Fear is a Dark Stranger...and other stories with pictures

Dear y'all

Before we begin today's posting we would like to share with you our joy and excitement in announcing that Nilu will soon be the proud mother of a beautiful baby photo collection now available on facebook..........."cough"

There are sadly not many photos of babies included but the photos are so small that we thought the term baby photo collection appropriate. The diminutive size is due to the far too oft mentioned not-quite-high-speed connection which we really ought to stop whining about as it is a free gift that we appreciate but should also be bloody well grateful for. And We are.

Please feel free to enjoy this selection of photographic gems from our past 2 months and change in the friendly and verdant not so cannibal isles. We look forward to your comments and questions.

Now, on to business.

This week marks our third in a row as the primary facilitators of the holiday break JY catch up hour in the Suva neighbourhood of Toorak. Twice or maybe three times a week Nilu and I walk the un-proverbial plank across the ditch up a hill and down some stairs and up some stairs and down a lane to our local Baha'i centre on Brewster street. There we give out passably edible cookies, lead suspect yoga routines and occasionally browse through two books of junior youth pre-Ruhi curriculum with a small group of exceptionally bright and thus occasionally bored individuals.

(that's a joke they are never ever in any way the least bit bored...ever)

In addition we have been hard at work on our joint art project, a highly emotive quasi impressionistic piece painted on fly netting using only mosquito carcasses with the fast moving palms of our hands. There is also a drought on. This was news to us as having arrived in scorching heat, and then passing two months experiencing very little other than scorching heat, it came as no surprise when the past few weeks continued to proffer a steady regimen of quite similar scorching heat. But apparently its the rainy season and all Fiji's rain was recently exported to the southern coast of British Columbia in exchange of one container of freeze dried salmon in tin foil...so be it. This is okay with us as we only just discovered the four shower formula for survival in this climate and now that we have that down, why not enjoy a lox bagel. Ok, that last little bit was silly...but we have both sustained a truly inappropriate amount of mosquito bites and who knows what that can do to the brain. Forgive us...we have late evenings and entertainment options are down to hunting rodents near the gas line or watching The Book of Eli.

But wait rodents..rodents you ask?

Yes, three nights ago or something like that we awoke in the murky half lighted dark of the tropical night... which is to say Nilu awoke and then punched Chris in the face seven times upon which he pitifully muttered something that might have been "knapsack" and managed to pretend to be awake just long enough to role into the fetal position and protect is bleeding face with a pillow.... as we were saying...we awoke to the heart-clutching sounds of someone literally breaking through the hollow walls of our bedroom...

oh yeah

to be continued....

The Big Giant Update! Part 1

And were back...

So Its been the very best part of a month since we last gave our readers something to sink their teeth into. The reasons are varied, some dramatic some predictable but in any and all cases we would like to apologize and wish everyone a happy holiday season...now lets get down to business. We thought the best idea might be to give y'all a brief over view of the missing month, and then pickup where we left off...maybe going back to visit some of the past events in more detail as the blog progresses.

As December opened we had been invited to participate in the second of two junior youth "Eco-Camps", which are as one might suspect basically mini sumer camps with an ecological focus. The first you may recall was held near Suva in a forest reserve where we had a very successful one-day program with swimming, studies, sandwiches all against an absurdly beautiful natural backdrop-think BBC's Planet Earth and then add the bahai writings, 33 kids and some lunch meat.

The second camp was held in a small coastal village of Kadavu (pronounced "Kandavu") just east of Labassa (pronounced "Lambassa"...catching on yet?) a sugar cane town on the north coast of Vanua Levu, Fiji's other big island. This camp lasted four days and was fraught with fun, breath-taking scenery and just a little bit of peril. Mostly the kind of peril that can be caused by chickens or falling mangos.

This village resides in the shadow of some glorious grassy foothills where one might expect to hear disembodied voices talking about the strange wonder of the human soul, or see Nick Nolte absentmindedly growling about the rosey-fingered dawn, in greek. The village is literally that, in the midieval sense of the word. 6 maybe 7 tiny homes of colourful wood and corregated steel nestled in a palm grove beside a stream just 150 steps by flipflop from the Pacific Ocean. Dogs, pigs, chickens, goats, cats, cows, geckos, and horses roam or are tethered more or less anywhere in the vicinity and together outnumber the human population many times over.

