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FIELD LETTER #5 FROM FIJI TERM ABROAD
November 21, 1997
written by Steve Leavitt
Topics
- The Tui Vuda Dies
- Ra High School Prize Day
- Address to the People of Ra High School
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THE TUI VUDA DIES
Earlier this week we got word that one of Fiji's big Tui had died over the weekend. His village is near Nadi (where the airport is), and we had had some prior interest in that village because our own talatala (minister) had been stationed there for many years, and he had commented to Va that this previous village was much more respectful than Rakiraki. Va was psyched to go, and there had to be a delegation from Rakiraki anyway (we have one of these big regional chiefs living in our village as well), so we all packed up on Wednesday and headed out for the presentations. Va and a couple of other women drove with us in our van.
It turned out to be a miserably hot day. When we arrived, we had to wait for our turn in giving our presentation, so we hung around. Karen watched Jeffrey while I went in with the men to be a part of the Rakiraki presentation. The format was the one I am now familiar with, with visitors presenting gifts to the family of the one who died, but this one, as it involved such an important person, was a lot more formal and dramatic than any I had seen before. I had brought my camera and tape recorder, but as I was sitting there watching the speeches, I started kicking myself for not bringing the video camera. We had it with us, but I had not thought to take it in to the presentation itself. The speeches were something to behold, and Rakiraki presented some eight to ten tabua all at once, and all the ritual was great. I do not have a videotape of any formal Fijian presentation, and this would have been perfect. They had pulled out all the stops, recruiting the very best speakers, and the kava ceremony was very formal.
Afterwards I sat around wondering if I could maybe videotape someone else's presentation, and I actually did go and get the camera, and I tried to get some footage, but nothing else I saw came even close to what I had been at first-hand, so I eventually gave up.
The ceremonial house was where the women were to go, and Karen didn't in the end go in--she still had Jeffrey and didn't act fast enough to hand him off to me (or I didn't volunteer to take him fast enough), so she missed the entrance and was not sure she could just follow them in later. The house was apparently filled and filled with mats. There were several Fijian warriors (from an ancient warrior clan) all dressed up in body paint and clubs marching around the house to protect the body of the chief. In fact, the chief's body was not even there, since he had died a few days earlier and we had heard reports that when he was lying in state a day or two earlier the body actually smelled. By the time we got there they had prudently returned the body to a refrigerated morgue.
We waited around some more and got a lunch and did some walking around the village. It did indeed seem a prosperous village, and the dead Tui had himself been a vice-president in the government at one point. Va pointed out to us all of the carefully tended flowers around the houses, and she mused that she should make an effort to get people here to do more of that. We had to walk around the village barefoot (another sign of the strict discipline there), and Va pointed out to us that the men who were slaughtering the cows and pigs for the earth ovens were working in fact in shirts and ties, with sulus. It was quite an operation. Women sat in various groups peeling vegetables while the men tended the huge pots sitting over fires. Some men were chopping meat into chunks while others supervised the killing and cleaning of more animals. There were five large pigs sitting by the water waiting their turn. It's hard to estimate just how many people they had to feed, but there were over 200 eating during our own lunch, and it was likely that they would be rotating people in and out though the whole day.
In the end, we weren't sure it was worth our going. We got a few pictures, saw some formal presentations, but learned little else. We had been thinking we might return for the burial the following day and the installation of the new chief the day after, but by the time we were on our way home we had I think tacitly decided we would pass on these. As it turned out, it was good we did, because the very next day I was recruited to do something more interesting (see below).
Jeffrey was very good through all of this (again), waiting patiently for us, tolerating everyone picking at him and cooing over him. He really has been good at waiting around for us (though he still is not much good when we eat dinner at a restaurant).
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RA HIGH SCHOOL PRIZE DAY
The next day, yesterday, I spent some time trying to revise a paper for a collection, and I felt frustrated not having the sources or the field data that I really needed. I had brought with me most of the interview material and such that I have on disk, but I could not of course bring my field notebooks (maybe it would have been good to at some point over the last few years to enter all these notes in a computer?). Still, I managed to write a passable introduction and figured I could slog through the rest with the promise that I'd surely get a chance to revise it again later. I am not sure how urgent the situation is. I had spoken to the editor a few weeks ago on the phone and he had indicated that he was still waiting for some of the others' contributions.
