The Fijian Life

Okay, let's finish the Fiji story and get on to New Zealand! Where was I?
...So there we were, with our duffels on our backs and our day packs on our front, walking the 2 kilometers down the road from Sigatoka to Save Two's village of Nayawa. We had no idea where we were going or even whether we could trust the person we were walking with, but we kept walking until Save took a sudden right onto a barely visible path through the thick plants. We walked through the banana trees for a bit until we came out onto an open dirt section full of people playing volleyball. We went past a few small houses until we reached his mother's house, where we were able to put our bags down. Save wrapped a long cloth around my waist to show respect of the village custom. We walked back outside to see the village as the sun was setting, and just in time to be eaten alive by mosquitos. It was so bad that Save actually took us back to town to get bug repellant before the ceremony!
The village was larger and more established than we had expected, but definitely nothing like any town or neighborhood in America. Save's mother's house consisted of one big room with a tapestry separating the double bed that we were given, while everyone else slept on the floor mats together. There was electricity and running water, with a separate toilet and shower outside next to the cooking fire. The properties all flowed into one another, without any fences or barriers or really any seeming ownership of the areas. People would walk in and out of each other's houses and sit down for a meal as they liked. Food grows easily everywhere on the island, and every plant can be used for making medicines or rope or furniture or anything else one might imagine, so greed is a foreign concept. Both Neal and I were taken aback by the simplicity and ease of life, especially since it wasn't due to naivete to other lifestyles. The people are accustomed to tourists and visitors of all types coming from across the world to see them, but they seem to have no desire to live any other way than the way they already do. We walked around the village a bit and heard the echo of people singing a Methodist hymn translated into their native language, then we sat down for kava.
The next morning before we left for Nadi, Save took us up to the place where they grow cassava. We got to pull the roots out of the ground and chop off the edible bits with a giant machete! We also drank fresh coconut juice fresh from the tree, and we walked through a lush forest of banana trees where Save's ancestors had lived. We were welcomed into the village life and treated like family from the moment we entered, and we thank Save for being such a generous host to us, even though we could only stay for a short time.
That night we stayed with Save One and family once more, and drank kava one last time before our morning flight to Auckland. What an adventure we had, and this was only our first week abroad! Many more adventures to come!