We awoke one morning to a chicken in our bedroom and awoke most of every night to 27 barking, muling, ravening and squeeling dogs directly under our bedroom. All this only served to further our ever increasing sense of authentic experience and really who can consider a tropical visit complete without a little sleep deprived temporary insanity...without it you just can't appreciate the little sensations of a rural South Pacific midnight.

Our activities with the 30 or so Junior Youth seemed to be for the most part a smash hit. Games, dancing, boat rides. (15 people to a boat no more than 18 ft long and 2 1/2 ft wide)...and yes some of the children could not swim, and of course we wanted to bring life jackets, but really how deep could the water be right its not like we had any extra space anyway...plus it kept the two girls on the bailing buckets very motivated)

Nature walks were also a prime feature. We hiked up the foothills behind the village and were treated to a view usually reserved for the lenses of David Lean or the imaginations of CGI wizards working for James Cameron. Nilu and I hiked up again later maybe 300 meters above where we took the kids just to take in the view a second time...we say hiked but Nilu did the one hour sharp angled climb in flip flops which to Chris elevates her accomplishment to true mad-dog adventurer level.

Apart from the more Ranger Rick-ish activities we did some swimming, Chris lost a piece of his toe to either a volcanic razor or possibly a reef shark with weak commitment to his craft. We also had regular musical devotionals and a little rugby. Nilu learned a few local dances from the more practiced girls but unfortunately when time came to perform for the whole village the girls chose a dance which they had neglected to teach her even though she was on the stage, the video of this will be made widely available. In addition we had several impromptu offerings of the break and Bboy style and something very unique by Junior our resident 2 year old warrior in training.

We finished up on Vanua Levu and flew home after another day in Labassa with our gracious hosts Johnny and Anna. Upon returning we found the Christmas season gearing up for full force along with the weather reports...

Next post: Cyclones! Refrigerated Geckos, Bananas, More Bananas, and Cannibalism...which we now suspect might have been born out of an obscene over-abundance of bananas.

Nice to be back

Chris and Nilu

PS

Due to the still shaky nature of our internet connection the photos that accompany this and probably the next blog post will be added later or posted on their own after the text.

ACCESS DENIED...kind of...but now its okay

Dear and devoted readers.
Due to strange and possibly unsavoury web savvy forces our access to this blog sight has been comprimised (sarcasm follows). Of course, due to the very crucial and highly sensitive nature of our entries this is to be expected. Who can really blame any modern security organization from wanting to stop reports of cockroach sizes, editorials on the tastyness of pacific pinapple and the untoward goings on of such critically dire information and the health of my toes. Really, we ought to have seen this coming. Such are the times in which we all live, and then blog, and then live with what we have blogged...but fear not...we have a plan!

Face huggers, Fruitbats, and Dinosaur ferns

This is an old post that never made it up last week, its old news but we hope you will enjoy it any way

Our list of amazing plants and creatures...

This week we learned about all the edible and interesting plants that abound in our little garden here at #2 Vunivalu Rd.

We have a Cinnamon tree (the inner bark is the spice), banana trees (not really a tree) Pawpaw (papaya) trees (probably a tree) orchids, spinach, beetle-nut trees, Taro (Dalo) which is a local tuber sort of like a potato that got buff and turned purple, a Star-apple tree (starfruit to

Canadians), Cloves, Aloe, a wide variety of flowers with names like bleeding heart, a black pepper plant, a yellow flower that smells like turpentine and keeps away bad spirits and a fern species that dates back to the time of dinosaurs. We also have two tiny pineapple trees, one of which gave us breakfast.

In addition we have become far more familiar with the local wildlife, it would seem that where in Africa the lion is king in Fiji its the mosquito that reigns supreme. The cockroach you have already heard about, but there are now new and interesting creatures about which we can report. The face-hugger, as seen in the "Alien" films is actually a native of Fiji and a smaller breed of it can be found under beds and in shower stalls all over the nation. I managed to capture one in a jar(pictured below) but we have seen more since. There are also flightless Mongooses...or Mongeese (these are essentially carnivorous squirrels that mated with sea otters and learned kung fu at birth? and last but not least, of all the wonders of nature that can be found in the Suva region, and indeed all over Fiji, Nilu's favourite, stars of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The giant fruit bat. Basically imagine the bats of old monster movies and then increase the size to that of say a small eagle.

back with new exploits and tales of intrigue soon.

PS. Most of flora info was told to us by our friend and landlord Austin who has a farm with his wife Kim out in a rural area called Sigatoka (pronounced SING-a-toka).

