Isa Lei

Isa Lei

This will be my last blog entry for the Fiji Diary. I actually left Fiji in September and its now November.

I never learnt to walk Fiji style: saunter, amble or meander. I never managed to eat as much bread or food as everyone else. I never got around to doing my photographic essays of Fiji taxi-drivers with their fancy, enlarged, decorated gearsticks, or of the bright pink, purple and orange houses, or the wheelbarrow boys working in the markets, or the Fijian ladies in their bula print dresses with the frills and piping, the Kiribati/Tuvaluan girls in their smocked gingham tibuta tops or the flowers of the ginger plants: red ginger, white ginger, pink ginger, butterfly ginger, crab’s claw, flaming ginger, shell ginger, pinecone ginger and all the others I don’t know the names of. I would also have liked to taken photos of the warriors: the wishful-thinking extremely oversized muscular bodies that you see printed on sulus, towels, t-shirts and photo albums and also the real flesh and blood ones that are used as display bodyguards during Hibiscus festival, the ones in traditional dress for the important kava ceremonies or sevusevus and perhaps even the rugby players who are the informal warriors of today. The formal warriors of the military forces I am less inclined to photograph but they do have great triangular-edged white sulus as part of their uniforms.

I brought back to Australia the eyebrow language that communicates ‘yes’, ‘I agree’ or ‘I completely understand’.

I brought back lots of coloured outfits that make me stand out in Sydney and Melbourne where the favoured colour is black with black and accessorised with black,

I brought back a reduced tolerance for cool, cold air and air conditioning. Give me a fan any day and temperatures above 29 degrees. I now take a good 15 minutes or so to lower myself into a pool or ocean. Give me back the lukewarm bathwater oceans anytime.

I brought back a reduced tolerance for shopping. The choice, arrays and spreads of goods are overwhelming.

I brought back less regard for the exclusivity of the nuclear family and more regard for the extended/communal family. I miss the community and ‘family’ that I had in Fiji which seemed to spring up around me without much effort on my part.

I also brought back more modesty than I had before. After wearing shirts and shorts to swim in like the locals, I’m not in the mood for bikinis anymore. After getting into the habit of longer, looser skirts so you can sit comfortably on the floor and respectfully cover your knees, I think I’ll keep the habit. I loved observing how your dress changes your behaviour and body language, particularly with the Fijian men. Wearing a sulu (the tailored ones they wear to work or church), means they often have to hold the flap down as they get into taxi’s or climb up stairs or walk in the wind. If they don’t they risk showing too much leg or even underpants. Preparing to sit on the floor also means having to hold the flap and gather the sulu around you. To me, watching it added a gentleness to the way the men moved, slightly bent over, hands on thighs or in front. Much harder to sit with your legs splayed with your crotch on clear display.

I came back to find it painful at times to breathe in the thin dry air. I got bad hayfever instantly. Had a few tummy rumbles as I adjusted to eating more rich food. I got one boil after the other, up my nose, under my arm and up my nose again. Anti-biotics again and again. I still have a ringworm-lookalike fungal thing around one elbow which is slowly fading. Tropical skin eruptions are impressive in their size, stubbornness and variety.

It’s hard to be back. To let go of everything. It has felt a bit like a bereavement. Letting go of my meaningful job, my nice roomy house, the garden I worked on for 2 years, my neighbours who looked after me, my boyfriend, my friends who were just getting to know me well and me them. I’ve had to let go of dreams too: hoping that I could stay in Fiji for longer, hoping my boyfriend could become my life partner and hoping I could find more significant meaningful work in Fiji.

I’m going to try and keep smiling. Keep that sunny disposition. You look up and make eye contact with someone and you smile. Could be exhausting in a place like Sydney with so many people here. But then again, not many people even make eye contact with you. I will keep wearing my bright colours and bula outfits, although I found myself wearing all black the other night at a party. The black keeps creeping up on me. Help! I’m going to try and not go to 7 social events a day and yes to everything so I fill up my life and feel good about myself just because I am busy. I’m going to try and walk slowly or at least calmly and enjoy the walk for the sake of it instead of just for getting from one place to the next.

So from one place to the next….

Isa Lei

Isa Lei

This will be my last blog entry for the Fiji Diary. I actually left Fiji in September and its now November.

I never learnt to walk Fiji style: saunter, amble or meander. I never managed to eat as much bread or food as everyone else. I never got around to doing my photographic essays of Fiji taxi-drivers with their fancy, enlarged, decorated gearsticks, or of the bright pink, purple and orange houses, or the wheelbarrow boys working in the markets, or the Fijian ladies in their bula print dresses with the frills and piping, the Kiribati/Tuvaluan girls in their smocked gingham tibuta tops or the flowers of the ginger plants: red ginger, white ginger, pink ginger, butterfly ginger, crab’s claw, flaming ginger, shell ginger, pinecone ginger and all the others I don’t know the names of. I would also have liked to taken photos of the warriors: the wishful-thinking extremely oversized muscular bodies that you see printed on sulus, towels, t-shirts and photo albums and also the real flesh and blood ones that are used as display bodyguards during Hibiscus festival, the ones in traditional dress for the important kava ceremonies or sevusevus and perhaps even the rugby players who are the informal warriors of today. The formal warriors of the military forces I am less inclined to photograph but they do have great triangular-edged white sulus as part of their uniforms.

I brought back to Australia the eyebrow language that communicates ‘yes’, ‘I agree’ or ‘I completely understand’.

