HIBISCUS FESTIVAL

Fijians LOVE a good festival. Festivals mean FOOD. FOOD means a sausage, pork chop, 2 eggs, 2 pieces of cassava and salad, all for $5. A heap of oil is also thrown in for free. Festivals also mean rides, amusements, popcorn and "candy floss". It also serves as a great advertising opportunity for local companies by sponsoring festival "Queens" and "Kings". Contestants include: Kings (guys in their 20s or so), Queens (ladies in their 20s or so), Princesses and Princes (teenage contestants) and of course, "Ladys" (who are the more...mature division).

So last week was the Hibiscus Festival. When we first arrived in Fiji in Nadi, we visited Lautoka for the "Sugar" festival. This is it:




The Hibiscus is famous for being the "Mother of all festivals". Or, as my housemate put it: "The sugar festival on steroids":




Pre-requisites for festivals include:
- A line of foodstalls at least 100m long



- Ferris wheels that would probably send you flying to the Suva mud flats if they were to break



- Flying aeroplane rides with "Osama bin BOOM" scrawled across the side



- A float parade:



- A talent contest (one of the kings stated that his talent would be "to play the drums, and then read a poem")



- Rubbish weather (apparently it always rains in the week of Hibiscus)

But most importantly: A CROWNING CEREMONY of the Hibiscus Kings and Queens.



So despite us being a lot poorer, suffering from tooth decay and heart disease, I'd highly recommend the Hibiscus Festival for a lot of fun in the sun, just like this adoring crowd:

THE OBJECTS I HAVE CARRIED AROUND SUVA THIS WEEK

People may start to recognise me as that Asian girl who carries around random things.

There are certain places which you buy or obtain certain things. For example, you find the best meat in Flagstaff which is 20 minutes walk down the road, the better pool to swim in is a further 20 minutes, the place where you find the best curry is about 30 minutes in the other direction and the cheapest toilet paper is somewhere in between. We do not own a car and catching taxis ALL the time tends to rack up a bit of a bill, despite the fact that they are cheap to begin with. So the only option is to either catch a bus or walk in a massive circular route to get all the necessary shopping items. This may result in carrying a huge stash of toilet paper on the way to the curry restaurant or carrying all of your veggies from the market across town to the butcher.

On Monday, I walked 40 minutes and bought a guitar:



Which I then carried on a 30 minute walk to the bus station to take it home. I was aware that the guitar, in comparison to my own small stature, made me look like a suspended guitar with a pair of legs walking down the street. Hence, I received some stares from passing people.

On Wednesday, I walked 20 minutes to school, collected a banana leaf:



And then walked 15 minutes with Emily into the city to the market with my massive banana leaf because it was on the way home. People yelled out at me: "hey! Banana leaf, eh?!". Thankyou. I am quite aware that I have a banana leaf.

On Sunday, I walked 20 minutes to the only place I had seen coconut brooms for sale:



I bought my broom and carried it through Suva a further 25 minutes to the pool where we then went for a swim. Yes Mum, I wore suncscreen. I am well aware that it looks like I have no pants on in my picture, but I have shorts on underneath.

Today, who knows what I'll be carrying across town?

PACIFIC TIME - THE REAL DEAL

About a month ago I told you about our in-country manager "testing" us with his intentional lateness. Well, I experienced the full brunt of it this week.

It's now school holidays. Apart from the mountain of reports that I have to complete, I was also asked by one of the student's carers to see their child EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. OF. THE. SCHOOL. HOLIDAYS...at their house. As this student did not require daily treatment and had a past history of being non-compliant with exercises anyway, I gave them a compremise by making myself available at school for two days of the week.

Monday was the first day for therapy at 11:00. I arrived right on 11:00 with the expectation that they'd probably be late. They certainly didn't let me down when they arrived at 11:30 without any notice, apology or explanation. So away I went, working away and running through this kid's exercises. His exercises consisted of passive stretches for his hips flexors, adductors and knee range. Nothing had ever been given to him for leg strengthening or balance. And as for functional, playful exercise...not sure if he was involved with any of that. The session wrapped up and so I arranged to meet them again on Wednesday at the same time.

