How to plant a coral garden

Collect pieces of coral...

glue the pieces of coral to a metal table...

put the table in the water...

make sure everything is secure...

and watch your corals grow!

Photos from our Marine Protected Area

Crown-of-Thorns starfish

Our giant clam farm

Collecting corals to plant

Giant clam

Congratulations Jessica and Akuila

Last weekend I went to the wedding of one of the volunteers from the group before me. After all this time in Fiji, this was the first Fijian wedding I've been to. The cloths they're wearing are traditional wedding dress made from the bark of a certain tree. Before Europeans came to Fiji with their textiles, this was the kind of thing clothing Fijians wore everyday, though not so elaborately decorated. Now they're just worn for special occasions. All of us volunteers were happy to represent the brides family since they couldn't make it all the way to Fiji for the wedding.

Some photos...finally

Drinking grog after youth day

New Years Day, 10am, drinking since midnight

Me and my friend Dji Eta on New Years Day, everyone gets covered in baby powder, I don't know why

Yaqona

It's time I finally explained this. It's most widely known as kava, though I'm not sure where that word came from. Here in Fiji it's called yaqona. I had it once when I was in Hawai'i and they call it 'awa. The English slang word for it is grog. What is it exactly? It's the roots of Piper methysticum, a plant in the pepper family. Traditionally it was only drank by chiefs and only on specially occasions. It was traditionally prepared by a young boy who chewed the roots into a pulp then strained them with water through cloth made from coconut husks. Nowadays, anyone can drink grog anytime. The roots are pounded into a powder then strained through a cloth to make a thick liquid that looks like muddy water. Grog is an important part of any special occasion. Baby namings, first birthday, first menstration, 21^st birthdays, engagements, weddings, and funerals all take place around the grog bowl. Meetings are also held around the grog bowl. The dried roots are presented as an offering for visiting someone's house, talking to the chief, for apologies and thank yous, really just about anything. We also just drink grog just for fun, and indeed we do almost every evening in the village. It's a social thing, like having coffee or a beer with a friend. Even when just drinking for fun, there's a proper procedure that must always be followed when drinking grog and it varies by region and I'll spare you the details. Now what does it do? It's always been interesting to me that grog is used for meetings and for social gatherings because after you've had few bowls, you can't really talk much anymore. One bowl makes you mouth numb and dry (that's why we always eat sweets when we drink grog, and maybe part of the reason why Fijians tend to have bad teeth). After a few more bowls, the numbness spreads (not complete numbness, just a kind of dull feeling), your muscles relax, your mind relaxes, and it becomes difficult to talk in anything more than simple sentences. I've never reached the point where walking becomes impossible, but I've seen it happen to others. What are the side effects? There was as study done once that showed that in causes liver damage, which is why you don't find much kava in the US or Europe. But it was later discovered that that study wasn't done very well, and it was funded by the rival of a pharmaceutical company that was using kava to develop anxiety medication. So there probably aren't any serious permanent side effects. It does make you lose your appetite temporarily, and if you drink it regularly, it makes your skin scaly and peel. But that goes if away if you take a break from drinking for a while. It makes you sleep really well, and some say it makes you lazy the next day. I guess that just depends on how much you drink. Some say it negatively effects sexual performance and sperm count. I'm not sure if there have been any clinical studies on that. So why do we drink it? I don't know. I guess every culture has it's intoxicants and social lubricants. In the US we're addicted to coffee and beer. In South America it was yerba mata. In other pacific islands it's betel nut (also in the pepper family). Here it's yaqona, and I really like it.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