I brought back lots of coloured outfits that make me stand out in Sydney and Melbourne where the favoured colour is black with black and accessorised with black,

I brought back a reduced tolerance for cool, cold air and air conditioning. Give me a fan any day and temperatures above 29 degrees. I now take a good 15 minutes or so to lower myself into a pool or ocean. Give me back the lukewarm bathwater oceans anytime.

I brought back a reduced tolerance for shopping. The choice, arrays and spreads of goods are overwhelming.

I brought back less regard for the exclusivity of the nuclear family and more regard for the extended/communal family. I miss the community and ‘family’ that I had in Fiji which seemed to spring up around me without much effort on my part.

I also brought back more modesty than I had before. After wearing shirts and shorts to swim in like the locals, I’m not in the mood for bikinis anymore. After getting into the habit of longer, looser skirts so you can sit comfortably on the floor and respectfully cover your knees, I think I’ll keep the habit. I loved observing how your dress changes your behaviour and body language, particularly with the Fijian men. Wearing a sulu (the tailored ones they wear to work or church), means they often have to hold the flap down as they get into taxi’s or climb up stairs or walk in the wind. If they don’t they risk showing too much leg or even underpants. Preparing to sit on the floor also means having to hold the flap and gather the sulu around you. To me, watching it added a gentleness to the way the men moved, slightly bent over, hands on thighs or in front. Much harder to sit with your legs splayed with your crotch on clear display.

I came back to find it painful at times to breathe in the thin dry air. I got bad hayfever instantly. Had a few tummy rumbles as I adjusted to eating more rich food. I got one boil after the other, up my nose, under my arm and up my nose again. Anti-biotics again and again. I still have a ringworm-lookalike fungal thing around one elbow which is slowly fading. Tropical skin eruptions are impressive in their size, stubbornness and variety.

It’s hard to be back. To let go of everything. It has felt a bit like a bereavement. Letting go of my meaningful job, my nice roomy house, the garden I worked on for 2 years, my neighbours who looked after me, my boyfriend, my friends who were just getting to know me well and me them. I’ve had to let go of dreams too: hoping that I could stay in Fiji for longer, hoping my boyfriend could become my life partner and hoping I could find more significant meaningful work in Fiji.

I’m going to try and keep smiling. Keep that sunny disposition. You look up and make eye contact with someone and you smile. Could be exhausting in a place like Sydney with so many people here. But then again, not many people even make eye contact with you. I will keep wearing my bright colours and bula outfits, although I found myself wearing all black the other night at a party. The black keeps creeping up on me. Help! I’m going to try and not go to 7 social events a day and yes to everything so I fill up my life and feel good about myself just because I am busy. I’m going to try and walk slowly or at least calmly and enjoy the walk for the sake of it instead of just for getting from one place to the next.

So from one place to the next….

Surviving a bloodless coup

Surviving a bloodless coup


Another coup – the Australian government from what I have heard got frightened by a military exercise in the streets of Suva at midnight which was well publicized by the military and the helicopter going down off the coast of Fiji which led to the evacuation of all Australian volunteers out of the country within 2 days. A very speedy evacuation, barely questioned and we all followed orders like well-trained sheep dogs.

I then felt ashamed that once again white people, the Europeans and by association the colonizers where whisked off to safety and treated like our lives where very much more important. I feel like I have worked so hard to get past people’s attitudes left-over from colonial days (rightly formed in many cases but not always rightly carried on) and the evacuation made me feel like my hard work might have been wasted or undone. This does not seem to have been the case now that I have come back. Maybe people have more pressing things to think about and anyway life does go on whether Europeans are around or not.

As of yesterday, the military have handed over manning of checkpoints to the police. Suva had at least 10 checkpoints around the city, nearby was the tarpaulin tent with perhaps a makeshift bed, an urn, a kava bowl under which the soldiers stood when it rained which is rather often and then when the sun came out which has been not so often. Walking along with my boyfriend, who seems to know most men in town, he would invariably stop to wave, shake hands or have a brief conversation with a nice, young, friendly solider manning a checkpoint. Most of these men would be a cousin, a rugby friend, a friend of a cousin, a friend of a friend in the British army or someone from church. Usually some combination of rugby, the Fiji army, the British army and church will explain how most young men know each other. The checkpoints consisted of big thick ropes the thickness of a rugby player’s forearm spread across the road acting as a sort of speed hump, with perhaps some oil drums dividing up the road and some metal slabs with spikes sticking out of them.

But life does continue with water shortages, water outages, water pump breakdowns along with floods, endless rain, mildew and massive potholes. Yes it is pothole season again. Every road has at least several spanning 75 metres wide. It’s a wonder that people are still driving their vehicles really. It was reported in the newspaper last week that a fish was found swimming in a pothole. I have never thought about potholes so much in my whole life but they are quite staggering in their shape, size and depth and in the effect they have on drivers zigzagging skills. I have asked many people questions about potholes and what is it about the roads and the rains that cause them so badly. I think someone needs to go to a bitumen conference but maybe they only have them in northern hemisphere countries where the theories on bitumen would be irrelevant.

The Interim government has set up an anti-corruption unit and so far has received 400 complaints. At first they were only investigating the ones they had evidence for and we have heard that they are investigating the Public Works Department which is responsible for our water woes. It has been said that people within the department have a vested interest in water not working as it means their mates who own the water trucks get paid to deliver water where it is not on tap. Something like that.

