We're going where?

About 5 weeks ago, the Peace Corps Fiji staff announced where each individual or couple would be headed for their 2-year assignment. This is the culmination of all the work and effort that trainees and staff have put in to identify what sites would best meet the needs of the local people as well as the needs of the volunteers. Keep in mind that the trainees/volunteers, once they’ve reached this point, have already been heavily vetted, so Peace Corps generally has a pretty good idea of where most people will fit.

The Peace Corps application process is no small task. Michelle and I began our application 18 months prior to our selection for Fiji, which was just 6 weeks before we stepped on a plane to the South Pacific. The time in between was filled with multiple interviews, a psychological profile, medical/dental exams and immunizations, essays upon essays, questionnaires, recommendation letters, and a “wish list” of where we’d like to go. Just making it through the application process is a testament to the determination and dedication of the applicant. If you can at least manage to make it through all that bureaucracy, you’ve shown that you have the patience and resilience to be a good Peace Corps volunteer. Imagine a track and field event involving endurance running and randomly placed hurdles where a line judge decides to arbitrarily stop the race for individuals where they see fit and you have an idea of the Peace Corps application process.

Given our passion about the oceans (not to mention my interest in – not addiction to – fishing), Michelle and I selected three regions on our wish list including: (1) the South Pacific; (2) Southeast Asia; and (3) the Caribbean. Bear in mind that those of us in Fiji are a percent of a percent of a percent of all applicants to the Peace Corps. Last year, about 16,000 people applied to the Peace Corps for only 8,000 available positions. Of that 8,000, most volunteers end up in Africa or Latin America. Only 5 percent of all Peace Corps applicants go to the South Pacific and only a percentage of that end up in Fiji. Currently, there are about 30-35 trainees who are annually selected for Fiji, making the overall percentage of Peace Corps volunteers who apply for service and end up in Fiji about 0.45 percent of all Peace Corps applicants per year. Nonetheless, placement is at the pleasure of the Peace Corps and we could have just as easily ended up in a landlocked African nation like Niger (for those of you confused by a recent Vice Presidential candidate, Africa is a continent, not a country). Thus, we feel very fortunate that we were selected for not just the South Pacific, but for Fiji specifically.

So for site announcements, the Peace Corps Fiji Training Director, Rose Armour, held a dinner at her home in Suva to announce our site placements. Prior to the dinner, two large maps of the north and south islands, Vanua Levu and Viti Levu respectively, and a smaller one of the Yasawa Islands, were placed on a large plywood platform covering what would be a swimming pool. Anticipation was allowed to build as trainees browsed around what would be their prospective sites on the map while other staff and current volunteers arrived. Next, large envelopes where handed out to all the trainees, who were instructed to await an announcement for everyone to open their envelopes simultaneously. Shortly after, the announcement was made to open our envelopes and, like 6 year olds on Christmas morning, the trainees all tore into their envelopes to varying degrees of surprise, confusion, satisfaction, or disappointment. Everyone dreams of that idyllic thatched hut on a beach surrounded by palm trees and crystal blue waters for their site placement. However, the reality is that Fiji is a developing nation and its needs vary just like any other developing nation. This includes needs in urban and rural as well as interior and coastal areas. While most trainees seemed satisfied with their placements, there were a few who expressed outward disappointment with their placement. In previous years, some trainees have apparently cried they were so disappointed. I can understand mild disappointment with a placement, we all yearn for that tropical paradise, but I do think perspective is in order.

Nowhere in Fiji are you more than 2 hours from the beach. Furthermore, the tropical jungles and mountains are amazing in and of themselves. Taking this into account, and considering my description of the total percentage of volunteers in Fiji, it makes it hard to understand how anyone could really be disappointed, but it apparently happens. I guess you can’t please everyone all the time and some folks can find the dark cloud in every silver lining, but I can’t help but suggest to those folks that they could’ve been in Kazakhstan living in a concrete Khrushchev surrounded by snow or in Niger living in a mud hut surrounded by scorching sand. That said (and not to be smug) Michelle and I were incredibly fortunate because not only did we get the Idyllic beachside villa, but our house is about 1000 square feet, made of wood (much of it mahogany no less), powered by hydroelectric (thank you China for your attempt to buy U.N. votes), and has reliable running water. So we really don’t have anything to complain about.