In Fiji Christmas really starts when the schools get out for their two month holiday at the end of November and lasts untill they start again at the end of January. This is when people that have moved away from the village, or never actually lived in it, come back to visit family and relax. I say relax because everything slows down during these two months (as if things weren't slow enough). Then as Christmas gets closer, the parties and marathon grog sessions begin. For Christmas Day I spent the morning in my village, then I left after church and went to another volunteer's house in a town nearby. There were four of us that spent the afternoon together cooking and eating and drinking and talking. The next morning we went to the beach and then I returned to my village. The week between Christmas and New Years was pretty much non-stop grog drinking, occasionally washed down by some rum. Now it's normal for me to drink grog everyday when I'm in my village. But usually just for a couple hours in the evenings. But around this time of year, the grog starts flowing first thing in the morning and doesn't stop. Then comes New Years Eve. After drinking grog all day, everyone goes to church from 11 - midnight. Then the water fights start. It's the village kids' responsiblity to fill plastic bags with water and throw them at anyone who walks by. This lasts for about the first week of the new year. Besides that, after church everyone starts drinking grog...again. There's singing, guitars, dancing, baby powder on everyone's faces (I'm not sure what it means, it just always happens), and small groups of people sneaking off to drink rum in the bushes before returning to the grog session. Yes I took part in all this, until about 4:30 in the morning when I couldn't take anymore and fell asleep. 2 hours later I woke up and they were still drinking grog at my neighbor's house. So I went back and we finished at about 10am. Since then the grog drinking has started to slow down, but only a little. It'll still be a holiday in the village until school starts again. It's been a lot of fun, especially since I still enjoy drinking grog unlike most volunteers, but I'm about ready for things to go back to normal. Working on any projects during this time of year is out of the question, so I'm really hoping to get something started as soon as things settledown. I've been in my village about half a year now and I feel like I don't have much to show for it. I hoping that 2009 will bring a little progress. I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays.

hurry up and wait

So that meeting I was really excited about didn't happen. Our new committee (the one that includes youth and is motivated to start new projects in the village like our ecotourism project) was supposed to meet with the chief and the old development committee last Saturday. Our chief was going to ask the old committee to step aside and let our new committee run the development projects in the village. This is really important because the last time our committee tried to do something (the Serua Day fundraiser), the old committee came and took over. So now we're afraid to start any new projects because they might shut us down. That's why it's good that the chief supports us because he has the final say in everything so the old committee should listen to him. But the old committee didn't show up for the meeting on Saturday. So I guess we just have to wait until they decide to come. What I really want is to have the support of the old committee. I hate to think that I'm part of something that will divide the village into two sides. But this process was started before I even came to the village so I'll just have to wait and hope everything ends up ok. Wait, wait, wait. That's what I spend most of my time doing...waiting.

meet the youth

Youth Day at church

small success

We got our small committee back! Our first meeting is December 6th. My counterpart and I went to a project design workshop put on by the Peace Corps and together we wrote a nice proposal for the ecotourism project we want to start. So we'll present it at the meeting and see if we can make this happen. My vision is to use this small committee, consisting of representatives from all groups in the village (each family group, the women, youth, Turaga ni Koro, etc.), to start and then manage the ecotourism business together as a team. The money that we make would then go towards helping parents pay their children's school fees and maybe some other education promotion projects. But that's just my vision, and I know some other people share it with me, but some have different visions so our challenge will be to put all the visions together. But I'm happy that we've made this important step. That is starting the committee and setting the date for the first meeting. We'll see how it goes...

Bringing the Peace Corps into the 21st Century

I actually wrote this on Friday, November 21, 2008

This blog entry is going to be somewhat critical so I think I'm supposed to say something like: The views expressed here are my own and don't necessarily reflect the views of the United States Government, the Peace Corps, or anyone else you might blame. Ok, now that's out of the way.