In the afternoon I was just figuring to shut down when I got a surprise visit from the Senior Education Officer Mr. Cakacaka. He told me that he had gotten a last-minute cancellation from a speaker for an end-of-the-school-year high school prize day, and he wondered if I might be able to fill in. I had no idea what I should talk about, so we talked a bit about the school. It is a rural high school, and it seems to be afflicted with the vague demoralization that is a part of most rural schools here. As I have indicated in past descriptions of Sarah's term project, the rural schools simply get left out of the loop when it comes to finding places for their students at the University. This school is worse off than most, and Cakacaka wanted basically what amounted to a pep talk. He wanted me to deliver the talk the next day. I said, "Sure." He then said he wanted the speech written out also, and I suddenly had second thoughts. "Too late now," I thought.
As we talked, he gave me a brief rundown on what he wanted said, and the message was a familiar one. "Yes, you are a lowly school, but even you can do your best, and the Ra Province primary school athletic group has recently won a championship, so this shows that all is possible." It didn't seem to me to be exactly inspiring. I decided to myself that I would try to fashion a speech that would have a slightly different message, one that seemed to fit with his general expectations but try its best to avoid reinforcing everyone's view that the school has no hope.
I talked it over with Karen that evening, and she gave me some great suggestions on angles I might take, in particular that I could point out that we have some of the same problems with education in America, and that it might be good to use my students' experience here as an example of what can be learned in a rural setting. By the time I went to bed I had the general ideas blocked out in my mind.
Cakacaka had told me he would pick me up at 8:30 the next morning, so I woke up at 5:30 and began hammering it out. I had asked him how long I should be, and he had said that it was entirely up to me. I decided to aim for 15 minutes. By 9:00 I had it done (still no Cakacaka) and was printing it out while I showered.
He turned up eventually, about an hour later, and we set off. He had an interim stop planned, and we were due at 11:00, so time was short. He drove at break-neck speed out to Navolau, using the whole road as his own, and I just sat there praying we wouldn't meet an on-coming vehicle at a an inopportune time and when his attention was diverted.
We pulled up at the high school almost an hour late, and we were ushered in for a little snack of treats before the ceremony actually started. I discovered that the principal there was a very pleasant man from Vanua Levu I had met a few months ago, on another trip with Cakacaka. We had talked then about an anthropologist he had worked with in his own village some years ago.
After our snack, we went in to the school's hall, a big run-down looking building with three-quarters of its linoleum floor tiles missing. Students, parents, teachers were all assembled there. I was given a beautiful lei and central seat in a padded chair on a pile of mats. There was a podium draped with masi, and I decided to myself that I would step out from behind that and move in front to deliver my address.
We sat through a tedious report from the principal that he felt he had to deliver in both Fijian and English (there were some Indian parents in the audience that might need the English version). He pointed out that the school exam scores were abysmally low, that they needed to work to do better, but they could take pride in the fact that they had successfully prepared each student for their step up to the next higher grade, and that was, after all, their main task. If I were a teacher there, I'd have thought it a glorious vote of confidence. Not.
Next I was introduced by Cakacaka. I had given him a blurb on my credentials, and he expertly improvised on those, tossing in a couple anecdotes about his own association with me. And, sure enough, he pointed out that they, of all the province high schools, were getting the speaker with the highest status.
Next it was my turn. I had spent much of the earlier stop at Navolau going through the speech in my mind, and I was pretty confident that while I didn't have it exactly memorized word for word, I could follow its basic structure point by point. Since I did, after all, write the whole thing out, and since I used the possibility of including it in a letter as an incentive to actually get it done, I'll now, and the risk of boring you, give you the speech as I wrote it:
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Address to the People of Ra High School
Thank you all, Mr. Cakacaka, turaga ni vanua [chiefs], board of governors, principal, teachers, parents, students, for inviting me to speak about education today. I am honored. [Walking out from behind the podium], I want to apologize for not wearing a tie today. I mean no disrespect. I thought it right because I really just want to give you a simple message today, a message about the meaning of education. I have only been in Fiji for four short months, so I am only beginning to understand a little bit about the Fijian way of life. But I do know something about education, so maybe I can give you a few of my thoughts on that. It is hard for me to say anything strong about education in Fiji, because I do not know very much. But I will give you what thoughts I have, for what they're worth. I will have to speak in English, because that is all I know, but I think you'll all be able to hear it, and I'll try to speak vosa vakamalua [with slow speech].
