Livin Fijian Style

5/15/2011
Bula!
This week was spent evaluating the partners HELP worked with last year. I spent a lot of time in Tavua with Travis and Sara working with GOLD Foundation, a NGO (Non-governmental organization) ran be a lady named Irene Kumar. Irene is an amazing Indo-Fijian lady who I have already learned a lot from. We visited a lady’s group/club in Asi Asi, a small village outside Tavua. Satya is the leader of the group. She stopped going to school at the age of 14 but is very intelligent. She understands the importance of always striving to learn new things every day. My favorite quote from her is “lazy people sit.” She was telling us the importance of not just sitting on the couch watching TV but getting out and doing productive things, reading, and learning.
On Friday I went with Travis, Mallory, Alyssa, and Amanda to the village Korovo to teach a health lesson and introduce what HELP International is all about. After our lesson was the done the village ladies started singing a Fijian song and a few of them got up and started dancing around. They danced up towards us and we started dancing with them. Yes I danced or attempted to. Fiji does that to me. It was a lot of fun. The ladies where laughing with us (mostly at us), and this old grandma was shaking her bum at the guys which sent us all into fits of laughter. They made some necklaces for us and fed us lunch. I experienced my first fish in Fiji and it was pretty good. It was a little difficult o get past the bones but the taste was very good.
Transportation here is a little crazy. There are taxis, buses, and minibuses. The minibuses are sixteen-seater vans that are about the length of a minivan but have five rows of seats counting the driver’s row. I have already been in a minibus with 17 other people. The roads here are not very smooth or will have random spots of pot holes or gravel. The drivers know the roads so well and where all the bad spots are. The buses are fun also. Some have windows and others just have canvas that can fold down but is only used when it is raining. I really enjoy the bus rides because there is good air circulation. Some of the buses have music and basically it is all American music that is remixed and given some Fijian beats. I have heard a lot of the same songs, and it is mostly hip-hop/rap music.
I finally experienced Fijian ocean water. It is very warm. I went with some other volunteers to Weiloaloa beach in Nadi (pronounce Nandi). I could stay in the water all day and not get cold. In some places it was so warm it didn’t cool me off but those were mostly the places where the water wasn’t ebbing in and out but was pretty much standing still.
5/16/2011
Poverty in Fiji is not so obvious like in places such as Africa and India but Fiji still is suffering from it. Concerns include health issues with diabetes and hypertension being the main ones especially among women. They are mostly homemakers or will sit in an open market all day trying to sell produce. Their diets are full of starches and they use a lot of oil to cook because they have limited knowledge of the importance of eating a healthy and balanced diet and how that affects things such as diabetes and hypertension. Income generation is another area of concern. Most jobs are in the tourism industry and agriculture. Fijians need help finding a marketable skill or product. HELP business classes teach the basics about budgeting and saving.

5/17/2011
There are many things that I realized I take for granted. Yesterday, I went with two HELP volunteers, Kevin and Rohit, to talk to a microfinance company and a NGO called Koroipoita. Koroipita is in the process of evaluating a model community they built a few years back. The purpose of the model community is too get low income family back on their feet. We discussed with Koroipita some possible project ideas we could help them with. One project is too teach basic computer skills. The two other volunteers and I were picturing ourselves teaching the basic of Microsoft Word and Excel and maybe a few things about the internet but we have to simplify even more than that. We would be teaching them the very basics, such as how to turn on a computer.
Indian food may be my new favorite. Miya, the lady that cooks dinner for us is Indo-Fijian and most of her meals have been delicious. A few favorites include Roti, a flatbread almost torilla like thing, curry, and a potato ball type food. I don’t know the legit names of these foods but I’m trying to learn what they are. I found a new favorite sauce called Chetni (sp) sauce that has tamarine (sp??) in it. It is similar to BBQ sauce but has a little more a bite to it. The spiciness is one reason I like Indian food. Fijians eat more bland food like fish, cassava and root based food.

5/19/2011
Yesterday I got to do some good hard labor clearing some space at the Tavua hospital to plant some papaya seedlings. I got a million grass cuts and mosquito bites, but it felt so good to do some hard sweaty labor and so see the area get cleared. I got to use a Fijian machete to chop down the weeds.
When I first came to Fiji I wanted to focus on projects that had to deal with square foot gardening and building adobe stoves. We have found as we were evaluating last year’s projects that the adobe stoves have not worked here. It wasn’t that the Fijians weren’t using them but that the construction of the adobe stoves was not great. The stoves were cracked and broken. Now that I am in Fiji and have interacted with the partners we will be working with I have decided to work more on business classes and also the square foot gardening if I can. We have noticed though that square foot gardening may not be a sustainable project in Fiji because especially, in rural Fiji because the people here have space to have larger gardens. Square foot gardens are intended for people who have limited space to garden.
I now have a new record for how many people I have been in a minibus with: 19. There were twenty adults crammed into a minibus with me probably being the smallest in stature.

5/22/2011
This weekend I experienced the Fiji that is shown in the photos. Seven other HELP volunteers and I went to Volivoli resort up by RakiRaki. It is a small resort in a secluded area. We went start gazing, watched an amazing sunrise, and went snorkeling on a private island. John Caldera is a retired Peace Corps guy who took us out on his boat. Snorkeling was amazing. Coral reefs are so fascinating and full of life. We saw blue star fish, a variety of small colorful fish, clown fish, blue fish, sea cucumbers, all types of coral, clams, black fish, striped fish, neon fish. It was just fabulous. I could go snorkeling every day. What an amazing experience.

5/26/2011
I have settled into more of a routine. On Tuesdays/Thursday I will be teaching all day at Koroipita a “model community” that helps low income families get back on their feet. In the morning I will be teaching computer classes that involve teaching the ladies how to turn on a computer, use the mouse, learn the buttons of the keyboard, and real basic stuff. In the afternoon I will be teaching basic budgeting/savings classes and also transition in simple business skills that I am learning as I am teaching.
Some things I am still getting used to is the Fiji time system, having to rely on public transportation, not being able to refrigerate food (our fridge is very small and instead of keeping things colder it keeps food warm as compared to hot (slight exaggeration)), and that it gets dark here at six. I forgot that it is winter here technically so the sun sets pretty early. Mosquitoes are in great abundance here. I don’t hear them buzzing around but my legs sure feel their bites. I have 5-6 new bites daily. For some mosquitoes here go for the legs and ankles.
Yesterday I went to a small village near Lautoka where FRIEND, an ngo HELP is partnered with, to plant square foot gardens and heard the from the villages "It's the Fijian way" whether they were talking about using a two-inch in diameter club as a hammer to pound posts in the ground, or doing a kava ritual to welcome us into the village, or just making use of seeming useless items, Fijians definitely have a unique way. They are resourceful and yet some things are frustrating, like not having a a reliable way to get somewhere on time or never starting a meeting on time.
I fall in love with Fiji and its people more and more every day. It is so nice to be here and just isolated for the world although I don't like not knowing what is going on sometimes. The minibus I was in on the way to Lautoka today had a news clip thing about Osama Bin Laden that was supposed to be breaking news but was obviously three weeks old since it was talking about Osama as if he had been killed only a few days ago.
Sega na lega.