Elizabeth is in Fiji!: One Month Down, 25 To Go

It is a common Peace Corps saying that during your service the days will feel like months and the months will feel like days. In my last post I said that I felt like I had already been in Fiji for months, but now after one month has officially passed, it seems like it has flown by.

Last week we had Host Volunteer Visits. This means that all the trainees got to travel around Fiji to go stay with a volunteer and get a glimpse into their daily lives. I traveled to Tau Village, which is a pretty big (about 500 people) koro in the west. One other trainee and I took four buses to get our host’s village. Vanuadina Village to Nausori town, Nausori town to Suva, Suva to Sigatoka, and then a two hour bus into the interior to get to Tau. When we got there we had to do sevusevu, which is the traditional welcoming ceremony that visitors must do when entering a new village. This ceremony involves presenting the kava plant to the elders of the village and asking to be welcomed and permitted to stay. Then we spent all of Tuesday checking out the village, getting to know some of the people, and seeing how our host’s nursing station works. Wednseday we spent the day in Nadi. We went to the Hindu temple in Nadi that is famous for its murals and unbelievable colors.

These are pictures of the Hindu temple in Nadi. Unfortunately it was cloudy and rainy the day we went, but it is beautiful!

After the visit, we had to come back to Vanuadina village to continue with our training. When I got back home, my entire family was really excited to tell me about the ‘kai va laqi’ (European/white) tourists that came to the village while we were gone. Let me try to break down how random this is… there are hundreds and hundreds of villages in Fiji, and Vanuadina is an exceptionally small one that isn’t particularly well known, so for this to become a “tourist destination” is very odd. The new presence of tourists in Vanuadina has prompted some interesting conversations about what makes Peace Corps volunteers different from the average foreigner coming to see Fiji. The other five trainees and I in the village immediately became very defensive when our families started gushing over these new tourists, so we tried to explain to our families why we didn’t like it. This village and the people in it have become our family, our friends, and community so it’s upsetting to us to see buses of tourists come for a couple hours to experience village life without paying attention to the customs, culture, or rules of the village. The difference is that Peace Corps volunteers work really hard to adapt to a community; to learn the language, understand the customs, respect any rules, and get to know the people.

Speaking of village rules, I'm sure some of you are wondering what I mean by that. Fijian culture is steeped in tradition, ritual, and to a certain extent superstition and one place that you can really see it is in the rules of the village. Some of them make sense, and some of them seem to be completely random made up out of nowhere. All villages have different rules but a lot of them are the same throughout Fiji. Here are some examples of the rules we follow in Vanuadina:

1. Women must wear skirts that are knee length or below. If you are wearing pants or shorts you must wear a sulu (cloth) wrapped around to cover it.

2. No yelling across the village.

3. No eating or drinking as you walk through the village.

4. No hats.

5. No wearing sunglasses on your head.

6. No wearing bags that hang on your shoulder.

This is just a taste of the types of rules that different villages have. Even beyond the rules of the village, Fijian culture is full of taboos. There are tons and tons of things that are strange or impolite to do according to Fijians that make absolutely no sense to me, I’ll discuss some of these in my next post. In addition to taboos, there are lots of superstitions that Fijians stick to, which is why I’ve started the ‘Fiji-isms’ section of the blog where you can check out some of the interesting (and sometimes funny) explanations for things.

All in all, things are going great here in Fiji. I’m getting very anxious to find out my site placement (with happens on Halloween), but other than that my family is awesome, training is going well, and only three weeks of home stay left. Now enjoy some pictures!