn’t eat any. I fell asleep after lunch for a while and then Vika and I went out to do more censusing. We went to another four houses. I’m noticing that very few people are willing to speak English, which is very frustrating because I don’t want to have someone come with me all the time to translate. We finished four more houses and then went home for the chain prayer. Vika made dinner too and it was so good! I think that working at the resort she has learned how to make some more European dishes. We had potatoes and salad!! I was so excited I couldn’t believe it, food I like! There was mutton mixed in the salad but it was easy to pick out and I told them that eating the meat made my stomach hurt sometimes. I keep mentioning that I really like fruit and vegetables but I don't think they are understanding that I really want to eat them. After dinner Tata, Akini and Nina went to the Bible study and Vika and I stayed with Mesa. I read for a while and when they got back Tamasei came back with them. I met Tamasei’s mother today and she told me to stay in Fiji and marry him because he lives in a bure by himself. He’s only 28 and he’s a pastor and the leader of the youth group in the village. He got two checks from the government today for the youth group so he wanted to celebrate so he and Akini and Tata and I drank kava at our house. I stayed with them until 12 and then went to bed. I think they were up for a while after that. I haven’t seen any live cockroaches in my room for two night now!!! I keep finding dead ones from when I sprayed but I don’t care as long as they’re dead.
NAIVUVUNI ORIGINS

Kem and Ili explained how the village was formed and what Naivuvuni means. Years and years ago, during the cannibalism times, there were many wars in the country. Men fought each other all over the islands. To hide from the fighting some of the men went to hide on the mountain. These men were the first to belong to the Navatu clan. The name Navatu literally means stones and it refers to the rocky places they lived in on the mountain and also the rocky areas where they settled when they came down from the mountain. They made a village on the mountain and lived there for many years. When the fighting had ended they came back down the mountain and settled in different villages. The Navatu clan settled the villages of Narewa, Vitawa, Naivuvuni, and Vunitogoloa.

The name Naivuvuni means "a hiding place". Before the wars and the Navatu clan came to Naivuvuni, there were men, who were actually spirits, who came from all the way across the island to fish in the waters near Naivuvuni. While they fished they would hide their food on the hill where Naivuvuni is. When the tide came in and they couldn’t fish anymore, they would go up the hill to eat. Then they would travel back to the other side of the island. These men were called Nakauvdua, they were the first to inhabit Fiji.

Ili also explained that every tribe in Fiji has an animal associated with it. The Navatu clan’s animal is the dairo (dare-o). This is like a sea cucumber. It is their animal because their foreparents used to eat it a lot. Now the animal is only a symbol for each clan. It is like a joke between members of the clan who live in different villages and also between the other clans. Although neither Kem nor Ili would say so, I got the impression that now making reference to the clan’s animal was referring to a person’s sex organs. They laughed and got flustered when I asked what the animal represented and would not really answer me, they said it was a big joke that everyone understood and if you go to another village and meet someone of the same yavusa, you should ask them about their animal.
SNAKE GOD

The godfather spirits of Fiji are snake gods. They are the true owners of the villages. The live in the streams around the village. People have seen them and can sometimes feel their presence. These spirit gods are very dangerous and have often killed people. If young girls swim naked in the streams the gods will come into their houses at night to kill them. Some people appeal to the spirits to kill their enemies. If men are jealous of others in the village because they have a better home or more cows they may ask the snake gods to kill them. They will take yaqona to the stream and offer it to the spirits. If the spirits accept the offering then they will kill the man for them. Kem told me that this was how is own father was killed. In 1984, just after his father had finished building their cement block house in the village, he fell very ill and shortly died. He said that a man from the village had appealed to the snake god to kill his father because he had a nicer house. At the time it was only the second cement house in the village.

Nina also made a reference to this, although she did not directly say it was through the spirits. She said that two weeks ago the family had had three cows. One week one of them mysteriously died, and the next week another one died. Now they are left with only one cow. She said that many people in the village hate the family because they had several cows, so they made them eat something bad to kill them.

