Bula!

I've officially been here now for three weeks, and figured it was time for an update. I'm starting to get the hang of the job, though I believe I'll be challenged until the day I leave. Caracas was a good job for learning how to become adepts at making quick decisions and doing lots of interviews fast while still being fair. However, in Caracas there were 15 or so people just like me doing the exact same thing, and different people were assigned to handle different special types of visas, and then there was a supervisor and a two more layers of bosses on top of that, plus about 40 local staff behind the scenes preparing the cases, answering phone calls and e-mails, etc. Here, I'm all the interviewing officers, the supervisor and the boss all rolled into one. I answer to the head of the consular section, and I have three local staff doing all the background work. While the volume of interviews is obviously much lower, the variety is MUCH greater, so I am continually being challenged to look up State Department policy before making decisions on lots of things. Overall it's really great. I actually wanted to come to Fiji specifically because I knew this set up would force me to learn a lot more about processes and regulations than I'd had to know before.

Two of our local employees interpret Hindi when needed, but our office is short staffed right now, and one day during my second week I didn't have an interpreter available. I'd either have to interview in Hindi or ask this couple to sit down and wait a couple of hours until I could do their interview. So after a couple moments' hesitation I decided to give it a shot. When I started speaking Hindi, it felt like every head in the waiting room snapped around to look at me. I was rusty, having not used any Hindi in the two months since I'd finished language training, but we somewhat communicated and I completed the interview. Since that one, I've used my own Hindi probably 20 times or so on other interviews, though I like to get an interpreter, especially when a case is less straightforward, just so no one can claim later that a decision was based on a misunderstanding. Yesterday, after I finished interviewing a young Indo-fijian student (in English) he said "I just have a question; when you speak Hindi are the words on your screen? or do you actually know them?" It made me laugh, but I took it as a good sign that at least I wasn't butchering the grammar to badly. The two Hindi-speaking local staff have been encouraging, so I may be able to work on keeping up the language while I'm here.

I'm still in a temporary house for a couple more weeks. I was originally assigned to move into this house permanently, but things changed and I got reassigned to one that is just up the street from the embassy, so I'll eventually be able to walk to work every day. It's a little hard to settle in when I know I'll be moving out again shortly, but I decided 5 weeks is long enough that I do need to make myself feel as comfortable as possible here. So...I have had a couple of good shopping trips where I stocked up on the essentials--broom, soaps, clorox wipes, kitchen essentials, etc. and have done a good bit of cleaning. I was excited to receive my UAB (unaccompanied air baggage) this week, so I now have several more things to make me feel more at home (my memory foam pillow, my viola, more clothes and shoes!). My entire shipment of household effects is likely to arrive 2-3 months after I did.

As I was well aware it would, it rains a lot in Suva. Humidity is usually in the upper 90s, although it's winter right now, so it's cooler. It feels like it's been in the 70s to low 80s since I've been here, and not too unpleasant. I like hearing the rain on the roof at night, and it hasn't rained too hard during the day since I've been here. There are three large dehumidifiers in the house, provided by the embassy, and I've been emptying them about twice a day. I'll post a short video that I took through the window of my taxi yesterday, just to give a feel for what the city of Suva is like. I hope to get more soon--I think once I'm able to start driving around on my own I'll have more interesting photos to share!

The road between the embassy and one of the areas where a lot of embassy housing is located.