The Fiji economy is not in good shape and to recover in some small way, the government has had to consider changes that are the opposite to what is happening in Australia. For example, the retirement age has been reduced from 60 years to 55 years. There is no problem with an aging society here. All civil servants have been told their wages will be slashed by 5%. When the average hourly rate for many people is $1.10 and the daily newspaper costs 70cents, this 5% will mean a lot to lots of people. To start paying tax here you have to be earning over $10,000. Most people in the country would be lucky to earn half of that.

Hong Kong 7’s mania has started again. Fiji all geared up to bring the cup home but unfortunately while they managed to thrash the New Zealanders really well, they were in turn thrashed by Samoa. But at least two pacific countries were in the final. The famous players are the goosesteppers. I’d never heard of the goose-step till I came here. But they are the ones who seem to score the tries with some nice fancy footwork. Anyway it seems to be the fashion this year for them all to wear big clunky square watches, wedding bands several cm’s thick, a mullet, and then when they score a try to have some elaborate sign language statement which means “give God the glory’ but because they are so cool with their signing it really means “glory be to me’.

I laughed as I read a letter to the paper from a Fijian who now lives in Australia. He was writing about how horrified he was when he first moved to Australia and realized that no one bothered or really cared about the 7’s and that on the world stage, it was really rated very low and that Australia barely bothered to show any of the play on TV and if they did it was 2 weeks after the event and only the Australian team games. This man was urging us all in Fiji to get with it and change our passion to the 15’s which is after all the ‘real’ rugby.

My sense of humor is still not Fijian. I am still too serious. It took me some time to work out why the whole restaurant where I was watching the rugby was laughing out loud at what looked to me like some very bad rugby being played by Japan and Kenya. What was funny was that the ball was being dropped constantly, players were jumping on each other, flinging their limbs out in ungainly ways and basically just did not look like rugby players –they were too effeminate and skinny and small. It explains why the word “uncircumcised” (boci) is used a lot here by men to other men. It means you are unskilled, incompetent and weak.

I got to laugh more.

oh no! It's raining again.

The last full day of sunshine we had was Friday 22nd September. Eighteen days ago. I have been forced to keep track of the weather lately as I have had some visitors from Australia and of course coming to a tropical island they expected some sunshine. We have been reduced to hoping for even half an hour of sunshine in a day. Much of Suva is built on limestone and there are many parts of the city where you can see evidence of landslides and chunks of land breaking apart after excessive rain. Suva is not a flat city so there are many houses built into and on top of limestone. A poor motorist got his car flattened after a huge boulder came away from the cliff he was parked under in a well known city car park. We wait for the sun so we can put our mildewy-smelling cushions, pillows and mattresses out to dry and start scrubbing the walls which are sprouting grey blotches. I probably need to park my own fungi-sprouting body in the sun as well for a few hundred hours. I have big white blobs all over my body as well as the small white spots which are my skin cancers-waiting-to-happen. Fungi is hard to get rid of said my cheerful doctor necessitating two different lots of cream before and after a shower and some stomach-pain-inducing pills.

My cheerful doctor also advised me not to take filiarisis tablets. Also known as Elephantitis, deposited by a mosquito which causes this parasite of an intestinal worm to live in you and make your extremities and genitals swell up so that you look like an elephant. This might take 20-30 years to manifest itself but the end result is very ugly and painful and the Ministry of Health is doing a good job scaring me with its frightful photos of a supposed elephant in the newspapers everyday. The Ministry of Health is offering the tablets for free but my cheerful doctor has told me I don’t need to take them as I don’t wallow in rivers or mud and have not lived in Fiji for a long time.

Suva has been hosting the 4th Melanesian Arts and Cultural Festival for the last 10 days. The city is swelling with the delegations from Vanuatu, the Solomons, PNG and New Caledonia. I think its been interesting for us all comparing the Fijians with these other Melanesians. The people from the Solomons seem to have longer and straighter hair and the men have really long dreadlocks hanging down to their bums. The PNG people can be distinguished with their brightly coloured beanies and woven bags. It is harder to pick the people from Vanuatu and New Caledonia but I think the women wear brightly coloured mumus and of course with New Caledonia you can hear French being spoken and also see some fairer skins with the mix of French blood.

The highlight of the concerts which are held every night have been the women’s groups from PNG and the Solomons. This is because they bear their breasts wearing truly traditional costumes. It is also because they are older women and the Fijian crowds delight in the ‘sucu lili’ (hanging breasts) of older women. So all the way through the performance the crowd is full on laughing and whooping and even more so when a sucu lili sways or moves because of some energetic movement. The women take it very well I think. I don’t think I’d be too happy with people laughing at me because of my hanging breasts. I don’t even have an excuse like bearing 10 children.

The other thing that causes great mirth from the crowds is when someone gets up from the audience and goes on stage to dance with whoever is performing. They might wander in and out of the formation the group are in, mimic some of their movements or go up really close to one of the dancers and try and dance with them! Everyone is hooting with laughter. It’s kind of like a friendly ‘send up’ of the group.

The men from the Solomons have been impressive with their dancing and at the same time playing large bamboo flutes several strung together. The men are all dressed in traditional costume as well, bare thighs, laplaps, etc. However the leader of the group wears a bright blue Nike sweatband with the huge white tick sticking out on his head. – let’s not forget the Western world eh?

