Living By The Book
Books were scarce in our village, Naqelewai, in Fiji. All material possessions were scarce because of the village's remote location. Despite the two-day journey involving dusty bus rides and a muddy Land Rover trek, I brought in five cartons of books, many of them Peace Corps issues with titles like Small Business Projects for Rural Villages and Raising Chickens in the Bush. I also tucked in books for comfort, like The Joy of Cooking, The Tao Te Ching, and War and Peace. Later I picked up junk, mystery, and romance novels from other Peace Corps Volunteers and from bookstores in the capital. During my two years in Naqelewai, I read everything I could find, including Newsweek, furnished by the Peace Corps, and National Geographic, sent by my parents. National Geographic may seem a strange choice, given my exotic surroundings, but reading it and piling past issues beside my bed reminded me of my childhood and home.
Reading, however, is not part of the Fijian culture, historically or currently. Before Europeans arrived in the last century, Fijian was not a written language. Early missionaries soon developed English-Fijian dictionaries and translated the Bible into Fijian, so that now almost every rural Fijian home has a copy of the Bible as well as a Fijian hymnal. Few other books find space in the clutter-free house. Newspapers brought in by travelers are read and passed on, then used for a variety of nonliterary purposes, including stencil designs for decoration under the tin cans that hold house plants, and as crumpled balls used in place of tissue in outdoor toilets. Few rural Fijians read for pleasure, other than the occasional letter from family, although elementary education is almost universal.
Pleasure reading is made difficult because of the lack of electricity. With little artificial light, people in Naqelewai get up with the sun and do most of their activities during daylight. After dark, dinner is served by the light of kerosene lanterns....
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