Bieber Fever Comes to Pentecost Island

To field any whiny comments I would like to say that I am not a fan of Justin Bieber. If you are, that's nice and I don't really care. Here we go:

As you know electricity is not something found in my village. Many families buy small generators to turn on lights and TV/DVD players once every few weeks. They don't turn them on often because you must pay for the fuel to run the generator. The co-op (a store) also has electricity due to a solar panel and a wind turbine. They will charge things (like cell phones) for 50vt or about 50cents and have a fridge but they don't keep the power on all day or all night and they don't play movies. So needless to say whenever movies are shown, usually on holidays and during celebrations, it's a big deal.

Well, one night sometime around New Years, a man carried out his TV and DVD player to a clearing in our village close up to the nokamal (meeting place) and everyone gathered on woven mats and palm leaves to watch some videos. Now, when you are going to watch a movie in the villages typically you will first watch a bunch of music videos. Mainly string band (local music) but there are also some Australian and American videos too, depending on what the person has. It was this night that I realized there are certain things to which you cannot escape even when you go to the other side of the world.

We had been watching/listening to music videos for about 30mins to an hour when a Bieb song/video begins to play. At this point I think to myself 'it won't last long it's just one song'. Soon that song ends and another comes on and then yet another. I soon discover that it is a whole DVD dedicated to The Bieb. Not only am I stuck watching a Bieber DVD but everyone is really liking it and now I have to listen to everyone singing/humming the songs proceeding in getting them stuck into my head every time (when I recognized the song). During the hour or so of Bieber videos I couldn't help thinking 'why can't they get a Chris Brown video?'.

Call it naivety or what you will, but something about living on an obscure island in the South Pacific led me to believe that I would be safe from the tween fads of America. Apparently not.

p.s. if you are wondering what the movie is that was shown it was 'The Hottie and the Nottie'. However, I did not stay to watch the movie because by then it was about 10pm and I was tired.