Monthly Archives: July 2013
Coconuts: lesson 1
One of my blogging friends mentioned to me, before the trip, the possibility of getting some nice, black skies. So this shot is for Ehpem, whose wish is, apparently, my command.
But aside from that, check out that very tall coconut tree!
Most houses, especially ones that are away from the villages, have their own coconut trees: coconut is a dietary staple on the island. The trees begin to produce fruit about 5 years after planting; a tree can live for 90 years. On our culture walk, we found out that coconut milk is used for baking, in place of cow’s milk. (The only cow’s milk we saw in the grocery stores we went into was shelf-stable, non-refrigerated milk imported from New Zealand. I don’t have concept of how much things cost, but my feeling was that imported milk was probably a bit on the costly side.)
The scuba divers on our trip got slices of fresh coconut as post-dive snacks. That’s almost a compelling enough reason to take up diving.
Our cabin, or bure, was named Niu, or “coconut.”
And, coconuts are harvested by picking them up from the ground after they fall out of the trees. Except when you want a green coconut; you’ve got to scale a tree for those.
In the foreground, you can see a banana tree. Fijian bananas are very small, with thin skins, and are very sweet. A good start to the day was a banana, a hunk of papaya, and a slice of coconut. Yum.
Taveuni Island, Fiji
photographed 7.5.2013
Voting is your right
This is the office at the Bouma National Park; no one was around so I just made myself at home. The Fijians we met were all very friendly, so I like to think the park employee wouldn’t have minded my little tour.
Here’s what I saw:
– A very low ceiling. I’m not particularly tall, and I could easily touch touch the ceiling.
– Some nice curtains that were open to let the breeze through. The fabric was stuffed into the wire grid that guarded the windows.
– A piece of silvery Christmas tinsel hanging from the column.
– A sticker on the refrigerator reminding us that VOTING IS YOUR RIGHT.
– An oilcloth covering on the desk.
(Women and ethnic Fijians were first permitted to vote in 1963. In case you wondered.)
Bouma National Park headquarters
Taveuni Island, Fiji
photographed 7.5.2013
Laundry like prayer flags flies
All over the island, laundry hung on clotheslines. And although we saw washing machines for sale in the big store in Somosoma Village, we saw constant evidence of laundry being done in the small streams that make their way from the mountains to the sea.
Many people still wear the traditional sulu (or sarong) and my favorite clotheslines were the ones that had a row of sulu rectangles drying in the sun.
This house was above the ocean – that’s what you can see behind those trees – and the laundry flapped like prayer flags.
Taveuni Island, Fiji
photographed 7.5.2013
The day breaks gently
Our side of the island faced west, which meant that the dramatic evenings were offset by gentle mornings, with a flat ocean and clouds that were in a hurry to be somewhere else before full daylight.
Taveuni Island, Fiji
photographed 7.3.2012
The sea is a friend to no one
Airport security’s done on a little bit smaller scale on Taveuni; this gentleman was hard at work, doing something airport-related, with his back toward an open door. No one stopped me from taking a photograph, and I wasn’t pulled for additional security screening when we left. In fact, there wasn’t any kind of security screening when we left.
I like the glass jalousie windows – not all the houses on the island had glass windows, but the ones that did had jalousies. I liked the worn furniture.
But mostly I liked the reminder, pinned to the bulletin board, that the sea is a friend to no one.
Matei Airport
Taveuni Island, Fiji
photographed 7.6.2013
One Day | One Image 