Navigating Race as American Volunteers in Fiji

Peace Corps Fiji's Group 93 is fortunate to include a range of diverse racial identities that reflect our vast American heritage. Over the past year, I’ve gotten to converse with some of our current Volunteers about the unique challenges that our races and genders bring to our service. I’ll share here in the hope that we can gain some perspective on the experiences of our fellow Volunteers as well as navigate our own challenges in ways that make them easier to manage.

Peace Corps Fiji Group 93 after 5 months in Fiji

Despite “making do” with their Volunteer stipend as all must, male Volunteers who present as white may be perceived as being wealthy by Host Country Nationals. That perception of excess can lead to being targeted for robbery. It’s very common in Fiji to be asked “Where are you going?” or “Where do you live?” But Volunteers should exercise caution when responding and potentially have some vague or even downright misleading answers prepared for anyone other than their Supervisor and closest friends. Telling your boss you’ll be away in Suva for a week is required, but telling the same to a random dude on the bus could be setting yourself up for a house-casing, or worse.

White Volunteers may be perceived to share the same demographic as tourists who visit the village and make donations. Assuming that you could also whip out a few hundos upon request, your village mate may put the squeeze on you for an upcoming soli, or even to upgrade their phone. Shortly after my arrival at site, a host country national who knew an outgoing white male Volunteer instructed me to have him send her a new smartphone now that he was headed back to the states. I swallowed my shock at her audacity and patiently explained that, since he had been in country as a Volunteer, unpaid, completely foregoing income for the last 2 years, he would not be in a financial position to send her a phone.

Getting one’s house cased can also happen while you’re home - by the person you’re talking with. A different outgoing white male Volunteer shared his story of the “best friend” he made shortly after his arrival at site. The new bestie spent the first month hanging out at the Volunteer’s house with him where they enjoyed levu na talanoa, grog, kakana (lots of storytelling, kava drinking, food) and libations together. Our beloved new Volunteer was happy to have made a friend. He was, of course, devastated when that new friend returned while our Volunteer was away to relieve him of the electronics and essential possessions he’d noticed while soaking up all that hospitality.

To my white male brothers serving in Fiji, watch your backs, don’t disclose too much, and enjoy the validation of whatever you say being taken as fact. You’ll have a lot of freedom here and you’ll be able to enjoy it in relative peace so long as you don’t do anything crazy to buck the system - like, doing your own laundry.

Lighter-complected female Volunteers endure only some of the allure of being perceived as walking sacks of cash. Host country nationals may not be sure whether you do have money because you are white (or look white to them) or don’t have money because you’re a woman.

If you don’t self-identify as white but are perceived to be white by Fijians, there can be a kind of identity crisis. You may immediately want to explain your true heritage. Sometimes the conversation will be useful and affirming. Other times, it will result in the response, “So you’re not American?” Creative ways of explaining and self-affirming your unique and multi-layered identity may follow.

The main blessing and curse faced by our fairer maidens in Fiji is that they look way more like the leading ladies in most of the media here than any host country national women. Colonization and mass media have conditioned Fijians to value, seek out and try to marry lighter-skinned women over darker-skinned women. For female Volunteers who are open to physical or sexual attention from Fijians, their eager reception could be a blessing. But as most Volunteers also want a chance to flaunt our intellectual attributes, a white female form can invite challenges.

Single women are already a commodity in Fiji. But looking like the desired archetype can mean getting proposed to numerous times in a day and being sexually harassed at all hours. In Fiji, nonverbal communication is subtle yet powerful. I confirmed with our Training Manager, Filipe, that making eye contact with a person of the opposite sex is considered to be flirtatious in Fiji. Holding that eye contact or even - gasp - smiling while making eye contact, may actually be construed as an invitation to share oneself. Whew. The very things women have conditioned ourselves do in the U.S. to avoid being labeled as “intimidating ice queens” could gain you a terrifyingly persistent nighttime caller in Fiji. Who knew? While it sucks to have to adapt our learned and deeply ingrained behaviors to support our safety, it is enlightening to realize that perhaps some of the attention hasn’t been as unprovoked as we might have imagined. While women should never have to adjust our own behavior to ward off male attention, we’re still working to raise awareness of that fact. In the meantime, some have found that better utilization of “resting bitch face” or ignoring men altogether may cut down on the amount of unwanted attention received.

Another caveat to being desirable is that, for white and lighter-skinned women who do find themselves coupled with host country national men, they may be immediately incorporated into all family functions and events. Those hours of boring downtime you were promised may be suddenly filled with every opportunity your Fijian partner has to show you off to his envious cousins. While the pulse of your relationship runs steady, your stomach may do a flip every time he mentions going back to America with you because wondering whether he’s into you or your citizenship can limit your ability to trust. Just as in any relationship, open and honest conversations about what both partners want and expect can help to alleviate concerns and potentially even reclaim some of your precious self-care time. In a culture where women are too often seen but not heard, you may need to re-iterate or even take a stand in order to get your point across. But if your partner improves his ability to accept a woman who advocates for herself, then you’re rocking Goal 2 and making Michelle Obama proud. If you post your combined name with your couple selfie on facebook, that’s Goal 3 right there.

