My first night in Tagaqe (7/12)

We didn’t arrive to the village until 8:00 pm. Dammit. Zach was fartin’ around all day showing Mukesh how to make squid paste with or without activated chemicals and feeding it to unsuspecting fish. Fish: “Oooh! Look squid paste. My favorite! *chomp chomp… SPIT* Eck! What the hell is this crap?” Zach & Mukesh: “Okay, so that algae seems to be chemically deterrent. Let’s test the next one.” And the cycle continues.

It gets dark here at 6pm. I mean really dark. The dark like you imagine nothingness to be. It was even worse since there was no moon on Monday night. Anyway, we caught a cab and after an hour and a half made it to the village. Ratu Jim (chief Jim) whose name is actually Timocy (pronounced “Timothy) – how Jim is short for Timothy, I don’t know – wasn’t there. His wife gave us the key to the lodge we’re using, and some tea and sugar… and mumbled something incoherently about someone not paying their power bill. Anyway, we had the taxi driver drop us of a mile down the road at the lodge. Once arriving, we discovered there was no power. Shit. It was pitch black… like the movie with Vin Diesel as Riddick. Any minute I was expecting screeching , flying things with sharp teeth to pour out of the house and devour Zach and Putel (our cab driver) while I vainly tried to run away, only to be devoured because I tripped and feel since I was the only girl in the scene. It didn’t happen. But there was a lot of screeching coming from a few yards away in a nearby pasture. As far as I could tell rough handling aliens were anally probing several cows. It sounded painful. In Fiji, cows don’t go “moo”; they go “eeaahhhiiiiyyy”.

Fortunately, we had a few flashlights. We were able to get our ridiculously large amount of crap into the building when a villager named Mary approached us. “Bula! I’m Mary, are you the Americans?” We introduced ourselves and explained we had no power. She took us to her uncle, Moses, who gave us his next door neighbor’s lantern. Once dimly lit, we assessed our abode. I had seen the house previously and was dying to show Zach the shower and “bathroom”. As we walked into the room off the kitchen, I stepped down only to feel something dart from under my foot. Zach caught the butt end of a large rat in the light of his torch. A rat. I stepped on a rat. Great. I was a little freaked out, but I got over it by imagining that the rat was like the rats in Disney cartoons who live in cute little homes in the walls, complete with miniature furniture, a dutiful wife rat with an apron and big brown eyes, and three little children rats with cute butts. I’m over the rat phobia. Mark said I probably broke his back and now he can’t take care of his family, who are starving in the walls – the mother weeping and the children crying for their daddy. Yeah Mark, it’s a rat, okay? I can hear them in the attic though. They sound like midgets on crack scurrying around to get something very important done, but never seeming to finish the task.

Later that night, Moses came over to check on us and retrieve his neighbor’s lantern. Damn. There goes most of our light. Zach and I sat around for a while. That didn’t last long. There’s not much to do in the pitch black. We went to bed. The mattresses here are kind of disgusting. But the pillows make the mattresses seem like sterile Serta sleepers. The pillows smell like a mixture of mildew, crap, and dirt. They’re pungent. Fortunately my friend Anne left me her pillow before she went back to the US. Thank you Anne! I put a sheet over my mattress and then placed my OWN sheet (that I brought with me) over that. It was as cold as a witch’s tit in a brass bra that night, so I had to use two blankets. Fortunately, the blankets weren’t bad (smelly, I mean). Unfortunately, I dreamed ALL NIGHT that I was covered with bugs. I kept picking tiny insect off of me and examining them. Some were robots that looked like fleas, which would bite and tear your flesh. I also dreamed I had body lice. Needless to say, it was a restless nights sleep. Then, at 5 am (or earlier) the big cocks started dueling by seeing who could cock-a-doodle-doo the loudest. I was up by 5:30. If you take away the sound of coyotes and the smell of bacon and eggs cooking at 4:30 in the morning, and add the sound of deranged cows, there’s an aura of grandpa’s house here.

Oh, I forgot to mention the sound of scratching on the window screen. I lay in bed and read for a while before going to bed. As soon as I turned off the light, I heard what sounded like fingernails scraping on the window screens in my bedroom. It was a little disconcerting. I noticed the sound intensified when I would shine my light on the window and then settle down a few seconds after removing the light. I summoned the courage to whip the curtain out of the way, fully expecting a ghostly white vampire with long red fingernails to be standing there waiting for me to invite him in so he could suck my blood. But, it was just geckos! Lots of tiny green lizards. I mean lots. I think I counted 16 or 17 of them on each window. They would scurry around eating the bugs attracted to my light when it shone on the window. Huh, my little insect repellents! J

I have so much to tell you about today and yesterday (Wednesday and Tuesday) - - ie. breakfast with Ratu Jim, the traditional dance show with Mary, etc. But, it’ll have to wait. I need to finish working on my paper before there’s no place left for the bugs to bite me, and get to bed.

I love you all!
Sara