It was obvious that the spirit gods still play a major part in the lives of the Fijians. They are a presence in their lives that they can feel. Christianity is also an important aspect of their lives as well, from what I have noticed so far, a much more visible and salient aspect. As Kem told me the story about the spirit gods he was also quick to point out that these spirit gods are not as powerful as the Christian God. He said that God cannot be challenged. If you believe in God you will be saved and the spirit gods cannot challenge the power of God.
IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA

Kem and Ili are very interested in moving to the United States. They asked me repeatedly if I would write a support letter for them so they could get visas to move to the States. They have the impression that once they move to the United States they will find great jobs and become rich. They asked me about how much money my parents made and if there were farms around where I live that they could work on. They had worked as farmers in Australia several years ago but they returned to Fiji. They said the wages in Australia are not any better than in Fiji. They only worked there for seven months. They explained that all of the farms in Australia are owned by Greeks and Italians. The only food there was either ethnic Italian or Greek food and that Ili could not eat it because it did not agree with her stomach but they could not afford to shop at the grocery store because they did not make enough money.

They asked me first if I lived in New York City or Los Angeles. They were very disappointed to learn that I live three hours from New York City and that LA is on the other side of the country. Apparently they think that I am going to write them a support letter and that they will live near me in America. I tried to explain to them that I couldn’t write a letter because I would not be able to support them because I have no job. So they asked me if my parents would do it. I didn’t know what to say to them so I told them I would ask. Vika has also asked me if I would ask my parents to write a letter for her and her husband. It puts me in a very awkward position because I feel like I can’t just flat out say no, but my parents aren’t going to support the entire village to move to the United States. I tried to tell them that it would hard to find a job in the United States that paid well too but they have the idea that there are all these extra jobs in the states and everyone is very rich and no one has to work. While we were drinking kava Tamasei made a reference to that as well. He said that in Fiji people have to work very hard, not like in America where everyone gets something for nothing. I try to tell them that you have to work in America too and that not everyone is rich but they really can’t understand that. To me, my family is not rich but if I were to tell them how much my parents made, we would seem extremely wealthy compared to what the Fijians earn.

Kem told me that he owns 10 acres of land but that he is only able to actually farm sugar cane on three and a half of them because the rest of the land is too rocky. He cannot support his family on the land and so he bought a taxi and works in Suva. If they can go to America he will sell the taxi to pay for their fares.

They were very concerned about the crime in America. Ili said she would be scared to live in New York because someone might shoot her just walking down the street. They said they had seen movies about America where everyone was killed. I tried to explain that the movies are very different than what actually happens but they couldn’t understand. "But people are always getting killed, right?" they would ask. I couldn’t make them understand that America is not a complete crime zone. They also thought the drugs were absolutely rampant in the US. I asked if there were drugs in Fiji and they said no, they were illegal but that some of the boys in the village smoked marijuana anyway. I tried to explain that it was the same way in the United States, drugs are illegal but some people do it anyway.

Every attempt I made to turn the conversation back to life in Fiji somehow turned into how great it would be for them to live in America. They said that living in Fiji was boring with nothing to do and no work. "We cannot live like this" they said. They think Fiji is slow and backward.

Some of Kem’s longing to leave Fiji has to do with the fact that he was in the Army and has traveled. He has been in New York and Los Angeles, but only in the airports. He was stationed in Lebanon and also been in England. While he was on tour in Australia he went to an electronics/technology fair and saw computers and telephones and video cameras from Europe and the United States and thinks that everyone in America has all these things. The ideas they have about America are demented because they only see the extremes of living in the United States, the media and things like the fair Kem went to don’t create an idea of what life in America is actually like and they cannot understand that that is not how all people live.
KEM AND ILI (THEIR MARRIAGE)

