First Impressions

My first official half-week at work has come and gone without much pomp and circumstance. And without air conditioning, a comfortable chair, and a handful of other creature comforts. No, it’s not really a big deal, and yes, there are perks. For instance, I wore shorts and thongs to the office on Thursday. I also paid $1 Fijian (about 60 Aussie cents) for a corned beef and spice-filled roti for morning tea. If that’s not the complete opposite of a dealbreaker, I don’t know what is

With our induction to Fiji and volunteer program out of the way, us Suvanian volunteers got stuck into work on Wednesday. Both George and myself are working at the Fijian deaf society: George doing some financial spring cleaning and me working on bringing in the bacon. Emma, our housemate and co-volunteer, is working at the Department of Environment with the goal of developing a national climate change policy. No biggie.

I’d had the opportunity to meet my counterpart Gael in Brisbane over Christmas last year (she was the one that told me wearing shorts and thongs to work was OK). Apart from George and I, she is the only non-deaf person working in our office. The office itself is what the generous would call small, and frequently shrinks when crowds of people come in to say hello. The Association (FAD) is part of a wider compound that houses a number of other NGOs dealing with people living with disabilities. We’re next door to the Association of the Blind, and just down the corridor from the Stroke Survivor Association. Quite obviously, it’s an eclectic mix of people. There’s no fridge, no internet (I’m ‘borrowing’ from the wireless network from the vocational education school next door to the compound), and you have to bring your own toilet paper when you go to the bathroom. Having said that, a fridge really isn’t required: a man selling roti filled with pure awesomeness alternates with a man selling banana muffins and egg sandwiches, so there’s abundant cheap food. And as for toilet paper, yeah, I guess that’s a necessity, but one easily managed.

Our office is quite busy with people, mainly interpreters or deaf people, coming and going throughout the day, but there is a core staff of about five people, including George and I. Yep, we’ve almost doubled the organisation. Jill and Isoa are both deaf and work as project officers, with Gael sort of a senior interpreter and liaison officer. Both George and I have only the most rudimentary knowledge of Australian sign language, which bears some similarities to Fijian sign, but we’re in no way confident enough to exchange more than a few words of greeting. Thus Gael is a bit of a lynch pin for us, and it came as a bit of a blow to hear from her on our first day that she was working elsewhere at the moment and wouldn’t be in the office until July. Despite those words, she’s been here the entire time. Fiji, uh?

As for the work, it’s been slow getting off the ground. I’d say most of that is due to this being Fiji, and as one of the other volunteers, Andrew, said, Fiji isn’t a very intense place. There is no hitting the ground running. The ground’s too soft and muddy for that. And unless you’re part of a sports team, there is no running. Even knowing this would be the case before I started here, the change in pace from work in Australia is monumental. And I didn’t even work that hard to begin with. There’s a lot of sitting and waiting for someone to complete a task for you, and in my case, there’s even more sitting and watching madly as three conversations in sign language go on in one room simultaneously.

I won’t bore you with the details of what my work actually entails. Not fully anyway. I will say this: my job description is virtually non-existent, but everything I’ve done thus far falls loosely into the marketing and resource development arena. I’ve also become quite the MS Publisher whiz. Pre-Feej, I hadn’t even realised I had it on my computer. The people are all incredibly friendly and eager to learn. I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise, but from the tiny bits of training I’ve given to the office thus far, I’ve noticed that deaf people are incredibly quick visual learners.

Surprisingly, the most tiresome aspect of the job is watching these silent conversations occur across the room, and trying to make sense of them. The whole experience is completely different to listening with your ears: there’s no way you can be typing on the computer and listening at the same time. You literally have to stop and watch, something which is totally foreign to me. I realise that sounds very obvious, and it is, but there’s a lot of mental exhaustion that seems to go with it. Makes me feel extremely fortunate to be in a country where almost everyone speaks English.

George and I will hopefully be starting Fijian sign lessons soon (although soon carries precisely no weight here, so don’t get too excited just yet), and should be able to start communicating more effectively with our peers in due course.

I’ve just realised that all my other posts have included a little something at the end to spice things up a bit. I’m loathe to ignore tradition, but I’m not sure I have anything even remotely clever to say. Like I said, this job is draining. And it’s only Day 4. Aces. But don’t feel sorry for me, there are many positives. Like, it hasn’t rained in nearly four days.