The next day was by far the most interesting and rewarding experience. I can barely put it into words. We had the “drop off”. We were paired up randomly and given a topic that we had to discuss with random strangers and find out as much as we could about it. Then we had to find our way into Loutoka city and eat lunch and then catch the bus back to the hotel. Well Megan and I got dropped off in a low income housing project and as we walked in we had never felt more awkward in our lives. Two white girls strolling through the middle of a housing project trying to talk to people about education. Then a women invited us up into her home and told us everything we needed to know about the schooling system around Loutoka. Which seemed very similar to America’s traditional way of schooling. After the visit, megan and I wandered outside to a field where about 15 little kids came running up to us. They were a little shy at first and then after about 2 minutes they were jumping and grabbing our earings, playing with our hair, staring at us, climbing on us; just infatuated. One of the kids asked if we were white which was pretty funny. It was really cool to see how much joy they got out of the simple things, how little they knew about America, and how happy they were with their lives even though they were not very healthy and poor. Later we made our way back to Loutoka city, ate really good spicy vegetarian food and then caught a bus back to the hotel.
That night we went to a Pecani Youth group that was made up of all flamboyant gay men and drank kava all night, sang, danced, spilled kava, had fun.
This is a picture of everyone dancing and below is a clip of the youth group singing. The traditional way of fijian dancing is to stand hip to hip holding the other persons back and step forward 4 steps and backward 4 steps, while shaking your hips. Then you can back away and do any sort of dancing you want that usually involves shaking your hips and arms. When a group is preforming the polite thing to do is to go up and put baby powder on their faces and heads and money in their shirts. Since these men were very flamboyant the dancing got a little out of control and one of the guys from our group got up and shook his boootayy. Their voices were amazing and unfortunately the video did not do them justice.
This is a picture of everyone dancing and below is a clip of the youth group singing. The traditional way of fijian dancing is to stand hip to hip holding the other persons back and step forward 4 steps and backward 4 steps, while shaking your hips. Then you can back away and do any sort of dancing you want that usually involves shaking your hips and arms. When a group is preforming the polite thing to do is to go up and put baby powder on their faces and heads and money in their shirts. Since these men were very flamboyant the dancing got a little out of control and one of the guys from our group got up and shook his boootayy. Their voices were amazing and unfortunately the video did not do them justice.
No comments:
Post a Comment