hanging breasts
Hanging Breasts
I have not really learnt any swear words or terms of derision in Fiji. But I have learnt a making-fun-of term. “Sucu lili” means hanging breasts and usually means you have had lots of children hence a legacy of hanging breasts. Akata and Marika who are my housemates at the moment said that when they were growing up in the village and would come across older women bathing by the river they would yell out “sucu lili!” and run away laughing.
Akata told me a story about a friend of hers who married a pastor about 20 years ago. The tradition is that you go to the husband’s village after you are married and get introduced and spend some time there. So they headed off into the hills of the interior to his village to stay with his mother. The wife, who was a town girl was shocked to see that her mother-in-law only wore a sulu covering her from the waist down and bared her breasts all day. The wife found this very hard to get used to and for days would beg the mother-in-law to wear some of her clothes but she refused. After a week or so, the tears subsided and she got used to it.
I have started to put on weight. Living with local people means eating more of what they eat. This means cordial with sugar added to it, Milo with sugar added to it and tea with half a cup of milk added to it. It also means a carbohydrate rich diet. Bread or cassava or dalo or rice or 2 minute noodles are a must with every meal. None of the above and you will have a disgruntled diner at your table. I had a meal recently of a curry made of potato and 2min noodles served with dalo. A carb-rich meal! At a dinner party recently to celebrate the end of some work we had finished, I later heard that some people did not want to come as “Kate always eats fruit and vegetables”. They were pleased to come and find that I had done a pile of sausages (they were the first to go from the table). Phew!
I guess it is part of living on an island but I am amazed at how much people love to eat fish here. I have never been a big fish eater and I find it a struggle to eat so much of it. You drive anywhere out of town and there are always people selling fresh fish on the roadside. Locals will drool as they eye off the fish and imagine some meal with it. There have been media campaigns recently to try and alert people to the need to preserve and care for marine life and protect fishing grounds. Eating turtle is now illegal but people still do. It has been an important traditional and ceremonial food and everyone raves about the taste of it.
While we are on the topic of food – I may as well tell you about BBQ. The word barbeque does not just refer to how food is cooked but to an actual meal. So if you say “you want to eat bbq?” that means do you want a meal of marinated sausages and chops, with cassava and salad all for around $3.50. You can find many places selling bbq on the roadside and in town there are some registered marquees set up that cook bbq at night. The Suva City Council have stopped giving out licences to sell bbq as there are too many stalls set up around the place.
You can get arrested here for swearing in public. A guy got arrested for swearing at his cousin in public. He was not arrested for being drunk and disorderly but for swearing!
Our water woes continue. Four young children have died from diahorrea probably caused by bad water. I have started boiling all my water now. Often I will open a tap and out will come brown water. The diahorrea could also be caused from other practices which are a bit worrying. A sugar bowl will have one spoon which everyone shares. They take their sugar, put it in their tea and stir it and then put the spoon back into the bowl. Because people eat with their hands a lot, restaurants will have a sink for people to wash their hands and a lone tea towel which people use not only to wipe their hands but also to wipe their mouths.
Toilet paper – is illusive and rare. I went into a shop the other day and was shocked that its toilet had FIVE rolls of toilet paper placed around it. My workplace does not have toilet paper. Each office has to buy their own and you take a few sheets with you when you go to the loo. I was told when I questioned this practice in my early days that they would go through 20 rolls in a week. I don’t know what people do with the stuff. Then of course my office will run out of paper and also run out of petty cash so I have to run around borrowing sheets from other offices or bring my own in for a few days. Most public toilets and office toilets do not have paper. There are some places where you alert the security guard and they will give you a little parcel of paper. One place I went to the other day, you paid 20cents and they also gave you a little parcel of it.
Fijian way of getting rid of hiccups but only for babies – you tear off a small bit of paper and lick it then stick it on the forehead of the baby. Then the hiccups will go away!
There seems to be widespread belief in using water to reduce your electricity bill. People will fill up a bottle of water and put it on top of their meter box. So widespread is this belief that the Fiji Electricity Authority did a poster campaign telling people that a bottle of water will NOT reduce your electricity bill!
I have been having a holiday seeing some of the best works of art I have ever seen. Under the water – fish and coral. Some of the combinations of stripes, patterns and colour I could not have imagined myself nor have I seen on art gallery walls yet. When you get away to an island you can believe that old tourist slogan Fiji once used “Fiji: the way the world should be” with the sunsets, works of art and peace. This balloon of a peaceful world I have been cocooned in has been somewhat punctured for me by reading a book about the 2000 coup. It had me in tears and I wonder how any of the ministers of the deposed government could recover from the betrayal and injustice they must have felt. I feel sad because those who instigated it seem to have had no thought of the consequences of their actions which 6 years later are still being felt. People still have not been brought to justice and in fact some people have been promoted. There is unrest, fear, discord and distrust still doing rounds today and it is because there has not been a proper resolution. It is and was all about power and money. How ugly.