The Vanuatu delegation made a formal apology to the chiefs of Fiji yesterday. They wanted to say sorry for the past misdeeds of taking Fijian women and men for labour I think. Some 10 pigs, fine woven mats, taro and a kava plant were presented to the Vice President of Fiji which he accepted in the traditional way and all is forgiven.

Geographically Fiji is on the edge of Melanesia. The Fijians have all the features of Melanesian people with their skin and hair etc but seem to share many other features with Polynesia. The Eastern side of Fiji has very close ties with Tonga because of trading, intermarriage and migration in the past. There have been Fijian chiefly families who have married into the Tongan royal family. So when the King of Tonga died last month, it was quite strongly felt here. A very chiefly delegation went to Tonga for the funeral. You can play spot-the-Tongan in town as they are all wearing black for the next month to mourn. There is a house full of Tongan men next door to me. I don’t notice their rowdiness as I can’t hear it. They are big drinkers normally but the beer is gushing out at the moment perhaps due to their mourning?! My visitors tell me they get woken up by angelic singing at midnight which then progresses to loud talking for the next few hours or shouting. But people say thank goodness they are Tongan because they don’t fight and bash each other up like the Fijians do! Like with the laughing at the performances, it is such an un PC comment!

The noise of the Tongans is enhanced by the seven puppies next door on the other side of me. Another Australian volunteer has been doing some soul-work by feeding up the dogs that hang around his house – all five of them. As a result they are the only decent sized dogs in the street and we can no longer see their ribs or bald patches. It also means they have fallen for him and hang around the house perpetually waiting for food. It also means that the mother was able to give birth to seven gorgeous healthy puppies who make lots and lots of noise. The Australian is being very careful about who he gives the puppies to as he wants them to go to good homes not just a place that will discard them once they stop being gorgeous cute baby puppies.

Fijians love baby puppies and babies in general. A friend of mine came to visit with her 10 month old chubby pale skinned baby. Poor baby had to cope with not only lots of dark faces looming into her vision but also being pinched on both cheeks by all these strangers. Walking down the street in town, nearly every single person noticed her, smiled or cooed or pinched her cheeks. It was kind of overwhelming how much attention she got and this was from young, old, women and especially men. Poor little baby also got a few mosquito bites. Two in particular landed right smack bang in the middle of her cheek like spots of rouge. This again drew lots of attention from everyone. Little dark Fijian babies, don’t show up mosquito bites in quite the same way. If you want some attention, bring your babies to Fiji.

I am not really a clubber. When I was younger I would have found the attention from men a bit overwhelming. Living in Sydney, my friends and I always found other more interesting things to do. Suva has quite a happening club scene. There is not really much else to do at night besides the movies and going out for dinner. The men are also mostly happy just to dance and don’t try and chat you up.

Purple Haze – the Indian Bollywood night club. 95% of the population are men with about 40% of them cross dressing. The men from what it looked like to me just want to dance, they all sing the words to the latest hits from Bollywood and fling themselves around very energetically. If you get asked for a dance, they come and politely ask you, lead you onto the floor, dance and then say thank you and lead you off and then vanish into the heaving mass of flesh. Pretty easy and uncomplicated for a woman!

Birdland – the dingy, cheap looking favourite haunt of young Fijian men with their mates and often one of them is back in Fiji on holidays from the British Army so he is shouting everyone jugs and jugs and jugs of beer. A fight will break out, fists will thump through the dense air, mates will intervene, the tension dies down. Next minute you look over and the thumpers are bare chested swapping shirts with each other in the Fijian culture of kerekere (what belongs to me belongs to you).

Golden Dragon – lots of young Rotuman people here. You can get away with wearing shorts and thongs. The men were a tad more aggressive here. Just a tap on the shoulder to indicate you were wanted on the dance floor. Then before you knew it, you were mauled with the young man roughly rubbing himself up and down the length of your body in a cheap imitation of ‘dirty dancing’. A friend would save you by pulling you out of his clutches and into yours. I’m much happier doing ‘dirty dancing’ or tango imitations with a girlfriend than an unknown male.
Traps – for the groovy university crowd with techno music and the latest fashions.

Sirens – for the Chinese sailor who needs some distractions.

The Barn – for the single parent looking for someone older and who likes reggae mixed with country and western.

So Fiji can offer you rain, fungi, endless attention if you are white chubby baby and a varied club life. Come on over!

hanging breasts

Hanging Breasts

I have not really learnt any swear words or terms of derision in Fiji. But I have learnt a making-fun-of term. “Sucu lili” means hanging breasts and usually means you have had lots of children hence a legacy of hanging breasts. Akata and Marika who are my housemates at the moment said that when they were growing up in the village and would come across older women bathing by the river they would yell out “sucu lili!” and run away laughing.

Akata told me a story about a friend of hers who married a pastor about 20 years ago. The tradition is that you go to the husband’s village after you are married and get introduced and spend some time there. So they headed off into the hills of the interior to his village to stay with his mother. The wife, who was a town girl was shocked to see that her mother-in-law only wore a sulu covering her from the waist down and bared her breasts all day. The wife found this very hard to get used to and for days would beg the mother-in-law to wear some of her clothes but she refused. After a week or so, the tears subsided and she got used to it.