Despite the direct adjacency of literally ALL of Asia to Oceania, there is still relatively little awareness of just how many countries yield visitors of Asian descent to Fiji. As an Asian-American Volunteer, there is a mixed bag of - well, no, it’s mostly just a good helping of ignorance coming your way. Host country nationals may not be able to distinguish your particular ancestry from that of Chinese or Japanese residents and visitors. Not that it’s much better in The States, but telling a Fijian that your father is Cambodian may yield the same response as if you’d said some mythical land from a tale of obscure fiction. Fake Chinese speaking and eye-corner pulling reminiscent of a small-town kindergarten can round out the usual array of responses that some of our Asian-American Volunteers navigate. As with most things in Fiji, being direct can work wonders. If you’re up for schooling some people on that particular day, or just fed up with the ridiculousness, you may decide to whip out your smartphone and show maps of your family’s national origins to the person who insists that you must be Chinese, not American, and certainly not Korean-Cambodian-American. You might try suggesting to the students (or adults) who are blurting out terrible approximations of the Chinese language that they should actually try to learn Mandarin because, although you don’t speak it yourself, because you’re not Chinese, they sound really horrible pretending.

Similar pits open to trip up our (all-American) Volunteers of various and mixed national backgrounds. If you, your parents or grandparents were born anywhere outside of the continental 48, you may know all too well the added stress of having to field questions about where you’re “really” from. Try to keep in mind that our American media has just done a crappy job at preparing the world for our diversity and, that is one of many reasons why your presence here is so important. By showing more sides of America that aren’t blonde and blue-eyed with California diction, you are also winning at Goal 2.

As a black male in Fiji, you may alternate between being exalted as an important male in good moments and, in other moments, being talked to as though you must also be an aspiring rapper. Depending on your complexion, you also may field questions doubting your American heritage. If you have ancestry outside the U.S., you too may choose to enlighten by showing a World Map and pointing out the origin countries for your parents or grandparents. Or, you may find yourself painstakingly trying to explain that while almost every black male on almost every American rap song played in Fiji refers to himself and all other black people by the “n” word, it is indeed not a preferred noun and does not reflect your awareness of self. The saying, “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” certainly holds true in Fiji. In the words of the immortal Tupac Shakur, “keep your head up” and try to rest in the solace of knowing that the cops here are mostly all brown just like you and they don’t carry guns. Enjoy your two full years of existing without fearing for your life.

Anyone who hasn’t completely tuned me out by now has heard earfuls about the never-ending bliss of being a brown Indigenous American woman in Fiji. Whether I’m sitting in the grass outside a perfectly good building cutting carrots at 1 am or wearing a three-layer, ankle-length yurt on the hottest day of the year, being a brown woman in Fiji has been the most character-building time of my life. Sometimes I daydream about returning to countries that haven’t been colonized so recently, where I’ve been treated like a celebrity just for showing up. Other days I sob uncontrollably because - yet another - market vendor or taxi driver berated and swindled me because they’ve assumed that I’m a prostitute and think I deserved to be mistreated. But most days, I’m reveling in the newfound sisterhood that my brown female existence in Fiji has forced me to cultivate. Back home in the U.S., my besties have been white and male for most of my life. I’m just a product of my environment and I’ve mostly been surrounded by white males in my community and industry. Anytime I tried to be friends with other brown women, my experiences were less than positive so I mostly gave up trying. In Fiji, it is socially unacceptable for me, as a single brown woman, to fraternize with males. As a result, I’ve spent more time in the company of brown women than I have since my mother went back to work when I was two years old. I finally understand what “sisterhood” means. I have been steeping myself in it with Volunteers and host country nationals alike. I have built some of the strongest friendships with women and with other brown women that I’ve ever had in my life. I finally understand what it feels like to uplift and to be lifted up by other people just like me. I feel as though my self-love has finally come full circle by being able to see women like me and love and appreciate them as I love and appreciate myself. For all the hard labor and inequity that this post-colonial nation heaps upon the shoulders of its grandmothers, mothers, sisters and daughters, I feel less burdened as I continue to immerse myself in this culture. I feel somehow like the sun is finally shining on me and I stand with my sisters in rays of gold, with melanin and estrogen fully engaged.

While Peace Corps service will always have its challenges that know no race or gender (hey, double dragon, I’m calling you out), there are certainly layers of complication that our various identities can add. The good news is that, we are all in this together, even when we’re navigating different challenges. Being aware of some of the potential pitfalls, and workarounds, can help us get through to CoS only minimally scathed. Seeing the blessings in these challenges can help us earn that coveted badge of Peace Corps Service - leaving here stronger than when we came in.