Our site assignment package described a site on Vanua Levu in a village called Wailevu, about an hour bus ride from the main southern city on the island, Savusavu. Savusavu is a town of about 5,000 people including surrounding communities, hardly making it an “urban center” by U.S. standards, but it is as urban as it gets next to Labasa on the north end of Vanua Levu at 24,000. Wailevu is comprised of the village proper and several small settlements outside village boundaries amounting to about 300 people. The village is on a small river delta sandwiched between a coral coast and beautiful rocky peaks over 1000 feet and blanketed in lush, green jungle. Michelle was assigned to address public health and education needs while I was assigned to address environmental needs in the village. We probably couldn’t have asked for more…this is as close to paradise as it gets in terms of our assignment. So later that night after an amazing Mexican dinner (you have no idea how hard this is to come by in Fiji), many of the trainees went out either to celebrate or drown their sorrows and we, very content with our assignment, went back to the hotel where we were staying to enjoy another precious night of air conditioning, hot showers, and the Discovery Channel before returning to our host village and buckling down for the last two weeks of training. In any event, the last big step before swearing in as Peace Corps volunteers was complete and we were all able to rest easier with at least a little more certainty of what we were getting into.

Nits and Snot Bubbles

There are three things in Fiji that I have determined are absolute certainties: (1) a dropped slice of buttered toast always lands butter side down…on a trail of ants; (2) a cat that falls out of a tree always lands on its feet…immediately before being eaten by the village stray dogs; and (3) the child with the largest snot bubble inevitably targets the biggest germaphobe in your group like a heat seeking missile…and I’ve seen some trophy snot bubbles since arriving in Fiji! From the single-nostril slinger to the nose-to-lip green double runner, I’ve seen some whoppers. Now, this gets me to a discussion about public health in Fiji.

It wasn’t that long ago in the U.S. that people thought getting wet when it was cold outside caused head colds, so I make no judgments about the Fijian peoples understanding of what causes disease or illness. Since Leuwenhoek first peered through his pinhole microscope at the little monsters in a droplet of water over a century ago, western science has come a long way in understanding that disease is not caused by evil spirits, curses, or the weather, but by tiny little critters we now know as viruses and bacteria. Fiji, especially rural Fiji, is still learning about these advances.

One volunteer, who came down with a particularly bad case of explosive diarrhea, was told by his Fijian host family that it was the result of him walking past the “devil tree.” Now, this is not like the proverbial and hypothetical “ugly tree” that many of us in the U.S. have experienced either first hand or after a long night drinking and the donning of the “beer goggles.” These particular folks genuinely believed that this devil tree, which happened to be a common tree in the region, caused sickness just through the simple act of walking past it. Why they just didn’t cut the tree down and solve their disease problems altogether I have no idea, but my suspicion is that they felt an even greater curse than the trots would befall them if they did. Either way, it makes no logical sense to those of us with even the most rudimentary health education.

In Fiji, ailments are also often blamed on the weather, the wind, and, of course, missing church. However, when people do not have access to the same level of health education that we in the U.S. benefit from, you can’t expect them to understand that bacteria and viruses spread through human contact, water, or food are really causing the disease and, moreover, that it could be easily prevented, or at least mitigated, by simply washing using soap and water and thoroughly cooking food. But even “cleanliness” has a subjective meaning here in Fiji no different than it does in the U.S.

One good example of the impact of culture on the concept of cleanliness involved a volunteer living in an Indo-Fijian settlement. This volunteer, in an effort to win over her family, committed to preparing an entire Indian meal for a special dinner. After hours of preparing roti, chutney, and various curries she came to the point where she was ready to serve the meal. What she didn’t know was that despite the hundreds of times she likely washed her hands and dishes throughout the day she was unclean!

In the course of conversation with one of the older Indo-Fijian women, they came to the subject of women’s cultural role in the Indo-Fijian society where, through some unexplained diversion the subject of women’s monthly visitor came up and that women experiencing this are deemed “unclean” and are limited in things that they can do during this time. So the volunteer expressed, “Well I guess it’s a good thing that I’m just coming off mine!”