I just received the latest issue of Worldview magazine (worldviewmagazine.com) which is the National Peace Corps Association's quarterly magazine. This issue was focused on what is wrong with the Peace Corps as an organization and what it could do to improve and become more effective in the future. It's heartening and frustrating at the same time to read the articles written by past volunteers and staff that served in countries all around the world and to hear that they've faced the exact same problems as I have, not with their country of service or the members of their community, but with the Peace Corps management and resources available to them. Everyone that submitted critical articles to the magazine agrees that the mission and goals of the Peace Corps are sound and it could and should be the most effective development organization in the world. But it's not and there are many reasons. I agree with most of the writers that call for change in management structure, policies, and training. But I feel that most of those things are out of my control so I'll leave them to the next president and the returned PCVs in congress that are currently pushing for change. But there was one thing that was mentioned in the magazine that I can directly relate and particularly frustrates me. We live in the 21^st century and as difficult as it may be for some people to believe, there is high speed internet on this tiny little piece of land in the middle of the pacific ocean. I see no reason why we as Peace Corps Fiji aren't taking advantage of it. The biggest problem I've faced with the Peace Corps and trying to start projects is just a lack of information. One person in the magazine wrote that it's as if each new volunteer has to re-invent the wheel, because there is surprising little information available to us about what past volunteers have done in our area and how they did it. For example, the two projects that I've started to focus on are getting a school house built for our kindergarten and starting a small eco-tourism business on the island. You'd think there would be plenty of information out there about those two projects since every village in Fiji either has a kindergarten or wants one, and tourism is now the largest industry in Fiji and business advising and good environmental stewardship are two of Peace Corps Fiji's goals. But I have not been able to get any information on past volunteers that have successfully or unsuccessfully worked on these two projects. All of us volunteers are required to report trimesterly on all projects we've worked on include organizations we've collaborated with and gotten funding from. So the office has all the information. It would be extremely valuable if they would then put that information into an online database that all current volunteers could access. I see no reason why this hasn't already been done. If there's some privacy/security/bureaucratic reason why this can't be done, I'm starting to think that we should just do it ourselves. Start a Peace Corps Fiji wiki that volunteers can use to share their project information. We wouldn't even have to start a new wiki, we could just develop the Fiji page of peacecorpswiki.org. But this might too much extra work since we all already have to compile all this information on our trimester reports, it'd be even more time (=money) spent at internet cafes. That's why I wish the office would just do it for us, but the wiki might be worth trying. All of you tech-minded people out there that read this blog, I'd appreciate any advice.

By the way, though actually somewhat relate to everything I've discussed, we just had the first volunteer in our group (FRE-6, remember the acronyms?) decide to go home or ET (early termination) and we're all very sad to see her leave though we all understand her reasons. So our group is down now to 30 I think. We lost one a few weeks ago to medical reasons (not lost as in he died but as in Washington headquarters told him he had to leave though he really wanted to stay). This is the longest any Peace Corps Fiji group as gone without someone ET-ing (actually, no group before even made it all the way to swearing-in). Even though this is quite an accomplishment (the staff credits themselves for the good training, we credit ourselves with just being too stubborn), it's still sad to see our friend leave and we'll all miss her.

Obama wins!

I'm pretty sure that every Peace Corps volunteer in Fiji is celebrating Barack Obama's win tonight. A group of us watched CNN on the satellite TV at one of the resorts. Someone should call him and let him know that Peace Corps Fiji voted for him.

chickens are racist

All the white hens in my village follow the white rooster. And all the brown hens follow the brown rooster. Or maybe the white rooster only lets white hens follow him. Or the brown rooster only wants to mate with brown hens. Maybe this is common knowledge, but I've never lived in a place that had chickens roaming around freely so I've never noticed this segregation before. Now I'm pretty sure that ancestral chickens weren't white, so where did the preference for white roosters (or white hens) come from? Maybe there's something else going on that I haven't noticed. Maybe the people that own the chickens have somehow convinced them to stay segregated, so in that case it's not really the chickens' choice. I'll let you all know if I find out more.

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.

levulevu

After laying in bed until 10 am because for some unknown reason I just couldn't make myself get up, I decided that I needed to rearrange my bedroom. Not only because I wanted a change, but also to make space for me to do my “Yoga for Weight Loss” routine. I just picked up the DVD from the post office yesterday, along with a “natural rubber yoga mat,” a “sustainably harvested cork block,” and a “natural hemp strap.” You might be asking yourself, why does she need to lose weight? And if so, why yoga instead of just walking? And if she's going to do yoga, why do it in her small bedroom instead of in the spacious living room of her big house? All good questions, and here are the answers: In the village, I spend the majority of my time in my house or in someone else's house, sitting on the floor. I try not to eat too much, but with no physical activity, I think I've started to gain weight. So why not start walking instead of sitting around? Because as you've seen now from the pictures, I live on tiny little island! Sure, it's not that hard to get to the mainland, but try explaining to my Turaga ni koro that I want to go to the mainland and walk down the road by myself. “Not safe,” he would say, and he'd tell me I'd have to take someone with me. And who would go with me? Not any of the boys, because there would be way too much gossip if any of them were seen alone with me. And what about the women? None of them are interested in any kind of physical activity. So my dad sent me the “Yoga for weight loss” dvd, but why do I have to do yoga in the bedroom? Because in the bedroom I can close all the windows and nobody will see me. If I do it in the living room, people will see me through the door, which stays open all day because it's rude to close your door cause it means you don't want people to visit (not that they would visit because most are still afraid to come into my house). Why don't I want anyone to see me? Because nobody does yoga in the village! I would get so many questions, everyone would talk about it. And in the village, gaining weight isn't seen as a bad thing. People tell me all the time “Sai, o iko levulevu,” which means “Monica, your getting fat.” That's not an insult here. It would actually be an insult if I was losing weight because it would mean that they're not feeding me enough. It's one of those hospitality things. So here I am, rearranging the furniture in my bedroom so that I can secretly do yoga and lose weight. I actually really like the new arrangement:

