The Mix-up
03.09.2009
Two children switched by mistake in the hospital.
vilimone, aged six, was preparing to go to primary school. His mother, Sofia, decided it was time to explain. “You are Farida’s son and Asif is my real child. You were born to an Indian family but you were switched in the hospital with my child by mistake,” she said gently. Vilimone was listening intently. “You mean, like mistaking a container of sugar for a container of salt?” he said, puzzled. “How did that happen?” Sofia answered. “The nurse switched you by mistake,” “What a stupid nurse!” cried Vilimone.
In August 1994 Sofia, an indigenous Fijian, from the village of Koromakawa in Labasa parish gave birth to her first child in Labasa Hospital. Fourteen months later she attended Mass at a parish centre about 30 miles from their village. After Mass a local parishioner told Sofia about a little boy in an Indo-Fijian family nearby who looked as though he might be her son.
The next day Sofia set out for the house that had been indicated. Farida, the woman of the house, was drawing water from a well in front of her house. She was startled by Sofia standing in front of her.
Sofia introduced herself and asked Farida how many children she had. “Three,” said Farida, “But one of them looks Fijian. Please come to my house and see him.” On the way Sofia found out that they had both given birth at about the same time on the same date in August 1994 in Labasa Hospital. “You have my baby and I have yours,” Sofia blurted out. Farida was shocked. She cried.
At home, Farida showed Sofia her third child, Asif. The child had Fijian features and hair but looked thin and unhealthy. “When I saw my birth child I loved him,” Sofia reported later. Farida explained that her husband, Khan, thinking that this child had resulted from an affair between her and a Fijian man, used to beat her and wouldn’t buy milk for the baby. That day Khan heard that their child had been mistakenly switched at birth. His behavior towards his wife changed. They were very relieved but at the same time both families were in a terrible predicament.
Sometime later Sofia and her husband Tevita brought Vilimone from the village to Farida’s house and the two families sat down to talk. “We discussed swapping the children so that we would both have our rightful sons but it was too difficult,” Sofia said later. “We both wanted to take our real son but neither of us could part with the child we had been rearing.” However, the two families continued to visit each other occasionally.
Some villagers in Koromakawa told Sofia and Tevita to send Vilimone away because he was from a Muslim family and would be a stubborn person. “Bring your real child home in his place,” they said. “We cannot part with Vilimone now,” Sofia answered, “but when he is grown up it will be up to him to decide what to do.”
When Vilimone played with the other children in the village someone would sometimes shout, “Hey Vilimone, you are just an Indian.” Vilimone would return home crying. 
The teasing continued. Sofia, tired of telling him not to cry, one day suggested that when teased by the children he should say to them, “Yes, I am not a poor Fijian, like you. I am a rich Indian!”
One day Vilimone said to Sofia, “Mum, I will study hard and when I grow up I will buy a 10-wheel lorry (the kind used for logging timber near the village). I will drive it and we will all be wealthy.” Sofia suggested that he study hard and become a priest. She recounted that “he used to tell people that he would be a priest. But one day he announced that he wouldn’t be a priest because the priests didn’t get a salary. Instead he would be a soldier. He has the mind of an Indian. He speaks Fijian and his behavior is Fijian but his thinking is that of an Indian.”
“I used to feel lonely being called an Indian because I wanted to be one with the other children,” Vilimone explained. “But they do like me. We like to play touch rugby or soccer together. I can swim. I plant cassava sometimes. The food I like best is the curried chicken which my mother cooks.”
Last December Sofia and Tevita took their family to the island of Taveuni, where Khan, Farida and their family had moved, to spend Christmas with them. “I got on well with Asif, remarked Vilimone. “I get on well with my Indian parents too and they like me. We ate all kinds of food there. The happiest time in my life was last Christmas when we were all together.
Vilimone’s story is also a parable which helps us understand Fiji. The British colonialists were the midwife who took 60,000 people from India to a new motherland in the Pacific. The relationship between the Indo-Fijians and indigenous Fijians has endured the tensions and sorrows of misunderstanding, racial and religious prejudice. There have also been good times. But there is still a journey to be made before the two major ethnic groups in Fiji live together happily and celebrate the different gifts they bring to each other.
Fr Frank Hoare has returned to Fiji after six years on the international leadership team.
Read more stories from the September, The Far East
