Winter in the Tropics

I remember John and Barbara telling us stories about how Fijians would wear parkas and socks with their flip-flops during the winter here, but somehow, I couldn’t quite believe that it really got cold. I mean, this is the tropics, right? They wear jeans during the summer, too—they’re just used to it. Well, after being cold and wearing my only long pants and my only pair of socks for three days in a row, I realized that it was solstice. Winter solstice. And it’s COLD.

I’m not sure how, but Miles seems to be much better prepared than me (he’s got jeans and plenty of socks), and he keeps laughing at me for saying that it’s cold. He reminds me that it’s not any colder than Oregon in September, and that I am just used to it. As excited as I am to be coming home, I try not to think about the cold. I’m not sure how I’m going to survive it. All I can say is that it’s good I’m coming in August, when it will be nice and warm, so I will have time to ease gradually into the cool fall weather.

Jasper is doing even more awesome than usual. We went through a rough patch of two year old behavior, but either we’re used to it now, or we’re reached a good equilibrium. I can’t help but think that our decision to keep him home a lot more (away from the kids who shoot pretend machine guns and hit each other for fun) has something to do with his more pleasant behavior. He’s really into reading books and spends a significant portion of the day either reading to himself or asking us to read to him, and has some really cute two year old obsessions—planes, busses, boats, fish (and to some extent animals in general), and the moon. Now that he has been on a plane trip (that he can remember), he zooms around the house making plane noises and flying his “plane” (his hand) every time he hears a plane land or take off from the airport (about 10 times per day). When we are in town, he excitedly points out every bus that goes by (way too many to count), and sits in rapt wonder when I take him on the bus (which I’ve done twice now for fun). When we’re in town, he points out all the boats in the harbor, and we’ve inflated the micro-dinghy in the living room, which he plays in all the time. In the book “Sand Cake”, he excitedly points out the boats on every page, as he does with the moon in “Goodnight Moon” and “Where the Wild Things Are”. And every night we look for the moon outside (stars get some excitement, but the main attraction is definitely the moon). When I take him to the market, I always let him pick out a fish to take home, and he proudly carries it (in a plastic bag) and when people stop to talk to my little kaivalagi boy (which happens about every 15 seconds), he holds up his bag and excitedly says “ika, ika” (Fijian for fish). Oh how they love him. His favorite movie (well, pretty much the only one he has seen here, besides some recorded rugby) is “Blue Planet”, an hour-long documentary (BBC I think) about the Earth’s oceans, which strongly features two of his favorite things, fish and the moon (there are a lot of time lapse moon/tide shots). And his skin is finally doing better. We seem to have the mosquito reaction under control with the children’s Claritin, as well as keeping him inside more and using coconut oil on him (great mosquito repellent) to prevent the bites in the first place. Unfortunately, the scars he has from scratching will probably last for a while.

I am still going to the hospital for clinic every week and loving it. Hopefully I will be able to attend some deliveries before I leave too. One of the nurses wrote my cell number on the OB ward’s blackboard, but the next time I went in it had been erased. So I wrote it again, only to see it had been erased again by two days later. I’m not sure why it’s getting erased, but now one of the nurses has my number in her cell phone, and another nurse who works on the weekend wrote my number on a slip of paper by the phone, so hopefully between the two of them, someone will call me at some point. I’ll have to check to see if the paper is still there after clinic tomorrow. I really want them to call me! We’ll see if it actually happens though. One of the Peace Corps volunteers who used to work at the hospital told me that she would try to get people to call her or even just talk to her to let her know about trainings, etc, but that in the eight months she was there, not one person called her. After eight months, she changed her position to working in the schools, since she said she basically didn’t do anything at the hospital, and that as far as she could tell, most of the people working there try their best to do nothing as well. Sigh. I will keep working on them anyway. If I can get one single phone call, I will consider it a huge success.

New month, new job, new dog

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.