I have learned a great deal about culture and people from single incidents. In 1974 I was living in Fiji, in the Yasawas Islands off the coast of Lautoka and Ba on the western side of Viti Levu island. The trip to the Catholic Mission took about eight hours by village boat which made the journey once a week.
It was school holidays. The Marist Sisters who ran the Catholic school had returned to the mainland for a break. When the village boat arrived one afternoon, I watched it enter Na Somolevu (Big Bay) Bay. From my vantage point I was surprised to see a European woman on the deck. I was not expecting anyone. As the Sisters were gone, who could this be?
It was a Canadian teacher from a school in another part of Fiji who had heard about the beauty of the Yasawas islands and decided to visit during the school holidays. People were supposed to have permission to visit from the Government but no one worried about it. Protocol demanded that she could not stay at the priest's house and the sisters were absent. The chief of the village made the decision that she would stay in the village with one of the teachers from the Catholic school. She stayed a week.
A couple of weeks later when people from the village were discussing 'things' and I was included in the conversation, one of the Fijian men who had a reputation for being outspoken in the sense of coming to the point, asked me this question, “Why did that woman come to the village and shame us?” Even though I understood the question, I did not understand what he meant.
He explained as follows: “This European woman came to the village and stayed a week. She lived like us and she slept on a mat on the floor like us and she ate our food. Why was she doing this when we know that all Europeans are wealthy? Instead of having a holiday at a tourist resort, she came out here and in living like us, shamed us. We know we are poor here. If we were rich, we would not come and live among poor people and pretend to be poor. She dishonours us.”
This is not what she meant to do. I thought about this. I may believe that her intentions were honourable, but her intentions did not make them so. Other people had a negative interpretation. For the most part the disadvantaged party doesn't get a chance to complain.
This man may have been out of step with the rest of the people on the island but it gave me pause to reflect. Why would anyone live in a poor manner if they didn't have to do so? The Columbans have a phrase 'option for the poor' meaning we are on the side of the poor. What does that mean?
Fr Gary Walker
director@columban.org.au
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