26 April 2018

Fish baby-sitting service.  Monica parked her goldfish here as she gets ready for a trip overseas.  Pleasant upgrade from the little tilapia that used to be in this tank.

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ANOTHER  LOVO

I’ve shown you the lovo (underground oven) before – but forgot to take photos after it was opened.  Also, before we used store chickens.  So here are a few shots of our lovo this week, that Ju made to welcome Guy and Mami (belatedly) and also to celebrate a Holy Day.

Our OWN chickens – I think Dad and Junia killed and prepped eight chickens.  Turned out four of the folks we were expecting ended up not coming, so we stuck three cleaned carcasses in the freezer, and Junia lovo’ed five of them – for the 9 adults and 2 kids that were here.  Half a chicken each!  That’s how Fijians think!

Oh, here are those two darling children pushing a wheelbarrow … in the kitchen!

Aha – So THIS is the cooked food from the lovo, transported to the house.  Some of the food.  Much of it was still in the pit at this point.

Yummy, yummy.  Maybe next time I’ll take clear photos of the unwrapped food on the platter – somehow my photos all turned out fuzzy this time.

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Still on a food theme:   TOAD IN THE HOLE

You know, that famous British dish of sausages and pudding batter?  Yeah.  Now I know the inspiration for it.

That’s my creek!  Yum yum!

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The PUPDATE:  feature presentation for this issue

I know some of you have been wondering about Winky’s litter.  So feast your eyes on a Pile of Puppies.

Austin had the great idea of naming each one and putting their pictures up for an auction.  He got as far as naming them.

The boys:

Little Gogo

Little Muffin

And the girls – who were way more active and harder to get photos of:

Little Winky

Chubby Bear

I don’t think Austin will ever really get around to an auction, but if you live in Fiji and want one of them – send your bid to me!

Here is a final shot of the four of them on the move:

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A last little happy shot for the week.   Our butcher’s sign.

Somebody knew all the letters that they should put in it.

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FIJIAN  WORD  OF  THE  WEEK

Keeping with the same Lovo and Toad-in-the-Hole theme –

Kana – means “eat”

Vakalevu – is literally “with big”

So  Kana vakalevu  means “Eat plenty.”

(I’ve been slacking on learning Fijian, but am trying to get back on task.)

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Happy week, Everybody.

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19 April 2018

You can’t tell from my poor photo – but that is a pair of yoked bulls, and I was really nervous that one was going to slip and pull them both down.   They aren’t goats, for crying out loud!

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On the bright side, Akka figured out how to charge our phones while the power was out without draining the truck’s already-dicey battery.

Ta da!  He wired the charger directly to the battery, bypassing the starter since we have a radio that cannot be turned off.    Mr. Mechanical Smarty Pants.

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I don’t think I complain too much, but I am distressed at the appearance of potholes … a LOT of potholes suddenly … on Valley Road.

I don’t think I’d mention it except that I bragged so much about how PROUD I was about the “best road in Fiji” back in the 6 February 2014 post HERE   Dang it all.

Somehow this became a topic of conversation as I was bringing son Guy, daughter-in-law Mami and two grandsons home from the airport.  They don’t have potholes in Japan – and, guess what, they don’t even have a WORD for “pothole” in Japanese.

Guess what they DO have a word for:   “death from overwork.”   For some reason neither English nor Fijian has a word for that  🙂

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LEO’S  GARDEN

Mami decided that while they are here, she and Leo would make a garden.

First question – Where to put it?

Junia said there was a very good place where many papaya trees fell during the storm.

Next step, dig the plot.  That was a LOT of work.   It turned out that Mami and Leo got a little help from Guy and Junia.

And plant the seedlings.  Mami needed something like popsicle sticks to label the trays.  I asked her if ten or so would be enough.  She said yes, so I told her to check in the door on the driver’s side of the truck, because Somebody likes to eat popsicles and he always drops the sticks there.  She came back to me very surprised … there were more than fifty!  Ha ha ha.    Great conservation effort!

So she and Leo made a little nursery in the orchid house – and those bok choy seeds were already sprouted in only three days!

Meanwhile, the new garden had to be FENCED – otherwise the chickens will scratch out the seedlings.   All that’s left now is the gate and the planting.

To be continued…..

