We woke up to such a change in the weather from yesterday’s sunny day. It’s been raining off and on all day with blustery wind in the mid-twenties. Kind of like going from summer to winter in one day. It is winter here actually, but we don’t expect it to actually act that way! Hopefully tomorrow will be a nicer day as right now it’s cold and wet. Very un-Fiji like.

Ann with Penina and her new dress.

We did make it into church though. Magically (I would say – Ann of course has other ideas) the rain stopped long enough for us to jump in the dinghy and make it to the beach without a downpour. In church one of the speakers called us “People of the sea”. Has a ring to it I think. The rest was in Fijian so I have no idea what was being said other than they thanked us for coming to their service.

Sunday lunch after church has a special quality to it. The villagers spend all day Saturday getting food and preparing it while early Sunday is spent finishing it. It’s a big deal. We were invited today to go to Mata’s for lunch. Mata is the woman we spoke of a couple of days ago who spent the entire day hunting octopus. She heard how much we liked it and got another one and invited us to join her. She was thanking us (really Ann in particular) because Ann helped her daughter-in-law make a new dress for her granddaughter, Penina. Such a thoughtful gesture but as things go here we couldn’t accept. You have to lunch with your host family, so we were spoken for as it were. She understood but said she would send some food instead. That’s kind of the fun part of Sunday lunch. You sit down and your host spreads all the food she has made, out on the tablecloth (on the floor, no tables here). Then as she gets ready to dish the food out people start appearing at the door (which is always open – I’m not sure there’s even a door there) with dishes of food. Well, our octopus showed up, delivered by lovely Penina in her beautiful new red dress that she proudly wore to church, and was still wearing it later as she was escorting us back down the path to the beach. Our host, Tau, in turn sent a dish of lovo baked cassava back to Mata. And so it went. There were probably four others who showed up at the door with a cooked fish or something and they left with either a dish of baked cassava or pulisami. Crowd-sourcing on its most basic level.

Tau said that at the end of the day at dinner time, some of the houses will have run out of food and people will drop by asking if there are any leftovers (which at many houses there are) so none of the food gets wasted and everyone eats even if they weren’t lucky that week and didn’t catch a fish.

Village life at its best.