As I look around the school grounds, the beautiful scenery, the houses on the hill, the big playing field in front of the highway, the construction of new buildings, I am thinking that this would be a great place for learning. To have a school at such a beautiful location can be an inspiration to the mind.
As I am sure all of you know, there are some serious problems with education in Fiji. Fiji is a developing country, and there is simply not enough money available to educate everyone to the highest degree. There is only one university and a few small training colleges. There are not enough spaces for all of the talented students that finish high school. The people at USP, the university, when they think about admitting students, value skills in English above all else. They tend to ignore students from the rural schools like this one, and they admit mostly students from the urban schools in Suva or other towns. It is easy for them to ignore the students from Ra Province, seeing this as a "backward" province, as the "ra" [lowly] province, the one near the ground. This means that only a very few students from Ra can get a university education and the high paying jobs that follow from that. This is true not only of this high school, but the others in Ra as well, such as Penang Sangam in Vaileka. It is not a problem affecting only you--it is a problem for rural areas everywhere in the country, and the situation is not going to change soon.
I am sure you know all this. The question is, what can we do about it? What should we do? Should we allow our children to become lax in their studies, to drop out, because it is not worth it? Because there is no point? Why should I, as a parent, force my son or daughter to work hard in school when I know that after school there will be few jobs, and my child may very well return to the village? If this is how we view education, as a "ticket" to a high paying job, then these kinds of thoughts make sense. There is no point. But I am here to tell you "No," that is NOT the way to think about education. I am here to tell you that education is a very valuable thing--the MOST valuable thing you can give to your children--no matter whether they become professors like me or whether they are farmers or cane-cutters. Education, like the church, is something that takes place inside your mind. It can give you dignity and respect, and these are valuable things for every person, no matter what work they do.
In this kind of thinking, the Fijian officials are right. They build schools like this one in rural areas so that everyone can get an education, even though they know that many of the students will spend their lives in villages. I am here today to try to tell you WHY they think that way, why they value education for everyone, and why you should take pride in the education of your children. Let me take a few moments to explain this.
The Fijian government takes their view of education from other countries like England and the United States--America. In my country, education is very important. In the United States there are many universities, some of them with as many as 50,000 students--the school itself can be larger than the whole town of Lautoka. In the United States we believe in educating all of our people, and we are lucky enough to have the money to help with that. But, you know what? Many of the problems there are the same. Parents come to me and say, "Why should my son or daughter have to learn math? They may become a farmer, or a worker in a factory, like a sugar mill, and they will never need to know any of that math. Why?" They say that to me. When I hear them say that, inside I feel a bit sad, because I know that these parents do not understand how valuable education can be for all of the children.
It is a hard thing for me to explain, but let me try. Education is a bit like religion; it is food for the soul. You can say the same thing about going to church. You can say, "Why should I go to church every week, give money to the church, when God never does anything for me? Has God made me rich? Has God stopped my family from dying? What does God do for me? I work hard, I want to SLEEP on Sunday mornings!" It is easy to say that. It is easy to think that. But you all know that that kind of thinking is wrong. What God gives you every day is on the inside. He gives you the strength to deal with the painful things in life. When your father dies, there is the church, offering the service, honoring him, the beautiful singing of the choir, and you can take some comfort. You know that the lessons of the church, of the talatala, are valuable and you listen. You go to church every week. You pay money in the offering. Every week. You do this because you know that God is always working for you on the inside, in your soul.
It is the same with education. The true education is not in whether you can do your sums or point out a country on a map. The true education is something else. The true education is what happens in your soul. Like God, the true education is what guides you through every day; it helps you make decisions, it helps you think clearly. This is why the Fijian government wants to educate all of its people. This is why this school is here. This school is the gift you can give to your children. The teachers are like the talatala; they are guiding your children to a better life. They should be honored and respected. This is the way we think of education in America, and that is why I am telling this to you.