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A little note to Deb:   Your parents got here just fine 🙂

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Happy week, everybody.

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12 April 2018

The Claw!  It just appeared at the foot of my driveway.  What Does It Mean ???

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THE  CYCLONE

Keni, a cat 3 storm, was headed in our general direction.  Enough of a threat we had to prepare:

My house got boarded.

The mobile chicken pens got wrapped and weighted.

And the porch/kitchen where we LIVE got a tarp (but not in front of the sink.  Sheesh.

Luckily, the winds were east-west instead of north-south, so the tarp was fine.   And it didn’t rain too much, so we didn’t flood much.

It didn’t rain much, so why was there the sound of rain, Ju asked

Aha !  The pipe on the roof (for hot water ) had broken.  He ran up the hill to shut off the water.

After the storm, he got up on the roof to repair the pipe.  An easy fix, hallelujah.

The trees took some hits with the gusts.

And – good grief – the dead part of the teak tree “survived” while the living part hit the ground.  Go figure

We somehow neglected to bring in a table and chair.  This was the result (not like that cheesy staged meme)

We will rebuild.

Still no power.  But we figured out a great light:

Candle in a bucket.  We have lots of candles and lots of buckets.

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Picked up family at the airport yesterday. .. and looked up.

Ha.

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Happy week, everybody.

From my phone….

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5 April 2018

MANGOSTEEN !   The yumiest fruit ever.

 

The inside.  We do have mangosteens growing, but have not harvested a fruit yet.  This fruit was a gift from a day visitor from Home of Hope.  I’m hopeful he will return with even more of these!

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COCONUT TREES – some stuff I may not have shown yet.

Shorty.   Many of the coconut trees Austin has planted have been “leka” (short) ones.  They give fruit after only 5 years, and they are easy to pick.  Also don’t break roofs or people’s skulls when they fall.

Cloth.  I had never really looked at how cloth formed – and got a good look this week on a little nature walk.  Here is a photo of how it is made.   See how the fibers come off of the base portion of the large frond.   Amazing that it comes out looking woven.

I’ve been proofreading a book on local medicine for a friend, and it is amazing how often the coconut cloth, vulo, is used.  It is used to carry the leaves and to strain the leaves.  Many times the portions seem to be measured by the vulo.  Really neat stuff.

Damage.  I just took this in the neighborhood yesterday.  We still have coconut rhinoceros beetles in the area.  You can see the damage in this leaf.  It looks like it got whacked with a cane knife.  Instead it got chewed across when it was still inside the tree. (heart of palm: “millionaire salad”).

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FLOOD.  I think most of you have heard that Fiji got hit with enough rain to cause flooding.  We did not get it as bad as some areas …. but this was Valley Road when we went down to look.  The photo is of a couple of youth wading toward Narewa Village.

Meanwhile, beside the truck, Austin found a “flowerpot snake” and put it in the hands of our 11-year-old guest … who freaked out for a minute…. and then liked it.  I couldn’t tell the head from the tail!   Had to wait until it moved to see which end took the lead.

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FATSO.   Junia is so proud of this gigantic cassava root that he made me take a photo of it, with a skinny normal one beside it for comparison.   Glad to have the cassava – though most of it was “kadrala” (kan-DRA-la,  a candle, i.e. waxy).  Still tasted good.

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ROADKILL.   That same little piece of road where I have seen a dead kingfisher, a dead owl and a dead honeyeater.  Now there is a dead butterfly….

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FIJIAN WORD OF THE WEEK:  Moce  (MO-thay).   It means Good-bye.

And I have a kind of sad reason for teaching you Moce this week.

Suresh, a really nice farmer, came to buy a bunch of chicks again.  Suresh has been here before – he is a really nice man with a sweet wife.  And he and Austin talked and talked.  And then, somehow, it was agreed that he could adopt our dog Gogo.

He has one female that needs company.   I actually thought that sounded like doggy heaven for Gogo!  But the female is neutered – and that’s where he was going to be taking Gogo as soon as he got him home.    Suresh needed a second dog.  Gogo needed to be somewhere where he wouldn’t always be attacked as Not-the-Alpha male.  Too bad the big beautiful female is not in the mating game though.

Moce,  Gogo.   Isa!  Isa!   I hope you like it at your new home.

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Happy – and good weather – week, Everybody.

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