I have started to put on weight. Living with local people means eating more of what they eat. This means cordial with sugar added to it, Milo with sugar added to it and tea with half a cup of milk added to it. It also means a carbohydrate rich diet. Bread or cassava or dalo or rice or 2 minute noodles are a must with every meal. None of the above and you will have a disgruntled diner at your table. I had a meal recently of a curry made of potato and 2min noodles served with dalo. A carb-rich meal! At a dinner party recently to celebrate the end of some work we had finished, I later heard that some people did not want to come as “Kate always eats fruit and vegetables”. They were pleased to come and find that I had done a pile of sausages (they were the first to go from the table). Phew!

I guess it is part of living on an island but I am amazed at how much people love to eat fish here. I have never been a big fish eater and I find it a struggle to eat so much of it. You drive anywhere out of town and there are always people selling fresh fish on the roadside. Locals will drool as they eye off the fish and imagine some meal with it. There have been media campaigns recently to try and alert people to the need to preserve and care for marine life and protect fishing grounds. Eating turtle is now illegal but people still do. It has been an important traditional and ceremonial food and everyone raves about the taste of it.

While we are on the topic of food – I may as well tell you about BBQ. The word barbeque does not just refer to how food is cooked but to an actual meal. So if you say “you want to eat bbq?” that means do you want a meal of marinated sausages and chops, with cassava and salad all for around $3.50. You can find many places selling bbq on the roadside and in town there are some registered marquees set up that cook bbq at night. The Suva City Council have stopped giving out licences to sell bbq as there are too many stalls set up around the place.

You can get arrested here for swearing in public. A guy got arrested for swearing at his cousin in public. He was not arrested for being drunk and disorderly but for swearing!

Our water woes continue. Four young children have died from diahorrea probably caused by bad water. I have started boiling all my water now. Often I will open a tap and out will come brown water. The diahorrea could also be caused from other practices which are a bit worrying. A sugar bowl will have one spoon which everyone shares. They take their sugar, put it in their tea and stir it and then put the spoon back into the bowl. Because people eat with their hands a lot, restaurants will have a sink for people to wash their hands and a lone tea towel which people use not only to wipe their hands but also to wipe their mouths.

Toilet paper – is illusive and rare. I went into a shop the other day and was shocked that its toilet had FIVE rolls of toilet paper placed around it. My workplace does not have toilet paper. Each office has to buy their own and you take a few sheets with you when you go to the loo. I was told when I questioned this practice in my early days that they would go through 20 rolls in a week. I don’t know what people do with the stuff. Then of course my office will run out of paper and also run out of petty cash so I have to run around borrowing sheets from other offices or bring my own in for a few days. Most public toilets and office toilets do not have paper. There are some places where you alert the security guard and they will give you a little parcel of paper. One place I went to the other day, you paid 20cents and they also gave you a little parcel of it.

Fijian way of getting rid of hiccups but only for babies – you tear off a small bit of paper and lick it then stick it on the forehead of the baby. Then the hiccups will go away!

There seems to be widespread belief in using water to reduce your electricity bill. People will fill up a bottle of water and put it on top of their meter box. So widespread is this belief that the Fiji Electricity Authority did a poster campaign telling people that a bottle of water will NOT reduce your electricity bill!

I have been having a holiday seeing some of the best works of art I have ever seen. Under the water – fish and coral. Some of the combinations of stripes, patterns and colour I could not have imagined myself nor have I seen on art gallery walls yet. When you get away to an island you can believe that old tourist slogan Fiji once used “Fiji: the way the world should be” with the sunsets, works of art and peace. This balloon of a peaceful world I have been cocooned in has been somewhat punctured for me by reading a book about the 2000 coup. It had me in tears and I wonder how any of the ministers of the deposed government could recover from the betrayal and injustice they must have felt. I feel sad because those who instigated it seem to have had no thought of the consequences of their actions which 6 years later are still being felt. People still have not been brought to justice and in fact some people have been promoted. There is unrest, fear, discord and distrust still doing rounds today and it is because there has not been a proper resolution. It is and was all about power and money. How ugly.

where are the bandaids????

It is World Water Day tomorrow. Ironic when once again I had no water for 2 days and I live in the heart of the capital. My neighbours and I called for the water truck to come so we could fill up our bottles and rubbish bins so that we could then boil it and attempt to go about day-to-day life. I now have a sense of just how precious water is and I really know now that I absolutely cannot live without it. The water truck never came to our end of the street. My neighbour heard the truck driver and his girlfriend having a good argument in the next street so when we rang to complain about the lack of water, we also complained about that. They told us the water would come 7am the next day and when we clarified that by asking if that was Fiji time 7am or real time 7am, they laughed. The truck came at midday of course. So when you have a kidney stone that you are trying to flush out by drinking 3 litres of water a day (as per Dr’s orders), you start to get preoccupied about where that water is going to come from, let alone if it is safe to drink.

I don’t want to rave on about my health problems but I will. I have 2 infected sores on each foot at the moment and I have had for about 3 weeks now. I have lost count of how many packets of bandaids I have had to buy. So walking is hard work and I have to wear thongs. Luckily they are considered to be appropriate footwear for work. At the end of the day I have aching feet because I am not walking properly and compensating for where my sores are. This morning as I rushed to work, I stopped at a Pharmacy on the way to buy some more bandaids and merchurochrome (not sure how you spell it, a bright red antiseptic liquid that is used a lot here). After numerous attempts to make myself understood (we were both speaking English) they told me they had none of either. I erupted in frustration and also I was astounded that a Pharmacy would not have these basic basic health products. I stormed out of the shop.