I have not really learnt any swear words or terms of derision in Fiji. But I have learnt a making-fun-of term. “Sucu lili” means hanging breasts and usually means you have had lots of children hence a legacy of hanging breasts. Akata and Marika who are my housemates at the moment said that when they were growing up in the village and would come across older women bathing by the river they would yell out “sucu lili!” and run away laughing.
Akata told me a story about a friend of hers who married a pastor about 20 years ago. The tradition is that you go to the husband’s village after you are married and get introduced and spend some time there. So they headed off into the hills of the interior to his village to stay with his mother. The wife, who was a town girl was shocked to see that her mother-in-law only wore a sulu covering her from the waist down and bared her breasts all day. The wife found this very hard to get used to and for days would beg the mother-in-law to wear some of her clothes but she refused. After a week or so, the tears subsided and she got used to it.
I have started to put on weight. Living with local people means eating more of what they eat. This means cordial with sugar added to it, Milo with sugar added to it and tea with half a cup of milk added to it. It also means a carbohydrate rich diet. Bread or cassava or dalo or rice or 2 minute noodles are a must with every meal. None of the above and you will have a disgruntled diner at your table. I had a meal recently of a curry made of potato and 2min noodles served with dalo. A carb-rich meal! At a dinner party recently to celebrate the end of some work we had finished, I later heard that some people did not want to come as “Kate always eats fruit and vegetables”. They were pleased to come and find that I had done a pile of sausages (they were the first to go from the table). Phew!
I guess it is part of living on an island but I am amazed at how much people love to eat fish here. I have never been a big fish eater and I find it a struggle to eat so much of it. You drive anywhere out of town and there are always people selling fresh fish on the roadside. Locals will drool as they eye off the fish and imagine some meal with it. There have been media campaigns recently to try and alert people to the need to preserve and care for marine life and protect fishing grounds. Eating turtle is now illegal but people still do. It has been an important traditional and ceremonial food and everyone raves about the taste of it.
While we are on the topic of food – I may as well tell you about BBQ. The word barbeque does not just refer to how food is cooked but to an actual meal. So if you say “you want to eat bbq?” that means do you want a meal of marinated sausages and chops, with cassava and salad all for around $3.50. You can find many places selling bbq on the roadside and in town there are some registered marquees set up that cook bbq at night. The Suva City Council have stopped giving out licences to sell bbq as there are too many stalls set up around the place.
You can get arrested here for swearing in public. A guy got arrested for swearing at his cousin in public. He was not arrested for being drunk and disorderly but for swearing!
Our water woes continue. Four young children have died from diahorrea probably caused by bad water. I have started boiling all my water now. Often I will open a tap and out will come brown water. The diahorrea could also be caused from other practices which are a bit worrying. A sugar bowl will have one spoon which everyone shares. They take their sugar, put it in their tea and stir it and then put the spoon back into the bowl. Because people eat with their hands a lot, restaurants will have a sink for people to wash their hands and a lone tea towel which people use not only to wipe their hands but also to wipe their mouths.
Toilet paper – is illusive and rare. I went into a shop the other day and was shocked that its toilet had FIVE rolls of toilet paper placed around it. My workplace does not have toilet paper. Each office has to buy their own and you take a few sheets with you when you go to the loo. I was told when I questioned this practice in my early days that they would go through 20 rolls in a week. I don’t know what people do with the stuff. Then of course my office will run out of paper and also run out of petty cash so I have to run around borrowing sheets from other offices or bring my own in for a few days. Most public toilets and office toilets do not have paper. There are some places where you alert the security guard and they will give you a little parcel of paper. One place I went to the other day, you paid 20cents and they also gave you a little parcel of it.
Fijian way of getting rid of hiccups but only for babies – you tear off a small bit of paper and lick it then stick it on the forehead of the baby. Then the hiccups will go away!
There seems to be widespread belief in using water to reduce your electricity bill. People will fill up a bottle of water and put it on top of their meter box. So widespread is this belief that the Fiji Electricity Authority did a poster campaign telling people that a bottle of water will NOT reduce your electricity bill!
I have been having a holiday seeing some of the best works of art I have ever seen. Under the water – fish and coral. Some of the combinations of stripes, patterns and colour I could not have imagined myself nor have I seen on art gallery walls yet. When you get away to an island you can believe that old tourist slogan Fiji once used “Fiji: the way the world should be” with the sunsets, works of art and peace. This balloon of a peaceful world I have been cocooned in has been somewhat punctured for me by reading a book about the 2000 coup. It had me in tears and I wonder how any of the ministers of the deposed government could recover from the betrayal and injustice they must have felt. I feel sad because those who instigated it seem to have had no thought of the consequences of their actions which 6 years later are still being felt. People still have not been brought to justice and in fact some people have been promoted. There is unrest, fear, discord and distrust still doing rounds today and it is because there has not been a proper resolution. It is and was all about power and money. How ugly.
posted by kate at 4:04 pm
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