Remembering Fiji Video

Since Fiji, not many days have passed that we have not thought fondly of our time on Vorovoro or of the friends we made there. We put together this recap video (which took over a year of interviews and actually sitting down to put it all together) to let the kids tell their memories.

Arriving in Fiji, an excerpt from Krista’s journal.

July 30, 2018.

I am still not even sure I’m ready for this. We’ve been in Australia for 2 weeks now but I don’t think I’ve fully left Fiji, in my heart. I think there will always be a part of me, and all of us, in Vorovoro. 

Let me try to capture our experience arriving in Fiji…

We boarded our plane in LAX late Thursday night for our long overnight flight. We flew on Fiji Airways and the crew of the plane were all Fijian, wearing a beautiful, colorful print on their uniform and the women wore exquisite flowers behind their ears. The pink and purple lights meant to mimic a sunset were low, and immediately there was a sense of the magic that awaited us in Fiji. There were 2 meals on the plane, movies and games on everyone’s individual screen, the kids all slept, I… attempted to sleep, and when we woke up it was Saturday morning in Fiji. Our 11 hour flight took us 33 hours into the future as we crossed the international dateline! Out the window there was lots of green and brown, there were mountains, palm trees, dirt roads, and there was ocean. When we stepped off the plane we were wrapped in the warm, fresh air. Not hot, or cold, humid or dry, just beautiful. Perfect. 

We cleared customs and went to look for breakfast… and found a Burger King. I’m ashamed to say that our first meal in Fiji was at a Burger King… but 4 hungry little bellies needed those hotcakes, and we had a few hours until our next flight would take us north to Labasa. We ate, the kids played on their devices, I napped on a comfy leather chair, and when the time finally came to board the small 40 seater propellor Fiji Link flight we walked out on the tarmac and climbed the stairs into our last plane of the journey to Vorovoro! 

Nadi, the international airport we first landed in, was a small airport in our experience. We were not in any way prepared for Labasa! Labasa… was a SMALL airport. The size of… our favorite local Mexican restaurant? A single room, open air little cinderblock building. We stepped into the crowded room, and were greeted with a Bula! (hello) from Mama Jenny, the director of Bridge The Gap program in Vorovoro, and our hostess for the week. Jenny is from Indianapolis and has partnered with the Mali tribe after she brought her family to Vorovoro 15 years ago and fell in love. Along with her was Wati, a Vorovoro local, and Jenny’s business partner in the BTG program. Everyone’s luggage arrives in a glorified wheelbarrow that is pushed into the building for everyone to fish through. Jenny and Wati gather our luggage with us and take us outside where they’ve got 2 taxis waiting for us. We split up and take off down the red dirt roads through 3rd world Fiji, where carseats are not a thought. The cab driver is Indian and explains how the Indians were brought to Fiji by the English in the mid 1800’s to farm sugar cane. They are still, to this day, not considered citizens, cannot own land, yet they make up roughly 50% of the population there. The driving was a little wild, but nothing that scared us too bad so it must not have been much crazier than mama’s Atlanta Mario-Kart driving. 

We pulled into a parking lot area behind a grocery store and I’m trying to take in what’s going on, but we get out, Mama Jenny pays the cabs, and we’re standing there surrounded by dirty old cars with people staring at us.

It’s starting to rain, there’s an old broken down boat with a tarp tied to it and women are selling fresh fish under it. The fish are bright colors; beautiful, really. A woman walks her crying child past me with a blanket over his head to protect him from the rain, but other than that nobody seems to even notice the rain.

Finn asks where he can use the bathroom and when I ask Mama Jenny she takes a deep breath and says, “…um, ok! Wati can take you.” So we follow Wati past the makeshift fish market, through a fence and across another parking lot into an open air market. People selling fruits and vegetables, many of which I didn’t recognize, but the colors and smells and the faces of the curious Fijians we walked past immediately captivated me. I was in love already. In the back of the market there was a ticket booth looking stall and Wati paid the attendant some small coins for us to be able to use the bathroom. There was no toilet paper, and no soap, and a rough looking cement basin to wash your hands in. I don’t know why I didn’t put together that Fiji was a third world country, probably because all I’d ever seen of Fiji was the postcard perfect tourist beaches. This was not tourist Fiji. This was every day, real life, third world Fiji. And I was all about it. I knew right there that we were going to have exactly the experience I was hoping for in choosing to come here! 