Kem and Ili met in October of 1984. Kem’s father had died a little more than three months earlier and Kem and his brothers had just finished the 100 nights of bouta. They had just shaved for the first time after the death and were going into the city to go the movies. Kem met Ili in town with her father who invited them to go out with them. Kem was on leave form the army and had to return shortly after but when he came home again they were married. They now have five children. They youngest is only two months old. Kem works in Suva and tries to come home every two or three weeks to visit and bring money. They are the most openly affectionate couple I have seen so far. While I spoke to them, Ili lay with her head in Kem’s lap. They smiled at each other a lot and really seemed to enjoy being in each other’s company. They seem very loving to all of their children as well. However, one of the boys, Maika, my Tata’s namesake is always at our house. When he was a baby, Nina and Akini had taken care of him. He lived at our house and they acted as his parents. When Semesa was born Maika got very jealous and went back to live with his mother. Maika has spots all over his arms and legs that look to me like ringworm. I asked Vika about them and she said that they didn’t know what it is. All of the children in the family had it when they were small and then it goes away. She said they have medicine for it but that it doesn’t do anything to make it go away. She said that the children get it because when their mother was pregnant she didn’t eat the right foods. She said that it is worse at low tide and when the tide comes in it gets a little better. She said it would get better when he gets older.

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AVOIDANCES AND CIRCUMLOCUTIONS

When we were at Nina’s house yesterday I noticed that she would not eat lunch with her brother, Andrew, and I when we ate. At first I thought it was because she was watching Semesa but then I realized that it was because she had to respect him and could not eat until he had finished. They didn’t seem like they avoided each other any other way though; they joked and talked all afternoon. She told me his name was Andrew when she introduced him to me but then for the rest of the afternoon she only referred to him as "my brother".

I did not meet her other brother because he was working in the mud field but she pointed him out to me and said that he was "Tamai Buna", father of Buna, his oldest daughter. Again, she did not use his real name.

When I was doing my census, Lemeki Lau, would not say the name of his granddaughter, Arieta Maca, because she has the same name as his sister, who he has to respect by not using her name.
TAMASEI DAKUI

After the Bible Study, Tata, Akini and Tamesei and I drank grog. Vika sat with us but did not drink. She said she has recently given up smoking and drinking because it is bad for her health. Before we drank, both Tata and Tamasei blessed the grog and said a prayer.

Tamasei is one of Akini’s best friends. Tonight he came back from the Bible study with Akini. He is 28 and has just become a pastor. However, right now there is no church for him to go to so he helps the minister of the Naivuvuni church and also is the leader of the village youth group. Tamasei’s parents live in the village as well, but he does not live with them. He is not married, he said, "I’m still deciding about that". He lives alone in a small bure just on the edge of the village. He moved into the bure recently. He decided that he wanted to live alone so that he could focus his attention on his work and God. He wants to act as an example to the rest of the village by leading a life of faith, without the distractions of a wife and family. I think that there is more behind his decision than he was willing to tell me. I asked if he was going to live in his bure alone forever and he said, that he couldn’t talk about that.

Tamasei acts as the leader of the village youth club. It is the youth club that runs the shop at the bottom of the village. They are also trying to start other businesses in the village as well. They have started a coffin making business that will provide the village with affordable coffins. They also just received a loan or a grant (I’m a little confused about which it is) from the government. Tamasei was in Suva today to pick up the checks. They have received two checks. One is for $2500. The other is for one thousand dollars. With this money they are going to buy a boat and a motor and start a small fishing business in the village. The money that they earn from these projects will be used to help the village when it needs a project to benefit the community (like the new water tank). The only members of the youth group are boys. The group is open to girls as well but Tamasei said they have little interest in the business projects that the group is getting involved in.

Akini is the treasurer of the youth group. While we drank kava he balanced the account. He is responsible for recording every transaction that the group makes. He added the two checks to the balance and rechecked to make sure the rest of the figures were right.

