we took off after breakfast and made a short trek inland to the local village. it was larger and more spread out than the one on waya lailai, complete with shops, a post office and a primary school. the school was to be our main destination. it is an island community so everyone at the very least knows everyone, if they are not directly related to them, and one of our resort hosts was cousins with one of the four teachers at the school, which services about 150 students from 2 or 3 of the local islands.
if the fijian lifestyle is full of hardship it is impossible to tell by the personality of their children. they are loud when they sing, they dance with strangers in a style that threatened sensibilities, love to get their photo taken, and are all smiles. we introduced ourselves to the classroom, myself, an older australian couple and a young teacher from germany. some of the students had met the german on the beach the day earlier and when he introduced himself you could hear them whisper around the room, “jerry! jerry!” apparently word travels fast on these islands and its easy to find yourself as the local celebrity. they greeted us in english, sang some songs, and then asked us to entertain them which we failed miserably at. how can four awkward white people compete with the easy charm of these kids? they can’t and we couldn’t, but they were nice about it. we met some of the other teachers, including the principal, made some contributions (as you do), and then made it back in time for lunch.
i began to feel overcome by exhaustion on our walk back and after lunch i had to go lie down for awhile before i felt even a little normal. i think all of this jumping around has finally gotten to me and it may have been a smarter idea to do a longer stay on a single island.
the weather hemmed and hawed throughout the day but mostly stayed windy and not exactly cold but not exactly warm either. we found other ways to entertain ourselves. there was a demonstration on local produce which involved practice climbing coconut trees (not adept), tasting a fruit that looked like a mandarin but had the flavor of a lemon, eating bananas straight off the tree, and then learning to husk (not adept), break open (easy), and clean out the coconut. it is possible and not even all that difficult to use a karate chop type motion to break open a coconut. as with everything else, once you have the knowledge, it's all in the wrist. we ate the meat and also shred it and squeezed it out into a delicious creamy milk. a delicious fruit salad is made by taking a papaya and adding coconut milk and some of the lemony citrus mentioned before.
after our educational tour of the premises we had an afternoon of volleyball, 15 games to 10 points, over half of which my team lost. following the bit of sport was a period of rest in which i did my best to lay out and enjoy the brief periods of sunshine that snuck out between the clouds. we found an area near our dorm that was protected from the strong winds that bounded in off the ocean and were relatively at peace.
late evening played host to another round of educational material, this time how to properly pound raw cava root into a fine powder so it is ready to drink. and what do you do with freshly pounded cava powder? why, sit around a beach bonfire and drink it with beer chasers until late into the night. my preference would be to not drink it but do all of those other things anyway. all the same, even with a starless night and my belly full of bitter muddy water, it was a lovely evening.
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