We have been having a conjunctivitis epidemic in Suva. Every 5th person you see on the street has the red streaming eyes or is suspiciously wearing sunglasses indoors. People are going to work and being sent home as are many students. I don’t think I have ever seen conjunctivitis before. The newspaper printed a blurb about it, how infectious it is and that people need to be isolated but I don’t see that being practiced too much. I with my already bad health here am paranoid about getting it so have taken to wearing sunglasses as well to protect myself and avoid anyone with it. I have probably been an insensitive European by talking loudly about how people need to isolate themselves and how so and so should probably go home.

There has been a story in the newspaper about some dead babies that have gone missing from Lautoka hospital. The newspaper implied that the babies were stolen for use in some terrible way. Anyway it turns out that the hospital had not lost the babies. They had cremated them as is the practice when no family come to claim the dead baby from the morgue. The reason for this is that some families cannot afford the funeral or burial so they stay away until the hospital has to depose of the dead baby themselves. Sad eh?

Hospitals are known here for incredibly long waits. Same as in Australia but more extreme. A friend of mine who is an American nurse was telling me how she went with one of the Deaf boys who had broken his arm to get it looked at. It was broken a month ago but he was in a lot of pain with a huge lump over where it has been broken. They went to a GP who said the lump was just a boil and to give it a massage and it would go away. Suspecting a break that had not been set properly and was not healing they decided to take him to the hospital to get it looked at. The poor boy also could not move his fingers so could not sign – very problematic for a deaf boy who only communicates in sign. So the first day they rock up, had to wait 6 hours to be seen. They were bumped back down the line when a group of 20 policemen rock up for routine x-rays. My friend repeatedly asked for pain medication as the poor boy was in agony. She was told to wait and that the nurses were too busy. If you want to eat or drink at the hospital you have to bring your own bowl, cup and plate so bad luck if you don’t know that beforehand. After the long wait, a visiting American hand surgeon just happened to look up from his desk to ask if they were being attended to. The next day was a 3 hour wait and they had lost the file and x-ray from the day before and then the day of surgery was a 9 hour wait. During this time my friend was in the ward and started doing some of her own nursing when she could see some things were not going well. She took out a huge air bubble from someone’s IV drip. Another man had a huge lump over where his IV was wrongly inserted and was in obvious pain. When he complained to the nurse she massaged it with the needle still inserted (massage is the answer for everything here) causing him more pain. When the nurse left the room, my friend took it out and reinserted it. Of course she felt bad, interfering in people’s work.

I don’t know about the volunteer thing. I am starting to think if the organization can’t get its act together to do what they want to achieve then they are not ready for it. The culture in Fiji seems to be distrusting of white Europeans telling them what to do (rightly so probably) or having more expertise than them. You are often thrust into a leadership or management role but local distrust makes that difficult to carry out no matter how hard you try to be inclusive and not autocratic. The culture also seems to respect that more traditional hierarchy where you have the person at the top who is the boss and what he says goes and you don’t question it. They also seem to like that more authoritarian way of ruling. But if you act like that you get told you are trying to take over when you are only a ‘volunteer’. As you can see I have issues I need to work through!

Loloma

Kate

a new use for talcum powder

You need a lot of headspace to write (I do anyway). I have not had much of that the last few months – hence no writing.

Benny Hinn the American evangelical has been to Fiji, performing at the national stadium for 3 nights for free. He says if you have enough faith, you can reach out and touch your TV screen (while he is on the TV) and you can be healed. My friend Salote died this week and she died the same night after she has been to see Benny Hinn. She went up the front of the stadium for healing and she still died. She had a lot of faith but I think she was quite looking forward to meeting her creator.

There is a lot of death in Fiji. People often seem to die of things that you don’t die of in Australia. It is also quite hard to find out what people have died from. I find it very exasperating to be told that someone died because “they had a weak body” or “their knees were swollen”. It is very hard to get the story. Maybe I come from a culture that is obsessed with details or cause and effect but people here don’t seem to be bothered by lack of detail. Maybe it is enough that they have died.

Unless you are Hindu or Muslim, then you are likely to have a Christian funeral and burial. Fiji Christianity has its own style and I find it fascinating the blend of traditional Fijian practice with Christian ceremony. So when someone dies, a few days before the funeral you have what is called the Reguregu. This is where you visit the family of the person who has died. You present money and a gift of kava. Speeches are made, gifts are presented and a bowl of kava is drunk. The women will then separate from the men and visit the women of the family and often view the body. The body is in a coffin, often with a glass panel over the face. The coffin is in a room that is decorated with the traditional woven mats and masi cloth. You will file past the body, take a long look at the face, some people will kiss the glass. I got a shock the first time I saw the face of a friend’s dead sister. I did not know where to look. She had cotton wool in her nostrils and her skin was sweating. Then you greet and console the mother of the deceased. The family will then provide tea and bread or even dinner to everyone. The Reguregu can take all day as different groups of people come to visit the family. It is very exhausting for the family, as they are constantly welcoming people, cooking and serving.

The funeral service itself is not much different from ones I have been to in Australia, except that there is always a picture of the dead person placed on the coffin and the family will often hire out a couple of buses to transport people from the funeral to the burial and then back to the family home.

The cemeteries in Fiji are looked after by prisoners. The prisoners maintain the grounds, dig the graves and then bury the body. They work in gangs supervised by a prison official. The prisoners are young Fijian men, with fit hard bodies from the heavy work of digging graves. At the burial of my friend Salote, I saw an Indian prisoner for the first time and he stood out being so much slighter and slimmer than the Fijians.

