Traveled Waters to Fiji

Wow, I don’t really even know where to begin! I know last time I wrote, our journey was just beginning in Samoa. Although that was over 3 weeks ago, it feels like it was just yesterday, yet at the same time so much has happened. 

It’s a little surreal at the moment, as I race to write this and get over to the mall to connect to internet, to think that our “island exploration” is basically over. New Zealand will be the next adventure, but it won’t have the same academic focus as these other islands have, and we won’t be staying on the ship. In addition, tomorrow marks our first day of our ~2 week sail to New Zealand. Some people are extremely excited to finally get an extended period of time at sea, while others are dreading the backlash of their stomachs. I’m definitely excited, but I know it will be a lot of work. So, I’ll let you know how it goes when we get there!

As for everything else… Let me start with each island. After Samoa, we sailed to Wallis, which was such an interesting place. First of all, it was an amazing ride into Wallis because it is surrounded by a reef that creates a lagoon in-between that and the island. Thus, it is BEAUTIFUL, and almost resembles the caribbean, I imagine. It was crystal clear blue water and little islands that looked like movie sets. It was exciting to get docked, because that passage had been something our Captain had put a lot of thought and energy into since earlier this year. There was just a small passage in the reef to get through, so it was tricky, but we did it (well I mostly got to hand that to our crew, but we did a good job looking at the sites!). Once we got onto land in Wallis, we were a little lost as to where to go or what to do… because there was nothing. Some houses, some completely run down buildings, and a church but that was about it. Funny thing was, there were lots of cars driving around, and pretty nice ones in fact. They all looked like they were headed somewhere for a purpose— so we figured we must just not have gotten to the “town” yet. We eventually came across a small library and tried to ask where town was but remember we were in a French territory… so the language barrier was a little tough. Turns out we were actually “in town”, and there wasn't really a place in Wallis where a lot of stores are. Everything instead is pretty spread out, and everything is poorly marked. Our time in Wallis ended up being pretty great though, we spent a lot of time with people in charge of cultural affairs. Their leader, Bernadette, spoke perfect english and was so helpful in answering a lot of our questions. Over the course of 2 days, we were chauffeured around by this group to see the culture and sites of Wallis. Some of the highlights included another kava ceremony (first one was in Samoa), a trip to look at the large crater lake in the middle of the island, and a boat ride out to a motu (small island a little offshore). The motu was such a treat, and I can’t believe we fit 30+ people into this little boat to get there:

Futuna was our next stop. it’s the other island of the French territory Wallis and Futuna— imagine that ;) Like expected, it was even smaller than Wallis. There was literally 3 tiny supermarkets, a bank, a post office and one gift store that we saw. Not really any government buildings like we had seen in Wallis or larger buildings. Also, in addition to each store hardly having a sign, none of them had windows, and they all closed for a few hours in the middle of the day for lunch. The “fun” part was that it also started pouring about 5 minutes after we stepped off the boat. So that made our time in Futuna pretty exciting. Walking to the post office for 10 minutes of free wifi, while wearing our bright yellow foul weather gear will definitely be a defining memory for me. We were lucky enough to be in Futuna for the week of Communion and were invited to some of the local communities’ ceremonies. I don’t think I can really put into words how these were, but I explained it a little in my blog post for our trip… which for whatever reason still hasn't been posted (apparently got a little lost in translation, but should be posted sometime). It was a lot of feeling very out of place, a lot of Kava (if you don’t know what this is, it’s a huge part of Polynesian culture but to me it tasted like dirt flavored tea with a hint of Novocain to make your mouth numb), group dancing, and awkward Middle school-esq slow dancing. Nevertheless, it was awesome to be a part of and something I’ll never forget! We also got a small tour of Futuna after we met with one of the Kings on our second day there. My blog post for our class blog goes into a little detail about this, but since this is my personal blog I would love to say a little bit more. It was an extremelyyyy uncomfortable meeting with the King, because he and his “advisors” were clearly upset that we hadn’t talked to them first about testing waters around Futuna or conducting research on their island. And mind you— this is in French and their native language so we just had to sit through an hour of feeling like "what the hell is going on”. In the end, it all ended up being fine and they invited us to the bigger Communion ceremony that night. The day we left Futuna, the seas were pretty rough and that continued until we got to Fiji...

I know you are probably all are wondering how Fiji has been, because of it’s beauty we see in pictures (mostly from Fiji water bottles), but I actually probably could sum up this port stop pretty quickly. We’ve been docked in Suva for the past week, and it’s the major city of Fiji. It was insane to go from Futuna to a bustling city with malls and big lights and lots of cars, but it’s been awesome in it’s own right. Besides the adventure to a swimming hole at Colo-I-Suva Forest Park some of us went to the other day, most of our time has been spent in the city. I think a lot of people would have preferred being in a “prettier” part of Fiji, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more I see this as a pretty unique experience. I don’t feel like I would have ever seen this side of Fiji, and I’m glad all our time wasn’t spent in a resort— although maybe a day of that would have been nice! By walking through the streets and spending hours in the malls, we’ve seen the awesome diversity Fiji has. Turns out Fiji is largely Indian now, but still has a large Fijian population and there are also some Asian and Europeans. We were lucky enough to be here for the Indian holiday of Diwali, and that was fun to see fireworks around the city and Fijians in traditional Indian Saris. I don’t think you’ll meet this variety of people anywhere else in the world, but I kind of like it— and I can’t complain about the food!

So as far as life on the ship, I think I'll leave more explanation about that until after we’ve spent these next two weeks a sea. However, it’s been a lot of eat, sleep, do your watch, and clean the ship— with a little fun in between… and also the glorious sites of the ocean and sky :)

Talk to you in New Zealand!

~LTK