We got back from the bathroom break and the boys were climbing in a boat just 10 feet from the parking lot, down a short dirt path, littered with empty bottles and trash, parked next to a ramshackle fishing boat with several men sleeping or smoking under the tarp hanging from its window.

Our luggage was all loaded in and covered with a tarp and we are introduced to our captain, Api.

Api is quiet but gentle and he drives us away from the town, under low bridges that we almost have to duck under, and about half and hour out a river into the open sea to Vorovoro, our island home for the week.

I can’t stop smiling and waving at every little fishing boat we pass, at every person out the back of their house hanging up the wash. [And they all waved back.]

I am enamored.

I can’t believe what an amazing cultural experience it’s been already and we haven’t even gotten to Vorovoro!

We have to drive around to the ocean facing side of the island, and as we turn the last corner to the village side of the island a long sandy beach sprawls out the length of the bay formed by the gentle curve of the island. 2 girls bounce happily along the beach, waving a warm welcome, eagerly awaiting our arrival. We slowly motor our way up to shore, passing a woman out snorkeling around the bay who pops her head up to welcome us. Api tosses a rope to the girls and their dad and they pull the boat to shore. The kids jump out and that’s the last I see of them for a little while– they were so excited to find instant friends with Imogen “Immi” and Iona, from the UK, and Monte, Venianna, Leon and Joshua– the local kids.

A handful of people help us grab our bags and walk us to our vale– a beachfront, open air hut, that they had finished constructing just in time for our arrival! It had a bunk bed, 2 singles, and a king bed for Evan and I. It was simple and amazing and beautiful! 

We are introduced to Max, a fellow visitor to Vorovoro, just backpacking his way around Fiji a bit while waiting for his semester in northern Australia to start. To Gemma, the snorkeler who greeted us from the boat, Imogen and Iona’s mother, and Mike, her husband. They are a fellow Worldschooling family from the UK! They’ve been traveling full time for a year now, and were just the best kind of people. The very best. Cream of the earth type people. We’re introduced to Sibley, Clare and Sydney, Auburn students/grads who have been involved with Bridge the Gap and are back in Vorovoro preparing programming such as this first opportunity for families to visit the island since Bridge the Gap was founded. We’re introduced to Misi, the island chef, to Nemani, Mateo and Becky the rescued fruit bat.

Becky is a boy, but they didn’t discover that until after he was named.

Nemani takes us into the Grand Bure, the largest building in the center of the tiny village where guests to the island stay, and teaches us how to present a Sevusevu to the chief of the Mali tribe- or Tui Mali, as he is called. A Sevusevu is a gift of what looks like a bouquet of dried kava wrapped in newspaper that you present to the chief or the head of the village when you would like to ask permission to visit. Sevusevu means to open or start, so we are taught how Evan is to present the kava to Tui Mali in a very reverent, important ceremony that will take place shortly after our little course. We are given Sulus, floral printed fabric that we wrap like a bath towel around our waist whenever Tui Mali is around or for any special occasion.

We get a quick tour of the island as the sun began to set and the giant fruit bats began to come out. We learned of the compost toilets that we flush by dumping 2 coconuts full of wood shavings down the hole. The showers that you pull a bucket half full of water up on the pulley and hook a loop in the rope to hold it over your head while you rinse in the open air shower and clean with eco friendly shampoos in the trickle of cool rain water. The kitchen, the dining area, the different vales where everyone sleeps, all in a circle around the grand bure, and right on the water. It was so picturesque. So beautiful. So free.

A handpainted sign on repurposed wood nailed to a coconut tree read, “Vorovoro: Hard on the feet, soft on the heart.” Nobody wore shoes.

 Everyone wore their sulus to the Sevusevu ceremony, except 3 of the men who wore grass skirts, no shirts, coconut husks on their arms, and black paint smeared on their cheeks and foreheads. They brought the Tanoa, a large wooden bowl used to mix the kava drink in to the center of the hand woven mat, and placed it about 10 feet directly in front of Tui Mali. They sat around the bowl and mixed up some kava in a very ceremonial manner, washing the bowl with coconut husks, ringing the water out of the coconut husks, and we all sat with our legs crossed, silent. Our feet were never to face the chief. They served Tui Mali kava in a half coconut shell. Next they served the wingman, then Evan and I. You clap, or cobo (“thombo”), once to receive a cup of kava, and then three times after you’ve handed back the communal coconut shell cup. Evan crawled out in front of Tui Mali and laid the bouquet of dried kava before him and told him how grateful we were to be guests on his island, and sat back down on the right hand of Tui Mali. Tui Mali then spoke from his heart in Fijian of how grateful he was to have us and the sevusevu ceremony came to a close. From that moment we were officially family. We were one with the Mali people, with the visitors to the island, with Tui Mali and his family. Vorovoro was officially our island home, from then until forever. We are always welcome, and without a doubt, a piece of our hearts will always be in Vorovoro where 1+1=1. 

