Waste Not

The Fijians are not ones to waste anything, there is so little on the island, everything gets used.

Take the shark severed fish head, for example, our Fijian assistant did not want it thrown out- so he took it with him. I have no idea for what, but I suspect he may have eaten it. Possibly he used it for bait, but truly I think he ate it.

Maureen takes care of our trash each morning and the other day she came across some cookie wrappers. She must've determined by the weight of the packaging that a forgotten cookie or two lay inside. She returned them to me at once. Keep in mind these had been at the bottom of the trash bin all night (not far from where the mouse is known to dine). I told her, "no, I threw them out, I didn't think they were good any longer". She looked again at the cookies and determined that they were, in fact, still good and she took them home. I presume to eat.

She also regularly takes Justin's old fishing line- line that is hopelessly tangled, and she has a closet full of plastic Fiji water bottles, well over 100 of them. I have no idea why.

We went back to the resort pool yesterday and Elle jumped right in, practicing her new snorkeling moves. She screamed, "look mom, a crab!" I just smiled and stepped into the pool with baby. She shrieked again, made me look and sure enough there was a crab in the pool. Four crabs to be exact! Four pissed off, confused, sharp clawed crabs. They had wandered in from the beach and fallen into the pool. Justin got them all out and a waitress put them in a net. I expected her to walk over to the beach and release them but instead she walked straight into the kitchen. I believe crab will be on their menu tonight.

We took Sonia to dinner awhile back and she ate pizza with Elle. She polished off 2-3 pieces in no time. This is a 7 year old girl who weighs not too much more than Liam does, at this point. Justin had had roast chicken and finished it completely. Or so we thought. Sonia says "can I have that, it's my favorite?". Justin and I both looked at the plate and saw a completely empty plate, but he pushed it towards her and said "ok". We watched her strangely and then in disgust as she proceeded to suck each bone dry, draining the marrow. Even writing these words turns my stomach, seeing it was gut wrenching. She did it to each and every one.

I mentioned before that we almost always have to preorder dinner before going to a restaurant. They don't have food waiting to be cooked at the restaurant- they go and buy just what they will be making for the guests they have coming that night. When you have just 1-2 tables a night this surely helps to eliminate waste.

I guess this makes sense on an island where almost everything is brought in by boat. You can't waste anything, you never know when you might run out of supplies. Like butter. We have no butter. No one has any butter on the entire island. It's been 3 days now and people are stalking the stores for butter. Everyone's talking about it, but they also take it in stride. Next week it'll probably be coffee that runs out. The ship came today, hopefully they brought some butter.

The only thing that doesn't seem to offend Maureen if we throw it away is fruit. It's so plentiful, and goes bad so quickly, we routinely throw away masses of fruit. The humidity and the bugs destroy it within a day if it's not eaten. But hey, there's more on the trees out front. Last night Maureen said "what do you want for dinner?", we shrugged, and she went out and plucked a green papaya from the tree and an hour later came down with rice and the most delicious green papaya curry that I've ever had. I'm going to miss things like that.