Our Home - The Bure
10/1978 – 12/1980: Rod’s (and Marg’s) Trails is not just about hiking. I think I have explained that somewhere. Our trails take us to locations far, wide, near, narrow, and all are not hikes. While we did a few hikes in Fiji, our biggest efforts were emotional survival, living in a 3rd world, teaching, drinking Yaqona, finding each other, and making a life together.
This Fiji Trail does not fit my normal hiking template. As such, I take poetic license. The complete writeup (sort of), and a ton of pictures can be found in the book entitled, “What to do if a Coconut Doesn’t Fall on Your Head.” It is nearly 300 pages and only a few people will likely find it interesting. But in its pages you will learn a bit about Fiji, the Peace Corps and how to adapt, the wonderful Fijian people (especially thos of Nayavu), loneliness, happiness, frustrations, falling in love, and starting a life together. It all started here...and I wouldn't change a thing. You might want to at least skim through it - there's something for everyone.
It starts out simly enough...
Be Beyond the Falling Haze
January 5, 1977 – from Coon Dog Country
By Rod Roberson
Give me room to breathe again,
So that I may hear the children's laughter.
Walk with me so that I may hear the snow beneath my boots,
So that I shall see just one more day.
Build a snowman that has a smile...
Be beyond the falling haze
And laugh 'til tears roll down our face.
Ask not why a child might cry,
But push a sled and ride side by side.
Do not dream of what we’ve been...
Take the sleigh down the hill again.
I'll catch you with my frosted mittens
And race your breath across the hills,
If you promise to hit me with a snowball...
Made just for me.
Somewhere, the snow is falling
And people are rushing to their houses.
But somewhere, where the snow has fallen,
Children are playing ... and calling it home.
October 23, 1975: Rod in Coon Dog Country
Everywhere I turn there are signs of man. Even if he isn't there, his everlasting impressions are. Right now, I would like to be in a canoe, all by myself, just paddling along. There is nothing in the world more soothing than the constant whispering of a stream. Unless it would be the occasional whisper of one's lady.
In the summer of 1978 I was a gun-ho college graduate without a real job; I was coating roofs with tar, welding on the railroad and working as a labor reserve at Armco Steel. Simply, my bachelor’s degree in Anthropology had not paid the dividends I had expected. I was in Kentucky again with my family, but had traveled the country enough from college to college searching for something to do with my life that I knew that whatever that something was, it was not slopping tar on a roof in 100 degree weather, sneaking the occasional cigarette and getting drunk on the weekends with my friends. No, there was a bit more for me in life, but I knew that the only way for me to find it was to make an extra-ordinary jump from the ordinary. I submitted my application to the Peace Corps.
One very hot day in August, I was taking a break from the tar bucket on the roof of our family store in Ironville, enjoying a cigarette. “Rodney? Are you up there?” Mom yelled up at me from around the corner of the store.
Mom didn’t know I smoked (although I was 25 years old). I coughed out my last puff, threw the cigarette into the tar bucket, and answered, “Yeah, I’m up here mom. I’ll come down.”
But mom had already climbed the ladder and her head popped up over the edge of the roof just as the last trace of blue-white smoke curled out of my nose. If she had noticed, she ignored the last dregs of smoke. “You got a letter here Rod. It’s from the government and it looks official. Maybe you should read it.”
“Is it a draft notice or something?” I asked, although the draft had ended with or near the end of the Vietnam War (which I was able to escape with a high lottery number and coming of age near the end of the war).
“No, it’s from the Peace Corps,” she answered. Oh yeah; I had completely forgotten about that.
The letter contained an offer to join the Peace Corps in just a couple of weeks and teach welding somewhere in South America. I studied the parchment for a few minutes. Here was my escape from the mundane; my ticket out of here. But no, being a welding teacher wasn’t for me: everyone in my family had been a welder and I wanted something else; not that it was a bad career (it and the store had paid for everything we had). The teaching part was good and I had been taking night classes for the last couple of years in education. So it was a ‘yes’ to teaching, but a ‘no’ to welding.
I rejected the offer and reiterated on the reply form that I wanted to be a teacher in Fiji and, preferably, a math teacher. I wanted to be in Fiji for no other reason than while in college, studying anthropology, we studied “The Fiji Man,” which had actually been “The Fuji Man” as I recalled; it was close enough. And my fate was born out on a misspelling (or perhaps not paying attention that day in class).
One week later I got another letter from the Peace Corps office. This time, they wanted me to be a math teacher in Fiji. Hmmm…they had called my bluff; I was going to join the Peace Corps and live in Fiji, half way across the world, in the bush, in a grass house, among, I later discovered, a people that had probably been the most notorious cannibals ever known and had stopped that practice only about 75 years earlier. I figured that was extra-ordinary enough to set me on a new path.
I told both mom and Danny and had even told Aunt Jenny (mom’s sister) and Uncle Jules (Jenny’s husband). Everyone seemed to be cautiously happy for me and basically felt that it was a good idea. Of course, those were the family members that knew me the best, had been around while I struggled to find jobs after college, had quit at Michigan State and decided that Journalism was not my thing at Ohio University. They backed me and probably thought that, deep down, this was the best way for me to make my own way.
With the encouragement of the acceptance from the rest of the family, it was time to tell Gary. Gary had been something of “the dad” since dad had died in 1965. He had even told me the “facts of life” when he explained to me what to look for when Nelly, our hunting dog, went into heat. He further explained that I would then call Stambough, our family friend who had a male English Setter, and have Nelly bred. “Do you know what that means Rod?” he asked me.
