#20 Sentimental (Part 1)
Homesickness, Nostalgia, and Awe
Struggling with impermanence Yearning for home I watch the clock go dance With things yet to atone Missing here, missing there It's nostalgia in limbo, Yet community masks despair As eyes probe and tears flow Super cool dudes all around Neighbors and visitors they surround To cement myself into this ground Like the cement bags I bought this morning
The guitar is slightly out of tune, but the harmony has captured me. The gentle stir of nene’s soprano overlaps the young ones’ vibrating alto and the father’s tenor, which is all held together by the silky baritones of the older brothers. The lyrics wisp like cirrus clouds and crash like the breakers in Sigatoka. Enraptured in the music, I’m zoned into the moment, and yet I dive deeper into my trance by the prayer that comes next. Two more strums of the guitar after the lyrics cease, and Nene begins to rattle off her laundry list of gratitude for God Almighty. Her rapid chant rattles into the room, moving her body forward and backward. Each word flows through to the next, flowing through each of us in the room like the water cascading off pebbles and stones in the stream where we bathed earlier today. I’m hypnotized in wonder, sitting cross legged as the kids squirm restlessly around me, waiting to continue their Youtube video that is precariously paused. Nene finishes her prayers for safety and harmony, and the house is shaken with a chorus of Ameni!
Every day I join the family for 7pm prayer, and each day I am left sitting in awe of the people I have surrounded myself with for the past two years. A sense of awe is often attributed to something felt when one is immersed in nature or music. But more often than that, I am consistently in a state of wonder by the simple actions of the people around me. In this daily devotion, the familial bond is tangible, the Holy Spirit is visible, flowing from the fusion of many bodies imperfectly singing, to the invocations Nene brings into the room, which stay suspended in the air, soaking into each of our bones.
I often leave the house (after a nourishing meal) in a state of disbelief. I wonder how I am able to consistently witness something so pure, so awesome—so human—every single day. I will lay in bed listening to my other neighbors doing the same thing, chanting Catholic rites in unison, gratitude and confessions brimming in minds and spirits and pouring out into the physical world.
After two years in Fiji, I am quite reflective and feeling sentimental. I often feel worn down from the village, and yearn for the comfort of my home, my parents, and my community back in Idaho. But I equally feel a new sense of homesickness. A foreboding sense of homesickness, which I have come to realize comes from the deep impermanence that grows daily as I get closer to leaving my village. I feel this when I stroll aimlessly during the day, sitting on porches to chat the day away and soak up the last few months in my tortured paradise. I am nostalgic for my present moment– guilty that I want to go home and worn down from the sadness that all of these moments, my current everyday life here in Fiji, is merely fleeting.
This new nostalgia for the present has been with me throughout my time here, but it became surprisingly acute during the week of Christmas, which was kicked off by my good friend Owen finishing his Peace Corps experience in Fiji.
“I love Fiji!” were the last words Owen spoke before turning the corner at the Nadi International Airport. It was three days before Christmas, and we had a little farewell crew come out to say goodbye. I love Fiji. Mimicking a running joke we had together, repeating little phrases our friends say in the villages, they were perfect parting words. Although he was leaving a few months earlier than the rest of us, it really hit home after he turned that corner towards airport security. The farewells had started, and they will only continue until I'm back on American Soil.
The holiday season is always quite sentimental, and reflecting on two full years of Fijian life, I feel even more emotional as I head back to my village on Christmas Eve. I depart from the other volunteers to spend the holidays in the isolated highlands. This is my first Christmas in Fiji—away from my family—and I am homesick. It's been cured on and off through the month of December, from the 6:00 a.m. blasting of All I Want For Christmas Is You by my neighbors on December 3rd to the weekly singing of advent songs in church—but it is still tangible that Christmas will be different this year.
I rendezvous with others from my village in town, amid a torrential rainstorm that swamps the gutters along the sidewalk with rivers of mud. Under dark skies, a somber blanket covers the island, fitting, as it reflects my inner turmoil. And like the bustling thoughts within my own mind, the town is wildly packed on Christmas Eve. It feels that virtually the whole village is in town, buying last minute supplies for a week of celebrations. Christmas is a busy time, but in my village we are even more so crunched in festivities. On top of the usual festivities, we have a 70th birthday party, a graduation party, and a remembrance of 100 nights after the funeral of two people in the village. Oh, and two weddings—all after Christmas and before New Year’s Day. I link up with Don in town, and I hop on the first of many carriers heading back up to my village—given the rainstorm, I don’t want to be stranded in town for the big day. I’m already feeling stranded as it is.
