HOME SWEET HOME!

Our new home: Ruve St (pronounced “roo-veh”), Suva.

Ruve, meaning pigeon in Fijian, is our new home for the next year. I am hoping that our street name will reflect our ability to always find our way around in the months to come. …The other alternative is that we look like pigeons walking around with poking necks and carrying disease. My stomach has already been reflective of the latter.

As the house is actually two mirror-image units, we have two kitchens, two bathrooms and a massive shared living space. It’s near shops, buses to town and most importantly, it’s close to work.

What’s amazing is that if I walk five minutes down the road to the right and over the hill, I will find squatter’s settlement. Despite this, it is still a safe neighbourhood to live in.

We have a church behind our house from which we can hear gospel music most nights of the week. An old lady and a student live down stairs and to our left are a lovely Indo-Fijian couple.

Our furniture is from the garish establishment that is Rups Big Bear. Rups Big Bear sells everything your grandmother owned but with a tenfold increase in dag factor. Our settee is a floral blue and our bed heads are floral red. Our dining table surpasses tacky.

The powerpoints in the house are in the most illogical places, e.g. in the upper corner of our room where the roof meets the wall. There are no powerpoints near any kitchen bench space and so our appliances are lined up on the floor against the wall of our living area.

The garden is laden with cabbage, corn, raddish and longbeans that our landlord planted. Luke, the husband of my Speechy colleague, Lauren is drooling at the prospect of being able to garden properly for the first time ever.

So that is our house on Ruve Street, Samabula: almost great, but in other respects, really not quite there.