Fiji25 Day 12 - Emre

Day 12

Emre

Today is Day 12 and time has been moving more quickly as we get into a routine. With each passing day, the community becomes more interconnected and Nanuku and Lakeside become further intertwined. One thing about Fiji that is very different from Seattle is how inviting and neighborly the people here are. Here in Fiji, if I ever come near anyone’s front door I am invited in for tea, whereas in Seattle, strangers almost never invite me into their homes. This makes it much easier to get to know people in Fiji than in Seattle. Fiji makes me feel inspired to invite people places more and engage with my community on a deeper level. While this is not the culture in Seattle, I can make a small difference and hopefully make people around me do the same.

Another thing that I have noticed is how much more lighthearted people are in Fiji. Today my host mom told me that one of her aunts has asthma and the other has to walk using crutches while smiling ear to ear. In my experience, people here have told me bad news like it is good news, which makes it sound better than it actually is. Laughing is also much more common in Fiji. It makes the interactions feel much warmer when people are always chuckling and smiling. The community brings out the happy side in me because everyone else is cheerful as well.

In Fiji, people have to be more resilient in the face of bad news because their lives are less stable. Since Fiji is a small island, the people are much more susceptible to natural disasters like cyclones and typhoons, and since most citizens of Nanuku are farmers, these disasters can affect their crops as well. Diseases are also more common because of unclean drinking water, open defecation from children, and mosquito infections among other reasons. And when people fall ill, the hospital is far away, so they only go when the sickness gets bad. Because of all these reasons, people need resilience. Overall, Fiji has a much different culture than Seattle, but we can learn a lot from it.