Sequel

Sequel

[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.”] [All $ amounts are F$, F$1 = US 60cents.]

After “Bureaucrats, Panties, & Saving the World”, many folks wondered what happened. Here’s the sequel.

I talk to the business manager here, whom I get along with extremely well. He was familiar with the case, and assures me that once an eviction (of the cop) has proceeded this far, that there is no turning back. He assures me: the cop & his wife & kids will be out by the 14th.

I then go to the Asst Roko Tui, who, as the #2 man, as in any org, is the real power. He assures me that the cop will be out by the 14th, & that as provincial office staff, I have priority over any outsider for provincial office housing.

I don't believe any of this, but whadya do?

On the 15th I go to the new house, find laundry flapping on the porch, a prayer meeting in progress in the main room, and dishes stacked high on the sink. He has not moved out. He repeats that he's talked to the RT, he will pay the back rent, he’s staying.

I return to the biz-manager, who now is clueless, & the AsstRT, likewise.

The RT tells me that the cop has in fact paid $800 (NO ONE has $800 in Fiji, so this is interesting), so he can stay, but it's OK because he's been talking to the AsstRT (someone's lying) & they'll build me a house in 2wks to a month. So: according to him, no problem. He of course is assuming that I will just pass this sad tale down the line to Joana, I’ll tell her I can't leave for 2wks or a month. Recall that the original sad tale to Joana was in November 2003, revised bi-monthly. So I just tell the RT I will not do that, instead I will move my stuff into my office & sleep there. It’s interesting that he does not seem embarrassed by that, instead waves off in a vague direction saying no I shouldn't do that, that there is a housing unit 'there' that I can take in the interim. Now I do in fact know of a couple provincial units in that direction, so I ask re each, & it was always 'no'. I get the impression he has nothing in mind at all, especially when he finally decides to show me the true interim housing unit, which is in the direct opposite direction from what he'd indicated, only about 10meters distant, 2 connected abandoned offices, each about the size of a small cubicle. (Another PCV (she incredulous that I'd ever consider the arrangement under any circumstances) & I came to call this assemblage "The Hole".) Neither door contains a workable lock (there are locks, but they've lost the keys), but he promises they will fix that. I will need a shower (a daily life-support necessity, else one suffers skin diseases and painful boils in the tropical summer). There WAS a shower in the prov-office complex, except it quit working, hence has been filled with tires and lawn maintenance implements. He promises me that likewise will be repaired.

I believe none of this. I vacate my good home and pile all my Fiji possessions before my office desk.

I sleep in my office on an air mattress for 3 or 4 nites. I keep the windows closed against the bugs, and the big fan keeps me cool under my thin sulu blanket. It isn’t bad. Erami and his wife feed me next door, and I use their crude slimy shower (trying not to touch anything).

I meet with RT. It's really interesting, he says it several times in a heartfelt way: "I'm sorry for what happened to you." Interesting in 2 ways: 1. He says it exactly in the way that in the US we would reserve for a rape victim. (But that's a cultural thing.) 2. He clearly does not see HIMSELF as responsible for the situation.

He seems to feel powerless. He says he has the AsstRoko talking to a hardware store about fronting them all the materials, to be paid by the NNPO (the Provincial Office) "next year", so they can build a house for me. And that's it.

Ain’t gonna happen.

Interesting also that he’s ordered some of the boys here to get a carpenter to put locks on the doors of “The Hole” so I could put my stuff in there. They estimated Thurs or Friday last week it would be done. The next week: nothing. They say they did talk to a carpenter, but he didn't show. [Just as with many government entities in the US, I have gotten the impression that businesses, tho they always show respect, don't actually want to do biz with the NNPO, probably because there's too much paperwork & it takes forever to actually get paid.]

(The Provincial Treasurer gives me a long sad grateful story of how when she was transferred here, she had to commute for 3 wks each day, from 5am to 9pm, from Lautoka, because NNPO couldn't come up with a house for her, despite it being their responsibility, she with school kids to care for at home. Her salvation, finally, was when the local Peace Corps guy, out of the pure goodness of his heart, spontaneously gave up HIS house and moved in with another PCV.)

