Attack of the Cockroaches

In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher. - HH The Dalai Lama

My landlords assure me that they have NEVER EVER seen a cockroach in their upstairs flat – despite having lived there since the tsunami warning last year. I find that a bit hard to believe in this country – and especially when we have a backyard full of ducks and chickens, and the detritus which goes along with poultry keeping Fiji-style.
On my first night, I kept stirring from sleep, thinking I was sweating about the neck. I finally woke up to realise there was the most ginormous cocky sharing my bed – snuggling in under my neck. I quickly jumped up and gave him short shift with the spray, finding legs-up the following morning being carted off by the ants.
I mentioned it to my landlady. My main concern in this place is that all windows are screened – except my bedroom and the front door. They just blithely say – oh, just keep the front door closed and close your bedroom window. Yeah, right. Fiji in summer is a place where you need every tiny breath of air you can get. So I leave the door open, much to her horror of the flies which are now sharing the place with me.
But on my third night here I heard the sound of incoming cockies in my room in the dark. It sounded like the midday Jetstar flight coming in to Maroochydore and I pulled my sheet over my head in anticipation of the landing. The beast only made it as far as the floor at the foot of my bed, where it proceeded to scuttle around madly. I actually thought I may have been mistaken, that it was a rat after all, it sounded so large. I dozed off, then awoke again to the sensation of something sitting on my feet, then scuttling around over my legs, finally running up my body – all this while I am under the sheet, I might add. I knew it was the dreaded cockie, so gave the sheet an almighty flick before the damn think got to my face – only to misjudge the flick and actually flick it onto my head. Out of bed like a shot and grab the spray and dispatch it to cockie heaven.
The next morning, the spraying must have disturbed a whole colony of cockies because I picked up 5 very large dead ones in the kitchen. So much for never any cockies in this place.
I had used a full can of spray so bought another one – a red can – which guarantees to find hidden cockroaches. Lord only knows what's in it – it will probably reduce my lifespan by 5 years, but it does the job nonetheless. Last night, about 3am I made the awful mistake of going to the toilet. There were 2 large cockies in the bathroom, so I grabbed the red can and hit them a beauty. Then – a new noise from the kitchen – a cockie had found its way into my bread bag and was rustling around inside the plastic wrap. A quick spray into the bread bag and – voila – a feed of bread and one dead cockie for the ducks this morning. One of the lessons of Fiji – don't disturb the cockies in the middle of the night. From that moment, all I could hear was the scuttling and death throes of giant cockies throughout the place. I have high exposed ceilings, so I could hear them running up the ceiling, knowing full well that gravity and the toxic effect of the red spray would drop them eventually. Which it did, of course, mostly into my bedroom.
This morning, there was a positive harvest of dead and dying cockies strewn throughout the flat. I think I dispatched 7, and found the ants doing their bit and carrying out another 2 – down the stairs and into the distance.
Today – I bring in the big guns. Mortein Cockie Bombs – a big expense in Fiji – but they will do the trick. I'll go out for a few hours tomorrow, set them and then come home to see the carnage.
I actually am not too concerned by cockroaches, I will happily dispatch one with my shoe, or a spray. But I definitely don't like sharing my bed with them. I know they are a sentient being, whose punishment for past life misdeeds is to be reincarnated as a cockroach therefore they should be treated with respect and pity. But I'm sorry – cockroaches and cane toads are despatched with a blessing for an auspicious rebirth – and smacko, they're gone.