The last thing we did before putting the kids to bed and returning to the kava mat with the adults, was go to the beach with our Worldschooling friends and stand in complete awe at the greatest display of stars we’ve ever seen. On a tiny island out in the middle of the ocean, with no electricity for miles. And not only that, but we were now in the southern hemisphere so it’s a totally new set of stars! The big dipper was tipped on it’s side and we couldn’t even see the North star. We saw the southern cross, the Milky Way was extremely well defined, and the moon didn’t come up until much later in the night. It was just phenomenal. Pure magic. 

The kids welcomed sleep with open arms, as soon as they hit the pillow. They had a long day of travel, capped off with running wild on the beach, climbing trees and swinging in hammocks. 

A Fiji Moment: Levi gets sick.

What probably started as an episode of reflux (that happens every time he doesn’t eat enough for dinner)  ended up in dehydration and poor kid had a few sick days. One night he threw up in his bed, which you can imagine, is a terrible situation when you have a mosquito net tucked in around your mattress. We had a lovely mess to clean up at whatever time it was. All I knew was that I needed to rinse out a towel, and lucky for us the ocean was just a few steps away. I stumbled out to the beach in the dark. Walking in sand is hard enough, but I was so tired and jet lagged that I was struggling in a serious way to walk without toppling over. The contacts I fell asleep in were sticking to my eyelids making it very difficult to see and I wasn’t familiar enough with my path to know what I might step on.

I was glad everyone was asleep for that performance.

When I got to the water I opened up the towel and tossed it over the gentle waves when suddenly a burst of light and color shot from the outline of the towel! Mostly green, and some blue bioluminescence! My jaw just dropped, and I had to check myself to make sure this wasn’t some crazy dream! I pulled the towel up out of the water and the towel was covered in them too! I dipped it in and out a few times and as the colors seemed to fade away I looked up and noticed for the first time that the moon was up! The moon, I was told, doesn’t come up until like 2 am there but it sat right above sunset peak, and for a moment I sat in complete awe of the scene. The stars were bright. The moon was stunning and the reflection of a bright white crescent, rippling with the gentle night waves below, was maybe even better. It was honestly one of the most serene, beautiful sights I saw the whole week in Fiji. I wish I could have a picture to remember that incredible scene. I regret not sitting with it a little while longer. If I could go back I would have whispered to myself,

Don’t go.

Sit.

Stay.

Soak this in.

One thing’s for sure… it was and likely forever will be, by far, my best experience cleaning puke in the middle of the night! 

Why I love Vorovoro island, Fiji

Vorovoro is the absolute best. I had an amazing experience there, playing with friends, snorkeling, drinking fresh coconut water, and helping out in lots of ways. One of the best things about Vorovoro for me was playing almost all day every day with all of the other kids there. Leon, Princess, Vinnie, and Joshua live there, but I also played with two girls from England named Immy and Iona, and they were really fun to play with too. I learned lots of Fijian while I was there. Bula sia, hello,  and vinaka, thank you, are 2 of the words you use the most. If you can’t or don’t want to speak the language, you can speak English, the other language everybody there speaks.

Your house will be right on the beach, so you can wake up and go out and play in the sand or swim in the water. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were sooo yummy. Gooey oatmeal, gourmet fried rice to die for, and delicious fish that you just can’t get enough of! Oh, and the sunsets there are beautiful! If you climb up one of the mountains there, Sunset Peak, you will never see a better display of the sun going down, and  it’s just a short hike. You can go around the whole island in about 3 hours and see the neighboring island, the mainland, and some other islands in the distance.

They have a pet fruit bat there named Becky, and he’s the cutest most adorable bat you’ll ever see. He used to not be able to fly, because a long time ago (2-3 years), he was attacked by an eagle. In August, after we left, I heard that he managed to fly again. There is also a small family of kittens there, if you know where to look. I took a snorkeling trip out to a coral reef that was so amazing that it would rival the Great Barrier Reef. I know because I’ve been there, too. I celebrated my 11th birthday on Vorovoro with cake and ice cream! There is a volleyball court there, and Mateo, also known as Potato, Mici, and Nemani will all challenge you to a match that is definitely worth watching or playing.

