Of Bureaucrats, Panties, and Saving the World

Of Bureaucrats, Panties, and Saving the World

[Peace Corps requires this disclaimer: “The contents of this Web site are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. Government or the Peace Corps.”] [Exchange rate: F$1 = US 60cents.]

Where to begin? Erami Seavula, Youth Officer at the Nadroga-Navosa Provincial Office in Sigatoka, Fiji, on his own considerable initiative, applied for a Peace Corps Volunteer, and was successful: he got me. NNPO’s sole responsibility in the deal with PC is that they must provide my housing.

But by the time of arrival on site the end of November 2003, the place they had picked out for me, a 3^rd-floor apartment in a building owned by NNPO (they own many buildings about town, as an income generating activity), on the main highway, above a pool hall, 2 doors down from the open-24-hour yaqona sales store, was not ready. It was said that when it rained, the roof leaked so badly that water literally flowed like a stream out the door.

Enter Bill Aalbersberg. 32 years ago he was an 18-year-old PCV in Sigatoka. His host mom then, Adi Joana, is now chief of Sigatoka Village as well as the tikina. Bill did 3 years in Fiji, returned to the US, got his PhD in chemistry, then returned to Fiji and has been here ever since, teaching at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, where he heads up an outfit called IAS, Institute of Applied Science. He’s a genius at getting funding of all sorts. One of his biggest projects is a huge grant from the Packard Foundation (US), funding “Integrated Coastal Management” (ICM), a concept being introduced all over the world, principally via the University of Rhode Island, to stop or slow the deterioration of coastal environments. Erami was his man-on-the-front-lines for ICM, and Bill expected he’d be getting some work out of me as well. He’d maintained close contact with Joana over the many years. She & he have a housing unit adjacent to Joana’s place, which they intended to rent out to ‘backpackers’ (independent tourists). So he offered it as an interim solution to the housing problem, until NNPO could fix up the apt, expected to take 2 months.

Erami (whom, I should make it clear, does not handle NNPO housing)

Bill, left, with Dick Watling, renowned bird expert, surveying piggeries.

It’s a nice place. 2 big rooms. Screened windows. But the best part is that it’s right on the Sigatoka River. The cooling wind blows in from the ocean. I sit on the porch and watch the sun sparkle on the water, driftwood floats by, kids swim, fishermen fish, old women pole by on traditional bilibili. In the quiet nite I hear the surf on the reef.

My place (ground floor)

The view

2 months went by. NNPO had done nothing on the apt. Another 2 months. No progress. Bill made a new deal. I’d stay in the house, and ICM & NNPO would each pay $100/mo rent. (I’ve never been told the actual ownership of the place; in a village, ‘ownership’ has little conventional meaning. However, everyone in the village knows the place as “Bill’s House”. Hence in the US this arrangement would never fly, Bill paying himself from public funds, but in Fiji such is common practice. After 16 months here, it seems as natural to me as sitting cross-legged on a mat drinking grog.) NNPO’s Roko Tui grumbled about the cost, but went along.

I expected to stay in the house til the day I leave Fiji. But, foolish me, I had to go & try to do some good…

The 40km to the east of Sigatoka is known as the Coral Coast, home to the majority of Fiji’s resort hotel business, and to 10 Fijian traditional villages, each with a population of 200 or so. Over the last 10 or 20 years, raw sewage from the hotels, dumped to the lagoons, has all but completely destroyed the coral reef ecosystem, the nitrates & phosphates inducing the growth of algae slime which now completely covers the inner reef, blocking the sunlight and murdering the coral. Without the coral, the fish likewise die or go away. The villages depend on the fish, and they didn’t understand what was going on. Whatever sea life remains they hunt down diligently, but it’s much harder and far less productive than it used to be.

