Sorry for the lack of posts; we’ve been so busy lately. It’s tax season and I’ve been trying to learn the Fiji tax system and get together all of the needed documentation, as well as starting another job.
Several weeks ago, I met a Dutch nurse/doula named Anna who was here visiting Gavin de Becker and his wife Yukimi, who live about 2 miles down the road from us. (Gavin is somewhat of a celebrity- he’s a security expert and has several best-selling books.) Gavin has a charity organization here in Fiji and has done a LOT for local villages and kids. Everything from helping with school uniforms and fees to providing medical supplies to remote villages. Anyway, I have been trying to figure out if there is any way for me to get involved in the birth scene here, and Anna wanted to see everything too, so it seemed like the perfect time to get out and meet people. We went to the hospital and met some of the nurses and toured the labor and delivery area (which consisted of one room at the end of the women’s ward, and was definitely NOT where I would ever want to give birth). The nurses were very nice, and I gave them my phone number and said that I would love to help in any way I could, or even just come and observe. Things happen very slowly here, though, and I have not talked to them for several weeks. More about the hospital later…
Spending time with Anna led to meeting Gavin and Yukimi, and after Anna left, Gavin told me that he wanted to start a school and wondered if I would be interested in helping out. I got pretty excited about it, and said that I would love to. So I have started working at the store Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and spending Tuesday and Thursday at Gavin’s with a group of six kids. I’m not exactly sure where this project is going to go, so far it’s been very informal, more like drop-in child care than a school, but it’s still early on. I’m not sure if I will continue to be the teacher, since things at the store have gotten a little hectic since I stopped being there four or five days a week. I also have not had any time to myself to catch up on sleep (I’ve started drinking coffee out of necessity) or to study midwifery, which is very important to me, so I may propose stepping back and acting more as a consultant if Gavin still wants to move forward with the project.
One of the nice things about teaching has been having Jasper with me for those two days a week. We have been going through a somewhat difficult time lately with behaviors he is picking up at the babysitter’s house. Things are getting better now, but for a while, there was a lot of negativity at our house while Miles and I were trying to communicate to Jasper that some things were just not ok to do at our house. At the Waqa’s, and in Fiji in general, there is a different view of some behaviors we consider to be unacceptable, mostly involving hitting. I know it’s normal for kids (in the US) to go through an experimental phase with these things, where they try them out and see what the responses are, and they eventually learn that they are not acceptable. But here in Fiji, there’s a different attitude. Kids here hit each other all the time and it’s not considered violent or bad, but just funny. They smack each other on the behind, or they push each other, and just laugh. There is no negative association with this kind of behavior; it’s generally considered to be fun. This also applies to hitting animals. It’s not like they are beating each other or getting black eyes or anything, but when Jasper brings it home and hits me or the dog, I naturally get upset. For a while, I think he was confused about why we were so upset about it, because he was just doing it in fun, and not because he was angry or acting out. It’s just the message he was learning down the hill. After several weeks of trying to figure out how to deal with it, things are getting better. I think we’ve basically gotten the message across. We tried some time outs, but I don’t think they really worked. I think in the end, just explaining to him over and over that I don’t want to be hit, I don’t like it, and that I won’t play with him if he’s hitting me, got through to him and he’s pretty much stopped doing it. He’s still a little rough with the dog at times, but it’s definitely getting better.
Speaking of the dog, we got a little puppy near the end of January. She’s black with a little bit of white on her chest and paws, and she is very cute and very playful. Her name is Lai-Lai, which means “little” in Fijian. We got her from an Australian woman who found her on the side of the road in awful shape and nursed her back to relatively good health before putting up a sign to find her a home. We took Jasper over to meet her and he did very well with her, so we took her home. She is quite smart, and we have already taught her to stay away from cars (well, our car, which is the only one she’s around) and not to bark when we are getting her food ready. We are still working on getting her to be quiet and not whine to be let in at 4am.
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