Cockie Terminator




If you read my recent blog about the life of a house share with cockies, then you will be up to speed. They have really gotten the better of me over the last few days. I have stopped spraying at night, and leave them to have their rest – or more to the point, run wild through the place without the benefit of the mood-altering substance in the Red Spray Can.
Last night, however, in the early evening I was watching a DVD – Invictus, it was great and I now actually know the first rule of rugby – only pass the ball to the side or to the rear – when the sound of the scuttling got the better of me. I mean, fair cop, I had the lights on and I hadn't even gone to bed. There is a storage loft above my kitchen, with some rolled up Fijian mats and who knows what else. I could see a couple of very large cockies up there, so I couldn't resist the temptation to give the loft a shot from the deadly Red Spray Can. I whispered my hopes for rebirth in a better life for them, then settled back to my movie. By bed time all was quiet in Cockie Country.
Different story this morning when I got up. I picked up 9 very large, very terminal cockies from the kitchen and bathroom. They are huge and even the ants were having trouble dragging them out the door. As I had bought my Mortein bombs yesterday, I decided that I would go for a walk this morning and set off the bombs before I left. Did that, got home about an hour later to the sight of 27 very large dead cockies throughout the place. I haven't even found all the ones which may have died inside the cupboards. It kind of reminded of our old days at Eudlo, when we had a mouse plague and I set a trap with a piece of bacon in a kitchen cupboard – that trap went off 7 times in about 30 minutes and I caught a mouse every time. Eudlo was the house where if you wanted to go to the toilet at night – which was through the kitchen and into the bathroom, you had to stand in the doorway between the lounge and the kitchen, turn on the light, wait a minute for all the livestock to scuttle away – cockroaches, cane toads, rats – then walk quickly across to the toilet at the other end. Character building days for our boys, that's for sure.
I think that it must be almost a Guinness book of records effort – for a flat that has NEVER had a cockie, according to the owners. I was almost going to take them down and show her this morning, but I know she would just say it is because I leave the front door open (no screen) and they must all be flying in since I have moved here (one week ago). Still, they are nice people and I don't want to offend – they give me fish and coconuts and soon I am gonna have to murder their young dog for barking in the night. But the Tales of Blackie and Booza is for another blog!
I was going to go for the gross photo and line them up and record them here for posterity, but that would have meant touching them and I am not that keen on the blighters.
Instead, for your edification, here's a photo of last night's dinner of locally caught prawns – caught on the reef out the front on Friday night, into the markets Saturday early, into my seafood salsa Saturday nite.

Prawn Salsa Fiji Style Diced onion, capsicum, tomato, cucumber, avocado One small, finely chopped chilli Tablespoon each of fresh lime juice, soy sauce, Fiji honey Half bunch of chopped coriander Toss it all together in a bowl and chill in the fridge Cook up your heap of prawns, chill them in the fridge also To Serve: Half a cup of cold cooked rice in the bottom of your bowl Add the Salsa mix on top of the rice Dump the prawns on top of the lot Sit on the balcony, Bundy and Cola in hand and listen to the sound of the surf on the reef. EAT AND ENJOY

My First Day at School

Children who have grown up in a loving family atmosphere tend to be much healthier than those who live alone or, even worse, are beaten and abused and never shown genuine love.   - HH The Dalai Lama

 

 

I went along to Cuvu District School today. Probably a little further than I wanted to travel, but a well loved village and area on the Coral Coast west of Sigatoka. I will eventually just get the mini-van, which will be much cheaper than my car. Shane, the Peace Corps worker was there for his first day of the New Year today, and seems unsure of what he is really doing. He is supposed to be following on from the last Peace Corps worker – but doesn't really know what that person was doing anyway. He takes six classes over a school day on Monday. I have volunteered to come along on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in the mornings. Just being part of his computer class this morning – the impressive line-up of 15 computers that I saw last week actually equates to only 9 which are working – made me realise that perhaps computer is not the most important thing in the role of these young kids. And for the dear little Class 2 sweethearts – the largest class in the school, with 37 children under the care of one teacher – they come in two batches, so the kids are 2 and 3 to a computer, limited English but because the teacher is supervising the other half of the class, there is no translator. When the going gets tough, they just like to give the keyboard a good old bash, just in case that works fixes things. So you are constantly running around closing down things they have opened inadvertently! I am not convinced they wouldn't be better occupied reading stories in the grounds for half an hour, at that age.

The Year 4 teacher, Ilisoni, was telling me that they have had an Australian curriculum for many years, which has not been working in the cultural context for kids who don't have English as a first language. Which makes a lot of sense to me. So the Department of Education has decided to make a change to another, more local curriculum, basing it on testing in literacy in English and Maths – the first real tests in Year 4. I am not sure I totally understand, but it seems that this will be a big year for his Year 4 class. So we are thinking that, even though it is important to have some computer skills, it is actually more important to have English language skills. Ilisoni has taught Year 8 for 4 years, and last year asked to go back to Year 4, because he recognised that Year 8 was an uphill battle, so he may be better equipped to start with the kids earlier. He was tearing his hair today after almost 2 hours of a maths exercise which most of the kids seemed totally incapable of understanding, let alone completing.

