Fiji Critter Profile - Mud Wasps

The strange little blobs of dried mud that we’ve seen attached to the rafters, the walls, or just about anything else – both inside and outside the house – turn out to be the work of mud wasps. These aren’t nests, though. They are receptacles for the wasp’s food. When you break one open you find spiders (either dead or paralyzed) and larvae and other tasty morsels the wasp is keeping for future meals. They are kind of like insect kitchen pantries. I’m told you have to be careful when you break them off not to get any of the shattered remains in your eyes as whatever the wasps use to bind the mud together is toxic. They haven’t stung us or even acted aggressively at all, but I always destroy the little food lockers as soon as I see them to discourage the wasps from hanging around the house. So far the strangest place a wasp has chosen to build one is inside one of the homeowner’s guitars. We had to tape over the sound holes to deny him access, but I have to assume a little mud pantry is still in there somewhere.

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A wasp working on his mud construction

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This one was built on the tubes for the gas cylinders.

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This one was at the top of a wall inside the house.

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Bob the builder.

Inside the wasp's pantry. Yummmm.

Taveuni, Part 3 - West Side

We spent our third and last day in Taveuni exploring the west side of the island before catching the 2:00 ferry back to Savusavu. Once again we employed the services of our friendly taxi driver Dip (pronounced “deep”; I’m hoping his last name is Purple). Dip is a good driver and also a good impromptu tour guide. He makes an effort to identify points of interest as we head toward our destination, and even manages to spot jumping tuna from hundreds of yards away or a small purple crab at the side of the road, all while negotiating the extremely uneven terrain of Taveuni’s storm-ravaged dirt roads. Actually, because the west side of the island was more protected during the cyclone, the damage to the unpaved roads was not as severe, so this day featured somewhat less rattling of our bones.

Dip drove us by things like the hospital, the prison, the Catholic Mission, a couple of fancy resorts, the island's largest town, a few villages, coconut plantations, and a blow hole where the sea meets a formation of volcanic rocks. The three of us stopped for lunch at one of the resorts where the staff inexplicably thought Deborah ordered two sandwiches. We ate them anyway. Afterward it was back to the ferry for the four-hour-plus crossing. We arrived in Savusavu after dark and Deborah reluctantly but bravely agreed to walk up the hill back to the house. (She didn’t agree not to complain about it though).

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The island's prison. Only fifteen cells, but what a view.

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The Wairiki Catholic Mission

Inside the mission. Leave your shoes at the door and don't expect any pews. This is Fiji so you'll sit on the floor like everyone else.


Shoreline view

One of the fancy resorts we can't afford

The blow hole in the volcanic rocks

Blake and Deborah

(photo by Dip)

Dip the taxi driver

Fishing near the ferry dock. No boat or fishing pole required.

Taveuni, Part 2 - Vadewa Rainforest and Matei

Our second day in Taveuni included a return to Bouma National Park and, unfortunately, another taxi ride on the posterior punishing dirt road, although not for quite so far as the previous day. The objective this time was a guided half-day hike in the Vadewa Rainforest, which was to feature ancient village sites and bird watching. They told us we were the first tourists to take the hike since the cyclone and warned us the bird watching would probably be sparse because of all the damage. That proved to be true – we heard more birds than we saw – but we still enjoyed ourselves, traipsing through farmland first, past village ruins, into and out of old defensive ditches, and into the rainforest. After the hike we had some time to kill waiting for our taxi so we sat (on the ground, of course) and talked with our guide Rusi and some of the other residents of Vadewa, whose village marks the beginning of the rainforest hike.

The remainder of our day we spent poking around our home base of Matei, a small beachside town – if it can even be called a town – where a lot of expats (especially Americans) have built homes and put down roots. It’s a quiet place with a tidier, more affluent feel than most of the other places we’ve seen in Fiji. Even the dogs look healthier. We discovered the restaurant prices also reflect that relative affluence; no sign of the US$3 entrées we’ve grown accustomed to in Savusavu. Our accommodation in Matei was a wooden burre (traditional Fijian cabin) in the very friendly Tovu Tovu Resort. I'd call it a quiet place as well except for (a) the rooster next door who obviously had no concept of "dawn" or that crowing should be reserved for the onset of daylight, and (b) the fact that, like all establishments in Matei, it had to rely on it's own generator for electricity, which set the entire community to continually pulse with a gentle humming sound.

Tovu Tovu Resort

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The airy, light-filled dining area

Our hostess in Vadewa at the office for the Rainforest Hike.


A house in Vadewa Village

Our guide Rusi examines a cyclone-toppled tree in our path

Blake sits in the stone warrior's chair, used to scout the distance for invading tribes

Rusi makes a more convincing warrior suitable for the chair

Tree ferns

Rusi and Deborah demonstrate the use of the sacrifice stone

Taveuni, Part 1 - Lavena Coastal Walk

Taveuni is the third largest of Fiji’s 322 islands and is a four-hour ferry ride from our town of Savusavu. The ferry makes the journey just three times a week, always leaving at 6:00am, which required us to get up at a most uncivilized hour and walk for half an hour down our road in the dark to reach the dock in time to board. The sleepy crossing to the western shore of Taveuni was followed by a taxi ride to our accommodations in the town of Matei at the island’s northern end. From there we took another taxi down the eastern shore to the huge Bouma National Park and the Lavena Coastal Walk.

