The weekend before Christmas, I was invited to a wedding here in my village. The wedding was the biggest wedding that the island has had in a very long time, where both the groom and bride are from here. A lot of the times one or the other are from somewhere else and not originally my village. The nurse I work with and I were both asked to be honored guests for the wedding. Now, I thought being an honored guest was pretty cool and it totally had it perks! But then there were the downfalls of having no alone time all weekend...
The festivities started around 9:00am on Friday morning with the Church service. It was really beautiful to watch these two people share their vows, and the church was all decorated. The service was a lot shorter than I had intended. Tea was the next thing on the agenda at the brides family home, that was also short and sweet to the point. Throughout the weekend, anytime that there was a feast, (any meal that we had!) people from each side had to give speeches which made things go 10x longer!
After tea was finished, we then moved to the community hall where the lunch feast was to take place. I have never seen so much food in my life until this lunch. Food was just piled high on banana leaves (which acted as the table cloth). I was amazed and so excited because I had not eaten the day before to have room for all the food during the weekend. It was a very smart decision on my part to do this because it was 3 feasts every day!!! SO MUCH FOOD!!!
Once lunch was finished and people had done their speeches, the entertainment began. The two sides consisted of Tuvaluan and Rabian traditions. The brides family is originally from Rabi Island, but she grew up in my village. She had so many costume changes, but the dances for both sides were so beautiful!
That night we had a dance that lasted until 3:00am...I was so tired at this point because we had been drinking a lot of grog throughout the day along with all the food that was in tummy. It was a lot of fun being around everyone and really integrating HARDCORE!
Saturday, and Sunday consisted of the same thing; Feast for breakfast, dance, grog, feast for lunch, dance, grog, nap, feast for dinner, grog, dance...pretty much in that order
Once Sunday night happened I was happy to be able to get in my house and just lay down in my bed. I was very tired and my body just hurt from all the partying with the village. Who knew that I would loose all my college "skills" so quickly!
Monday morning was a doosy because I woke up to 12 missed calls on my cell phone. Now, I would normally hear someone calling me, but here I wear ear plugs so that I can muffle out the roosters and dogs going all night long. All the numbers were numbers that I didn't recognize and I assumed that it was people in my village. So, I didn't think anything of it until I got into work and Adi (nurse I work with) told me that an older man had died last night. Needless to say, Adi and I had to do take care of body and do the exam to find cause of death. Now we didn't do a full exam where we cut the body open or anything, but just did a surface exam and talked with many different people who were there. Here is that story...
The man that passed away was 57 years old and was visiting for the wedding from Rabi. Nobody knew his last name and he did not come with any children or other family. The brides side of the family had been having dinner at 12:00am...WHO HAS DINNER AT MIDNIGHT?! Around 12:30am, the man clutched his chest and said he was having extreme chest pain and it was hard to breathe. The gentlemen died approximately 12:45am.
Traditionally, the body is not supposed to be moved from where the person dies until it goes into the coffin. Therefore, when we arrived to do the exam around 9:00am, the body was under a sheet and people were eating breakfast and cooking directly around the body. I found this extremely uncomfortable for me because I have never had to deal with a rotting dead body before. I've been to my share of funerals, but those bodies are no longer rotting. This man's body was clearly rotting, began to smell, and his stomach was extremely distended that I thought the gas and fluids from his insides were going to burst out any minute.
Needless to say, it was a very interesting weekend and a experiential Monday morning.
Here is the link to the photo album. There are lots of new pictures there!
Fiji Album
Happy Holidays everyone! Christmas post will be coming soon!!!
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