When the Rains Came

It rained & consequently the critters that live outside don’t like this. So, they decide to seek refuge in my house.

Last night my house became Noah’s ark. As I was eating dinner I had an itch on my ankle, it turned out a little gecko had decided to take a rest on my foot. Woooow…fling! Get off of me! Later, I was getting out of the shower and because my bathroom is so tiny I have to dry off with the door open. In my nakedness & blindness because I had no glasses on, I saw 2 blurred living creatures scurry across my living room. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shiiiiiit!!! What do I do??!! I through on a sulu & went to my landlord’s house directly attached to the front of mine. I yelled for the young boy to come help me. I told him I saw two rats run across my living room & then into my bedroom & I needed help getting them out. So he, only being 11, is also afraid of rats. Never-the-less, he comes along with his 10 year old sister and their Japanese foreign exchange student, each armed with a yard stick, broom and rake.

We look all over the house & the rats are gone. I suspected they were just in hiding, but we shook boxes and pulled out luggage and there was no sign. My hunters leave and I sit back down and who shows up into Noah’s ark but a frog in my kitchen!! Ahhhhhh! They don’t scare me as much, but they jump and are fast. This one, in my attempt to exterminate, goes into a cabinet & behind my gas cooking cylinder. I yet again call for my SWAT team to come help. I call for the boy & he very seriously says “This time we come in full force!” All three come armed with their weaponry of animalistic destruction & we go to work in my kitchen. Then out of the corner of my peripheral vision….I see a rat run across my bedroom floor and into a small hole in the corner of the room. We all run in & I grab roach poison & spray it in the whole & then shove newspaper in to block it. Then I see the other rat run out & into the kitchen. The Japanese man takes the rake & traps it in the tongs while the boy tries to kill it with the broom. I’m screaming, the boy is swearing and the Japanese man is yelling in broken English, “Oh sheeet, I got the srat!!” The rat does not die, but runs out & the Japanese man hits it like a hockey puck out the open front door. Whew!!

Now back to the medock (frog). He is in the same spot deep within the cabinet. We, I should say the young boy, uses the yard stick to scare it out, opens the back door & out it jumps.

Okay, can I let my adrenaline dissipate now?? Everyone had such a fun time navigating the little creatures. The kids kept saying “This is such an adventure!” as they ran around with a broom and my headlamp on their heads.

I wish I had taken a picture of all three of them with their artillery in my teeny kitchen trying to look for the rats. It was awesome and hilarious!

That same night as I lay in bed there was a bujan or Indian prayer celebration at a neighbor’s house. They play drums and percussion and chant the name of whichever Lord they are devoting their time. After, they have prasad, a small plate of blessed food, mostly fruit and sweets. I’ve been to several of these events and actually enjoy them. You can hear bujans going on almost every night. So tonight there is lively bujan going on a few houses away and at my landlord’s house…… he is playing the guitar and singing We are the World into a microphone with his family. Occasionally, he would miss or a chord or sing off key & they would stop & start over. What the hell is happening??!! Where am I? Is this the Twilight Zone?? I texted a friend this scenario and her reply……...Yes. Yes it is. Welcome.

So tonight, again it rained. As I was cooking dinner (eggplant & roasted tomatoes with garlic and chilies over rice pasta), I saw a little rat run across the kitchen drawers & heard that little F-er in my silverware drawer. I screamed & jumped when I saw it & my body produced probably the last little bit of adrenaline it has left from my already over-exhausted adrenals. I kicked a few cabinets & made some noise hoping it would be scared back outside and I never saw it again.

Then, while I was eating dinner, a HUGE flying cockroach went from ground to wall!! Ahhhhhh!! I truly don’t know which are worse, rats or cockroaches. Those winding little antennae just gross me out, eeeeeeuuuhhhhh. I got up from dinner & grabbed my tennis shoe, chased it around my living room & eventually was victorious in the crunching of carapace.

I sat back down in front of my meal, thoroughly repulsed, but starving, so once again the word “de-tach” becomes my mantra and living life prevails.

When the new becomes familiar

We had 2 arduous weeks of mandatory Peace Corps training, part of which involved a self designed workshop. Myself and 6 other volunteers had 2.5 days to put together a 2 hour presentation on stigma and discrimination against AIDS/HIV and mental health patients in the work place. We presented to a group of 45 young nursing students. We put together a power point, did roles plays and several group activities. The students were so eager and engaged and it was very fulfilling for us to know that we were making a difference in these young impressionable minds.