Taveuni was hit hard by the recent cyclone and, even a month later, there was evidence of this all along the road to Lavena. Huge piles of uprooted trees, broken branches, and other plant debris lined the road. Plantations were littered with fallen coconut trees. Some village homes were knocked off their foundations and still lay in crumpled heaps. Other houses near the water were completely swept away, leaving only their foundations. The road to Lavena became unpaved not far outside of Matei, but it was especially rough after the cyclone and resulting sea swells chewed it up further. After a butt-numbing hour-plus ride that made Deborah wish she was wearing a sports bra, we were ready for the 10km (6 mi) round trip coastal walk, which ended at a waterfall.

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The clouds light up at sunrise

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Deborah is very excited about going to Taveuni

View from the coastal walk

Homemade catamaran? I'm sure it's waterproof.

Mushroom Rocks

Suspension bridge for a river crossing

Tree ferns in a prehistoric looking landscape

The waterfall at the end of the trail

Sitting pretty. Deborah cools her heels.

Foraging

Yesterday we had quite the feast thanks to both Semoko and Deborah. Semoko provided some incredibly fresh and delicious fish he caught from his uncle’s boat the previous evening, plus greens he had plucked from the surrounding bush, plus cassava and plantains growing on his property. Deborah whipped the latter two items into a mashed-potato-type concoction that was quite tasty. She also cooked two types of pasta and a vegetable tomato sauce. Deelish.

Virtually all Fijians outside the cities seem to have some sort of garden, and many have domestic food animals also – particularly chickens and goats – but also ducks (as Deborah well knows), pigs and cattle (Semoko has five). But the Fijians are certainly great foragers as well. You often see them walking along the road with bags or bundles of bananas, papayas, pineapples, coconuts, various greens, cassava, dahlo (taro), plantains, or whatever else they’ve managed to harvest from the surrounding land. They also fish, of course, – sometimes with a spear gun – and some hunt wild boar, wild chickens, or even mongoose. (Semoko says mongoose tastes like chicken (naturally) but must be eaten hot or it smells funny). No, people don’t starve here. The abundance of foodstuffs growing all around plus the strong village culture are probably the reasons you don’t see any vagrants here on the island.

Of course, as I’ve mentioned previously, Semoko forages for his medicinal leaves as well, which Deborah has been diligently applying to that nasty boil on his back. She found a new use for feminine napkins also as they make terrific bandages for soaking up the puss from the wound. Semoko did take our advice and saw a doctor about his boil, and received some penicillin injections and antibiotic pills. I’m happy to report that his back is much improved.

Tomorrow we’re getting up before the crack of dawn to catch a ferry to the neighboring island of Taveuni, where we will stay two nights. Since we won’t be back until Thursday night, I probably won’t blog again until Friday.

Deborah Kills a Duck

Wednesday we returned to our frequent lunch spot The Sea View Café for duck curry, which is a special menu item. They offered it a few weeks ago also and Deborah enjoyed hers so much that a few days ago when she passed Dave, the friendly Indian proprietor, in the street she asked him when it would be offered again. He said he didn’t have any immediate plans to offer it, but a couple of hours later he tracked us down while we were picking up our laundry in town to tell us that duck curry would be on the menu for Wednesday. What this meant of course is that (a) we were obligated to have lunch at the café on Wednesday, (b) we would be ordering the duck curry, and (c) some unlucky duck would loose its life that same day as a direct result of Deborah’s craving.

Naturally, some poor creature must die whenever we eat meat, but there is seldom so direct a connection between us and our dinner as when it is killed specifically at our request. We don’t eat animal flesh that often, but when we do we eat mostly seafood and avoid eating factory farm animals – so common in the US – in favor of the organic, free range variety. But it is a safe bet that the duck we ate was running happily around in someone’s yard before Deborah personally gave it a death sentence. It may have even been one member of the flock of ducks we see most days toward the bottom of our road. It would have been interesting to count them before and after our lunch. The cook at the café came out of the kitchen to ask us how we liked the duck curry and to please let them know the next time we’d like to have it. But, as good as the lunch was, Deborah is not so sure she wants another execution on her conscience.

The Hidden Paradise Guest House and Sea View Cafe -

where ducks go to die

Religion

The missionaries descended on Fiji in the 1830s with an eye to convert the Fijians to Christianity, and were largely successful. That success was partly due to a strategy of converting chiefs, and partly due to the similarities between Christianity and existing beliefs of tabu (sacred prohibitions) and mana (spiritual power). One renowned exception was the Reverend Thomas Baker, a Methodist missionary in 1867 whose arrogance and cultural insensitivity led to his being eaten by his intended converts. Today 53% of Fijians are Christian, and a majority of those are Methodist. The Methodist church is quite powerful here, but there have lately been calls for greater separation of church and state.

Because of the large Indian population, who were brought here as indentured laborers in the late 1800s and early 1900s, 34% of Fijians are Hindu and 7% are Muslim. All the major religions have at least one national holiday including Easter, Christmas, Diwali Festival, and the Prophet Mohammed’s Birthday.

The churches are very basic buildings, or sometimes they just take up one floor in a commercial building, such as the one here in Savusavu which is above a Chinese restaurant. The most lively one is at the bottom of our road where the preacher uses a microphone and speaks with great fervor in Fijian, with frequent outbursts in English of “Praise God” and “Halleluiah” intermingled in his sermon. On Sunday mornings he can be heard from several blocks away. The Hindu temple just above town is easy to spot as it is painted very colorfully. I’m sure there is a mosque somewhere in town also, but it must be a modest one. In Labasa we saw a much more substantial one near Semoko’s village, and heard the regular calls to prayer over their loudspeaker. Religion can be really noisy.

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Stairs leading to the Hindu Temple

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The noisy church down the road from us

(God blew the roof off of this place in the recent cyclone)

All are welcome here (just on the other side of the security fence)

A Christian named Singh?

A muslim man (I presume)