Collective gasps and shocked expressions preceded the women virtually picking her off the floor as they shuttled her to the most remote part of the house in a swirl of saris and indistinguishable panicked Hindi expressions in an effort to remove the unclean creature from the presence of others and the food that had been prepared…by her. Yes, the most offensive of offensive things that one can do when Aunt Flo comes to visit is to prepare food with unclean hands! After some discussion, and the realization that the ENTIRE meal for about 15 people had been prepared by this volunteer, they were able to rationalize that since it was the end of her period that they could overlook her filthiness just this once.

But there are issues of genuine hygiene and sanitation that have a profound impact on public health in Fiji. Much of it stems from the lack of clean running water or the fact that when it comes down to buying two loaves of bread or a bar of soap for $1.15, the bread is generally going to have priority. Shampoo isn’t even a consideration for a number of reasons including expense. Nonetheless, some of the most problematic health issues could be resolved with these simple substances.

A good example is the profound existence of boils in Fiji. A boil is a staphylococcus infection that encysts at the base of a hair follicle. For those of you unfamiliar with what a boil is, imagine the worst zit of your teenage years so large and swollen that it hurt to look at or touch, much less squeeze. Multiply that times 10 and place it anywhere on your body and you have a boil. These things are so tenacious and painful they can prevent you from walking or sitting…depending on where the boil is located. And, as many Fijians exhibit, they can leave physical scars if not treated properly. They can be treated with antibiotics, but it’s much easier to simply avoid them to begin with by washing with an antibiotic soap. The soap may not prevent them completely in Fiji’s brutal heat and humidity, but it least it improves your chances of not having a swollen, red, oozing sore the size of a golf ball where your lip should be.

Boils are just the beginning. There are plenty of other preventable health issues in Fiji as well. One of my favorite stories from a current volunteer involves the prevalence of lice in the rural areas. Keep in mind this is an absolutely true story, or, as we called it in the Navy, a “real no shitter.” This volunteer was walking home from training one day when she came upon what appeared to be an outdoor hair styling session where the person standing appeared to be removing bobby pins from the hair of the woman sitting in the chair and placing them in her mouth…only they weren’t bobby pins and she wasn’t just holding them in her mouth… It seems the current method, at least in this village, of dealing with lice is to use an herbal wash to try and remove the crawlies and then pick the nits, or the eggs, from the hair using one’s fingers…followed by placing it in your mouth and biting down to a crisp ‘pop’. It makes sense, really. This way you’re killing the lice whereas if you just through the nit in the grass another person could get lice from that discarded egg. And if you’re wondering, neither I nor the volunteer who witnessed this asked what it tasted like, but my guess is the response would be “like chicken.”

This volunteer kept her composure, though, and, very matter-of-factly, asked about lice and how common it was in the village. Unfortunately, her inquisitiveness was misinterpreted by some of the young girls standing by and one fresh-faced youth stepped forward to proudly exclaim, “I have the most nits of all the girls in my village!” I guess everyone needs to be the best at something… How this volunteer suppressed an expression of being completely appalled I have no idea, but she has my respect and admiration.

Nevertheless, overall the people in Fiji are relatively clean, happy, and healthy. Every day education, and public health, improves and, maybe one day, things like boils and lice will be concerns of the past and they can have the luxury of worrying about things like cancer from environmental toxins and type II diabetes caused by a processed food diet like we do in the U.S.

Blessed are the children...

I must first apologize for the long lapse since my last post. The pace in Peace Corps training is frantic and, in addition to other community obligations, I had precious little time to commit to anything other than what the Peace Corps staff had given us as assignments and the string of community events we attended. But I’m back and ready to thrill with tales from the South Pacific!

There’s a lot to catch up on since my last post. We’ve since received our site announcements, parted ways with our Peace Corps colleagues, and traveled to our permanent sites where we are now settling in. But before I get too far ahead, I want to talk a little about what the great prophet Whitney Houston professed before she married Bobby Brown and got the dain bramage from all the crack cocaine…I believe the children are our future.

The children of Fiji are just like children anywhere around the world. They are unassuming, inquisitive, accepting, playful, and absolutely engrossed with anything or anyone who seems out of the ordinary…like a white guy with a red beard married to a beautiful blond living in their village. You learn to appreciate their interest in you as a case of unbridled innocence that reminds you of “how things should be.” In any event, as a Peace Corps volunteer, no matter where you go in Fiji you are in a fishbowl. You just don’t act, dress, or look like anyone else and, therefore, stand out like a Great Dane in a room full of wiener dogs. Thus, you simply have to get used to being stared at or otherwise being the center of attention. The children are especially prone to offering this sort of interest.

