The new location had me feeling quite safe – surrounded by the cover of mountains, sitting above the ravines, and relatively out of the bush. Normally Nakavika was a sunny, colorful paradise (forget the swarms of flies), but this week, it presented its difficulties by the bucket load.

Wash Them Hands!

The day following the most intense storm activity, Garrett and I took advantage of the sopping ambiance by focusing our project objectives on a theme involving lots and lots of wai (Fijian for water): hand-washing week. Starting off on day one, we created competitive games with slippery soap and scrubbing techniques while we all stood outside in the misty air. And since the village’s source of water was disconnected by torrential water power knocking out the pipes, we filled buckets from the dripping eaves to make the hand washing possible.

We noticed there wasn’t a pressing urge by anyone to wash their hands with soap after any dirty activity (other than slaughtering animals, thankfully), especially when the tap didn’t work. Garrett and I sometimes had to work all morning to figure out how to get water for our next lesson plan with the kids. Our efforts and sweat had to have made an impression on the observing few, and we exploited those moments as if they were the lessons themselves.

The disconnected pipe made showering into a labor intensive task. Feeling concerned about bathing clothed downstream of a wading horse, Abel took me to the water fall, my favorite little oasis, to at least rinse off. Normally, we would cross a land bridge, climb down a small wooded path, and reach the river bed that led to the waterfall. On this trip, post-cyclone, we had to weave around huge mounds of eroding jungle in the road, pull our flip-flops out of the sinking mud, and scramble down a bare wall of earth recently exposed by a landslide. The land bridge was no longer there, and the four culverts that formerly ushered through the water were no long in such good shape; two sat exposed, one smashed 20 feet away, and the last one unseen.

It had flown down the narrow, shallow stream and rocketed over the waterfall, shattering in massive pieces in a final resting place positioned far enough from the waterfall to show evidence of the intense water power. I was in awe. The water was frigid. I stood under a pounding froth on the stairstep rocks, sudsing up where yesterday a high-speed culvert would have pounded me senseless, turning my skull into shrapnel.

15 Year-old Balloons

The sun began peaking out the next day, giving us false hopes that the water would be fixed. Acting on a genius plan we concocted the day before, Garrett and I searched for a working faucet or method with which to fill up water balloons for the day’s lessons – all ideas failed. Thankfully the kids knew of a water source that could possibly do the trick: a PVC pipe positioned upstream of some pig pens. We took off down the road with forty balloons, a bucket, and three determined 5 year-olds.

It worked! The pressure near the foot of the pouring water was enough to fill the balloons – ones I had brought from home that wore the name of my dad’s old business. The last time they had a purpose was 15 years prior at a company golf outing. I couldn’t help but think of my age, geography, and how hilarious the shapes were of these morphing orbs – all of which reminded me of fertility statues.

And because their latex skins were so feeble, they popped dramatically almost as often as we succeeded in finishing one. Stacking them in the bucket wasn’t an option. We gave each child two balloons to carry with all the care and caution they could muster. I took off my sulu and made a hammock for ten of them, about five of which exploded like watery fireworks on the walk back. Of the six transported by the youngins, two remained, both surprisingly carried by the most haphazard and irresponsible boy.

Luring the kids in with our colorful toys, we soon had a class of many, all eager to compete in our balloon toss after listening to “The Wonders of Precious Water.” Parents and elders emerged from their homes to sit in the grass and heckle their offspring. The whole village engaged in our teachings and merriment.

Bats for Dinner

The rain returned again, leaving us stranded in our home without ample options. Garrett was getting stir-crazy and asked if he could accompany our host father, Weiss, to the next village where he was picking up Fane from her jaunt into town. The road through the highlands was still in horrible shape, so for those mothers and family members in need of supplies from town, they had to cross the naked Namando cavern on foot, walk five kilometers to Namuamua and take a long boat to Navua at the coast. Weiss thought Garrett couldn’t tackle the hike like a Fijian and encouraged him to stay, but Garrett couldn’t stand not exerting himself.

They ran off into the mist. I stayed to conduct a lesson on the alphabet and creativity on the floor of our home.

Three hours later, I heard the my kaivalangi partner calling from many from houses away. I rushed outside to see what dangled from the new branch he held: a bat. “Rabies!” was my first thought, but fruit bats in Fiji don’t suffer the same maladies as our infamous winged cretins. They had caught a Fijian dinnertime favorite, and while I pondered how to get out of gnawing fleshy wings that night, Weiss hung the bat from a power cord and let it hang out for a few more hours before sunset.

A word of advice for those visiting traditional Fiji, be careful walking into a home at night. Dangling shadows are most often not bags of laundry.