Wednesday came. Again, I arrived at 10:55 ready for my appointment at 11:00...or 11:30 or thereabouts. As I was waiting, I busied myself with cutting a gigantic banana leaf off the tree in the school yard. I then arranged the therapy furniture. Then I arranged it again. I sat and chatted with the teachers that were doing holiday filing, followed by more waiting and twiddling of thumbs. I was facinated by the banana leaf and was looking for something to do, I took heaps of pictures of the banana leaf. 11:30 came, but no student arrived. I slowly munched away at my lunch, not because I was hungry, but becuase I wanted to pass time.

11:50 came and I sent a text to the student's carer:

"Just letting you know, I've left the school for the day. Please let me know if you want to see me again and I can make myself available"

The student never turned up, but on the flip side, I was in possession of a giant banana leaf that followed me home.

P.S. Things I have also achieved these holidays so far:

- written 5 half-reports
- bought a guitar
- went to hibiscus festival
- met with a diving instructor
- went for a swim at the 50m pool
- increased the demarcation of my flip-flop tan line

SWEET TREATS

When we first arrived in Ruve St, Samabula, we agreed to rent out our spacious 4 bedroom unit as it was - unfurnished. We have since bought a fridge, a washing machine, beds, furniture, cupboards and one disgustingly ugly dining table. Our house is now complete, however, we still have one missing household item: an oven.

We lack an oven on Ruve St, Samabula. In addition to this, one of my housemates is gluten intolerant and in a country where food allergies are far and few between, there are limited gluten-free options. Lauren (the "intolerant") usually gets by in Australia by baking her own food with gluten-free modifications. So naturally, she was desperate to purchase an oven asap.

And then I remembered the myriad of Malaysian recipes that mum and popo used to use in Malaysia when ovens were expensive. Most of these cakes and sweets were steamed rather than baked. So I proceeded to ask mum to email me recipes that she had in her cookbook.

Lauren bought a large bamboo steamer from an asian grocer just over a week ago. She has since made chocolate and sweet potato brownies and one awesome batch of savoury muffin/was-meant-to-be-a-quiche.

Today, we got busy in the kitchen and this was the result:

POPO's STEAMED CAKE

- 3/4 cup of white sugar + 4 eggs, beaten like MAD until pale
- Dash of vanilla essence and 3 tablespoons of milk
- 1 cup of flour - sifted twice (if you're my mum, you "shift" them twice, and if you're Manda in Fiji, you whirl it round with a balloon whisk because you forgot to purchase a sieve).

Steamed for 20 minutes in teacups.





PEANUT AND BLACK SESAME ONDE ONDE from "Poh's Kitchen"
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/pohskitchen/stories/s2895228.htm





STEAMED TAVIOCA CAKE
(Tapioca/Cassava/but "Tavioca" is the Fijian word)

1.5kg of grated Tavioca
600g grated coconut with 2 cups of coconut cream squeezed out from it
2 beaten eggs
a tsp of butter
2 tsp evaporated milk
Dash of vanilla essence (was meant to be Pandan but couldn't figure out the Fijian equivalent)
300g sugar
1/4 tsp salt

All mixed in a pot together and heated through until thick

Steamed for 40 minutes

This cake was cheap to make, given the availability and freshness of the ingredients. I also managed to crack open the coconuts all by myself!!! The flip side was that it took AGES to grate the coconut and tavioca. Lauren is currently napping after all of her hard effort!



It's completely strange but I feel more Malaysian than ever after today...but I'm in Fiji! Special thanks to Mum for the recipes. Suddenly I feel a sense of connection to Mum, Popo and their homeland just through cooking these sweets today. Whoever thought that I would need to be dumped in the middle of the Pacific to ever make this discovery?