The coffin is wrapped in several woven mats before being lowered into the ground. The prisoners then shovel in the dirt and make a mound. Then a piece of masi (traditional cloth made from the bark of a pepper tree) is covered over the mound. A prisoner then takes a digging fork and pierces it several times. Masi is quite valuable and in the past was stolen from fresh graves. Piercing it makes it unable to be sold and therefore not worth stealing. The prisoners then all kneel and clap several times and their job is over. Flowers are then laid on the grave and people depart quietly.

Other ceremonies take place, 4 days later, 100 nights after and then a year later.

Witchcraft is still practiced in Fiji and often spoken about. I find it hard to take seriously but people do take it very seriously. Often when trying to find out why a person became sick or became deaf, I will be told that they were cursed. Kava is used to make the curse and jealousy is usually the reason given for doing it. People are told to be careful about whose kava they are drinking and where it comes from. Certain places in Fiji are well known for having evil spirits or using curses. My friends’ sister who died recently, died on an island called Beqa just off the coast of Suva. She had a stroke and asthma which affected her before she went to the island but when she later died, it was the island that was blamed not her health. Some people even refuse to go to the island for the fear that it induces in them.


It’s fascinating living in a place where the blend of pre-christian practice and Christian practice is quite obvious.

In November, we celebrated the National Disability Games. People with disabilities from all over the country participate in athletics and other sports. The children from all the special schools travel to participate. The night before the games begin, they have a concert with every school and disability group performing either a traditional song or dance. It is quite hilarious seeing these little kids all in matching hula skirts, sulus and Bula shirts (Hawaiian shirts). Even more hilarious is the behaviour from the audience. At first I was affronted with what I thought was bad behaviour but I realized I was judging it from a western perspective whereby when you watch something you are expected to sit quietly, applaud at the end and in no way leave your seat and get up on the stage. You judge a performance by how good the timing was and how co-ordinated the dance is. There is a real division between the performers and the audience. Not so in Fiji. It is very hard for the performers to keep in time as their dancing is constantly interrupted by members of the audience (usually parents) who smother their kids with kisses, then stuff money into their costumes, sprinkle talcum powder on their heads, if they have a ceremonial sarong/sulu on they attempt to take it off while the dance is going on not before. If a kid is wiggling their hips differently or more provocatively, the audience will be raucously laughing at and pointing at this person. A performance is judged to be good when someone stands out not conforms. But what makes them stand out is usually something that would cause great embarrassment in Australia. Things like their costume falling off or being a boy but dancing like a girl, or dancing with great energy while everyone else is two steps behind. It is all very entertaining and but takes some getting used to. I have tried to find out why talcum powder is seen to be special or used to congratulate people but I just get told that it means they are good, but why? I want to know. I must come across as a 4 year old constantly asking “but why?”

I have been here nearly a year now. I still feel like an outsider and am the subject of a lot of gossip which I find hard to deal with. I guess it takes a while for a place to feel like home.

Happy New Year to you all for 2006.

once were warriors and probably like to think they still are

Happy Diwali everyone! Yesterday we had a public holiday to celebrate this Hindi festival of lights. I went out into the streets last night and all the Hindu households had their houses covered in lights and their lawns and steps lit up with candles. Then the air was filled with the smoke of firecrackers and you could hear the squeal of them as they explode dand combusted. I even held a few in my hand as they let out their balls of colored fire. I felt very daring. The last time I handled a firecracker with my own bare hands was when I was 14 just before they were all banned in Australia. They said Diwali was a bit boring and quiet this year as a number of the really good firecrackers have now been banned. Nothing for the young boys to blow their hands and faces off with now. What a shame. But I did enjoy eating the multi-coloured sweets and various curries which is all part of Diwali.

The last time I wrote was about going to Lautoka, a sugar making town on the west of the island I live on. Since then I have been to another sugar making town on the other main island of Vanua Levu (big land) called Labasa. Again amazing how different another place can be when it is only an hour’s flight north east of Suva. Labasa is basically a town with one main road that leads to the sugar mill and small roads coming off it where people live. It is dusty and drier than Suva. It also appears to be a muslim town with people wearing more traditional muslim attire. I went with a Rotuman, Fijian and Rabian (from the island of Rabi - looks Rotuman). Not only were we deaf and therefore signing in public but we were also different in skin hues from the majority of Indians. I found the staring hard work to ignore. People can stare a bit here in Suva because you do stand out a bit but the intensity was of a different level in Labasa. People would turn their heads, stop what they were doing, open their mouths, even make eyes at you. I mean we were a good looking group of people but I found it hard to take and even when I stared back or made an expression as if to say “yes?” the staring continued unabated.

The staring is balanced out by the friendliness of people though. Everyone says hello and being deaf as well you get cheaper taxi fares and even free entry into nightclubs. I am sure by the end of the weekend, the whole of Labasa town knew that there were 4 deaf people from Suva staying at the Takia Hotel and that two of them went to a night club on Saturday night.
The lone cinema shows only Hindi movies. Costs $2 in the stalls or $3 in the circle. It took me some time to decide which seat to buy! Remember in the old days, at the back of the cinema where you entered the dark space, they had a curtain which was pulled to block out the light? They still have that curtain in Labasa!