Well, I was 13 years old at the time, of course I did. I didn’t know how to answer him. “Uh, well, yeah, it means she is gonna have puppies,” I stumbled through, trying not to have to explain to him that it meant having a male dog impregnate Nelly and the particulars of how it was done.
I guess he was satisfied with my ridiculous answer or was just as embarrassed as I. I heard him tell mom later, “Well, you don’t have to worry about Rod; I told him all about the facts of life.”
That was it? O well, it was good enough and I have been able to fumble my way through life armed with that knowledge, and even succeeded in having three fine kids of my own.
So Gary had been something of “the dad” to me, and I guess it is most difficult to tell the dad that you are getting ready to do something potentially stupid or at least marginally risky, and that you are not asking permission, but making an announcement. That was the chore that lay ahead of me, effectively telling my brother/dad that I was leaving them for at least two years (which, indeed, turned out to be for the rest of my life – except for the occasional visits).
I pulled my rebuilt ‘72 Ford LTD into Gary’s driveway and walked around back where I heard Gary working on something. He was heads down focused on welding a car frame. The blue sparks and white-blue light radiated all over Gary and the backyard. I knew better than to look directly at the arc, having been a welder myself for the last couple of years. I eased my way up and stood off to the side of the car frame waiting for Gary to finish his burn.
He finished, pushed the welding hood back to get another rod and saw me. “Hey stud, what’ya up to?” he asked.
I had decided that the direct approach was the best, “Well, I’ve made a decision about something Gar. I’m gonna join the Peace Corps.”
Gary looked at me for long seconds, not even removing his hood or gloves. He just stared, with his mouth slightly ajar – I think intentionally for dramatic effect. At least he didn’t drool. “Ye know, whenever I think ye’ve done about the stupidest thing ye could possibly do, ye turn around and do something even stupider. Are ye ever gonna get yer life started?” Heavy emphasis on “ever.” “Do ye ever wanna have a family?” He shook his head slowly, the welding hood wobbling a little on his head; not at all comical. He looked like a dad wondering about his wayward son. “Are ye ever gonna settle down?”
It occurred to me to argue back with him, but I didn’t. I simply said, “Gary, yer the only one in the family that thinks this is a bad idea. I’ve talked to mom, Danny, and everyone else. Gary, I’m gonna be 26 years old in a few months.” And I didn’t say anything else…and neither did he.
He got another welding rod and loaded it into its holder, gave me a look like I was a complete fool, pushed his hood down and went back to welding. I stood there for a few seconds wondering what to do. I walked back to the car and drove to Crisp’s Dairy Cheer and got a milkshake, and then drove across the street to Armco Park, parked at a deserted picnic table, drank my milkshake and had a couple of cigarettes. Well, that was over and I was still convinced that joining the Peace Corps was the right thing to do, which, as it turns out, was not a bad decision at all.
Gary and I spoke no more of it and he was at all the family going away parties, shook my hand when I left and basically supported me the rest of the way. I guess, to Gary, it really was like a dad watching his son make a major decision without his advice and agreement; only asking for his blessing. I think, over time and seeing the result, I got Gary’s blessing.
In the summer of 1978 Marguerite was a gun-ho college-graduate with a double degree in Biology and French from Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. She had a job that actually used her degree testing pap smears in a lab in Salem. She hated it. Fortunately, it was a temporary job and she had to make the eventual what-am-I-going-to-really-do-with-the-rest-of-my-life decision.
She and her friend Chris (from high school) had agreed that they would go to France after they graduated from college. So, Marguerite had that mental mind-set that going to France was the next step in her life before she really had to make that what-am-I… decision. But then Chris was not able to raise the necessary funds and had to back out. Marguerite didn’t want to go alone.
Marguerite had always admired her Grandma Olson for becoming a missionary and working in India from 1919 to 1927. Her Grandpa Olson became a missionary so he could join her in India and they got married there. Marguerite had considered becoming a missionary and following in her Grandparents’ footsteps, but she admits that her faith simply was not at the level that a missionary’s faith should probably be.
December 11, 1978: Marguerite to Win & Bettie
I’ve also been thinking about Grandma, going into an Indian house and all. I wonder how she felt when she arrived in India…
So, with three very significant factors rolling around in her head: what-am-I-going-to-really-do-with-the-rest-of-my-life, having planned to go to France but then Chris not getting the financing, and – perhaps the most significant – her admiration of her Grandparents and wanting to do something to honor them and follow in their footsteps, fate stepped in and set the wheels moving.
One day around the end of July, she was walking across Willamette’s campus and saw a notice that Peace Corps recruiters were going to be in town and to drop on by and chat. Marguerite did just that. They chatted a bit and then that evening she went to dinner with them. They gave her the “sell” (but not a hard sell; they really didn’t need to, she was ready) and the tome that is the Peace Corps handbook.
Marguerite walked out of the diner with a plan: apply to the Peace Corps where she figured she would go to Africa because of her French. But it turned out that the application deadline for going to Africa had expired for 1978, but there were a few other places still available, to include Fiji.
Later in August she got a letter from the government and it was definitely not a draft notice; the Peace Corps was inviting her to become a teacher in Fiji. She accepted almost immediately. Her parents were very happy, but of course a bit apprehensive, but gave her all the love and encouragement she needed in making this decision.
December 25, 1978 – MERRY CHRISTMAS: Marguerite’s Diary
Today has been uneventful. I’m thinking about Grandma & her first Christmas in India. I think that today will just be a nice relaxing day. Rod is falling asleep at the moment.
Created: 2023