I love Vorovoro, and I hope to go back sometime. I made so many memories there, and I hope all other visitors do too

T Mullins. Age 11

Touristing in Fiji, Heading Down Under

Though one of our goals is to not tourist, our flights went through Suva and Nadi, and gave us a lot of time to kill in each city. We had about 8 hours in Suva and 23 hours in Nadi! We did not want to hang out in the airports all day for two days so we went out to see what we could find.

After landing in Suva and taking a break to recharge phones and look up what we could do in our window of time and playing card games to corral the kids, we went out to see what there was to see. We hired a taxi van because a family of 6 can’t fit in anything smaller. We had looked up a couple things, and rather than go to the touristy markets, we went to a rainforest park. There was a little hike down to the river with a waterfall and a swimming hole. It was awesome! Not only a swimming hole but a rope to swing off the top of the falls and drop into the water hole at the bottom. We tried our hand and enjoyed the swing, but also enjoyed watching some locals doing incredible flips and tricks. There were a couple of friends that were olympic material. One would swing out and swing back and pick up the friend and swing together, then they’d jump off while pushing off each other and spiral twist back flips all the way down into the hole! Another guy climbed the tree, up above the rope knot and just jump into the water, it had to be 50-70 feet tall! We really enjoyed the cool water and playing in the creek above the falls. It was a great break between airplane flights, it was nice to see another part of Fiji as well. Talking with our taxi driver was humbling as well. His small wages and the house he pointed out and the nicer if hours he drives. 60+ hours per week and earning the equivalent of $20 a day. We got back to the airport when we wanted to, but I’m reality we had a couple hours to spare. It took all of 10 minutes to get through security and check in for the flight, so we played cards for a couple hours and made friends with the security and airport staff.

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Heading to the airport all smiles after a week at Vorovoro – though we were quite sad to leave.
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Our Taxi around town in Suva
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The view as we drove around town
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Colo-i-suva National Forest Park
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The swimming hole
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Swinging in. Likely the most graceful dive ever…
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Playing cards and visiting with airport security

We arrived in Nadi and headed to the hotel we had booked. We’d heard and read that it was very family friendly, and it was. But it also felt a bit fake to me. After being in Vorovoro and seeing real Fiji life, the ironed shirts and matching sulus, drinks delivered on platters by smiling but silent servers felt detached. It felt like a production or presentation at Disney world. Don’t get me wrong, Disney world has its place, but it’s certainly not a place where you get an authentic experience with real people and real culture. It’s all pretend, and that’s the point there… Disney isn’t real. It was great to have a pool and to relax most of the day in it and reconnect with friends and family. It was also an awkward and stark difference after the cultural experience on the island. Having Fijians serving us and drive us around when we didn’t know them or share kava or live with them was hard. It felt like a sterilization to placate the wealthy tourist who doesn’t want to be aware of the culture or the people, who doesn’t want authenticity, who is not comfortable with seeing the economic divide in their face. Fiji is a beautiful country though, I hope people learn too that Fiji is a beautiful people as well.

Not being good at touristing, making friends with taxi drivers and security officers and not wanting to be served drinks on platters as we sit by the pool is a sign that we are doing something right, right? Maybe we were just missing our new island family.

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He was so excited to finally see our matching luggage on the belt (he’s been asking about this since we left home but it’s somehow the first time it’s happened (from carry-on only to no belts in the tiny Fiji airports)
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Taking a hotel pool break after the traveling and 2 days of short flights
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Catching up on Pokemon catching

We did have a little scare at Nadi airport checking in to head to Australia. All our boarding passes printed fine at the kiosk but one kept giving an error, so we had to go to the counter to figure that out. It turned out that even though our electronic visa application had been approved, it had since changed! One of our six visas to get into Australia was revoked… How exciting! Then they said it was only because the birthdate was wrong on the application compared to the passport. So, we had to reapply before we would be allowed to enter the country. This significantly added to the stress of the day. (After spending hours at the airport and not seeing any of our last 4 flights in Fiji board until flight time, we didn’t feel pressed for time, so we were a bit later than the recommended 2 hours for international flights.) Reapply for a visa to entry the country which you are currently about to board a flight for, no big deal. Luckily Australia has a fast and electronic application process, so they let me use their computer to get on and reapply really fast, and it actually worked! I just had to correctly enter the birthday and pay another application fee (luckily it’s only $20 Australian). My best guess, since I honestly do a decent job remembering my kids birthdays, is that I entered the date American-style (month, day) whereas it’s required to enter in like-literally-the-rest-of-the-world-style (day, month). Luckily they approved us with enough time to run to the gate and board the flight! If it hadn’t worked, we had already decided to leave 1 kid behind, I’ll let you think on who it was… (feel free to guess in the comments!)

