Like the Spoon song says, Don't make me a target...

A note of vulnerability from Jenn:

Our whiteness is a beacon. We are stared at, we pay more for everything at the market (the Whitey Tax) and generally are presumed to be ultra rich. There is no blending in... there is no concept of multi-culturalism. You are Fijian or Indian here.

It's humbling, it's angering, it feels unfair and unbalanced, and it somehow feels a very important experience to have.

Yesterday afternoon, I felt that imbalance rear up inside myself and it manifested intensely in feelings of irritability, suspicion and guilt. I felt irritated at the presumption we have lots of money. I felt suspicious of people's intentions. And I felt overwhelmingly guilty at feeling both irritable and suspicious.

I wanted to set what I felt to be an imbalance straight with everyone we encountered. "I'm NOT wealthy like you think. I don't have heaps of money to do with as I please. I have to be responsible with my budgeting. I've made sacrifices/deliberate choices to get here". Why was I automatically assuming that I have "so much more" than the average Fijian, when the evidence seemed to, in many areas, state that is not the case.

I should qualify that the "so much more" in this context refers more to "things" than environmental experiences. Many Fijians we have met have newer cars than the one we had in Canada. All have incredibly new devices (similar to our experiences in Dominica, cell phone companies dominate and war with one another for supremacy on these islands). Most of the folks we have met here have travelled far more extensively throughout the world than we have. Many seem to own several properties and parcels of land...far more than would be possible for the average Canadian to own.

My high tolerance of differences in others seemed way out of line with the general level of tolerance here. My personal basis point (my Canadian basis point?) starts at inclusion, whereas the basis point here seems to be one of exclusion. Although, one would argue that that should be unsurprising when one considers the history of intolerance to "difference" here - read a bit about the historical relations and resentments between the Fijians and the Indians and it is easy to see.

Perhaps what I fear in myself is the hypocrisy in the moment when that balance seemed to reorient itself for me.

We hopped on the bikes here at the cottage to go for a ride out to the point of the bay and not 2 minutes down the road we met a white fellow coming onto the road on his bike. Dave, was from San Francisco and had just sold the property he was biking down from to some Australians. "Made a great profit" he informed us. "And I own another property, 8 1/2 acres of beachfront across the bay with a sweet place on it".

"Now there is a RICH white fellow", I thought.

"See?" I told myself, "I'm NOT the rich one". And, at once, the "balance" I sought was restored.