Back home, the festivities start immediately. The rain is deafening inside the room at Don’s house, but not loud enough to drown out the laughter of the kids. The children congregate in the house, blowing up balloons and volleying them above the adults’ heads. As for the adults, we start grogging almost immediately, and we continue through the night into the wee hours of Christmas Day. Sitting on the straw mat, with kids sound asleep all around me, I have a familiar sense of comfort, a homeliness, as I sit and drink with my family of nearly two years, with people whom I have spent time with every single day for hours on end. I feel comfortable. And yet this comfort is tinged with sadness. I feel that I have reached a new level of familiarity with my village, and I am worried for the moment when the rug will be pulled out from underneath me.
On Christmas Day, I wake up late and groggy. All the families are finishing a communal morning tea in the bolabola when I join them with the other late arrivals, a ragtag groggy crew. Today we are isolated, as the water in the creek has risen to a flash flood and the bridge is completely overflown. But contrary to how I have felt many times before in this remote village, I don’t feel any sense of isolation at all. It is Christmas, and I am surrounded by a loving village family. The rain blankets the village commons, and despite festivities in each house, it seems that no one is out and about. I take this perceived respite of village activity as a chance to make my daily walk up the hill to call home. I don my rain jacket and wield an umbrella as I brave the slick slope up the mountain and face an endless downpour so I can see my American family on Christmas. I am thrilled to be able to connect with home, but I am equally excited to jog back down into the village where activity is afoot. Christmas is Christmas after all, and the gravity of the day propels me with giddiness down the hill. I am met with two lunches at different houses, followed by hours and hours of grog. I bounce around different houses throughout the evening, bearing good tidings from America.
Boxing Day is a day of sleeping and rest, much needed after two nights of Christmas merriment. Listening to the prayer in the houses nearby, I fall in and out of sleep against the gentle rain on the roof. I am cozy inside my house, hearing the muffled stories and laughter of my neighbors deep into the night, reminiscent of childhood when adults were still talking in the next room. I rest easily, knowing the next few days will be a dizzying blitzkrieg of Fijian festivity.
I wake up on Friday with the village already hard at work preparing a feast for the afternoon. Despite the continued rain, women are chopping vegetables outside and men are collecting firewood and gutting fish. Tonight is the premiere event: celebrating the 70th birthday of our patriarch, the graduation of the college grad, and the 100 nights for two who had passed away in September. Tonight’s party is a big deal. As the day progresses and the community venue is prepared, people from other villages begin to arrive by horseback, unable to ford the rushing river in their own 4x4 vehicles. As the visitors trickle in, the men begin to grog. The festivities begin, and they won’t end until late afternoon the following day.
It's hard waking up on Saturday, after a full night of guitar playing, singing, drinking, and eating all sorts of Fijian delicacies. The night was a culmination of various experiences in my village, celebrating relationships I have nurtured and witnessing special village occasions I have grown to understand intimately. I felt connected with the others—not as an observer but as an active participant, as I have seen the village grow together over the past years and have been a part of all the celebration and mourning. This morning though, I am paying the typical price of a late night celebration.
And yet, before noon, I see my friends preparing to drink. I avoid them as long as I can, because I know we are supposed to go to a wedding today, but it is hard to avoid their line of sight. “This is the month of drinking!” One person shouts, a refrain I have heard countless times this holiday season. “The wedding is canceled, no transport!” Another calls to me, beckoning me to drink in the bolabola. As if, now that I have nowhere to go, I must have no other reason but to go drink again.
And it continues like this. The following week is a blur. Sunday and Monday are full of preparations for Epi’s wedding. Each night, everyone is drinking. The night before the wedding we wait late into the night for the bride’s village to arrive, a traditional custom. Carriers roll into the village at two in the morning, and the wedding kicks off. We prepare their welcome ceremony, but I soon escape and go to bed.
The wedding ceremony is on New Year’s Eve, and the wedding celebrations turn into New Year’s celebrations. I immerse myself in the functions, equally giddy in the occasion as those around me. Epi, similar in age to me, has been my counterpart in many village projects. Celebrating with him is as exciting as celebrating a friend's wedding back in the states. In fact, all the celebrations here are no different than back home. I am a part of this community, and the years of presence around my friends here have cemented myself as a steadfast thread in this colorful fabric.
As I sit with all of my friends through the night, I acknowledge just how special I feel. This isn’t just a Christmas and a New Year’s away from home. This is one of the most home-like weeks I can remember. As the clock strikes midnight, and the countdown erupts into a tumultuous cheer and round of applause, I cannot help but think how lucky I am. I flash a wide grin to my friends who are all bright eyed and smiling at me, all of us ready to dance. Someone flips on the diesel generator and plugs in the JBL crowd speaker. Music flows like the grog, and we all stand up and transcend into a new year of yet more awe and wonder.
Thanks for reading! This is a longer story, and Part 2 will be published soon.
Part 2… i’m ready!
Sobbing outside iggys rn