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Thank goodness for a near instant electronic visa application!
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The sprawling city lights of Melbourne were quite a shock to take in after spending a week with barely any electricity!
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The winter temperature was more of a shock when we stepped outside. We were freezing at midnight and had to wait an hour for a taxi that was big enough for the whole family. We should have just taken two, but we weren’t thinking clearly.

Embracing the Fiji Way

In Fiji, as in all our travels, our goal is to really get to know the local culture rather than just visit as a tourist. Bridge the Gap shares this same vision and it was very welcoming to be able to participate with real people in a real village. We made friends, learned about their traditions, and respectfully followed these traditions as guests. No natives were serving us drinks on platters or other resort/Disney-inspired representations of their culture. We were there and worked alongside them to prepare meals, wear their traditional clothing, and learn their phrases. We were able to help in a couple of construction projects, learn about the medicinal uses of the plants, fish with them, and more. We also laughed a lot with them, played games and volleyball, and spent many hours on the kava mat.

Kava

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Crushing the kava root. Inside the steel cup is the root, and we’re pounding it with a steel pipe (used to be a car axle). You lift it and pound it down onto the root repeatedly.
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Here’s the kava mat in the Grand Buré. The Tanoa between the guards with the kava being mixed. The chief is just to the left at the head of the mat.
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Here is the Tanoa and the drinking/mixing bowls/cups. The cloth is used as a strainer to get anything that hasn’t dissolved into the drink as they mix the crushed powder. There is a certain ceremonial way to do all of this too.

As I mentioned before, in Fiji we spend a lot of time on the Kava mat. The time is well used to visit and join in music together. There are a lot of traditions and rituals surrounding Kava.

Sevusevu

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Here’s the helpful sign we have to guide newcomers in what to do during a sevusevu ceremony.

Music

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We played music with kava most nights on the guitar and uke. They had a spoon and a string they’d wind around the neck of the guitar to act as a capo.

Church

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Since there was no church on Vorovoro, Tui Mali usually goes to church in one of the other villages over which he is chief. We rode boats to church.
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Saying goodbye to new friends after church.
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Special meals we all ate together, this was our Sunday Dinner and it was amazing!

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School

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The school of Lengalevu
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The students introduced themselves to their visitors.

Projects

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Building a shed for storing the wood chips.
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Taking the building down from the top down.
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Lovo

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Preparing food for the Lovo
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Snapping beans
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Opening the underground oven up after everything has cooked

And More

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Mateo (or affectionately called Potato by the kids) the undisputed coconut king
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We got up early to watch some of the World Cup in Tui Mali’s home!
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Composting toilet
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Composting Bins

Island Time

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Saying goodbye to our Fiji family

1+1=1

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We hope to return soon!

Fiji Water Fun

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Living on an island for a week certainly included lots of time with the water and sand. Even getting there was a water adventure since we had to take a boat to get there, no roads! We were able to swim anytime since we slept literally 10 steps from the sand.  The waves were pretty calm since the reef breaks most of the big waves further out. Watching the tide change was interesting, it was a very big difference in seeing the coral bottom all uncovered vs the waves coming right up to our hammocks. There was snorkeling equipment available to borrow and we were able go out multiple times. We even went out to a reef one day to snorkel that had much clearer water and more aquatic life! We did some fishing too. I will have to do better next time at catching more fish, but I at least caught one. I didn’t learn to spearfish, but that’s more my fault. I should have gone out with Api to harpoon some fish or set some traps/nets. He did this multiple times and he was really really good at it!