Let me give you an example to explain better what I mean. As you may know, I have just finished supervising three students, three girls, in their training in anthropology. I had each student live in a different village with a Fijian family. These families were not the ones with high paying jobs. One father was a fisherman. Another was a construction worker--in fact he supervised the construction of that new building over there. These were just rural Fijian families. Deborah was in the village of Vitawa. Sarah was in Rewasa. And Amber was just over here in Navolau. Maybe you have seen these students in town. Maybe you talked with them.
Now let me ask you this. Why did I put those students in rural Fijian villages, with simple families? Why does my university pay me to supervise students in a place like Fiji? Why did the parents of these three students pay all that money for their airfare to come over HERE to Fiji to study? Why did these students want to go? What could the people in a rural Fijian village possibly teach them? When these students finish school and take up their work, are they every going to NEED what they have learned about the Fijian "sevusevu," or the "reguregu," or the "bikabika" [various Fijian ceremonies]? What is going on? Why were they here? Is this useless knowledge for them? How is this a part of their "education"?
But you see, you already know the answer. You know the answer because you have pride in your way of life, your "vaka i taukei, vakaviti." You all know this. You know that the Fijian village can teach an American student many things. Each week, I had a meeting with those students and the Rakiraki Hotel to talk about their work, about what they were learning. And I was amazed at what I saw. These young girls, by living in the village, there was such "loloma" [love] in the way they talked, such "vakarokoroko" [respect]. They talked about the children, about the respect in the family, about the love they had received. And they told me what they were thinking. In just two months, they said, they had learned more than all the many years of careful schooling that they had done before. In just two months, in a Fijian village, they had learned more. THIS was their education.
I was lucky enough to be able to attend the tatau [farewell feast] of one of the students. Debbie, who had lived in Vitawa. When I drove up in my van, I saw that they had put up a shed, with the tin, and inside the women were on one side, and the men were on the other. There was a guitar player there, and the young men were singing. One man came up and said he would be my matanivanua [representative], that they wanted to offer a sevusevu for me. I sat down, and they brought out a beautiful salusalu [lei] and put it on Debbie's neck. They gave another one to me. We did the sevusevu, and I offered them a sevusevu in return. After the ceremony, they asked Debbie to speak. It was something to watch. Debbie had tears coming down her face, and she tried to find the words to tell them how thankful she was for all that they had done for her. She talked of her tata and her nana, how they had answered all her many questions, how they had fed her, how they had stayed up at night with her while she was working on her computer. She talked about all the children that visited her every day. "Debbie, bula, ni sa yadra!" [Hello, good morning!] And she said that just hearing them greet her each day filled her with happiness. And all through this speech the tears were coming down. I sat there and listened to her speak, and I thought to myself, "Debbie has been getting a true education. Here, in a small Fijian village, Debbie has gotten a true education." After the food, I went back home, and Debbie stayed up all night, dancing and singing, crying and laughing. When I arrived back at my house, I saw that the children had written something on the back of my van in the dust. They had written, "Debbie, uro, sa moce, I love you" [Debbie, you dish, good-bye, I love you]. They had said it all.
I told you this story because I want to ask you to understand that in the village one can learn the most powerful lessons in life. It is in the village where Fijian culture is strong, where you can learn to love and respect. It is not in Suva, it is not in the university, but in the village where the true education lies. Education is something that happens in the soul. You have to value what the principal here, what the teachers here, are trying to do for yourselves and your children. You have to give them all of your attention, all of your energy, you have to work to build up the school, because it is here that you and your children will be learning the deepest lessons about life. It does not matter what you do for your work, how you earn your money. You will always have your education in your heart, like God, and you can use it to guide you through everything you do.
When my wife and I first arrived in Fiji, we did not know where we wanted to do our work. We traveled the Kings road and the Queens road, went to Rewa, went to Sigatoka, went to Nadi. We looked all around. We went to speak with one of the professors at USP, Professor Ravuvu, who has written a book about Fijian life. He himself had come from the interior of Viti Levu, and I knew that he valued Fijian traditions. When I asked him where I should do my work, he said, "Go to Ra Province. That is the first place. The Uluda. Go to Ra Province and do your work there. Find the Education Officer, Mr. Cakacaka. He will help you." So we traveled up here, stayed at the Rakiraki Hotel, and we looked around. We saw how beautiful it was, no rain, and we saw that in the villages there was respect. Professor Ravuvu had sent us here, to Ra Province, because he knew that it was in Ra Province that we would get the best education. The best education.