Tamasie, like everyone else, was interested in talking about the United States. He was more interested in foreign policy than anything else. He asked why the US is always getting involved in the affairs of other countries that have nothing to do with the US. He also commented on the power of the US and made a reference to how easy live in the US is.
PERSONAL REACTIONS

I’m almost starting to resent the attitude that everyone has towards the United States. I understand that to the Fijians the United States is a very rich and powerful country that represents a lot of opportunity but they also seem to think that everyone sits around and does nothing and gets paid so much for it. I tried to explain that not everyone in the US is rich and there are problems there too with the economy and that if you want to make money you have to be willing to work very hard for it. I think that they see me as the typical rich American who has money to spend to come to Fiji. I hate when they ask about how much things cost in the US because then they double whatever I say and there’s always the comment, "oh, no one in Fiji has that kind of money, not even the Prime Minister".

I think that Ili and Kem could be very helpful to me because they both speak excellent English but Ili has really bad asthma and is in bed a lot and Kem is usually in Suva. Dukei could also be good but he is really shy and doesn’t really like to speak in English, even though he speaks very well. He’s not around a lot either. He doesn’t seem to hang out with the rest of the guys much. Probably because he has a job other than farming and some other responsibilities. I think its odd that he lives by himself. He is the only person I have met who lives by himself. I think there may be some other reason for him living alone that he didn’t really want to discuss. He is shy and seems to be more a private person than most of the others I’ve met as of yet. I’m kind of curious about him.

I’m getting used to the taste of kava, I really didn’t want to drink but I thought it would be a good way to get to talk to Dakui cause he usually doesn’t talk when I’m around. Tata didn’t really say much when we drank and I think that he maybe only stayed up because he didn’t think that I should be alone with the boys, even though Akini is my brother.

Friday, September 24, 1999 (written 25/9/99)
SUMMARY

I didn’t get up until almost seven today. I think the kava made me extra tired. We had babakau for breakfast, which I think is my favorite food now. Not that fried dough is what I really want in the morning but it tastes good so I’m not going to complain. After breakfast I did some work and then went down to talk to Ili again. She had to go to the hospital in the morning because her asthma was really bad. She got some medicine and they sent her home. She was resting when I got there. I went back home and had lunch and then fell asleep for a while. In the afternoon I played cards with the younger girls for a while. They tried to teach me a game but none of them could really explain it so I taught them 21 and slap jack and go fish. I walked around with Vili for a while and then went home for dinner. A bunch of guys came over and I talked to them for a while. They left and I did work while Akini, Tata and Nina went to Bible Study. Koni is here, my other sister, she arrived this afternoon and she and Nana talked while I did work. After church the guys came back and starting drinking kava. After I ate I drank with them for a while. They taught me how to play drop 10 and some card tricks and we talked for a while. They didn’t really want to talk in English though. I stayed with them for about an hour and a half and then went to do work. They were still drinking when I went to bed at one. They are all big Bob Marley fans, Akini borrowed my tape to listen to while they drank.
AVOIDANCE RELATIONSHIPS (ILI)

Ili explained to me that the avoidance relationships are different in different areas of the country. She is from the village of NukuNuku on the island of Lakeba. The ways in which she has to show respect for her parallel cousins and brothers is not the same as it is in the Ra province. She is allowed to talk to her brothers and she can say their names. They are not close though. She can eat with them as well. Her parallel cousins are considered the same as her brothers. She cannot eat with them but she can talk to them and say their names. She could also marry her parallel cousins. In Ra, she said brothers and sisters must avoid each other more strictly than she has to avoid her own brothers. In Ra, they cannot say the name of a sibling of the opposite sex and they are not to eat together or be in the same room if it is avoidable.
NINA’S WORK (WASHING MACHINE)

Nina was sitting on the floor folding laundry today and Vika mentioned all the work that she does in the house. Nina said, "One day I will leave it all and run away." Vika said she has asked her several times to buy a washing machine for the house (Vika appears to support the family with her job at Mokosigas). Vika is considering buying one at Courts. She will put down the deposit ($40-$60) if the family promises to make the monthly payments. I have a feeling this promise is really only symbolic, saying "we’ll try" because she made a comment about how she already has an account at Courts from when she paid for the refrigerator for her father. The monthly payment would be about $20 a month. Vika said she would buy the washer because she feels sorry for Nina because of all the work she does.