The new way

The old way

a tour of my village

yup, that's my village out there on that island

sunset over the mainland

the view from the top of the hill

same hill

rugby team practicing at low tide

yeah, it's always that windy

my kitchen

my house, way too big for just one person!

sunset over the mainland

tide going out

our community hall

our church (yes, I go every Sunday), and the Pastor's house

Werelevu (big house) - the Chief's house
This is where we have village meetings, and where you go if you want to see the chief. He and his family live in the house to the right. This is also where we get our drinking water. That pipe to the left leads from the roof of werelevu to a cement water tank where we fill up our bottles

Some houses along the seawall.

the view down the footpath through the middle of the village

my neighbor's laundry

nap time

fijian lesson

This is something i wrote about a week ago but couldn't post until now:


It's time for a short lesson on traditional Fijian village structure. Hopefully this will help you to better understand what it's like for me to live here since my village is more traditional than some. If this isn't interesting to you, I won't be offended if you don't read it.

The country of Fiji is divided into 12 provinces (Yasana). These could could be compared to states in the U.S. Each province is divided into districts (Tikina), which would be like our counties. Then there are any number of villages (koro) in each district. Each village has a chief. One village in each district is a chiefly village so that the chief of that particular village is also the chief of the district. Then each province has a chiefly village where the chief of that village is the chief of the his/her district and chief of the whole province. The position of chief is inherited and he/she has the last say in all decisions made in the village.

Also an inherited position is the mata ni vanua or the chief's spokesman. He's the connection between the chief and the people. He can speak directly to the chief, and during ceremonies he speaks for the chief and accepts offerings (sevusevu) made to him.

Another important person in the village is the Turaga ni koro. He is sometimes elected and sometimes chosen by the chief depending on the village. He's like the village mayor. While the chief is the traditional leader of the village, the Turaga ni koro is more like a political leader. He's the connection between the village and the government. He goes to district and provincial council meetings and all projects in the village must be approved by him.

Then there are the elders who advise the chief and the Turaga ni koro. They're the ones that do most of the talking at village meetings.

There could be anywhere from 50 to 1000 people living in a single village. They say the people of a village are all descendants of a common ancestor who was one of the original Melanesian colonizers of the islands maybe 3000 years ago. The people of each village are divided into clans called mataqali. You inherit your father's mataqali and when women marry, they join their husbands mataqali. What's interesting about Fiji is that the mataqali is the land-owning unit, not the individual. 83% of the land in Fiji is still owned by mataqali (compare that with how much land in the U.S. is still owned by Native Americans). This land can never be bought or sold but it can be leased. So most of the resorts and hotels in Fiji don't own the land they're on, they pay rent to the mataqali that owns the land. For many families this rent is a significant source of income.

I hope all of this is somewhat interesting. Now I can better explain my village. My village has about 130 people and 4 mataqali. I've been adopted by the chief's mataqali which is called Raralevu. My village is a chiefly village. So my chief is the chief of this village, this district, and this province. His title is Vunivalu which means war chief. The Turaga ni koro is my counterpart, so he's the person I'm supposed to be working closely with on any projects I do in the village.

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.

New Address

My new mailing address is:

Monica Papp
P.O. Box 490
Pacific Harbor, Fiji

I'm leaving my training village tomorrow and I'll be at my new site on Thursday. I'll be even further from an internet cafe there so I might not be able to write as often.

Serua Island

I've just returned from my sight visit. I'll be spending my next two years on Serua Island. The island is very small, only about 30 houses, and almost everyone fishes for a living. It's a chiefly island so the chief of the village is also the chief of Serua Province. Since there're only 14 provinces in Fiji, he's a pretty high ranked chief. It's very different from my training village where the chief is a woman and she's one of the poorest people in the village. In Serua, the chief and his family are very well off for Fiji standards. They even have a car that they keep on the mainland. The village is more traditional than my training village so I'm going to have to get used to that.