I check the District Officer, perhaps the most powerful man in the province. He has an immediate and very reasonable solution: I will move into a vacant room in the bachelor quarters of the gov housing out back. I check it out. A blank bleak room in the communal quarters. A single window obscured completely by exterior veg, facing the setting sun & hence hot/humid-as-hell. Bug screens ripped out of the communal livingroom/bath/kitch. The other residents say there is a stream of strangers off the street who climb thru the windows at all hours to use the bathroom. It’s not that bad, if one could imagine oneself enduring monk-like an unjust prison term.

I politely pass on that offer.

I am fortunate. I have been aiding Master Isaia of Korotogo, distinguished retired teacher, current Deputy Chairman of the Provincial Council, and a good man, with his new computer and internet connection, a FUCKING NITEMARE, I am reminded anew that computers are so ridiculously hard to use, I mention to him my plight, and he immediately, with never a 2^nd thot, in the Fijian Way, helps me, I will stay with his son and the son’s wife in their house in Korotogo, maybe 10km east of Sigatoka.

I arrive and present sevusevu to the couple and the deliteful Turaga-ni-Koro. I feel so welcome. I have a room and bed in their home, the place is clean, neat, orderly, tho’ despite it being on the Sigatoka Town water system, the water supply is turned off as often as on. Not their fault.

Master Isaia Gonewai & granddaughter

Simeli, Turaga ni Koro Korotogo

They, Emori and Sara, are wonderful people. He works security at a small resort, she a housekeeping supervisor at a big 1, he works nites, she days. 6 days a week each. Despite the hectic schedule, they keep me well-fed as well.

I am so lucky.


The house at Korotogo

They seem to honestly love having me there in their home, but I do prefer my own place, eh? The men of NNPO, whose responsibility and promise it is to Peace Corps to provide me housing, do nothing. It’s the women who help me. They are appalled at what has happened. Fijian Way is to care for others - the RT should have taken me in to his own home before letting me sleep in the office. Pele, a wonderful Tongan lady who struggles to run the only counseling service in the region on shoestring donations, actually clears out a room in her home/office for me and insists i move in, but I don’t impose - she needs the space for the homeless battered women & children she aids.

Livia, Ili, Siteri

Pele

They investigate places for me to stay, under the condition that I not reveal to the RT that they are helping me. (Master Isaia had imposed a similar condition. No use causing trouble.) I let them handle it. (Understand, everything is done thru someone one knows.) But it drives me crazy: each day they say something will happen, & nothing ever does. Maybe tomorrow. For 1 place, the landlord is said to be in Australia at a funeral. For another, the secretary Ili is going thru the Mata-ni-Tikina Nasigatoka, who in turn is dealing with the owner. I keep asking to SEE the place, they keep saying 'today', then putting it off til tomorrow, meanwhile asking how much I want to pay. Well, I'll know that after I see it. Repeat cycle tomorrow. Finally it seems it will be $250/mo, tho i still haven't seen it. MT is supozed to call. Doesn't. I call his mobile, & it’s always turned off or the wife answers, which does no good. I get back from Suva to discover he's finally called earlier, and will call back after lunch. And he does, tho’ he just talks to Ili, not me. She assures me he'll be here in 10minutes. 1.5hrs later, he calls, even talks to me this time, says he'll come very soon to see me. (Me, idiot, I didn't ask what the news was that I was DYING to hear, because he’s coming right over, right?) Another hour later, Ili tells me: yes he did come, but saw that I was talking to someone in the office, so he left!! I try calling his mobile & it's not responding. This last, his being here within 20ft of me and then leaving, is just too much. I’m about to lose it. It's been a week of torture & I'm no closer to a home than I was a week ago. It's 1 thing to be in jail, quite another to be told daily that they MIGHT let you out tomorrow. Hope is torture.

Concurrently with the above, I am struggling with Peace Corps WashingtonDC about a real paying job, Regional Safety/Security Officer. There should be 9 in the world, but there are 3 vacancies. RSSOs travel around a Peace Corps region somewhere in the world, lecturing volunteers on safety/security, and coordinating with local law enforcement to keep PCVs safe. It’s highly paid. What a great job! The RSSO for the Pacific Region makes it sound like I’m perfect, a shoe-in, tho she warns that the HR (Human Resources) office is known for rejecting perfectly qualified applicants. I submit my application. I dream of a nice apartment high up in Bangkok Thailand, traveling thru China, Mongolia, Philippines, Bangladesh, Nepal. After 2 months, no word, I send a polite inquiry. No response. I wait 2wks, send another polite inquiry. No response. Another week, another polite inquiry. No response.