In our village, there was one little boy who provided endless hours of entertainment for the rest of the volunteers and myself. This little boy was probably 5 years old and looked a little like Buckwheat from the old “Our Gang/Little Rascals” TV shows, except that his hair was WAY bigger. He was very interested in us, often running to the door to yell at the top of his lungs “VALANGI” as any of us passed by the modest tin house where he and his four other siblings lived. The word “valangi” in Fijian is roughly the equivalent of being referred to as a “gringo” in Mexico, or, if you are any non-American visiting the Southern United States, a “furriner” (excepting, of course, anyone who even remotely appears to be of middle eastern descent who would be simply labeled “turrurist”). Anyhow, you get the picture that “valangi” is not the most endearing label this little boy could have used to address us. I guess this was OK, though, because to this day I still only know him as “Lil’ Freak Boy.”

This little boy clearly had an overactive imagination and very obviously lived in his own little world. Any nearby inanimate object, or sometimes small animals, often became some prop in the filmstrip playing in his head. At other times, for no visible reason, he would twirl around in circles and flail his arms wildly while yelling incomprehensible gibberish, all while making some of the most outrageous and contorted faces. Yes, in the U.S. this kid would almost certainly be on Ritalin.

One night, as we were practicing our village meke, Lil’ Freak Boy was sitting in the back of the community hall being his usual self, rolling around on the floor and making fart sounds with his mouth. All of the sudden, he just stopped as if time itself had done the same. He sprung up on to his feet. Then, his eyes began to squint and his lips curled back, revealing his clenched, bared teeth. Simultaneously, he reached with his left hand into his oversized, poofy hairdo and began to scratch violently while making a noise that sounded a little like a miniature version of Chewbacca. Needless to say, while he was an adorable and entertaining child, he had some hair-related personal hygiene issues that he and his mother really needed to deal with.

Lil Freak Boy was not the only child who we came to know and love while living in Nabua. There were several little girls who captured our hearts and memories as well. The first was Silo (SEE-low), the little girl on the left in the inset photo with the impish smile that I will post shortly. Don’t let the cuteness fool you! This little girl is trouble with a capital “T”. And she is “cheeky” in more ways than one. Much to her mother’s chagrin, she’s been known to leave school (often well before it’s actually over) and return home where she promptly strips down to her birthday suit and runs around the house giggling and singing…all while dodging the shoes and other various household items her mother is throwing at her while yelling at her to put some clothes on.

Precocious only begins to describe Silo. She was also one of the brightest children in the village, knowing virtually every detail of every traditional song and dance of the Rewa District and, specifically, Nabua. She was, in fact, the village choreographer. As the precocious child she is, when teaching the mekes she often showed either the flamboyance and demand of Robin Williams in “The Bird Cage” (“Madonna, Madonna…”) or the disinterest of a California valley teen (“whatever…”). I suppose she was just like any other 10 year old anywhere in the world, but she was certainly exceptional to all of us.

Then there were the “yalewa ca”, or “bad girls”. The weren’t really “bad” (they were actually quite wonderful little girls) but, boys being boys, it was always fun for myself and the other male volunteer to get a rise out of them by calling them bad in their native tongue. Moreover, Olivia and Margareta were two girls that were probably too smart for their own good, which made it all the more entertaining to tease them. Olivia was a little heavy for her age, resulting in the village boys teasing her by calling her “levulevu” or, as an American might recognize, fat. She took it in stride though, and carried one of the most beautiful smiles of all the girls in the village. And when Michelle found out what the boys were calling her…those boys didn’t know what they had coming… Margareta was quite the opposite, being rail thin and about 35 pounds soaking wet. She was also a very pretty little girl that would no doubt break a lot of hearts and give her father lots of heartburn one day. Nonetheless, Olivia and Margareta were seemingly inseparable pair, making it even more entertaining to tease them together.

Of course, two of our favorites were the grandchildren living in our host family’s home. Koli and Joe were the children of our Ta and Na’s two oldest daughters who were working in Rorotonga and Nadi. In this culture, it’s common for grandparents to take care of grandchildren while their parents are working abroad to support the family. The boys were a source of endless entertainment and lots of smiles while we stayed in the home.