Would you eat bat? Any other comments on these approaches to teaching basic hygiene?

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Garrett and I, both equipped with our arsenal of cameras, sat atop propane tanks and cracker bins documenting the horizontal palm fronds. While everyone else was enclosed in woven bamboo walls, we found relative shelter under the awning of the billiard area, with a concrete floor and an opening behind us facing the belly of the beast. And with every hearty gust, my pigtail braids split over my shoulders and flopped in front of me, flanking my face. My all black gear coated with a thick layer of mist, I avoided touching my clothes in order to keep the rain from penetrating to my goose-bumped skin.

The boys ran back and forth through the storm, making sure cows were secure and homes wouldn’t fly away in the night. Adorning little kid ponchos and hard hats, they laughed with every exclamation of further duties they had to complete before the dangerous eye drew closer.

Garrett and I packed our bags of must-save items and asked for emergency plans, but there really weren’t any. “Get under the house if the roof blows away,” they would say with a chortle before running back into the gales.

Nothing Stops Tea Time

The one thing I love most about former British colonies is tea time, undoubtedly. It happens whether you’re in the midst of a funeral, a natural disaster, a blizzard at 17,000 feet, you name it. Though rain came spewing through the cracks in the walls, Fane was still able to strike a fire. Though the pipes weren’t connected because of the overflowing river, she filled the kettle with monster drops collected off the roof. Though homes were in danger of being thrust to the next mountaintop, Paul found it essential to have some coffee with his hot sugar water before tending to the rest of the unanchored bures.

We had no idea what to do but go along with the light-hearted merriment, sipping java and cracking jokes like the sun was smiling.

And after the jokes cracked the necks of two chickens, two victims of the wind too weak to stand firm in an unfortunate gust. One hand reached around the blue curtain (shielding one side of the porch) and flopped a hen, barely moving but obviously still alive, which was soon followed by her husband, uncle or brother, a rooster with the same malady. Slicing the tracheas with a knife, Weiss (our host father) made our dinner menu official. Abel and one of his hundreds of cousins plucked, chopped and cleaned the pimply bodies in the runoff from the tin roof, not without pretending to play the beaks like kazoos.

The Fijian language radio station spilled into the village air, apparently telling everyone that the heart of the storm was approaching at 7pm. All day long we watched waves of water in the sky, counting down to the moment the entire village would be leveled. 5 hours. 3 hours. 1 hour to go! The boys made it sound like we’d never see another sunny day in the South Pacific.

No Way Out

7pm was chirping, calm, and partially cloudy with a chance of absolutely no eye-o-storm. Everyone wanted to run a kilometer down the road to see the land bridge we crossed nine hours earlier. I picked up fallen mandarin oranges along the way to find there was no such bridge. Entire bamboo plants shot down the river, colliding with volcanic walls like hopeless bones snapping in a box crusher.

Landslides dotted the landscape, and the river was now twice as wide. Eroded trees squished into the road like an untucked belly. I couldn’t believe the amount of water that powered through the cavern at Namando. Had I zorbed down the rapids, the inflated ball would have exploded dramatically into bits as small as the muddy mist, and I would have been a goner. The pure power of the water in front of me was too scary to fully comprehend.

We returned to Fane’s house for our Mick Chicken dinner and show. I uploaded every video from the day and replayed them over and over for every new male that entered the room. When my laptop nearly self-combusted, we turned on the TV, and I fell asleep in the middle of a crowded room of boys watching a bootleg ninja movie. I anticipated an after-shock storm, some rumbles in the distance or a light rain. Not a peep resonated from nature that night.

The next morning Namando was visible, and the water was thirty feet lower. It was simply a marvel.

I couldn’t believe the power I witnessed: the power of the river and rain, the strength of Namando’s rock to not budge from the opposition, the muscle of the winds that made the sky dance with water, the bodies of the men who ran through the gusts to save a somersaulting piece of tin, the smiling cheeks of the residents who watched their kitchens and bathrooms fall apart, sometimes leaving behind the lone standing toilet.

I should have been worried and frozen in awe, but the scene in our house the previous night resembled more the Chuckles Comedy Club rather than a storm shelter. It was the perfect way to throw our caution to Mick’s billowing breaths and let nature take its course across Viti Levu. Why worry when its inevitable and you’ll most likely be okay? Why not enjoy it until you have a reason to fret? Was that front all just for us to not worry? I just can’t believe I laughed through my first hurricane.

See the video of our hurricane experience, Surviving Cyclone Mick, and please comment below your opinion of the village’s approach to this natural disaster.

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