Fijians pride themselves on their physiques especially the men and I can say I really understand why. They are gorgeous looking people (especially the men). In particular they have perfect white dazzling teeth, long slender hands and fingers, perfectly clean and cut fingernails, there are plenty of 6-packs to be seen, muscular calves and thighs, thick luscious lips that put botox to shame, noble noses with slightly flared nostrils and they ALL have wonderful smiles.

There seems to be this warrior theme in Fiji which I am sure is related to their physiques but I have sensed it goes deeper than that. There are numerous shops in town that sell t-shirts with “Fiji Warrior” emblazoned on it and then a Sin City style cartoon of an overly muscular man wrestling a pig. The muscles would put the Incredible Hulk to shame. There are other shops that sell sulus (sarongs) with “Fiji Warrior” printed on them and again a picture of a Hulk or a man with a big Afro holding a war club. Alot of the postcards are photos of hulky Fijian men in traditional dress again titled “Fiji Warriors”. Even in my research work when I have asked for suggestions of names for Fiji Sign Language, people have come up with “Fiji Warrior Sign Language”! This all got me to thinking about where this has come from. I have been reading a book about the militarisation of Fiji. It talks about the role of the warriors in pre-colonial times called bati. Their role was to defend the land and the chiefs. Tribal wars were a way of life in Fiji and men were born and bred to become bati. There were ceremonies to celebrate the successes of the bati in protecting the tribe. It now looks like the Fiji military have taken on this role as they protect the chiefs, the government and those with power and wealth. Certainly many young Fijian men look up to the military and even copy their hairstyles and style of dress. The military, government and church are certainly interconnected here very tightly to protect the land of Fiji just like the warriors, chiefs and priests of earlier times were. When the Minister for Foreign Affairs in Australia, Alexander Downer made a passing visit (he drove by me as I walked home from work) and commented on how inappropriate and wrong it was for the military in Fiji to be making comments about the government and getting involved in the internal affairs of the country; he was howled down because the role of the military here IS just that and very different from the Australian military. Of course Downer was making the comment from the perspective of the role of the Australian military and implying that that is the ‘right’ way to be.

But back to the warriors.......I am very happy looking at them.

Music is almost non-existent in my life here. I have no TV, no stereo and no radio. I do find that my mind perhaps because of this drought has dredged up old songs from years ago that I never thought I would remember. I am also ‘hearing’ lots more static inside my head which not even my hearing aid is managing to mask anymore. But that might be due to other things. The only times I hear music is on the bus where it is blared out so much so that many people with normal hearing have to cover their ears. The other time I am lambasted with it is when I catch a mini-van. They are reknown for dangerous driving (they are cheap, fast and go 24 hours a day) and their music. Having been with a friend who has come to visit me lately, she has been able to inform me that the music which I thought was pacific islander ukele style is in fact Celine Dion set to reggae, or Australian Crawl set to reggae, or Kenny Rogers set to reggae or country and western set to reggae. When hanging out with the deaf community, sitting around a bowl of kava, the party is not considered complete unless the stereo with speakers the size of toilets are blaring out some reggae. It has to be of a level that deaf people can appreciate but that never seems to be a problem as most of the hearing people listen to it at the same level anyway.

We have had Spring here. I never thought of Fiji as a Spring-time kind of place but it happens. All of a sudden the ‘chill’ in the air has gone and I can now put away my knitted blanket which I used perhaps for 5 nights during the ‘winter’ season. We have frangipani’s blooming as well as a whole variety of ginger plants which have amazingly heavy and colorful flowers. The air is also alot steamier and we have had more rain again. It is also now hurricane season which will end in April. The cochroaches and ants have returned and the mildew on the walls has grown a little further.

When my friend visited we did a 2 day walk through the island of Viti Levu. We stayed in 2 villages along the way where we drank tea made from lemon leaves, had our bath in the river, drank the welcome bowl of kava, ate custard pie with lime green custard, ate lots of traditional Fijian food and saw the sight were the Reverend Baker was killed and eaten in 1867 or so. The story goes that Baker and his two Fijian assistants went into the highlands of the island which are known for having lots of warriors! They insulted a chief by touching his head and hair. This is a grave insult in Fijian culture and when in the company of a chief you would always try and walk so that your head it not higher than his or if you have to, you would ask to be excused for this. There is debate that Baker must have already known about the head touching taboo as he had been in the country some time so there must be more to the story but anyway, all three of them got killed probably by some warriors who probably used their war clubs to smash their skulls in. They were then eaten. I think meat would have been hard to come by as the village is quite isolated. Years later the chief of the village feels that because of this act, on their part, the village has been cursed and so to restore the spiritual balance he sets up a memorial to Rev Baker which is the site I saw. The chief himself is a strong Christian and chooses not to drink kava or eat meat.

During this walk, again I had the opportunity to marvel at the warrior-type physiques of our guides who rode their horses bareback, walked the 6 hours a day in flipflops or bare feet with absolute grace and never once stumbled while making the 20 river crossings through fast flowing water and a rocky riverbed. While I huffed and puffed, got wet, got blisters from my 20 kilo walking boots which we were all told we had to have, got a massive migraine from being dehydrated even though I was carrying 4 litres of water while they carried and drank no water at all!

Once again it has been a while since I have written. Time flies even in Fiji! I hope I have not written and rambled on too much.
Happy Diwali and I hope your lives are filled with light and sweetness. And if you like the look of warrior-types, that you get a sighting now and again.

Kete