Three months after the initial application, HR emails me that I am not minimally qualified for the job, no details.

I immediately reply that I believe I am qualified and that I believe my application reflected that, and request they tell me what quality they believe I lack. No response.

Wait 2wks, try again. This time there’s a reply, I’m told that the guy handling my case is on medical leave, will return in 2wks. "I am sure that it will answered [sic] as soon as possible when he returns."

I wait 10 days past the 2wks. No response. This is driving me crazy. I send another inquiry, direct to the responsible fellow. [To be continued.]

On the home front, I take matters finally into my own hands and go myself to seek out the 2 landlords. After a long confused search for the first office, I did find the guy back from Australia, he will show me several places tomorrow, and there’s 1 other place rented by the Fire Department where the Chief stayed, but he’s gone to a new job in Kuwait for 2yrs, so he will check with the bank to see if the Fire Dept is still paying rent; if not, then we can look at that place too. [Yes it’s odd how things are done here.] Likewise, I am assured that the second landlord will meet me at his hardware store tomorrow, 8am. It feels I'm finally making progress. At least I’m back with the illusion of semi-control of own destiny.

Next day I check with LL#2. It’s a 3BR apt in an industrial area, over the shop he & his wife run. They are Indian. Waiting for the husband to arrive, the wife tells me truly what a wonderful country Fiji is, and then as if there was no contradiction, tells me they were run out of their shop over on the highway by Fijians who didn’t agree with the lease arranged with the village leaders. They’d paid $20k for a 99yr lease on a building on native land, but one faction didn’t like the arrangement so they broke all his windows and made life so miserable that they moved out and now pay $1k/mo on the present location. They have a lawyer, but good luck: the courts take forever and there is no enforcement – everyone is just supposed to get along. One hears such stories all the time. The apartment is dusty from disuse, but basicly in good shape by Fiji standards, 3BR, very large, $350/mo. He cannot come down on the price, he is only showing it for the Suva landlord, Sun Court Hardware. (This is the place the MT was working on, telling me he thot it would rent for $250. I suspect that that price is what he felt was appropriate for me, and was using political pressure on the Indian man to bring it down. Or maybe I’m just cynical.)

LL#1 is a very large bald Muslim, he would play the part of an underworld heavy in a movie, maybe a loan shark. His cell phone tones constantly as he scowls at his accounts-stacked desk in the midst of his densely-stocked hardware store (“Sears” but I doubt there’s any association). His midget assistant (yes, this would make a good stereotyped movie) shows me 2 adjacent apts, over shops on one of the main commercial streets, both still being remodeled. Nice tile inside, but piles of construction debris all over the porch and in one shower. “They will be finished on Saturday,” he says. “Bullshit,” I think, but say nothing. It is the nature of everyone here to be over-optimistic. The smaller one is $350/mo. The porch, once cleared, looks out over an alley to a nearby forested hillside outside town. This could be OK. About the 3^rd apt, the one vacated by the Fire Chief, he doesn’t know, the bank hasn’t replied.

There was one other place I’d checked but found already rented, but the shy Indian teen had told me of yet another, under construction. Now I went to seek it out as well. The steep uneven concrete steps left the street a block from the main marketplace, reached the landlord’s house, then a path continued farther up the hill, up more steps, and there was the place, high on the hill with only Bush behind.

Nice. Big roofed open porch with wonderful trade-wind breeze in the hot afternoon. Distant view of the green Interior mountains over the rooftops of the town. Inside, all new, beautiful tile floor, excellent kitchen cabinets, lovely tiled bath, all construction of the (almost-)highest quality. 2BRs. Well-done bug screens and security grills. Properly locking doors. $350/mo.

I love it. It has the quality that I’m imagining in my dreamed-for Bangkok apt in what I hope will be my next job: high up, highest quality, grand view.

“Who do I talk to?” I ask the girl. “My parents,” she answers, “You know them.”

