Maybe Ann will make this into a new Olympic Sport. You certainly need to be quick. She slapped two sparrows today. One on the way in to church and another on the way back. Both seem to be OK.

What the heck am I talking about? Well, the trail up from the beach toward town is “rich” with mosquitos. So, there are tons on quick little sparrows who take advantage of that by dive bombing the trail and eating them. Probably by the thousands. Usually they are just swooping around, but today for some reason they flew much closer to both of us that we have seen before. Combine that with Ann slapping at the “mosies” buzzing her head and you have sparrow slapping. She got one on the wing on the way into the village. I was behind her and saw the close encounter. But on the way back she slapped at her head just as a sparrow swooped and I could hear a hollow thump as she slapped it on the head. In both cases she let out a little yelp. I’m not sure I could hear what the sparrows said.

So fun meeting the children on the path on the way into the village.

Church was the usual beautiful singing and happy, loving people. They so make us feel part of the family here. Everyone calls us by name; “Bula Bob, bula Ann”. As always I’m struck at the differences with formal religion as I’ve experienced it in the past. Here the very young children are shared from lap to lap with family and any others who happen to be nearby. When they get tired of one person they wander off and someone else scoops them up and holds them until the process repeats itself. “Joe The Enforcer” is there to keep the older children in line, but his bark is scarier than his bite as the saying goes. He looks menacing walking down the side of the church toward the unwary child who is not paying attention. As we sense his presence “stalking” down aisle with his long stick, we cruisers all unconsciously straighten up in the pews, but he is focused on the kids (fortunately). Just as you think he’s going to whack one of them with his stick he gently prods him or her with it and gives them a scolding but grandfatherly look and they straighten up and all is good in the world again. Until the next kid misbehaves.

Joe "The Enforcer".

The other thing about church is the incongruence of some of it. One the one hand here is worship of a Christian God. But on the other hand you have native drums just outside that are used as a call to worship (this is throughout Fiji, not just here in Fulunga). Today when the ladies in the church began a hymn as the minister was entering church, the wooden drums (carved out of a tree trunk, the larger drums are six feet or more long and three or four feet in diameter) outside the church started their primal beat as a counterpoint to the singing within. Today the drums signal a call to worship, but I couldn’t help feeling how just 100 years or so ago those same drums were used instead in pagan rituals or signaling an enemy approaching from a neighboring island.

After church, as is the Sunday custom, we were invited to feast with our host family (Tau, Joe, Grandma, their two boys and Tau’s half sister Jasmine who is staying with them. As we got to their home (It’s got a large open main room and several bedrooms, corrugated tin siding and roof and the kitchen is outside where all the cooking is done over an open fire or in the lovo – an in ground oven) the food was already being placed on the “table”. On the floor really. There is very little furniture here and no-one uses a table and chairs. When we asked why they didn’t eat at a table it was explained to us that as big as their extended families are, they can’t get enough table space, not to mention chairs in the room. It’s not at all unusual here to have a dozen or more drop in for a meal. So easy to just sit down on the floor instead of worrying about all those pesky chairs.

Meals with Tau and Joe have almost always been on their front porch. They put out several large pandanas mats to sit on and cover that with a tablecloth runner – about 10 feet long and two feet wide that the food is placed on. I asked how long a typical mat would last and Tau noted that the one we were sitting on was 7 or 8 years old. It hardly even looked worn. You sit on the mat, around the tablecloth cross – legged on the floor. It’s so relaxing sitting there on the porch. People walk past on the path outside and “bulas” are exchanged all around. The dog and cats sit on the mat as well, but don’t beg. They know that no one will feed them until the meal is over at which point all the scraps will go out into the compost pile where they can have at them. There’s no dog food or cat food here. It’s scraps or nothing.

The meal is usually spectacular, but of course depends on what they gathered on Saturday. Today we enjoyed curried green papaya, boiled fish (you just pull the meat off the bones of fish served whole), a couple of huge crabs, lovo baked cassava root (grated and combined with coconut then wrapped in banana leaf and baked in the ground) and the best clams I have ever tasted. Tau claimed they were just boiled in water, but they tasted so rich, like they had been simmered in pure butter. Anyway, really amazing food all gathered yesterday. Nothing packaged or from a store. Wow.

Sunday feast.

After lunch we headed back to Charisma for a lazy afternoon. Ann worked on a quilt she’s making for the weaving ladies (more on that in a future post) and I worked on, um…a nap. OK, I read some of my book but then drifted off in a food induced stupor.

Sunday in Fulunga. We love it.