THE WHEELS ON THE BUS

Buses in Suva are amazing. They have no windows, they run on noisy diesel engines and they blast out the latest popular tunes in Fiji. Unfortunately, there are only about five songs on continuous repeat: Justin Bieber’s “Baby”, Travis McCoy’s “Billionaire”, Iyaz’ “Solo”, Akon’s “Daydreaming” and this song that goes “One two, one two, one two, one two” and so forth... Bus routes are identified by the colour of the bus and different routes are owned by different companies. At 70 cents a trip, it’s the cheaper mode of transport so buses are crowded. This means that getting close and friendly to your bus neighbour is completely normal. The other alternative is that you sit on half of the seat to preserve respect for personal space. However, sitting on only half of the seat makes a good launching pad if the bus runs through a pot hole. I’d rather give up personal space.

Bus routes are not documented anywhere. However, everyone just “knows” where the buses go. Never ask a local if a bus goes down a particular road because locals don’t actually bother learning the names of roads. Places are referenced by landmarks, rather than street addresses. The routes are arterial-based and there are no round-circuit routes…either that or we are yet to discover them.

Today I found my favourite bus route: route 20 “Gaji Rd via Samabula”. It took about as long as it takes for a Fijian to saunter down the length of the 500m-long Ruve Street and was about as indirect and vague as the flow of a Fijian conversation. We chose this route because Gaji Road is a continuation of Ruve Street (the street that we live on). So naturally we were hoping that the bus would be able to drop us right outside our house.

The lesson we learnt today was that when the bus route says “Gaji Road”, it actually means: “we will be travelling the entire length of Gaji Road, do a U-turn, and then double back on the road we just went down and then travel somewhere else that doesn’t quite make sense”. See the diagram below for full details. In the end, we got off at the corner of Belo and Gaji Roads which was near enough to our house.




I’ll call it the scenic route home.

Digging Deeper

It's now been two weeks since I've been at Hilton and school holidays are just around the corner. And I’ll tell you - it couldn't have come at a better time. Two weeks have given me good insight into the school and has also given me time to get to know almost all of its 84 students. I have spent the last 2 weeks orientating, learning basic sign language, getting to know kid’s names and their conditions, commencing initial assessments and searching through dusty cupboards. Each day, the task seems to grow bigger, more impossible and unmanageable each day.

Two days ago I found myself feeling mighty overwhelmed. What on earth have I gotten myself into? NONE of the kids have had any baseline outcome measures done on them. Notes are unclear as to what has been happening with them. Files are EVERYWHERE in random stacks on random shelves. The school files that do exist on each student are patchy and incomplete. There is no system for filing things. There is no concept of filing by alphabetical order, by class or by age. Some of the children don't even know when their birthday is. Some children have multiple names. For example, a child can be called something like "Adi Asenaca Salote Miriama Varei" but will be called "Maria" at school. Birthdates that can be found on files do not correlate to the birthdates on other files or documents that exist on the same student. The spelling of names varies depending on which document you want to look at.

At parent-teacher interviews, Lauren and I thought that we would try and get the story straight for each of the children. We asked questions like:

"How did your child come to Hilton?"

"At what age did you realise something was not quite right"

"What concerns you most about your child?"

And we got responses such as the following:

Lauren and I: "So when did you realise your child was deaf?"
Mother: "When she was 10"
Lauren and I: "So did something happen when she was 10?"
Mother: "No."
Lauren and I: "So before you were communicating with her fine and then one day when she was 10 years old she couldn't hear properly anymore?"
Mother: "Yes."

And others like:

Lauren and I: "At what age was your child first able to roll over?"
Mother: "ohh, about 1 year old"
Lauren and I: "and at what age was your child able to walk?"
Mother: "about 1 year old as well"
Lauren and I: "so they didn't move much before they were one. Then they learnt how to roll, and then they were able to stand up and walk straight away?"
Mother, with raised eyebrows: "Io" ("io" meaning "yes" in Fijian)

I also meant to be training up one of the staff members. The purpose of this is for skills transfer and capacity building so that when I leave, someone can still carry on the knowledge. In theory, it’s a great idea. However, I have a bit of a problem in that my co-worker will turn up to school, disappear, and re-appear at the end of the day. I have no idea where she's been or what she's been doing but I'm still meant to be working closely with her.

