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.