More Strange Food

With the car still in the shop, Iretta was kind enough to drive us into town for a shopping day. This was mostly for groceries however we also needed to exchange an empty gas cylinder for a full one (the gas heats our stove and hot water). At the farm market we picked up some different items including freshly caught and cooked clam meat and a strange type of seaweed called sea grapes. They are little green clusters of bubbles slightly bigger than caviar. You just rinse them in cold water and serve quickly before they start to disintegrate. Neither Deborah nor I thought they had much taste; it was more about the saltiness and the soft crunch when you bit into them. You also need the right sauce, which may take some more experimentation.

We also picked up some “spinach,” which wasn’t really spinach. When we ask, the Fijian vendors at the market tend to identify any leafy green as spinach. What we actually bought was a huge cluster of what looked like clippings from a mature ornamental shrub with multi-pointed leaves the size of dinner plates. Marie ensured us they were edible and we’ve learned to trust her. In the end we found them to have a pleasant enough taste but they were a bit chewy. We might stick to the more spinach-like spinach in the future.

Sea Grapes in coconut milk

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A little salad anyone?

Tailored to Imperfection

Both Deborah and I were interested in supplementing our tropical wardrobe with some cooler clothes. We found a little clothing store in town with some nice, lightweight shirts for me for the very appealing cost of US$5. One I wanted wasn’t available in my size but they were willing to make one up for me the next day (still for only US$5). They were also able to take in the waist of my convertible pants for US$2.60. Love those low-cost labor markets.

Deborah has had a harder time finding clothes in town as they seem mostly fitted to the proportions of the stick thin Indian girls. She did however find at the same shop where I found my shirts a dress she liked which she asked them to shorten into a blouse. In fact she liked the idea so much that she wanted three additional tops made with the same design but in different fabrics. She picked out some material at a fabric store down the street, brought it to the tailor, and he went to work on the tops. The first fitting a day or two later was less than impressive, with the resulting blouse the very definition of ill-fitting. We returned two days later after he had nipped and tucked a bit, but there really weren’t any fewer of the unfortunately place sags and bulges; in fact there were more because they were featured on four blouses instead of just one, although each blouse seemed to possess its own unique quality of poorly assembled fabric. Deborah didn’t see the point of having him redo it again, given his apparent inability to correct his work the first time. She thinks part of the problem is that, in this conservative society, he was reluctant to get too personal with his measuring tape, thus dooming the prospects for a good fit from the start. I’m sure there are plenty of perfectly capable tailors in town; we just happened to stumble across one of the untalented ones. But Deborah believes she can modify the blouses herself when we get home. And because we paid less than US$10 a piece for them it’s hard to complain too much.

Which is more unflattering? The front...

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...or the back?

Ferns and Fish Heads

Neighbors Steve and Iretta came over for dinner last night and Semoko joined us a bit later as well. Deborah prepared fish, mashed potatoes, and a Fijian dish called fern lolo featuring onion, garlic, tomato and, yes, ferns in a coconut sauce. It was delish, and she got the thumbs up from the locals. We had bought the whole red snapper previously at the market and I had to scale and fillet it with dubious help from Semoko’s puppy, who was quite interested in the process. She had fish scales clinging to her fur for hours later. I saved the head and other boney detritus for Semoko. Fijians just love fish heads, and can’t understand why we throw them away. They also seem to prefer to leave the bones in when cooking and just pick them out as they eat, thus ensuring no morsel of meat goes wasted. So tonight Semoko and the puppy will dine on fish head soup. I think I’ll stick with the fern lolo.

Outdoor living room

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Outdoor dining room

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Outdoor bedroom

Fiji Critter Profile - Geckos

We see geckos around the house, both inside and out, on an occasional basis. They come in a variety of sizes and colors: from 2 to 7 inches (5 to 18 cm), and from pale grey to greenish brown. They are typically either standing dead still or zipping past too quickly for your eyes to focus on them. I’m sure there are many more of them than we actually see, as evidenced by the little piles of gecko poop we find on the decks in the morning. We see other small lizards as well – possibly skinks – the principal difference between them and the geckos being that they have smaller heads and don’t try to sell you car insurance.

That's (Pirated) Entertainment

We have no television here at Tobi’s house, and with a somewhat limited internet connection downloading video content isn’t really an option. We didn’t bring any DVDs to play on our laptop but fortunately there are a few stores in town that sell pirated videos of recent theatrical releases. These are sold completely out in the open with no misgivings about silly impediments like copyright infringement whatsoever. And they are an absolute bargain. You can get up to three movies on a single disc for the equivalent of US$1.50. That’s fifty cents per movie! And that’s to own it, not rent it.

Of course, sometimes you get what you pay for. Some movies are high quality copies, but others are obviously produced by some guy sitting in a movie theatre with a camera pointed at the screen (this will remind my father of a Seinfeld episode). This is apparent when the view suddenly tilts in a random direction, or you hear the sound of off-screen coughing or, most hilariously, when the silhouette of someone in the second row appears in front of the screen as he gets up to go get more popcorn, and then reappears a few minutes later to return to his seat. Fortunately, most of the pirated movies are of decent quality. The selection is somewhat limited, especially compared to our beloved Netflix, but we are doing a pretty good job of keeping ourselves entertained.