Facehugger...ewwww

...and the Coral Songs

So with our last post we neglected to expand on the title.

Last night we attended our first Suva Feast. Chris br

oke a chair and read a prayer, and we were inundated with pioneerish assignments to help this person with JY and That person with Children's classes and talk to this new believer and on and on, you'd think we were here to do service or something. But in amongst the chaos we were treated to some of the most beautifully sung bahai songs either of us h

ave ever heard. The healing prayer almost had Nilu in tears. Say God Sufficeth was sung as a very complex round with each section harmonizing perfectly and in time. The truly amazing thing was that each of these songs were sung by none other than...everyone at the feast, with no conductor or anything resembling a leader, everyone just sprang into tune. Incidentally the music played before the feast got started was Eric and JB's cd.

Later that evening

we went back to the home of Shantini and Omid for a little ice-cream and tea with some of the other friends. Graham our other housemate and principle guide brought his guitar along and started singing various 70's hits when someone suggested Bohemian Rhapsody which apparently Shan and Omid's kids had memorized but no one could remember how it started. Being a devoted Wayne's World fan Chris sang the opening lines and that got the whole process started. A 7-10 person choral version with acoustic guitar featuring a solo by a four year old child who came in with a pitch perfect falsetto and no prompting just sing "I'm just a poor boy nobody loves me" only to be immediately drowned out by the rest of us.

So anyway, singing is a big deal here, which is to say, everyone is good at it, including our kitchen gecko and one of the late roaches from that last post.

Here are some photos of some of our recent activities in no particu

lar order.

bye for now

Nilu and Chris

Cockroaches and the Coral Songs

So, cockroaches. have you all seen the X-files episode where Mulder is in a town that seems to be over run with killer cockroaches but then it turns out that people are just dying of fear of cockroaches, well I am proud to say that we have now faced three roaches larger and scarier by degrees than the largest little beast featured on that episode. Of course we mentioned our harrowing experiences to our housemate Vula, but he was not sufficiently impressed. Where we had employed bug spray, shrieks of terror and the blunt side of a flip flop he generally just picks them up and puts them outside. I would have posted pictures but Nilu had be dispose of the remains immediately. Maybe next time.

New Kids in Fiji-In which we arrive

Coming to you live from the worlds most pleasant military dictatorship, It's the adventures of Chris and Nilu. (crowd cheers) fade in...

(a quick note, this entry might be a little dry, we just want to get everyone up to date)

Where to begin... four long days ago after a 37 hour journey down the coast of North America and accross the mighty pacific ocean... we arrived in the tiny nation of New Zealand which based on my one hour visit consists oddly but conveniently of no more than shower facilities and towel rental kiosks. After participating in the national past time we felt the country had little more to offer so we headed back across the mighty pacific. Four hours later our intrepid heroes found themselves bouncing along the southern coast of Viti Levu (Fiji's biggest island) on the Sunbeam express bus from Nadi (pronounced Naandy) to Suva, the Capital and largest city in Fiji. We were installed in our new home at 2 Vunivalu Rd in a very nice residential neighbourhood just up the hill from from downtown and a 10 minute walk from the Bahai centre.

Naturally we were a little tired...

The next two days were spent getting settled. walking around the neighbourhood, discovering the delicious fruits and local megaphone preachers.

Our landlord and host Kim is a ten year veteran of Fiji, and has been showing us the basics. Food, security, directions, and cheap movie nights. Our house is one unit of a three unit house, We have the largest flat, its the original 2 bedroom house plus a covered patio/breezeway out-back where we share the wireless signal with everyone else.

The other residents are Kim the owner, Vula a local Bahai engineering student, and Graham Hassal a Bahai pioneer currently getting ready to leave for Oz and NZ.

The house and property are fenced and gated, surrounded by gardens with a second patio and pond behind. we have Bannana and Papaya as well as beetle nut, some very interesting flowers and the occasional street dog who manages to sneek in through the fence. the image here is of our garage.

Since our arrival we have had many tiny adventures and are now getting properly busy, hence the general lack of good quality blogging, but rest assured you will not lack for entertainment in the coming days, so stay close

That takes care of the basics, tomorrow, far more harrowing tales of lost luggage, 4 inch cockroaches, the pain and the pleasure of cooking with fresh chillies as well as highlights from the Miss Pacific beauty pagent and a trip to the rifle range with junior youth.

Bula for now

Nilu and Chris