frustration setting in

The frustration that's apparently common amongst all Peace Corps volunteers is starting to set in. I've been at my sight now for three months, which means I should start working on projects. We just had a week of training in Nadi where I got more ideas about projects from other volunteers and learned how to write grants and look for money. I came back my village really excited to start working on some of the ideas I've been discussing with people in my village. A few weeks ago I was invited to join a new committee in our village, the Fundraising Committee, which is a subcommittee of the development committee. The Development Committee is run by the elders and they've never invited me to their meetings, but this new committee seemed like to perfect way for me to get some work done. It was made up of mostly youth (remember "youth" in Fiji means anyone over 18 that isn't married yet) living in the village. There was one person representing each of the nine bito (group of families, each mataqali is divided into several bito), two people representing people from the village that now live and work in other places in Fiji, one person representing the church, and one person representing the Peace Corps (that was me). They set up a bank account and made it so that there was one person from each mataqali that could deposit and withdraw money. We elected a chairman, treasurer, and secretary. We met every two weeks. The notes from the last meeting were typed, printed, and distributed at the next meeting. All this might not seem like a big deal, but this is not usually how meetings are held and decisions made in the village. The committee was well organized and everyone from the village was fairly represented. The only problem was that I was the only woman. But one of our goals was to include more women in the future. Our meetings went really well. They always explained to me what they were talking about since my Fijian is still coming along (in other meetings I've been to it's usually a struggle to get someone to explain to me what's going on.) They always wanted to hear what I had to say, and they let me lead them in brainstorming future project ideas. Then I helped us to prioritize the project ideas and write a summary of the projects to show the rest of the village on Serua Day. Serua Day is the annual fundraiser in the village, and this year it was organized by the new Fundraising Committee. This year every woman from the village had to raise $50 (last year each of the men had to raise $100).

So all of this was great. All of us on the committee were really looking forward to Serua Day, and I was happy to have a good group of people to work with for my two years here. Then Serua Day came, and as the money started coming in, something happened. Two women (who don't live in the village) who were the old committee that used to organize Serua Day just took over. They started collecting the money, and didn't want to have anything to do with the new committee. And for reasons that I don't fully understand (something about age, and respect, and those parts of Fijian culture that I'm still getting used to), our committee couldn't do anything about it. So after all the hard work, the Fundraising Committee is over, and all the money is with the two women in Suva and nobody knows what's going to happen to it.

Now I wasn't around when the new committee was started so maybe they didn't communicate well enough with the old committee, but I don't really know. I know that some people in the village were really excited about our new committee and were looking forward to new ideas and a new way of doing things. But there were also people that didn't like the idea of the youth being involved wanted to keep the old committee (the two older women living in Suva). It' s not my place to say who was right and who was wrong, but I can say that for me the new committee was perfect. And now that it's over, I have no idea how I'm going to get any work done in this village. Because I'm not here to do projects for the village, I'm here to work WITH people on projects, especially people that actually live in the village. I just don't know where to go from here.

So that's one frustrating experience I wanted to share. Now for the next one. My village started a kindergarten just a couple weeks after I arrived. One of the mothers volunteered to be the teacher, and I worked with her to figure out what to teach and to make posters and decorate the community hall and things like that. Then, a couple weeks after the kindergarten started, the elders decided that we couldn't use the community hall anymore (there are various reasons and theories for why they made that decision but I'm still baffled.) But everything was okay because a woman that has a house in the village but doesn't live in it anymore said it was okay to use it for the kindergarten.

So things were going great. Before the kids to young to go to primary school would spend all day running around the village. Now they spend half the day in kindergarten and the other half running around the village singing the ABCs. Then yesterday, the woman who owns the house came to the village and said she heard a rumor that we were going to change her house (expand it, add a toilet, etc.) and she wasn't happy. So she made us move everything out and doesn't want the kindergarten there anymore. Nobody knows who started that rumor, and it's definately not true, but she wants to lock her house anyway. So now the kindergarten is over. There's no other house that we could have it in, and the elders said we can't use the community hall. So for now we're going to wait for the next community meeting and ask for hall again and hope the elders change their mind. But everyone knows that the real solution is to build a new house just for the kindergarten. But of course that would involve more fundraising and our fundraising committee is gone. All the mothers are really upset, I saw some crying yesterday, and once again, I'm feeling frustrated. So today here I am, sitting at the nearby resort, using the free wireless internet surrounded by a bunch of tourists that just got off a cruise ship. Two of them just came up to me and asked me why my computer isn't an Apple. I didn't know what to say.