Every year along the Coral Coast (where I live) the hotels field teams of staff members who compete in events throughout Fiji Day (an independence day).  The day starts off with a marathon relay, followed by a parade, water/waitress relay, boardwalk, coconut tunnel, eggtoss, several kyak races, a raft (the bilibili) race, and swimming races.  While back in the US, a competition like this might be a fun, relaxed day devoted to drinking beers and eating bbq; here in Fiji, the Bilibili Race is taken pretty seriously.  Training for the race at Mango Bay Resort, the closest one to my village, started a month and a half before Fiji Day.  Being new to the village, looking to make friends, and relishing an opportunity to excercise, I joined the team (nevermind the fact that I'm not actually an employee at the hotel, that was sorted out later). 

So, for three weeks before the race (which took place on October 10), I went up to Mango Bay at 3pm, when practice was supposed to start, waited around until 4 or 4:30, when practice actually started, and worked out with the team for a few hours.  For the first week, practrice was really, really hard-reminicent of the hard practices for my high school cross country team.  We had timed runs up and down gigantic hills and then do 30 minutes of sprints on the beach.  After that we did push ups and sit ups.  Three straight weeks of that and the team would have been unstoppable. 

However during the second week that I was training with the team, some problem arose between the village and the resort.  Something to do with the manager sending the chief's son to jail.  Needless to say, that didn't go over well with the villagers working at the hotel, and employee/employer relationships were a little strained.  There was a bit of a strike, and training was kind of interrupted that week.  When practice restarted towards the end of the week, instead of running we kyaked to train for the water events.  While it was great fun to be kyaking inside of a barrier reef in the Pacific around sunset, it didn't do a whole lot for my fitness level.  The next week, we ran some, but also started to practice some of the other land events which involve more coordination than fitness.  Throw in a few missed practices for work related activities, and come race day, my, and probably the rest of the team's, fitness was not quite tip-top. 

Also the week before the competition, we solved the "I'm not really an employee" problem.  Once afternoon I worked with the housekeeping staff sweeping and mopping, making beds, and scrubbing toilets.  I didn't get paid, but as a result, was able to answer, if I was asked (which I wasn't), what my work was at Mango Bay.  I thought it was pretty hilarious, really.   I made sure to give all of the Australian and Kiwi tourists who walked into their rooms a big "Bula!"  Bula is what all of the Fijians say to the tourists, but not really what they use that much in the everyday setting. 

So, October 10 at 4am I woke up with the team (we spent the night together), ate at the hotel, and set off for the first event, the marathon relay.  Each team fields 10 people who each run about 2km in a relay.  I was the 4th runner and was able to pass one gril, but then got passed by one boy.  When I handed off the baton, we were second, then for a while we were first, then after a rough last two legs, we ended third out of seven teams.  Not bad, I thought-wasn't first place, but not bad for the team's first year in competition.  The rest of the team was crushed.  They seemed to have the attitude, first or nothing.  No worries, we still had a half a day of other land events and then an afternoon of water events to catch up, right?  

Not being quite as coordinated as my teammates, I was a spectator for the morning's land events.  And, unfortunately, these eventsw did not go very well.  In some events, the team simply didn't place very high.  In others, we started off well, and then were disqualified.  Needless to say, moral was dropping pretty quickly.  The final blow came in the last event before the kyaking started, the coconut tunnel.  In this event, 10 people have to pass a coconut throught their legs, rotating the person who is in front (if only I hadn't had to wake up at 4am, I might have remembered my camera and been able to document this hilarious spectacle).  Each round of the event, our team came in first, slowly making it to the finals.  Spirits soared, and I htought to myslef, alirght!  Here's the cohesive, enthusiastic team that I've been practicing with.  

Three teams participated in the final round.  Because of the excitement and energy, there were a few false starts.  First one guy from our team did.  Then, a guy from the Warwick and then one from the Naviti, then a few more false starts.  Each time there was a false start, the officials blew their whistles, called the contestants back, and restarted the race.  Finally, as the age old saying goes, the fifth time's the charm, and all of our hard work paid off.  Mango Bay won the race!  As we were all jumping for joy and celebrating, the other two teams claimed that we had false started.  This time, rather than restart the race, it was called a disqualification.  It was at this point exactly that the coach cracked open his first beer.  He continued with the "all or nothing" trend, though this time he found himself on the all side.  The majority of the team followed suit.  Those who weren't drinking beer began to drink kava.  Participation in the afternoon events dropeed steeply.  I was almost going to paddle in the women's kyak relay, but we couldn't find the third pair.  The remaining diehards dropped inot their places around the grog bowl, and the months of training for the races took a backseat to lifetimes of training for kava drinking.  In my mind, it was a happy ending.  Though we didn't win, we all happily sang songs, relaxed, talked, and drank kava into the evening.