Part-time Fiji Princess

The phrase "Fiji style" refers to a lot of amazing things about how the Fijian people live and work. But after 3 weeks here, and especially after this week, the phrase has taken on much greater meaning to me.  The amazing thing about the mix of the Indian and Fijian cultures here is that both groups of people have adopted the most awesome things from each other.  I have been blessed to have "cultural guides" from each culture. Sangeeta and Dropati are Fijian-Indian, and Ufemia is iTauke, or native Fijian.  Because they all know each other so well they are comfortable talking about similarities and differences between the two groups.  I'm just eating this up because I find it so fascinating!

Of course each cultural group has a ton of diversity within it, but in general these are the similarities the ladies have shared, and I have noticed myself. The indigenous iTaukei people are gifted artists and craftsmen and talented athletes and musicians. They call themselves a "singing people", and their voices are amazing! They bust out harmonies singing anywhere. They are outgoing and laid back and love to laugh and they also like to hug and kiss you.  A lot!  They don't seem to be in hurry ever.  They are story-tellers and they need to talk about things... and then relax for a minute, and have a snack... and then talk some more.  They'll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. They are fiercely loyal to each other and family and tribal structures still matter a great deal to them.  They play Rugby... everywhere, all the time.

The Fijian-Indian people I know are very concerned with showing proper respect and kindness to strangers and teachers and people in authority.  They are much more quiet, but they will stop everything they are doing to help someone in need.  I have to be careful not to say out loud the things I'm thinking when I'm with them, like "I'm thirsty", or "I need to go get a pen", or something like that because that means one of my Fijian-Indian friends will have to drop everything he or she is doing and run and get me a drink, or find me a pen, or spend the next 30 minutes making me a delicious meal.  They seem to be a much more serious lot.  They plan for next week, today.  The women I know spend hours every day cooking for their families - even after a very long day at FNU.  The men play soccer, not rugby, because as Dropati told me "A Fijian would smash them!"

There is so much more! But this week I experienced their common love of making beautiful things and auspicious occasions where you give speeches and gifts and eat food. (Ufemia keeps saying "Nikki is going to put on some Kilos here in Fiji!")  I was invited by Ufemia to present to their early childhood association's western branch about inclusive early childhood education today.  I asked Sangeeta if I could do a trial run of the workshop material in one of her classes before the event  because I really needed feedback about if what I was saying was culturally relevant for them at all.  So I presented to a group of inservice teachers here in Lautoka and another online group in Suva on Thursday.  After I presented the students gave me this beautiful flower arrangement.

Those are all flowers from one of the teacher's gardens that they arranged together as a class before I arrived. Here's the Lautoka group after they presented me with the flowers. 

Then the workshop for the early childhood association was today.  Ufemia had also asked a visiting Speech Pathologist from Australia to present.  Her name is Terry and she was excellent!  Anyway, we had the most amazing welcome from the group.  They presented us with these hand-made garlands in this lovely little ceremony before we spoke. Ufemia said I can tell my friends back home that I was crowned a Fijian princess.  

 Check out the fans with our names woven into them!

The presentation itself was an intense experience in trying to translate the principles of inclusion to teachers in a place where it does not exist.  I was blessed to visit so many schools this week because I finally had a sense of the classroom context in Fijian kindergartens.  Luckily, everyone has kids that make them crazy in their class, so I had a nice starting point to talk about reflective teaching and meeting every kid's needs.  Then, because this was going to be our first and last time meeting with this group they sang us their good-bye song. They also sang songs while they were waiting for the meeting to begin. I had this image of telling a bunch of teachers in the U.S. that they had to sing a farewell song to end a meeting and it made me smile. They also began the training with a prayer. #fijistyle

I hope so much that you can get this to play because it was beautiful! They just broke into song on the spot.  

Sangeeta literally took 100 pictures of me presenting.  I deleted all of the 20 or so super-close-ups (where you could actually see my wrinkles) and the other 76, and kept about four of the ones from a safer distance, including these.  You can see I'm sporting my new #fijicut. The only thing to be done with hair like mine in a humid place is to chop it all off!   I just had that done yesterday by a Fijian-Indian woman who looked at me like she had not the slightest idea how to deal with hair like mine.  We both survived and she did just fine.  Poor Sangeeta, she already thought my hair was too short when I got here.