Bula is the Fijian greeting commonly accompanied by a hearty smile and a creamy accent throughout the collection of the approximately 330 Fiji islands in the South Pacific. I was unexpectedly given the opportunity to spend 2 months there this summer thanks to an incredible teacher and a (now) dear friend/archaeologist who got a grant to do her master's research in Fiji and graciously took me along.
I believe that all humans are storytellers. We communicate our lives, culture, and our past everyday. We catch stories, interacting with others and passing their stories along too. These stories are infinitely malleable. Sometimes we expand and change them as we pass them along. No one tells a story in exactly the same way as someone else. Each time a story is told it's accompanied by a different set of facial expressions, language use, and emphasis. I put a KAPOW! where you put a KAZAM! and so on.
My experience in Fiji awarded me a new collection of rich stories that I aim to share here. In part to pass them along, but mostly as a way of processing them myself. I hope to tell these stories as accurately and justly as possible.
Enjoy.
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