I have been told that relationship building is the most important part of the first three months. Even if nothing is achieved in the first three months, the relationship I establish now will be paramount to the success of my year at Hilton. However, I'm finding it rather difficult to build a relationship when the person I'm meant to be building a relationship cannot be found for some parts of the day.

Now that I'm getting to know the kids, my head is beginning to become soaked with ideas for treatment. Some nights, I can’t get to sleep because my head is exploding with information and I am constantly trying to figure out a solution to the problems I am facing. I am being impatient and I want to solve them NOW.

I knew this assignment was meant to be a challenge, but it is now starting to dawn on me just how complex a challenge it will actually be.

So school holidays: not quite a vacation.

84 students

20 interviews completed

20 student’s initial assessments commenced

Number of reports actually completed: none.

Person to complete them: me.

…and a whole term’s worth of activities to plan.

Bring on the school holidays.

TO MARKET, TO MARKET

Saturday is becoming my favourite day of the week in Suva. There are a number of reasons for this. The first one is that I get to sleep in or enjoy the sunrise that I can see from my bedroom window. I don’t have to rush out to be at work at eight. Another reason is that there is significantly less traffic on the weekend and so there’s less pollution from the diesel engines of the noisy Suva bus service. And although I do miss work on the weekend in Melbourne, it’s nice to have the weekend to unwind and recover from the school week. The best part though, is that the fridge is bare. This means that we get to go shopping!

Supermarkets are depressing in Suva. Cadbury chocolate costs $11 and everything you can buy at home cheaply (e.g. pasta, chips, lollies, peanut butter, cheese, yoghurt and juice in particular) is expensive as most western things are imported.

Don’t worry mum, I am eating well because during our in-country orientation, we were shown:

THE MARKET!



The market is open all days of the week except Sunday. The indoor section is always open. From Thursday to Saturday, the village ladies are also there to sell their produce. The village ladies will arrive late on Wednesday night and set up camp along the roads and footpath outside the main market. The money they earn will goes directly to them, unlike the stores in the undercover market where the money goes to a “middle man” who gets a cut of what is sold. Therefore, it is cheaper to buy it from the outdoor village sellers and it helps the villagers earn an honest buck.



Fruit and vegetables are sold in “heaps” or “piles” rather than by the kilo. The size of a “pile” depends on which fruit or vegetable you are buying. For example, paw paws are sold five in a pile, pineapple has six to a pile, cucumber has three to a pile and sweet potato has way too much in a pile. You can buy coconuts, taro, cassava, carrots, cabbage, bananas, green mandarins, Chinese vegetables, eggs, imported applies, beans, tomatoes, chilli, watermelon and the list goes on. Food is abundant and piles range from 50cents to $3 a pile depending on what’s in season.

Today’s lunch menu was fresh from the market: fruit salad with fresh pineapple, paw paw, watermelon, banana and a tablespoon of yoghurt. We still have some left over if you want any!

Oh, and another thing..

As per my previous post, this is the furniture shop that is brighter than Bula fabric


.

FIRST WEEK OF SCHOOL

Let me finally introduce you to Hilton Special School. It is a school that sits on the west side of Waimanu road, opposite Suva's CWM hospital. I arrive at 8am in the morning and the school is quiet. I walk down the hill towards the school's assembly area. M.A, the school's recemptionist, greets us with a "Yadra!" as she sweeps the leaves away from the gravel assembly area. To the right is Master P's vocational training building and to the left is the main school building. From the back of the school, you can see this:



But be careful, the school is on a cliff edge and the fence that separates the school grounds from the cliff edge is in need of repair.