Beach

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Holding a jellie
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The bowl was commandeered from the kitchen to serve as the crab aquarium
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Sea snake! Check out his fin-shaped tail.
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Taking it all in
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Coral and shell collecting
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Found lobster head (or something)
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Racing the boat along the beach
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Brand new birds we found in their nest

It was amazing to spend so much time on the beach. It was all ours too, there is even a place on the island called secret beach. It’s not that secret, just around the bend. But a great little walk and we found a lot of wildlife. Plenty of hermit crabs, but also baby birds, sea snakes, eels, fish, lobster, jellyfish, crabs, starfish, coral, etc. The kids had so much fun catching all the creepers they could: hermit crabs, and sand crabs mainly. Don’t worry, no coconut crabs. They did this for days on end! We also swam in the water, and it was sweet relief. While it was winter in Fiji and the locals were wearing jackets and were actually cold, we were still pretty warm. It was probably 70-80’s during the day and pretty humid. Mid-afternoon was usually a couple of hours of oppressive feeling heat, but the water was a good remedy. Walking along one day I lifted a leaf and in under it was a pile of hermit crabs, I started my camera in time to see some of them scatter

Fishing

We were able to go out night fishing and it was great fun. Besides the fact that 2 of the boys fell asleep on the boat because it was, well, night. They had played all day in the sun though, and one was actually feeling pretty ill (dehydrated). The way to go night fishing in Fiji though involves a hook on a line wrapped around a plastic bottle. Any bottle will do, you use it as your reel and manually turn the bottle to let the line out or pull it in. Casting is as simple as throwing the bait on your hook out. If you’re fancy you can even swing it around your head and launch it, we tried and might have ended up hitting each other in the heads with our bait once or twice. And then you wait in the dark and feel the line between your fingers until you feel a nibble. Api was the best to be with on the boat, he would basically talk the fish onto his line! Really, he’d say, “Here fishy fishy fishy, just the big ones!” and minutes later he’d pull one up. He spent most of his time untangling lines and cutting bait for everyone else, but he still caught 6 times more fish than the rest of the boat combined! 6 to 1. I caught the other fish, and it felt nice, but he was too small for anything other than cutting up for more bait. We had to watch out while fishing because the hooks were getting stuck regularly on coral and things at the bottom. Our Swedish friend Max actually caught some coral rock!

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Api caught bait earlier that day
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The most colorful bait
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Scraping the scales off the bait
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holding our fishing rods and waiting
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Max with his catch
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They gave up and had to rest
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My little catch still on the coke bottle line
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Yum

Snorkel

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Snorkeling was great and we saw numerous fish. I won’t even try to name the kinds we saw (mostly because I don’t even know), but I can say we saw lots, including swarms of jellyfish, and a few sharks, plenty of coral, bright blue fish, and some clown fish even. Thinking of all the varieties of life and considering the size of the ocean really puts our own size into perspective. We’re just small creatures too, finding our place in it all. There are so many fish in the ocean, and so much sand on the beach. It’s so great to be in it, and connect with it, and just take it in. Along those same lines, is another part of Fiji that I absolutely loved, the stars!

Stargazing

Being on a remote island with the only “civilization” light from town to our back over the jungle peaks, we saw more stars than I can ever remember seeing. We could sit at the beach and see billions of stars! I didn’t count them, but my kids told me there were that many. We could see the milk in the Milky Way! You’ll have to take our word for it, because the photos never turned out. The best was when there was no moon because then we could see so many more stars. One night though we were out looking at the stars and could see Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn all lined up across the sky along with the moon. It was magical. It continually made us think of simpler times when all people on Earth shared the stars and formed their own belief systems about what the stars meant and their personal, yet small place in the cosmos.

I wish I took this … Photo by Felix Mittermeier on Pexels.com
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Off the grid in Vorovoro, Fiji

Our time in Fiji was amazing! We were on a small island that is a couple kilometers square and stayed for 8 days. It’s just north of Labasa, on Vanua Levu. We Flew to Labasa, took a taxi to the coast, and then a boat (like a little motor boat) to Vorovoro. We stayed in a vale (hut) with 6 beds so we all had space. Our vale was steps from the beach on the edge of the village. We had compost toilets, bucket powered showers we filled with collected rainwater, solar powered charging stations and communal meals with everyone (courtesy of Misi) and kava on the grog mat every night. We went snorkeling and fishing and played volleyball and swam at the beach and enjoyed the company of the Fijians and the wildlife. They had an injured pet fruit bat (Becky) in the kitchen hut where we could pet and take care of him. There were chickens wandering the island with baby chicks. A guitar and ukulele in the grand bure. Plenty of hammocks around the fire ring and along the beach. We enjoyed walking along the beach and finding hermit crabs and shells, walking into the water and looking at the coral and fish and even snorkeling right off the beach and finding more. Mat weaving Fiji style, visiting the primary school on neighboring island Mali in the village of Lingalevu,

We went one day out to a reef and saw loads more fish and beautiful coral and even sharks!

