Lessons Learned

I am finding that the more I travel the more I want to learn and be apart of life and cultures that are different than my own. We have had the opportunity to travel to many beautiful places and the beauty is not only in the place but the cultures and people in the places.
This is our tenth year to the remote areas of Fiji and our second year to the Solomon Islands. Each year I see and learn something new and I am in awe of that. This year I wanted the lives of the people on both Islands to permeate my heart and soul…so that I would know them by heart and carry them with me long after I had left. I had the most beautiful encounters with so many people this year including the healers/medicine women on both Islands.

I think one of the things travel does for me is awaken my sense of perspective. I find that I am in fascinated with the life that others are leading concurrently with mine. It was during our teatime one day that I had the opportunity to meet and speak with the ‘old’ women of the village. Luisa had been the healer/health worker on Qumaeya in her youth and had been trained by her mother before her. She in turn was now training her niece in the ways of their ancestors. I have always been fascinated with the local customs and culture so I when asked her about the traditional medicines she agreed to take me through the dense jungle areas and began to show me the medicinal plants. I asked her if there was any written literature on these medicinal treatments and she told me no, that this knowledge was passed down from one generation to the next. When we were done, she sat with me and we wrote out a few of the most common treatments.

I think this conversation kindled my desires to learn more so when we arrived on the Solomon Islands I sought those women who could share some of the cultural aspects of their life with me. I remember one conversation I had with a woman named Leah. She was telling me about Malaita, the Island her husband was born in, and asked me if I would ever consider going there to work. She said there was a very nice place to stay at Langa Langa Lagoon. I told her that when I come to these places I like to live where the people live, get to know who they are, eat what they eat, see what they grow in their gardens, live day to day with them, and see what they do when they are sick. She began to share some of the customs with me and I became captivated by her stories. The more she talked the more I wanted to know. I soon found myself contributing into these stories as if they were my own! In the end, I began to have a deeper sense of who they were and how they lived day to day. I am enriched beyond what I could ever say.

I spent some time with Amy, the nurse in Konga. She has the sole responsibility of caring for the people in nearly seventy villages. She lives with her family next door to the infirmary and is available at all times. She tends her own gardens and is rarely paid (she asks for $2.00SD or uncooked food as payment) but will see you for free if you are unable to pay. She does this day in/day out everyday of the year. She says that while medical care is free in the Solomon Islands, the cost of travel to get to the health center would be the equivalent of one month’s salary. This makes it impossible for most to get the health care that they may need. I felt an incredible respect for her commitment to her calling.

I am always excited by these revelations. How sorrowful it would be if I returned home and felt as if there was nothing left for me to learn. I thank God each time I return that my heart can still be broken by something I have seen, my world forever rocked, and that I have learned something new.