The school starts from "Transition" which is like a prep-level class that is mainly for those with the more severe intellectual disabilities. The children's ages range from about 6 right through to 19. Then there are grades 1-4 for the "physically impaired" and grades 1-7 for the "hearing impaired". After this there are vocational classes.

The children begin to arrive at about 8:15. Now the chatter, squeals of excitement and pattering feet can be heard down the school's main narrow corridor. The hostel children arrive with J and they wave and sign "good morning" in auslan. Then the first busload arrives. It is at this point the school jumps to life. Now I mentioned the narrow corridor which is also very dark because the lights haven't been turned on yet. I walk down the corridor towards the Physiotherapy department. I get bumped by Illie, Ju wraps her arms around me to say hello (she doesn't speak...yet), Jaz tries to tickle me and Sol tries to teach me more signing words so I can understand what Jaz is trying to say to me.

I push open two massive sliding doors that open up into a room about 10x7metres. This is the Physiotherapy department. My laptop is set up and my bag is stored in the dusty cupboard where all the equipment is kept. At the back of the Physiotherapy "department" (which is actually just a single room) there is a hydrotherapy pool of about 3 metres squared. Currently it is looking a bit algae-y as it is too cold to be doing any hydrotherapy at the moment. Cold is about 20 degrees here.

And of course there is no way I can do any work before 9am. Azzie, being exceptionally curious will come up to me and turn my laptop towards herself and ask me to explain everything to her. Tee also dances up to my desk and demands that I play "mercy" with her.

Then finally, the bell rings at 9:00am for classes to start.

The halls fill with the morning songs and prayers that open up each class for the day.

So far I've been observing the children in their classroom environment. They all participate in reading, phonics, mathematics, singing and of course, writing. The classrooms are heavily decorated with alphabet posters, mobiles made from coathangers, hand-drawn posters of stories that they have read together, fallen tree branches with small pieces of paper hanging off them. All the windows look out over Suva harbour and there's this gorgeous breeze that frequents the classroom throughout the morning.

And just like that, morning tea passes by at 10:30. The next session reconvenes at 10:45. The school prefects supervise the classes until the teachers return from morning tea at about 11:00. Lunch comes around and the children say grace before eating their meals at their desks in their classrooms. The bell rings again at 12:15 and the chatter, the laughter, the screaming and the running feet pervade the hallway and the school grounds once more.

Lunch comes and goes and the children assemble for some announcements before heading inside for the last 2 hours of classes, clubs or physical education.

And where do I fit in all of this? More to come next post =)

HOME SWEET HOME!

Our new home: Ruve St (pronounced “roo-veh”), Suva.

Ruve, meaning pigeon in Fijian, is our new home for the next year. I am hoping that our street name will reflect our ability to always find our way around in the months to come. …The other alternative is that we look like pigeons walking around with poking necks and carrying disease. My stomach has already been reflective of the latter.

As the house is actually two mirror-image units, we have two kitchens, two bathrooms and a massive shared living space. It’s near shops, buses to town and most importantly, it’s close to work.

What’s amazing is that if I walk five minutes down the road to the right and over the hill, I will find squatter’s settlement. Despite this, it is still a safe neighbourhood to live in.

We have a church behind our house from which we can hear gospel music most nights of the week. An old lady and a student live down stairs and to our left are a lovely Indo-Fijian couple.

Our furniture is from the garish establishment that is Rups Big Bear. Rups Big Bear sells everything your grandmother owned but with a tenfold increase in dag factor. Our settee is a floral blue and our bed heads are floral red. Our dining table surpasses tacky.

The powerpoints in the house are in the most illogical places, e.g. in the upper corner of our room where the roof meets the wall. There are no powerpoints near any kitchen bench space and so our appliances are lined up on the floor against the wall of our living area.

The garden is laden with cabbage, corn, raddish and longbeans that our landlord planted. Luke, the husband of my Speechy colleague, Lauren is drooling at the prospect of being able to garden properly for the first time ever.

So that is our house on Ruve Street, Samabula: almost great, but in other respects, really not quite there.