The food

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Fiji was colonized by the British, and to farm sugar cane they brought over a large population from India who knew the crop already (and they had also colonized). There is still a large Indian population in the area, and they have greatly influenced the cuisine. They eat curries and rice all the time on Fiji, but they have their own treatment with local vegetables, we mostly had fish curry and chutney. It was delicious, and not usually as spicy as the Indian food I’m used to, but it was still really good. We ate coconut, fish, chicken, fish, rice, curry, chutney, pancakes (which were more like scones or donuts), bananas , oatmeal/porridge.

The Language

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  • Tui Mali – the chief of the Mali tribe.
  • Bula – Hi (literally it means life or health)
  • Bula Sia – The local way to say it on Vorovoro and the surrounding area of Labasa.
  • Vinaka – Thank you
  • Yadra – Good morning
  • Kerekere – Please
  • Tulou – Excuse me
  • Moce – Goodbye (pronounced Mo-they)
  • Sulu – The traditional skirt everyone wears.
  • Kava – The traditional drink of Fiji. Also called Grog.
  • Tanoa – The traditional bowl where kava is mixed.
  • Sevusevu – Ceremony when you arrive at a village. You bring kava root and present it to the chief.
  • Cobo – (Thombo) the deep handed clap you do on the kava mat
  • Oh ya – What men say as they approach a home.
  • Manavanduuu – What women say as they approach a home. They say this right after the men would say Oh ya. It’s kinda sung and trails off at the end like an echo.
  • Bongi – What everyone says at night as you first approach a home or kava mat.
  • Dondo – When on the kava mat, men sit cross legged, and women sit with both legs to the side on the knees. Sitting there for hours and visiting is great, but your legs get very tired, so the chief can call a rest by saying ‘dondo‘. We had a good joke going around the village that we needed a ‘full body dondo’
  • Kerekere vaka cangu – What you’d say on the grog mat when you’re ready to go to bed (not sure the exact spelling or meaning, but basically means, can I please go to bed?’ you ask the chief after you get everyone’s attention by cobo-ing three times, and he will say ‘Vinaka‘)
  • Lovo – The underground oven meal/feast. Super heat rocks in a fire and place them in a hole covered with food to cook. Including fish, chicken and veggies and then you cover with banana leaves and then dirt to keep the heat it and let it cook for about an hour and a half. The fun part is digging it up without burning your hands too bad!

Kava

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Kava deserves it’s own section here. Every evening after dinner will be a time everyone comes together in the big pavilion called the grand buré. Kava is a root, which they will pound into a powder and then mix with water to make a drink. Kava doesn’t necessarily taste good, but it’s not that bad either. It makes your tongue and mouth go a bit numb and tingly at first. They say it relaxes you and that once you’ve had it daily for a few weeks you can get drunk off it, though there is no alcohol content. I don’t remember the word in Fiji, but it sounds like “lambchop” in english and someone once confused the two, so now they just say that. Not like a crazy drunk or a sloppy drunk, but a mild mumbly laughing drunk. We never felt anything other than a tingling in our mouth though. But it’s not just a cup or two, they will sit for hours and hours on the mats, basically from dinner until bed, all night even sometimes. They combine the crushed kava root (they just use stones or metal or anything hard to pound the root) with water into the tanoa. Then they use a coconut shell as a cup and dish it out for everyone one at a time. They will pass the cup from person to person, and to receive it you cobo once, and after you drink you pass the cup back and cobo three times. There are kava guards that sit next to the tanoa and pass it around to people and keep the kava stirred and mixed. They will pass to everyone there and then take a break until the chief calls for another round usually 5-10 minutes later. There is a special kava ceremony when you arrive in a village called a Sevusevu, where the visitor presents the chief with a wrapped kava root and states the intention of the visit, then they are received by the chief as family (literally one of their own) and he will speak for the land and the ancestors in welcoming you to the land. There is also another similar ceremony when you leave , we were able to participate in a couple and see a few more of these types of ceremonies and it was nice to learn the rhythm of it all.

Off the Grid

We were off the grid because we did not get cell service where we were, and there was not much electricity anyways. There is a charge station for phones and things, but half our stay the solar panels or batteries did not work, so we were always trying to conserve our charge. IT was really nice to not be connected to things like Facebook and instagram, though some of you worried about us going dark. We did find after a couple days that there is a peak you can hike to that we did get signal on, so we would go and post photos and send messages to let everyone know we were still alive.