Shane was seeing some of the classes for the first time today, and even just getting them to speak out and reply to his questions about how was their holiday, did they get something nice for Christmas, did they go for holiday – was like drawing teeth. One thing I would like to see them have is the ability to speak out, not to fall about in paroxysms of shyness. They can speak out well enough in their own language – Ilisoni says they must be confident enough to speak out in their English language – now more than ever.

I think, therefore that my role will be as I thought all along – a mentor for their English language skills. He agrees with me. But I will be giving each class a half hour lesson spread over 3 or 4 hours 3 times a week. If watching Shane in action was anything to go by, then it will feel like a 10 hour day crammed into a morning. Anyway – as I keep emphasising to them – I am not a teacher, I have no teaching skills, simply a desire to be of assistance in an area where I have some skills.

I have been thinking a lot over the past day or so about my high school English teacher, Mrs Ruth Redmond. There were those in the class who hated her, for her attention to the minute detail of our speech and grammar. There were others, like myself, who thank her for making me an articulate, enquiring, well spoken, confident purveyor of the English language! I am trying to remember some of her tricks – albeit she was our high school teacher, but a lot of them will translate well to the higher grades, from Class 4 onwards.

Much, much more to follow in this saga, I have no doubt. But first, my Fijian 'Blue Card' to work there.

Leap of Faith

The best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other. - HH The Dalai Lama

Been a week since I made my great leap and have been as busy as I would wish to be.
Got hooked up with some appalling Aussie tourists my first night in Nadi - made me realise why I hate being an Aussie Tourist (sometimes). We were at a nice small Fijian restaurant opposite my hotel, I ordered kokoda (raw fish marinated in coconut milk, then made up with chilli, onion, coriander - very traditional and very moreish). She ordered prawns vakalolo - prawns wrapped in banana leaves and steamed. She nearly died when she opened her parcel and - DEAR GOD, THE PRAWNS STILL HAD THEIR HEADS AND TAILS ON THEM - well she was finished for the night then. Mossies were biting, her tummy was upset (they had arrived 3 hours earlier), she thought the heat was interacting with her 'medications' (HMMM) and she wanted to go back to the motel. So he stayed on for a bit, finished his meal and totally bored me to tears with his opinion of Fiji and how to fix all their problems. AAARRRHHGGH - let me outta here. They were here for 2 weeks, with no idea where they were going - except to the islands somewhere. Wanted my phone number - did the good old wrong digit trick - and made my escape. But I did give them some nice small resorts to check out on their way to Suva.


Aliti and Treasure House on first morning in town. She is looking so good - has lost 2 front teeth and the new ones are coming through. We always thought the ones which were such rotten stumps were her second teeth, but she is maybe not quite as old as we thought. She is starting to say a few words - there were a clutch of volunteers there, and she had just started saying "Sofie", much to Sofie's delight. Still not sure about school and the logistics - but will follow that up


Met a delightful NZ woman whose husband works in one of the new resorts. They are in the process of adopting a baby girl through TH. Grace is about 12 weeks old and the dearest little thing. Grace's mother gave birth to her in Suva, walked out of the hospital after the birth with Grace in her arms, put her in a carton and stuffed her in a rubbish bin a few bus stops away. Fortunately somebody heard her crying and rescued her. So she ended up at TH, and with now a new loving family on the way. These stories are depressingly commo here. Just in the Fiji Times this morning, was the article on how the current baby boom is under way. This is a result of, I believe, a time during school hols last year when traditionally (??) many young girls end up pregnant. Now, the result - which will mean more abandoned babies.