In the last few years, the resorts have realized they’ve killed off one of the top 3 reasons that tourists come to Fiji (which I suspect are beautiful tropical environment, wonderfully hospitable Fijian people, and the coral marine environment). So most (not all) have substantially cleaned up their sewage act. But meanwhile:

The population of the villages and the areas between the villages is increasing rapidly.
The people were always self-sufficient farmers and fishermen; now they’re more into working in the resorts, hence they are becoming consumers instead of producers, hence they’re generating lots of solid waste (packaging) which they’ve never had to deal with before in such quantity.
In perhaps the most successful government program in Fijian history, villagers were convinced by health workers that pit toilets were unhealthy and should be replaced by flush toilets. And they were, but with no attention paid to where the flush went (nor, I might add, to where the water was coming from, hence villages that always had an adequate water supply are now deficient).
Pushed by demand from resorts and by NGOs (Non-Govt-Orgs, what in the US we’d call non-profits) as income-generating projects, the number of pigs raised on the coast has, I believe, greatly increased. One can buy a piglet for F$20, raise it on kitchen scraps and garbage from the resorts, and sell it in 4mos for F$400. Wow. (Pigs are essential for feasts, and feasts are perhaps the essential center of Fijian life. In fact, I suspect that the number of feasts have increased greatly in the last few years – instead of generating village income, the 10s of thousands of NGO$ that went to constructing piggeries may have only generated parties.) Unfortunately, the pigs generally are kept in pens either directly adjacent to streams or even hanging out over them, to facilitate cleaning. Pig waste stinks. The water carries it away. Pig waste is 3x that of humans in nitrate concentration.

A piggery

I’ve been working with the villages for 16 months now. There have been “awareness-raising” workshops and a lot of talk, but not much action at all. Feeling the time was right, I organized a 2-day Waste Management Workshop, the idea being to select highly motivated people per village for training to high level in the issues of rubbish, composting, sewage, and pig waste, such that they would organize tikina waste management committees and push for continuing action over the long term. This was a big deal, the budget was F$3500 (paid by ICM), most going to lunches, “tea” twice a day (actually meals in their own right, people expect this when they go to workshops here), and t-shirts (as advertising & motivator) designed by Samantha, another PCV. The principal presenters would be Mary (a PCV from Vunisinu, a village the other side of Suva, in Rewa province), Pita, Emi, & Muria (three very able and motivated members of Vunisinu’s Waste Management Committee), and Sukulu (from IAS).

Mary, Muria, Emi

They would need a place to stay, as would a couple other PCVs coming to help. I expected the Fijians would opt to stay in Votua, the village where the workshop would be held, the PCVs with me. But as it turned out, the 4 Fijians were enthusiastic about staying with me. Fine. I let Adi Joana know ahead of time, as I always do, that people would be coming. She, it turns out, was in the process of fixing up another house of hers, just outside the village, so she offered to let some of my crowd stay in her own house, as she would be staying temporarily in the other place. She even made up 3 beds in her sitting room in case they were needed. She’s a wonderful woman.

The 4 Fijians arrived, 1 man & 3 women. Sukulu immediately was nervous about my house – all homes in Fiji are laid out very similarly, the toilet room & shower room often separate and generally off a peripheral hallway or porch or even in a separate outhouse. But for whatever the reason, my toilet/shower are combined in a single compartment, located within the bedroom, enclosed by a wall that doesn’t go all the way to the ceiling. I can understand her hesitance about combining unrelated men & women in such an arrangement. No problem, the 3 ladies would stay next door in Joana’s unoccupied house.

The workshop was wildly successful. Despite the heat in the hall, cooking us off bare tin roof, the participants were intent. As the final session, they prepared plans for tikina waste management committees that would carry on the hard work. Maybe I’m crazed, but it felt like a historic moment for future of the Fijian environment, and a model for the whole country and beyond.

My guests were very pleasant people. They stayed another nite. In the morning we sat on the porch, had tea, bread, papaya, and talked of what they’d accomplished in Rewa, the so-much-more needed to be done. Then they returned homeward.