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Saturday, September 25,1999 (written 25/9/99)
SUMMARY

I woke up to Mesa crying this morning. Lately I’ve been sleeping through the morning noises but he was really wailing this morning. Had left over babakau for breakfast and papaya. There was no water this morning so I couldn’t take a bath. While Nina cleaned I wrote some letters and then we went to town. I was planning on going to town by myself, my first real excursion unchaperoned, but this morning she said she needed to go too. She, Tata and I took the 11:00 bus to Vaileka. She would not stand by or talk to Tata while we waited or on the bus, to show of respect. First we went to the market so she could buy yaqona (they sell it in the village). I was practically drooling over the vegetables there and kept pointing out all the ones I really like. We ran the rest of our errands and then came back to the market to get more vegetables. I have a feeling that when she cooks them they’re going to be boiled and covered in salt but at this point I don’t even care. I fell asleep for a while when we got back and then we had lunch. I did a little work and then we took a walk to see Louisa, who was watching Mesa for the day. We didn’t stay long and I came back and typed for a little and then went for a walk. I met Arieta, a widow who speaks excellent English and is really friendly. Then Vili and I went across the street to where they are planting cane. They showed me how and I planted a row, really boring, tedious work, but not very hard. There was a really interesting man there who gave me a lot of information on the cane industry, unfortunately he lives in Lau. We picked some mangos and came back and ate them with Nana and Nina. I started recopying my genealogies and reading for tomorrow’s meeting. We had dinner, Koni is still here. Mesa has been throwing up and screaming all night. This is the first time I’ve ever seen him really unhappy for a long time. I’ve shut myself in my room with my walkman to avoid the noise.
MARKET

Because today is Saturday the market was really busy. We did not go inside but the outside area was packed with merchants and customers. There were a lot of Indian vendors outside today and most of them were men, contrasting with the few Fijian women who were outside during the week the last time we were there. The vendors were generally separated by sex. Most of the men, who were all Indian except two, sat closest to the entrance to the inside building and the women were farther back, closer to the street. Most of the vendors had tarps over their produce to protect it from the weather. The prices were generally the same as they had been. I noticed that there was still very little bargaining. The vendors were more outgoing today, shouting out prices and the promoting that they had the freshest vegetables at the market. Nina was very careful in picking her produce. Before she bought anything she went to several different vendors to get prices. She looked for the largest and best looking products before she bought any. She said that the market is too expensive and that they usually don’t buy anything at there but grow all their own fruits and vegetables. Nina also bought fish from one of the grocery stores. She compared prices from several stores before she bought the fish as well. The best price she found was $2.99/kg. She bought fifteen dollars of yaqona. They will divide it into small bags and sell it for a dollar a bag in the village. She said that what she bought today will make between 20 and 30 bags. The family also sells cigarettes, whole packs or individually, from the house. Nina goes to town once a week to get more supplies and to do the family’s shopping for the week.
AVOIDANCES

Tata took the same bus as we did into town. He had to see a man about renting a tractor to plow his fields. While we waited for the bus, Nina would not talk to him or stand near him, even though neither of them were talking to anyone else. In the house its harder to notice when she is deliberately avoiding him to show respect but it was very obvious today that she wanted to physically separate herself from him.
CANE FARMING

In one of the fields across from the village, a family was planting sugar cane. The cane is usually planted between September and December. December to late May is more or less the growing season and the cane is harvested between June and December. The mill shuts down in mid December. To plant the cane the field most first be plowed. Most farmers use bulls to plow, because a lot of the cane is planted on hills it is difficult to use tractors. Tractors are also expensive but they are becoming more common in plowing. Once the field has been plowed, very shallow ditches are dug, just deep enough for a piece of cane to lay in it. Pieces of sugar cane are cut into pieces about a foot long and laid in these ditches. One end is buried in the ground and then the entire thing is covered with dirt. Many farmers also mix a chemical fertilizer into the soil to enhance the cane’s growing. Planting the cane is not hard but it is slow, tedious work.