I have settled into a very comfy 2 bedroom flat in Olosara, a small beachside settlement just down the road from where we lived last time. My hosts downstairs, who own the house, are Sunny and Shareen and their kids. Nice family, good security, great guard dog (now my mate, thank heavens) and already wanting to buy my Suzy if and when I sell it! The best thing, however, is that I have the internet in my apartment, a godsend to continue my work and stay connected. Three days of working in the local net cafe was enough - by after school time it was like the set of a Bollywood movie.
Have made my first visit to a local school - they have an amazing computer lab, with about 20 computers all seemingly in good order and well set up. But, surprise surprise, they have nobody who can teach. They have just scored a Peace Corps worker for 3 hours on a Monday and will do 6 x 30 minute lessons with him - which will be a handful. Anyway, I will go back and talk to the head teacher today and see where I can fit in. He is keen for the small children to have the chance to learn - my dear friend Jane says that any learning at that age is learning, don't be deterred. I was scouring the net yesterday for clues, and there is plenty of online learning games, but nothing much you can download. I doubt that this school has the net. I managed to download some good tools for English literacy, but printing out and then colouring pencils will be another matter. But first things first.
It seems there are several schools with kindly donated computers – mostly from overseas benefactors - but none of them have a teacher. It seems such a shame - but an indication of how disposable computers are in other countries that we can give them away. But we can't give away enough money to sponsor a teacher for a year to teach the whole school. If you could just find the right person...
I am sure there are lots of people out there who would gladly give a few weeks of their time to come here and teach computer, or literacy. Just need to be able to co-ordinate them. HMMMM - another crazy idea to keep the Valagi Loloma awake at night.
I visited Waya and Viwa Islands when I had my trip to the Yasawas last year. They are crying out in the paper today for a teacher and for a nurse. They are something like 70km by open boat to the nearest Clinic - just one nurse is all they want. Pregnant mothers have to take that trip if they want to have proper medical antenatal care - and why should they not be entitled to it.
It has been nice to come back to this town - I feel part of the community and even though I see the same person several times in one trip to town and still forget their name, they are very forgiving. That's because I am the eccentric white woman. I live in hope of somebody directing my ramblings to Bill Gates or James Packer or even somebody not quite so wealthy, but who has a couple of hundred thousand dollars to spare - there is so much could be done here. Scary, really
And I do love the pirated DVD's - more movies to catch here than I ever do at home, all for $3 a pop.
And I have PayPay - if anybody is keen to add a little to the pot.

I'm going back to Fiji. There is so much going on in my head – the past, the future – I feel as though I need to concentrate on the present and then things will be clear.

I will find a place to live around Sigatoka again, engage in Aliti's life and hopefully get her into school this year. I also want to be a little more involved in the life of her sisters in the valley – they are able to go to kindy this year and I hope to facilitate this. My friends at Social Welfare have changed, but the new lady I think will be receptive to some plans.

Hopefully I will be able to be of some use in the local school – if only for help with English literacy skills.

And I will just live in the present for a while – then perhaps the past and future will take care of themselves. I'm excited about this period of retreat.

I hate to hear on the news that Fiji Australia and New Zealand are in a bout of 'schoolyard bullying'. Who is going to benefit from all this - the egos of the politicians. Who is going to suffer from all of this - the people of Fiji.



Australians and New Zealands are quite blissfully unaware of what it is like when the travel advisories go up. Tourists get nervous - not all, but enough - the resorts start to suffer reduced numbers, the locals have reduced hours, the flow on effects to education, health, nutrition is enormous.



Of course the Big Fella (Bainimarama) is standing big. He is the little guy in these transactions - therefore Australia and New Zealand can afford the man some opportunity to save face. They should have kept his High Commissioner in place - if only, so that Fiji can stay within the fold. Retaliation gets nobody anywhere. The Dalai Lama says "How can we have world peace, unless we have inner peace".

We all need to take a deep breath and remember what is really going to happen here.

As a child I remember always being keen to be a 'helper'. My favourite activity was Girl Guide Bob-a-Job week. I had a small group of friends in primary school who sought out good deeds with our near neighbours. I must have been a horribly bossy child - but I remember to this day that I even chose a motto for myself "If there is any good deed I can do, let me do it now - as I may not pass this way again" - this, of course, was a simple version of the quote below:I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.
William Penn

My Buddhist views now tell me that I will certainly pass through life again, but without any guarantee that it will be this blessed path in this human incarnation. Which just means that I have more reasons to do what I can now and not defer or neglect any longer.


Friends who have known me for a long while know that I have always given of my time - whether it be locally to schools, or clubs, or respite groups- or more recently during my travels. I have become comfortable with the notion of giving as I see the need in an immediate fashion. This is not always easy and I am prone to get it wrong on occasion - but I tell myself that I give with my hand on my heart and the best of intentions. My friend, and mentor, Marc Gold of 100Friends has been a great encouragement in this journey. He has always encouraged me to document, document, document all encounters - otherwise people have no idea what I am doing in their name. I, however, find it hard work to talk about myself and my activities. I find it even harder to ask for money to continue the work.


This new blog is my attempt to share, with those who may be interested, my regular forays into the world of micro-philanthropy. I will attempt to link some of my posts over recent years from Blognow - unsuccessful, so far - but I will continue to try.