My counterpart is the person that I'm supposed to be working closely with on any projects that I do, but he doesn't really talk to me much and I'm not sure why. Luckily I met some other people in the village that are very excited to have me there and seem very motivated to get some projects going. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to be working on. I was supposed to meet with the NGO that has been working with the village, but the meeting never happened. There's a women's group and a youth group that I'm hoping to get involved with. I also visited the school on the mainland that the kids go to and they're very excited to have me work with them.

The Peace Corps tells us that for the first three or four months we should just focus on integrating into the community and try to sit in on as many meetings as possible. They speak a different dialect than the one I've been learning, so my first task will be to learn the language. Luckily it's not too different than Bauan.

I have my own house on the island and it's way too big for just one person. The owners now live in the capital and they said I could stay there for the two years of my service. It's already furnished, but I'm gonna have to buy a stove and a few other things for the kitchen.

Oh yeah and they changed my name. I'm now Saivora, named after the chief's wife. In Fiji, if someone is named after you, it makes you kind of like a godparent and your supposed to give your namesake gifts and treats.

Another interesting thing about the village is that since it's a small island, a lot of people have moved to the mainland. Either because there's no more room on the island to build houses or to be closer to jobs and schools. Some of the people from the island now live together in a settlement nearby on the mainland so it's kind of like the village is split in two. Most of the younger women move the settlement because there's no work for them on the island and so their kids can get to school more easily. The young men can stay on the island and fish until they get married. Then they have to decide if they want to bring their wife to the island or move to the mainland. In Fiji, if you ask someone where their from, even if they live in the capital, they'll tell you the name of their father's village, even if they've never lived there themselves. Most people go back to their villages for holidays, weddings, and funerals. In Serua, some people from the settlement come back to the island every weekend. So family and the village are very important to the people here in Fiji. People are very surprised when I tell them about my family in the U.S. and how we all live in different places.

I really enjoyed my visit to the Serua, but it felt really good to come back to Naimalavau yesterday. I actually found that I missed the village and the people and I was only gone for 6 days. It's going to be hard when we have to leave for good next week. Me and the other trainees are already talking about going back for Christmas.

So has anyone figured out yet how to call me from the U.S? I have gotten any calls or messages. My service provider is Vodafone and they say that to call you just have to dial the country code (679) and then my number, but I haven't gotten any calls. Text messages might be different. It only costs me 20 cents to text the US so it'd be a nice way to stay in contact with each other. Let me know if anyone figures it out.

Moce mada

Site Announcement

Yesterday was what people here in Fiji call "America Day" (4th of July) and it was also the day of our site announcement. They made a big map of Fiji out of rope on the ground and called our names one by one and walked us to our site. All of our host families cried as they called out our names. They're going to miss us and even though my host family can be very challenging at times, I'm definately going to miss my village. I can only hope that my new village will be as cool as Naimalavau. I've also gotten pretty close to the other trainees in my village and soon we'll have to move far away from each other. They're my best friends here so I hope that we'll be able to visit eachother after we move to our sites. I'll also miss all of our Fijian training staff and hopefully we'll be able to hang out sometimes after training is over.

So here's what I've been waiting for! I've been assigned to Serua Island. We're all leaving tomorrow to go visit our sites so I'll have more to say about it when I get back next weekend. What I know so far is that it's a small island off the southern coast of Viti Levu (the main island that I'm on now) near the town of Navua if you're trying to find it on a map. There's only one village on the island and there're about 250 people. The island is close enough to the mainland that you can walk to it at low tide. It has 24/7 electricity and running water. There's supposedly a house there ready for me. My assignment is pretty vague and we've all been told that most people don't actually do what there assignment said. I do know that there's an environmental NGO already working with my island and I'm supposed to have a meeting with them on Tuesday. It's a chiefly island so the chief of my village is also the chief of the province I think. Everyone says that it's beautiful and I can't wait to go see it. My counterpart is the Turaga ni Koro (the village spokesman) and I'll meet him tomorrow and we'll go together to the island. I'll be back in my training village on Friday. Then we have two more weeks of training before we move to our sites. I'll try to get on the internet next weekend to tell you more about my site.