And I do. They are the Indian couple who run the small “restaurant” where I get a $1 snack bag of French fries every morning. I always apologize that I am so boring and do not buy more. The husband is hard-working in the kitchen, the serenely lovely wife works the counter, 6-and-a-half long days a week. “If I asked to rent your apartment, would you?” I ask her.

For the arrangements, they referred me to their trusted friend, Kahn, the Arab man who runs the hardware store next door their shop. (Plenty hardware stores in Sigatoka.) “You are just who they were hoping for,” he said. “Someone quiet.” He will finish the place, I will move in on return from New Zealand in 2wks. I pay him $250 now, $100 on 1Apr, and they won’t charge me for the last 6days of March. He seems very pleased, and so am i.

I tell Emori and Sara and Master Isaia of my plans. They seem truly upset, like I am abandoning them and the koro. They make me promise to come back and stay again, every now & then.

On return from New Zealand, I move my yaya (a great Fijian word for ‘stuff’) from the office up the long climb to the new home. Erami helps, thank goodness.

The first nite, when the wind dies as it does every eve, the stink of the animals out back is horrible. Before, I didn’t even notice them there, their tin shacks below, down-wind, half-hidden in the Bush. It smells of piggery, but next day I find chickens, geese, and a solitary penned dog, the one I’d heard crying at intervals in the nite, between the barks of another, who hung out on my porch til I chased him away.

Nothing is as we pre- dreamt.

No reply from Peace Corps. Back from NZ, I wait another week, then send pleas for help to the pacific regional administrator and to the head Safety/Security guy in DC. They each respond immediately, good for them. Within 2 days I have a response from the new head of HR. One of the requirements for the job is that (basicly) I have a year’s experience living overseas. I thot Peace Corps Fiji surely qualified me. Wrong. The job’s pay level is GS-11. They count Peace Corps service as GS-7 level. But to qualify for the job, the experience must be at least GS-9.

Good bye Bangkok, Ulaanbaatar, Urumqi, Dhaka, Katmandu. It was a good dream.

Less than 8 months to go, 17 of us remain of 26. Mary's back in Michigan for a month getting tonsils out. Josh just had his baby. Ryan's moved off Ovalau to Suva, 'commutes' to Dravuni island and its Great Astrolabe Reef. Josiah likewise has moved to Suva off Ovalau to coordinate training for the next group. Sam & Atasi still aren't speaking. Evans, they tell me, is getting even stranger. Lien’s still in LA, but all still claim she's coming back. All the men in Heather's village have gone to work in Kuwait, and she couldn't be happier. Jim's new place got burgled, they took his considerable DVD collection. Karen may go to Australia in May, then she’ll ET (leave early) to study linguistics at Oxford England or international relations in Bologna Italy; as Sam says: “Karen’s uber smart”. Katrina’s thinking seriously of re-upping for a 3^rd year, to (get this!): Do Good. Good for her. God bless us all.

Me, I went on a rubbish cleanup when I got back from NZ, 130 Fijian folk walked down the beach and the highway filling 50+ big garbage bags full of trash. My good friend Mac, Turaga-ni-Koro Namada, planned & organized the whole thing. It went amazingly well.

Cleaning the beach

Sanaila “Mac” Saukawa

Thursday I addressed government cabinet ministers on the subject of village water supplies. The MC politely cut me off before I was done, so that others could speak – our hearing was at the tail end of their grueling 4-day sweep of Nadroga-Navosa, and they were anxious to get to the party at the hotel, guests of the Ka Levu (provincial chief, literally: “Big Thing”). It’s just as well, I was getting to the part where I would say, in a way too politely obscure to comprehend, that Fiji’s problems all derive from racism, lazy government, and a culture which has become dysfunctional.

Every day it pours rain, relief from the heat.

Nites, I sleep on air mattress over ibe, a hand-woven mat on the fine red tile floor of the main room, sometimes a sulu for a cover but usually none required. There’s a little electric fan if it gets too hot. With the bedrooms shut off, unused ‘cept for storage, the neighbor animals are odorless. The dogs bark, but I’ve learned that if one doesn’t obsess about trouble, it just goes away. Mornings, with all the rain, fog shrouds most all below. Evenings on the deck, looking across the town to the clouds and mountains beyond, there’s a beer, the wind, and I just think: so lucky, so lucky, in this new place.