Now with 24/24 internet access!

Ruve St is wired to the net! More frequent posts coming your way!

THE HOUSE SEARCH

We are four volunteers plus one husband in the middle of Suva desperately seeking a home for one year. Our party of five are reluctant to separate into different households out of convenience, cost and companionship. The criteria that we set for our home sweet home were:

• Needs four bedrooms (at least)
• Furnished
• Clean
• Close to work or transport to work

Pretty straight forward right? Mmm. Yeah.no.
The search began on Monday in the last week of July. The first real estate agent shows us two units (one and two bedrooms), a two bedroom unit which made the housing commissions in Melbourne look like palaces and a three bedroom place which was half decent but apparently someone had just died there….

Tuesday showed us an awesome four bedroom apartment with polished floorboards, plenty of space to move around and central to all of our work places. There was a slight problem in that it was in the notorious suburb of Raiwaqa (pronounced “Raiwanga”). For those of you who aren’t familiar with Raiwaqa, they recently moved a whole bunch of squatters to another area, but some have stayed behind. Apparently they’re not a friendly lot and might be responsible for the rise in violent attacks in that area.

Wednesday looked slightly better with a five bedroom house, but this one was neglected and dirty. I also managed to acquire three mosquito bites in the space of 10 minutes – Mr Dengue, this is Amanda. Amanda, I’d like you to meet Mr Dengue. Amanda dislikes Mr Dengue.
Thursday we started to venture further out of town. Surely there’d be something on the market for us all.

Thursday exceeded our expectations. A house we dubbed “the palace” was found. Three rooms plus maids quarters, plus upstairs mini-apartment plus sky level room via a spiral staircase. The interior was kitted out with antique furniture, top of the range whitegoods and smelt like a hotel. Oh, and they threw in an amazing view of Suva harbour for free. Even the rent was affordable. The catch? A steep uphill climb for 10 minutes through a rough neighbourhood which was poorly lit at night to catch the bus. We were also concerned about the impression of absurd affluence we’d portray to our colleagues who are probably earning pittance for what they actually deserve.

Friday saw desperation. We had exhausted all the options from the listed real estates. Our in-country manager, drove us randomly around the streets of Suva for three hours looking for places that either looked big and vacant or had a “for rent” sign on it. One house only had three bedrooms. That house was too far away from the city. This house was not in a good neighbourhood. The other house has fallen into disrepair. The construction of those apartments had not even finished.

By this stage the five of us were in hysterics. We had the giggles and our concentration had hit the wall. We were exhausted and frustrated. Stress was building up and manifesting itself in fits of laughter and insignificant oddities. At one point, our ICM drove past a dog with four puppies. He slowed the car down and rolled down his window. What he did next completely flipped us over the edge. He proceeded to talk to the dog with four puppies:

“Excuse me, we are looking for a four bedroom house in a good area.”

The mother dog charged at the car, barking aggressively to protect her puppies. Our ICM continued in his thick Fijian accent,

“Since there are four of you, you should have a four bedroom house. So if it is okay with you and your four children, I think we will move into your house?”

Now these dogs were looking rather unhappy, growling and baring their teeth at us. I was convinced one of them would jump into the car through the window and have a feast of us all. Our ICM rolled up his window and started to drive away and concluded:

“She will not be a reliable landlord.”

The weekend passed and Monday finally came around. Our ICM remembered a house that he looked at with the last intake of volunteers. It was a set of two, two bedroom units, with the partition yet to be inserted into the house. He had located and contacted the landlord over the weekend. Inspection time was arranged and what we found was:

• Four bedrooms, each of a good size two without cupboards
• Two sets of kitchen and two bathrooms
• An excellent and fair location for all of us to get to work
• A good neighbourhood with friendly neighbours
• Massive living area that I could hold ballroom dancing lessons in
• BUT….UNFURNISHED.

The deal has been sealed with this house and I’ll tell you more about our new home in the next post from Mobilised Manda.