Scene from "Valkyrie" with Tom Cruise

with an unscripted appearance by some guy in the audience

Rainforests and Tow Trucks

Yesterday Deborah and I and neighbor Semoko drove up to the Wailali Rainforest Reserve, which is about 25 km (15 mi) from town on the main road that climbs up over the backbone of the island. Just as we arrived at our destination steam started coming out from under the hood of the car. After checking it out and seeing no obvious damage we elected to go ahead and walk through the reserve and let the engine cool down.

The reserve was a bit disappointing. As Deborah pointed out, the vegetation didn’t look much different than what was already growing around our house. Also, the colorful tropical birds we were hoping to see were conspicuously absent. The loop trail led to a nice little picnic spot by a small waterfall, but apart from that we were thoroughly unimpressed.

Upon returning to the car we topped off the water (I’m wondering if it was only water in the radiator, and not engine coolant). It started up fine so we headed back to town, keeping a watchful gaze on the engine temperature indicator. It didn’t budge, but after about 10 km (6 mi) the engine got sluggish and we had black smoke coming out of the tailpipe and from under the hood. As I pulled over to the side of the road the engine died completely, and we noticed oil dripping onto the grass underneath. Semoko had a cell phone but, as Murphy’s Law would have it, the phone’s battery died in the middle of my call to the mechanic back in Savusavu. Semoko and I walked up the road following the sound of hammering until we came upon a group of men working on a roof repair, one of whom had a working cell phone with which I was able to reconnect with the mechanic. Although he initially said he was at the sight of another breakdown and wouldn’t be able to get to us for three hours (!) he then decided to try and arrange for a tow truck to take our car to his shop. We ended up waiting in the hot sun for two hours anyway, sitting in the car for shade or using an umbrella as a parasol.

I’ve seen an actual tow truck or two in Savusavu, but when ours finally arrived it was really just a truck with a rope. Fortunately the guys from the garage seem to know what they were doing, tying secure knots and avoiding collisions between the two vehicles. In certain steep downhill sections it was deemed too dangerous to tow so they untied the rope and the truck moved behind us as we coasted like a not-quite-out-of-control bowling ball down the incline. I wasn’t driving our car for this rather scary procedure, thankfully; one of mechanics was. He put it in neutral and made judicious use of both foot brake and emergency brake to moderate our speed. When we reached level ground and rolled to a stop the truck would move in front of us again, they would retie the rope, and tow us to the top of the next hill. This back and forth procedure continued several times until we rolled into the mechanic’s garage just outside of town. It cost about US$42 for the tow – not bad by American standards, I suppose, but pricey for Fiji. (I’m sure we sometimes get the Fijian equivalent of a gringo price, but it’s hard to know when).

We treated Semoko to lunch at a restaurant in town before trying to hail a cab to take us home. Many, if not most, of the cabs won’t go up our steep gravel road, and we had no success finding one that would that day. So in the full heat of the afternoon with full stomachs we trudged up the hill by foot. Eventually we were passed by a taxi driver named Ali with a 4WD truck who lives on our street, although not until we had already walked most of the way. Deborah rode with him the rest of the way anyway, and wrote down his phone number in the likely case that our car is in the shop for awhile and we need a lift to haul groceries or laundry.

We were just so relieved to have a frustrating day over with and to get back home and take a cool shower. I can’t imagine we’ll be responsible for any of the car repairs, but we hope they aren’t too costly or too time consuming. But we know everything here moves on island time, so our walking legs and the taxi drivers may have to take up the slack for a while.

Waisali Rainforest Reserve

Deborah as the Little Mermaid


Semoko

Blake and Deborah

(photo by Semoko)

Picnic area

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The crippled rig

(photo by Deborah)

Fijian tow truck

(photo by Deborah)

Car Talk

Unlike most house sitting assignments, this one came with a vehicle. That’s a real benefit, especially given the steep gravel road to town we’d otherwise be walking up and down far more frequently than we’d like. Our temporary wheels are a Toyota Hilux 4x4 diesel of unknown year – a well worn but practical vehicle. When we first got here it was pretty hard starting in the morning, then completely non-starting until the mechanic came out and did some magic with a pair of pliers in a fuse box. More recently when Deborah was driving the exhaust pipe decided to meet face-to-face the ground it had only been hovering above all these years. She did her best damsel in distress routine until some locals were kind enough to temporarily re-suspend it for her with some wire. When we brought it in to the mechanic he basically cut off the offending bit of pipe, leaving us with half an exhaust system until he could get a new piece formed (it was an odd twisty shape) in Labassa, which he could then weld into place. For several days in a row the formed piece from Labassa was always scheduled to arrive “tomorrow,” as we meanwhile somehow managed to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning. Today the repair was finally completed: the new piece was welded in place and a new bracket was fashioned to support it where the old bracket fell off and disappeared. It only took about an hour and cost about US$85, which Tobi will pay. There just aren’t any well-stocked auto supply stores here, so the mechanics are pretty creative in finding inexpensive solutions. Hopefully we won't have to test their creativity anymore in our remaining three months here.

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Our ride