Integrating

I've been in my village for three weeks now and I'm going to try to write about everything that's happened. I started with the last day of our training. Early in the morning we packed our things and had to say goodbye to our host village. It was very emotional as we loaded our things onto the truck. Almost the whole village came to say goodbye to us and there was a lot of crying by the women and the men. I never expected it to be so difficult to leave, but I had made a lot of friends. After that they took us to Suva where we had one afternoon and $400 to buy everything we would need for our new houses. After such an emotional morning it was really hard to focus on stoves and pots when all I wanted to do was go back to my village. The next morning we went to our swearing in ceremony where all 32 of us Fre-6(that's what this years group is called, since we're the sixth group since the peace corps came back to fiji) trainees swore in and became official Peace Corps Volunteers (until this point we were only "trainees"). Then we were packed onto a bus with all of our things to be driven to our new villages. There was another emotional goodbye as all of us volunteers who had been together for two months had to say goodbye and go our seperate ways.

The bus dropped me off in Navua, a town near the island where I was supposed to be picked up by someone from the village. But when I called him, he said he couldn't come that day and that he'd come the next day. So I spent the night with Sarah, a volunteer in Navua. The next day I waited for him to come, but he never did and didn't answer his phone. Since this kind of thing isn't that unusual for Fiji, I tried not to worry. But when the next day came and I waited all morning, I couldn't help feeling like maybe they didn't want me anymore. He finally came in the afternoon, he said he lost his phone. So this was the beginning of my two years in the village and it didn't seem to going very. The first few days were very hard. I really missed Naimalavau, and the people in my new village weren't talking to me very much. I would spend all day sitting in my house by myself. In my training village, when if I walked around everyone would greet me and invite into their house to drink tea. But in my new village everyone was very shy. Nobody invited me over. At night they'd invite me to drink yaqona, but even when I'd be sitting in a room full of people, nobody would talk to me. I felt so lonely and really just wanted to go back to Naimalavau. And I got sick, which made me feel even worse.

So that's how it started. Things have slowly been getting better and I've found out some of the reasons why eveyone was acting that way. First of all they speak a different dialect than the one I had learned. So in the beginning all of my conversations with people had to be in English. Well a lot of people don't speak English very well. Also, in Fiji, being able to speak English well is a sign of being well educated, and I was told that a lot of people in my village were ashamed to talk to me because they weren't as educated as I am. Also I think people are maybe ashamed to invite me into their houses because they think they're not nice enough for a white person. Another issue is my own house. The house I'm staying belongs to the chiefs family, so before everyone in the village had to respect that house and the people in it, so most people never go in that house. In Fiji, you show your respect for someone by not talking to them, or only talking to them very formally. For example, traditionally in Fijian culture, brothers and sisters are supposed to respect each other, meaning that they don't talk directly to each other. If they have to sit in the same room, they'll sit as far away from each other as possible. So people were showing there respect for me and house by not coming over and talking to me. Another issue is the village gossip. Us volunteers refer to it as the "coconut wireless." In Fijian villages, people seem to spend the majority of their time talking about everyone else. Anywhere I go, anything I say or do is quickly known by the whole village. This has been a problem for me and the youth. The word "youth" in Fiji is different than in the US. A youth is someone who isn't married yet. So someone can be 40 years old and still be considered a youth. In my village almost all of the youth are men. Most of the young women from the island either get married and move to their husband's village, or they move to the mainland to get a job or go to school. This means that all the people my age in the village are men. And because of the coconut wireless, if any of them are seen talking to me, especially if we're alone talking, the whole village will find out and the rumors will start spreading. So most of them are afraid to be seen coming to my house.

In Fijian culture, while brothers and sisters respect each other and don't talk, cousins and cousin-brothers are required to tease each other and they're constantly joking around making fun of eachother. For me it means that if one of the boys tries to talk to me and his English messes up a word or something, his cousins and brothers will make fun of him. So even the boys that do speak English are afraid to talk to me in front of the other boys.

So these are the challenges I've been facing as I try to integrate into my new community. Things have slowly been getting better. More and more people are starting to talk to me and few people have even come to visit me at my house. What I really want are friends in the village, people I can talk to when I'm lonely. The women are always very talkative and I really like the women in my village, but they're all older than me and sometimes I want to be able to talk with people my age. Things are getting much better with the boys my age, but the coconut wireless is always going to be a challenge. Sometimes girls from the island that have moved away come back to visit on weekends and holidays and I get so excited to talk to another woman my age. And I'm always more comfortable with the boys and them with me when there's another woman around too.

So that's how things have been going in my village. I haven't started any projects yet. The peace corps recomends that spen the first 3-4 months just integrating: learning the dialect, getting to know everyone, identifying the leaders in community and the people that seem the most motivated to get things done. I think it's a really good idea to wait before starting projects, but sometimes it's hard to explain to people. In the past, there've been foreigners that have come to the village to work on projects. Usually they come with a lot of money, do their project, and then leave. That's what the village is used to, white people come and do things for them. That's not the Peace Corps' approach. The Peace Corps is about integrating into the community and helping them help themselves. So my challenge right now is to show them that I'm not like all the other white people they've met and try to become a part of the community.