Bridge The Gap

As we mentioned earlier, we were on Vorovoro as guests through an organization called Bridge the Gap. They are in partnership with the chief and other tribal leaders to help the people live sustainably and adjust to the local challenges of climate change. Read more about their mission on their site. It was a great cultural experience to learn about the traditional of Fiji and get to know the people.

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We’ll have a few more posts about our time in Fiji, so stay tuned! In the meantime, here are some more photos:

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The Jump

While having a blast at the reunion, we were also busy getting our final packing finished and the last purge. We had a few things to finally let go of, like our pillows and other random things, like our minivan…

We luckily found a great buyer who was in need of upgrading their vanimal and they dropped us off at the airport!

It was quite a strange feeling having just sold our last vehicle and jettisoned anything that wouldn’t fit in our suitcases and backpacks and to step onto an airplane! Very freeing, but also quite anxious. There were second thoughts and moments of panic, but we reassured ourselves that we’d done the planning and preparations and now was time to jump!

It was also very freeing to let go of everything society says we should have and accumulate and work hard to keep. We no longer are living the “American Dream” of owning our own house (and paying the bank dearly for it in interest and insurance). A yard to call our own to play ball with the kids, our own kitchen, and growing some veggies or spices. We do value that and are still interested in that, we just have a different dream right now. We want to travel light and experience different cultures and places, we want to go not as tourists, but as travelers and learn from the experience. We also want to learn to detach from the things and stuff of our commercial consumer culture. We want to JUMP! You can too!

Our first jump is to fly from SLC to LA to Nadi, Fiji to Labasa, Fiji, then a taxi to the docks and a boat to Vorovoro for a week of culture experience living sustainably with a Fiji village. More on that to come. The fun part was crossing the date line, in that we left LA on a Thursday night, and arrived in Fiji Saturday morning, yet only 12 hours later. So we jumped into the future too!

Preparing for Fiji

Through a worldschooling group on facebook, we stumbled on a family service trip/cultural immersion experience in Fiji. This was exactly what we were thinking of doing with our world nomad travels! But, getting to Fiji looked very expensive. 

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That’s a benefit of a round the world (RTW) mindset. We’re looking at one way trips and connecting them along the way with our housesits and other destinations. Since we’re not getting round trip tickets, we could treat Fiji as a stepping stone to the Pacific/Oceania region. We had Australia and New Zealand pretty high on our list so we thought we’d apply for house sits in those areas and make it happen. Soon after we were confirming a number of sits in the region! This also helped us decide on an international nomad adventure rather than going the overland/RV route. What better way to kick off a RTW tour than by visiting with a local Fijian tribe and living with them in a coop and help them but also be immersed in their culture.

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The organization works to help a remote island of Fiji (because Fiji isn’t remote enough). We’ll first fly to Nadi, on the west coast of Viti Levu (the biggest island of Fiji), which is the international airport in Fiji. Then we take a domestic flight to Labasa, the town on the north side of Vanua Levu (the second largest island of Fiji). Then we take a ferry out to the tiny island of Vorovoro. Look just north of Labasa, and you’ll see Mali Island. Vorovoro is an even tinier island off the coast of Mali, it’s not on this map but you can find it here.

Vorovoro is inhabited by the Mali tribe, which also has villages on other nearby islands. It is also the home of the tribe chief, Tui Mali and the cultural center. First the island was the location for a tourism community project which featured on the BBC Documentary called Paradise or Bust run by Tribewanted. After that, they partnered with a company called Bridge the Gap and Auburn University to assist the community with sustainable community development.

Bridge the Gap partners with Vorovoro in the planning and execution of Vorovoro’s community development goals and to bolster Vororovo’s global outreach opportunities while maintaining the integrity of the tribe’s rich cultural heritage and working to protect the local natural environment. The partnership uses a multipronged approach for reaching these development goals. This approach includes business mentorship programs, sustainable agricultural training, infrastructure support, and networking with various international organizations. (thanks Wikipedia)

We’ll be involved in building a kindergarten classroom for the local village school this summer and also joining the tribe for ceremonies and meals and other cultural activities like basket weaving, fishing (I hope to catch a fish with a spear), snorkeling, hiking and hammocking and more. We’ll stay in a hut by the beach as a family and eat (and learn to cook) local meals.

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So we’ll basically be living in Moana’s village, with a healthy portion of Given. At least that’s what the kids think and I hope they’re not wrong. If you want to learn more about those who started the Bridge the Gap organization here’s an interesting interview to read. Stay tuned for our updates, we fly in 1 week!