One day, I came in to find Joe holding a new beach ball that we had brought with us to Fiji. He didn’t realize I was watching as he held it to his face, closed his eyes, took a big sniff, and opened his eyes wide to accompany the big grin that had stretched across his face. It seems that pungent, toxic smell of new plastic that as Americans we’ve learned will probably lead to a tumor growing out of your forehead means something completely different to a child in Fiji. To this little boy, that vinyl smell laced with dioxins meant something new, which is not something you always find in a family of limited means in Fiji. As someone who grew up in an area saturated with chemical pollution and drowning in materialism, I couldn’t help but think, “you don’t know how lucky you are, kid, that this is the first time you’ve smelled a new beach ball.”

The younger of the two boys, Koli, really kept us laughing. Anytime a camera was around, Koli was sure to be in front of it doing something outlandish. When Michelle asked him who his hero was he said, “Mr. Bean.” He was, indeed, the village ham. At 9 years old, he seemed destined to be the first Fijian sitcom child star. At times, he was funny without even trying, like when we went to go watch him play rugby. Koli is all of about 30 pounds including the weight of his attitude and confidence, which makes watching him play rugby with kids much bigger than him hilarious. For starters, Koli can fit his entire body into one of the legs of his favorite pair of shorts…and have room to spare. Secondly, and even though I’ve got to give him credit for heart, when he runs after the other boys on the rugby field his legs look like two toothpicks attached to a string bean. But he was, nonetheless, a happy, funny kid.

In any event, as the novelty in the village, it wasn’t long before the kids took to us like human jungle gyms. For the last 3 weeks I was in the village it seemed like there wasn’t a moment during the day when there wasn’t at least one kid hanging off my arms or dragging on one of my legs. It was a little like watching a caribou on the summer tundra in Alaska. In the summer in Alaska the bugs get so bad that they virtually cover the poor caribou, driving them to near madness. Every once in a while, the caribou get to the point that they just can’t stand it any more and they buck, snort, and shake violently until all the bugs are thrown from their body…only to return less than a second later. Eventually, the caribou just seem to accept that they can’t get rid of the bugs. However, I did use one of the tricks the caribou use to escape the bugs. Head for the water!

One day, I decided to go swimming with one of the other volunteers in the river next to the village. The day before, I had gotten a sunburn on my neck and arms and thought this would be the best thing to cool those areas down and simultaneously keep the kids off. What I didn’t count on was that the kids had never seen a sunburn on a whiter-than-white guy. The questions about what happened was easy enough to answer, even if they didn’t understand, but I really wish they hadn’t thought that they could “rub the red off” as if it were a stain or dirt.

Anyhow, the next part of the story is another cultural learning lesson. While we were swimming in the river, we found an area where we could stand on the sand and, with our entourage of children ages 6 to 14, we started a game of “chicken fighting”, where one person sits on the shoulders of another and tries to knock the person in the same position of another person’s shoulders. They were already familiar with this game, so we weren’t teaching them anything new, but I was about to teach them something that resulted in devastating repercussions.

I hoisted one of the local boys on my shoulders and went up against Palden, my colleague in Nabua, and one of the other boys on his shoulders. Reverting back to our own childhoods, we were having a blast. However, as the boy on my shoulders began to lose ground, instinct kicked in and winning became imperative. Without thinking I did what any 9-year-old boy in America would do to gain an advantage at the waterline position…I reached out with both hands and twisted Palden’s nipples whereby we promptly won the match. The next thing I knew there was an eruption of nipple twists in every direction! Boys twisting boys, girls twisting girls, and (GASP!) boys twisting girls!!! “WAIT!!!”, I yelled, trying to gain some control over the nipple twisting melee that had ensued. I then tried to explain to them that even though I had done that, it was inappropriate to do so, especially so for boys to do that to girls.

Children are smart, and pick things up quickly, much to my dismay in this case. And, in another instance of cultural learning, it was again reemphasized with me that even though there are certain assumptions over what is appropriate conduct in our own culture, those same assumptions may have no bearing whatsoever in another…even the simple ones. I only hope that none of them went home that night and had to explain to their parents, “the valangi did it and he’s from America so it must be OK…”