There was a man from Lau at the field who was helping his father in law plant his cane. He explained to me that cane is the country’s main crop. The government has tried to supplement the cane with other crops as well but they have either not grown well or there has been little market for them. He said that the farmers work at a subsistence level, they produce only enough to support their families. Most farmers in Fiji as of right now are not able to produce enough to sell commercially but he thinks in the near future the government will be intervening to increase production to a commercial level.

At the present time, most farmers are not using mechanized farm equipment. They cannot afford tractors and tractors are not always practical because the land is so rocky and uneven, a lot of the cane is grown on hillsides. Tractors are becoming more prevalent and as the industry becomes more commercial mechanized farm equipment will increase as well.

He explained the recent problems with ALTA and that the government is starting to become involved in the land problems because if the Indian’s lose their leases and no longer are the ones farming the land the entire industry could be lost. Of the 23,000 cane farmers in the country, only 5,000 of them are Fijians. If the majority of the farmers suddenly become Fijian, the industry will suffer severe and perhaps permanent damages. He said that the Fijians are not capable of performing and producing at the same level as the Indians. The Fijians do not have as much interest in the land. They are not willing to invest the time and effort required to successfully grow cane.

Part of the problem with creating a commercial industry, he explained, is that the government is not willing to invest in the acreage that has not been cultivated yet. They are reluctant to do so partly because they do not think there will be people willing to farm the land.

The unemployment rate in the country is very high right now. Of 13,000 students graduating each year, only 4,000 will enter the work force. Most of the graduates do not want to be cane farmers after they have finished school. They are interested in white collar jobs in the suburban areas that aren’t available. Because they feel like they have no other options, they are rapidly turning to crime. Crime, particularly larceny, is becoming a problem in the villages as well as cities. People, particularly young men in their 20s feel as if they have no other options. The government does not offer unemployment benefits to out of work people. In addition, he said, the country is being flooded with new products and concepts that the people are not educated enough to deal with. As a result drug use is increasing rapidly as well as more serious crimes. There are also more and more broken marriages.
ARIETA

Arieta is a widow who lives in the village. Her husband died 11 years ago when her oldest son was 11. She has three other children that she raised by herself. Right now she is living with her eldest son and three other young men from the village who are not her own children. Her daughter is living with an uncle in RakiRaki and attending school there. She is currently in form 6 and has decided she wants to go to FIT, the Fijian Institute of Technology. Her other two sons are living outside the village with another uncle on his farm because he and his wife do not have any children of their own. Her eldest son who is living with her is a cane farmer. She said that she enjoys living with the boys and would rather live with them than with women because women are too gossipy and she does not want to get involved in that. She said European women are particularly gossipy and she could never live with them. She worked at Wananavu Beach Resort for a time and has contact with a lot of European women. She did not mean to say that they were not nice.

She explained how difficult it is to raise children, especially young ones, without a father. She had no source of income for many years and it was difficult to get support from the government. There is a tuition to send children to school and they also have to pay bus fair to and from school everyday. She once went to Lautoka to get funds to pay for her children’s education but they would not help her. She had to travel to Nadi before she could receive any help. When she worked at the resort she became friends with one of the couples who was vacationing there. She told them about her economic situation but was reluctant to tell them she was a widow because she didn’t want them to think she was looking for a hand out. The couple must have talked to the other resort employees because after they left the resort they sent her a check for $500 to help put her children through school.

Arieta said that although it is Fijian custom for the woman to do all the domestic work, the boys she lives with are willing to help her out in any way they can. They collect firewood and sometimes cook for themselves.

She also expressed a similar sentiment as Tata about the block houses. She said that everyone wants to have a block house but then when they do they realize that living in the traditional bures is better. Even though the houses usually have sofas and chairs in them the Fijian cannot get used to sitting on them and always sit on the floor anyway, which is not very comfortable on the cement floors. She said that bures are cooler and in general more comfortable for living.

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