I stayed in Suva with another volunteer that had an oven……Haaaaa-lle-lu-jah!! I made roasted chicken with ratatouille the first night and the second night, I made a variation of my grandma's sweet potatoes and apples. They don’t have sweet potatoes here they have kumala-a little starchier and not quite as sweet, but still mimics well. You slice the sweet potatoes and apples into thin discs and then alternately layer them. Between each layer you sprinkle a bit of sugar, cinnamon and a few dabs of butter. Add a bit of water, cover and bake for 1 hour on 350ish until everything has melted into each other and you lose your mind in comfort food bliss. Not having an oven bums me out, but there are worse things in life not to have....let’s say a limb for example.....I've got all those so there’s nothing to really complain about.

After training I headed home to Lautoka. This was the first time I had taken this winding hilly trip back at night & I had my head hanging out the window like a dog, smelling the thick damp air, so salty and fresh. The silhouetted palms acted like pillars along the road and I watched the stars move as the cab traveled at galactic speeds while listening to the perfect randomly selected playlist as my ipod shuffled.

Back at home mission #1 was move to my new place!! It’s been a long time in the works and took 2.5 months (were on Fiji time folks) to finally get everything together. It’s a small self-contained flat attached to a house at the front. My landlord, his wife and 2 kids, 12 and 13 live there. They are a very friendly Indian family and I can tell *LOVE* having an American living in their rental. It is a 20 minute walk into town or a 15 minute bus ride and is a 15 minute walk to the nearest volunteer. The compound is safe and has a gate all the way around with barbed wire on top of that, as most houses do in the cities here. I think the best way to describe my house would be 1970’s Los Angeles ghetto, accompanied by hundreds of tiny little ants and complete with cockroaches. I was sitting at the table and a stealth bomber sized cockroach scurried across the floor; I squished it straight away with my flip flop & proceeded to freak out at the horrific nature of it all.

My house itself is very small. One bedroom, a moderate size living room that has been broken into 2 rooms by a useless partition wall, a very tiny kitchen and a small bathroom with a toilet, sink and broom closet sized shower. I have running water most of the day, but only cold and have electricity all of the time. I have no refrigerator which really sucks, because it means more trips to the market and cooking every meal from scratch. I hope to acquire a mini-fridge in the next few weeks. However, I do have a 2 burner gas stove top (think glorified camping stove) which rrrrrocks! Previously all I had was 1 electric skillet. Now I can whip up all kinds of deliciousness.

I had to buy everything for my house as all that was in it was a bed, table and 1 lone chair. Pots, silverware, dishes, buckets, cleaning agents (more on that later), etc. This place has been vacant for at least 3 months & I don’t know how long the previous tenant lived here but oh my lord it is filthy. Buckets and buckets of filth. I went through an entire bottle of disinfecting cleaning soap in 1 day. I’m talking the kind of filth where you need to wash walls, grimy light switches and the underneath side of shelves. I think most people would say that joining the Peace Corps takes courage and I know that going through a divorce took a lot of courage but really, cleaning my new bathroom took even more. Layers and layers of someone else’s funk.....I literally had to mentally prepare myself for this task. I was on hands and knees like Cinderella scrubbing walls, floors, every square inch I could reach. After getting stoned on bleach fumes and working up a sweat for nearly two hours, I finished. I contemplated burning the clothes I wore while cleaning that room.

For the first time in my life I am living alone, something I have wanted to experience for a long time. I have inexhaustible lists of things I would like to do to this place including setting up a yoga room and planting a garden....I’ve got 2 years why not. I’m getting used to all of the new sounds of my new environment; the cacophony of birds in the mango tree next to my bedroom window, the cat meowing outside and as I sit and write this there is a group of Indians a few houses away banging on drums, shaking tambourines and chanting loudly in honor of this week’s special puja (prayer).

I went for a walk the other day in the early evening sun. There were only a few people taking walks just before dinner and the street traffic was quiet. Even though I had never walked down that stretch of street in my new neighborhood, there was a comforting familiarity. The trees, bushes and the cement or corrugated tin houses look the same all over Fiji. I realized, I finally experienced the comfort of the familiar in Fiji. Everything didn’t look and feel so new. For the first time, it felt like home and not just an extended stay.