April Fools!

So, apparently April Fools is observed in Fiji!

I had gone to town that day and on my journey home, I told a villager that I had received an email with a job offer I just couldn't refuse. I'd be going back to the states the following weekend. He didn't believe me, but he thought it would be a good lie to bring back to the village...

So, he told the members of his house. But, another member of his house had started another lie; he had seen me in town with a boyfriend from another village- he was really black, tall and skinny, and his skin was all peeling because he drank too much kava. By the end of the day, I had heard that the two lies had been combined; I would be returning back to the states the following weekend with my boyfriend! People were getting really upset, so I decided to step in for some damage control. I went to the house and set things straight. However, that night the people from that house decided to keep the lie going, and the next day, people came to me crying and threatening to beat up this "boyfriend" of mine! I was getting calls and texts from members of the family living out of the village! It had gone way too far! But, in the end people ended up laughing.

Fijians don't play little jokes like many of us do in the states. They lie about marriage, people in grave danger, and people dying or on their death bed. I went for a run with a villager that day and he pretended to collapse and asked me to call for help because he thought he was having a heart attack. Not funny!

The next morning, I woke up to find that I had no water. My 5,000L water tank, which is enough for a small family, which I have never seen close to empty, went dry. I thought this was a continuation of a joke from the day before. Also not funny. We couldn't figure out what had happened, so someone dug up my pipes, looking for a leak. No luck. Then, when the kids came home from school, one told us that she had seen the outlet pipe fall and all the water must have leaked out over night, but she put the pipe back in this morning, so there was no evidence of that happening!

And of course as I found the tank empty, the clouds that had brought us rain for about a week all cleared to reveal a beautiful blue cloudless sky with no chance of rain in sight! So, I've just been borrowing buckets of water from people around the village for the last few weeks, which isn't very fun. But, I guess it's made me realize even more how important our upcoming water project will be!