Palagi

Yes, I am a Palagi (pronounced Pa-lan-gee). That means white person. And yes, we are the only Palagi in Tauvua. Everywhere we go we have children do a combination of the following things: stare, yell Palagi, and wave until their arms are about to fall off. They love to see us because we are some of the only white people in this area of Fiji. The adults are not much different. Everyone in Fiji is extremely friendly, but especially to us. When we go to the bus stop we have 10 different people try to help us get to the right location-and each one tells us something different. The adults greet us with ‘Bula” (the Fijian greeting which literally means health, but is used in 100 different ways) everywhere we go-and when they see us pass on the bus they wave until they get a response from us. We went to a village the other day where some of the children had never seen a Palagi and they were fascinated. I had one little girl of about 3 years old who loved my hair and kept playing with it, to the dismay of her mother. Sometimes its fun to be the only Palagi around.

In our small green house we have an infestation of little critters-ants, geckos, lizards, mice, and cockroaches. The cockroaches have become the hated and despised creature. I like to think as myself as the queen cockroach killer, even though it isn’t really true. We have roaches that have a body length of 2 ½ inches. I have been woken up 4 times in the last week either in the middle of the night or early in the morning because of a large roach either in someone’s hair, on their face, or right next to them on the wall. I’m just waiting for my turn….

Projects are going well. For the first time this week I went with a group to help do square foot gardens. I was a little skeptical of this project before coming to Fiji because I figured most people knew how to do basic gardening. Turns out I was wrong. No one in Fiji knows how to grow anything from a seed. All of the plants that they grow are root crops, so they just cut off a branch, plant the branch, and it will grow for them. Seeds are a foreign concept. They also do not eat much in the way of fruits and vegetables, so type II diabetes is a huge problem here. We have done some work to help educate the people about diabetes, because most people have no idea what it is.

I have spent several hours at the hospital this week, once with a friend who is here who needed to go to the hospital to be check out, and the other as a volunteer. After spending two hours sitting on a bench watching the health care workers in action and then spending a few more hours helping them out, I realized how understaffed, under-maintained, and undersupplied it is. There is no room to work, very little care for or understanding of sanitation, and a massive number of patients needing to be seen. One of the saddest things was the signs posted on every wall for the price of the mortuary service, as if it is an overly common event.

On a happier note, last weekend was spent at the beach. For those of you who think that I am two minutes away from beautiful, white sand beaches, I’m not. Disappointing and hard to believe-I know, but very true. We are on the dry, hot end of the big island where there are no tourists and no beaches. The ocean is not too far away, but it is far from any beach. We had to travel at least an hour to get to a man made beach at a resort. It was a lot of fun and I am excited for future weekends that will be spent at the south end of the island.