That evening, per Bill’s arrangement, 2 young folks from Coral Cay Conservation, a very well thought-of British-based international scientific NGO, arrived to also stay in Joana’s house for a month while they surveyed marine resources to the west of Sigatoka. (He had earlier asked me if they could stay with me. I’d told him: for a couple days, sure, but no way could I stand company for a month.) They were there next door only a day or 2, then disappeared. I assumed they’d gone up to stay with Joana in the new house – the view there is awesome, the breeze much better in the sultry summer heat, and they’d have the advantage of Joana’s relatives preparing their meals. But the suddenness of the departure seemed odd. With Joana & her neighboring relatives gone, my little piece of Sigatoka koro seemed like a ghost town.

Two days ago I received a formal letter from the Roko Tui stating that Joana no longer wished me to stay at her place, and that I was to relocate to NNPO quarters next week. The letter was delivered along with the thick file on the NNPO housing unit, entries stretching back to like 1990, of repair requests, receipts, etc. I skipped to the back, a letter from the RT to the present tenant, a police officer (there with his family) stating that as the $100/mo rent had not been paid in over a year, he was being evicted as of 14feb. (RT’s plan was for me to move in 15feb. Yeah, right.)

Now it seemed odd the RT hadn’t just talked to me, tho he is prone to formality. Doubly odd was that Joana, my good neighbor, had not told me what was up. (We had talked several times over the many months of the hassle it is for her dealing with NNPO on rent – they never pay on time, she always has to ask them for it. Several times, when she’d needed cash immediately, *i* have paid the $100 or $200 (depending on how behind they are) to J, then sought reimbursement from NNPO. Of NNPO, Joana understates: “They are very lazy over there”. Also she had recently bemoaned how little she was getting for the rent on my place, when ICM+CCC was paying her so much more: apparently $900 for 2 or 3 people for 1 month. I now wondered if she was dumping me just for the hope of more $.)

The Roko Tui Nadroga-Navosa

Adi Joana

I went over to see my new place the next day. From the outside it looks OK. It’s 1 unit of a wooden duplex, in good condition. There are screens on the windows, which is unusual, except where they’d been partly torn off on the front & rear doors. The cop, wrapped in a towel fresh from his bath, told me he’d talked to the RT, had promised to pay all the back rent, and so would be staying. Oh. (I more or less expected this. You don’t throw a Fijian family out on the street in Fiji, regardless of mere money matters.)

I saw Joana this morning. “The Roko Tui tells me I’m moving”, I began.

“Oh yes”, she replied, as if it was something of little importance that had slipped her mind. But she proceeded to tell me, a bit at a time, the reason for all that was now transpiring.

Joana has 2 sons, both (as is common for chiefly progeny) with high positions in government ministries, in Ba and Suva. They often come to visit her, especially during school breaks with their kids, staying in the 2^nd-floor unit above my own. On one son’s last brief passing visit, he found that my Workshop female guests had hung their underware to dry on Joana’s chiefly porch clothesline. (This was something I was warned about back in training.) Per Joana: “they’re Fijian ladies, they should know better than that.”

Perhaps things are done differently in Vunisinu.

Anyway, the son (“Which one?” I asked. “The big one”, she answered.) was indignant, and when he returned later (perhaps, she intimated, drunk), finding the 2 innocent Coral Cay europeans, & thinking it was they who had hung the offending panties, he, per Joana, “chased them away”.

They’d run all the way to her new house on the hill, where they’ve been ever since.

But it’s awkward for her, these 2 in her midst. So her reasonable solution is to insist NNPO do what it originally promised, in Nov03 or before: provide me a place to live. The CCCers will backfill, at $900/mo. It makes perfect sense.

Except the cop isn’t leaving. And, predictably, per tropical downpour, at that original apartment perched over the pool hall: the water still flows from the front door.