Fiji in a Nutshell

So I have now been back from Fiji for a couple of weeks and I have been repeatedly asked, “How was Fiji?” Great question, but how do you answer that in a sentence? My typical responses have been things like “great,” “loved it,” or “Fiji is awesome,” but none of those answers really give a good answer to the question. I imagine this is what return missionaries often feel like when they get home from their missions and everyone asks “How was your mission?” and they are expected to give an answer in one or two sentences that describes the last two years of their life. It’s hard to do two years justice in a few measly sentences. Luckily, I was only gone for 6 weeks and can cram my overall experience into a blog entry. So here we go.

Overall, I loved my experience in Fiji. Yes, there were days when I was completely overwhelmed or wondered what the heck I was doing there, but it was worth it. The program I went with could use a little revamping and we as volunteers were totally clueless in some situations, but I think we made an impact in the lives of many.

A lot of people have asked me what I was actually doing in Fiji. The program I was with has a focus on doing sustainable projects, which basically means our goal was to teach some concept and have the people learn it well enough that they could continue to teach others once we were gone. Sometimes this was successful, other times, it probably wasn’t. We taught classes on basic health (major things included classes on diabetes, high blood pressure, women’s health, and typhoid), nutrition, fitness, and business. We also taught square foot gardening (Fijians don’t know how to plant with seeds-everything they typically eat just grows on its own or they have to buy it) and we taught how to make stoves. The Fijians cook over open fires inside their homes, and these stoves use less fuel, shorten cooking time, and help with overall heath issues that can be caused by the fires.

Each day we would split into small groups and head to a village where we would work on one of the above projects. Once we reached our destination, it would typically take us at least 30 minutes to an hour to get going on the project. The Fijians are a very relaxed and easy going people. They do not run on a time schedule, so we didn’t either. During this waiting time before starting our classes, we got to know many of the people quite well. They would tell us of their families, their villages, and of Fiji. Many of the people are happy living the lives that they have. They are not hungry-enough food grows naturally that they can easily survive off of the land-and they have homes, so their basic needs are met. They are also educated-Fiji has a 94% basic literacy rate. The problem is they don’t know what to do with their education-which is where we came in. Hopefully some of what we taught helped them to use their resources and their previous knowledge to improve their standard of living. They are living in poverty, but they live right on the boundary of a higher standard of living. Hopefully we helped them realized what they can do to cross that boundary.

I love the beautiful land of Fiji and the wonderful people who live there. I know that six weeks isn’t very long, but it was long enough for me to get a glimpse of the kind of lives that they live: simple, yet happy. I often wondered what we were doing there; they didn’t seem to need us to make life better. I was told by one man there that the problem with Americans is that we spend too much time working to try to be happy. He noted that in Fiji they don’t work and they are very happy. Although I don’t agree with him 100%, I think he has a great point. In fact, it’s probably the greatest lesson I learned while there: The Fijians have their priorities right, do I?