The Ra primary school athletic teams have recently won a championship. They have shown that on the playing field they can be the best. I am here today to tell you that also with education, with the village life, with the lessons that parents give to their children, with the lessons that teachers give to their students, you can also be the best. The answer is not always in test scores or in how many students go to university. The answer is inside, with the quality of education that each student carries around with him inside, with they way it guides his life, in town or in the village. These teachers here are trying to give you the greatest gift that life can give, a strong education, and they need your help. They need the help of parents. Parents should always tell the children the education IS important, that it is valuable. They must support the school, support the teachers, with all that they have.
And you students, take pride in your education, the gift that these teachers can give is yours. Treasure it. Study hard. Take pride. When you are in the playground, or on the rugby field, speak English to each other. Practice it. English is the language of your school, and your school is in your heart. Do not be ashamed to speak English with each other. Do not tease one another for speaking English. Take pride in it. English is a VERY hard language to learn, but tourists love to come to Fiji--why? Yes the people are friendly, yes the beaches are beautiful, but tourists love to come to Fiji because the people know how to speak English there. Take pride in that. In Papua New Guinea people do not know much English--even the teachers do not speak it well sometimes. But not here in Fiji. Fiji is ahead of the other Pacific countries when it comes to speaking English. So take pride in it. Take pride in what your teachers tell you. You will carry it through the rest of your lives.
That is it. That is my simple message. Education is in the heart, it is in the soul, and this school is here to help you be your best. Thank you, Mr. Cakacaka, principal, teachers, parents, and students for taking these few moments to listen to me. I do not know much about Fiji; I have only been here a few months, but I have told you what I see at this moment. Fiji's treasure is here; it's right here. Thank you.
I got a good applause. I felt it had gone well. I had held their attention mostly, and when I got to the point about Debbie's departure speech I could hear Cakacaka sniffling a bit behind me. Earlier the teachers had said they would give a Fijian summary of what I had said for those who would not understand my English, and I was gratified that after the talk they seemed to have decided that for the most part they had not needed to do that. One teacher got up and talked about my "provocative and original" definition of education, saying that in Fiji they all still think of education as something to be attained, and that I had given them a lot to think about.
After this we moved on the presentation of prizes. There was a speech about the Bible passage saying, "Many are called but few are chosen." This was supposedly to help the spirits of those who did not win any prizes. He did add that they could take my points in my speech and weigh inside what they themselves had accomplished and feel good about that.
I got to hand out the prizes, which was a lot of fun, and I was a bit startled when one of the mothers, after accepting a prize on behalf of her son, suddenly dropped down on her knees and laid herself down prostrate at my feet. I wasn't sure what to think. She quickly got up and returned to her seat, and we continued. When we got near to the end, there were a few school-wide awards and the young high school senior man who had won the leadership award, after receiving his prize from me, briefly did the same as the woman had, dropping to his knees and lying down in front of me. I thought to myself, "I could get used to this." I wanted to think that these were spontaneous gestures of appreciation for my message, and perhaps they were, but it may also have been simply that I was an American professor and they were recognizing this publicly. Hard to know. After the whole thing was over no one came up to me to tell me how much they appreciated what I had said, but many did come to shake my hand.
We then had a yaqona ceremony with the chief and senior men, went off for a nice buffet lunch of mostly Indian food, and set off back home.
Cakacaka didn't say much as we drove--break-neck speed--back to Rakiraki. At one point he said simply, "That was a good message. I think that should get them back on trackÉ to where they belong." Another education crisis averted. All in a day's work. I wondered vaguely if he really thought that a speech could make the difference. Lucky for them, they won't in fact have to rely only on my words. The Japanese government has come through with a grant for $70,000 for a new two-storey school building there, and at several points during the afternoon the teachers had mentioned this new "two-storey" building as a point of pride. Cakacaka had told me earlier that they were feeling left out because all the other high schools in the province already had two-storey buildings.
When we got back to my door he said this: "What are you doing next week?" I mentioned my parents' up-coming visit. He said, "Well, I have a lot of primary school functions to attend next week, too many in fact, so maybe you can go to a few of them instead of me." Sigh. I said, "Well, let me know," and we left it at that.
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