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…”