Published: October 03, 2007 11:09 am         

Far away from Fiji

International student comes to ECU to earn degree

(This is the second in a series featuring various international students from East Central University. The first article featured the International Students Program and new director at ECU.)

ADA — “Fall was very memorable for me. We don’t have the four seasons in Fiji. We don’t have those trees turning beautiful shades of red and orange and all those autumn colors. I was amazed by fall. It took me a while to get over that,” said Aradhna Pillai, East Central University international student. Pillai is of Indian descent and was born and reared in Fiji. She came to the United States in January 2005 to study and earn her undergraduate and graduate degrees.

“Fiji is made up of about 330 islands. The climate is mild and balmy. In fact, the summers are not as hot as Oklahoma’s. There are two dominate cultures in Fiji — the Native Fijians and then the Indians that were brought over by the British as part of the indentured system, which started in the 1870s. What started out as just a few thousand Indians has grown to be about 45 percent of the population. The Indians aren’t as traditional here as they are in India and we do not have the caste system.

“There is a lot of political tension in Fiji. Since 1987 we’ve had four military coups. The last military coup was in 2006. The army commander took control and there is an interim government put in place by the commander. It’s not a democratic government. The previous coups aimed to put Fijians in power. Whenever their political power was threatened, there would be a coup. was angry with the native Fijian prime minister. He said the prime minister was pursuing racist policies and seeking to pardon all of those who had taken part in the previous coup,” Pillai said.

During the 2006 coup, Pillai was unable for a period of time to access any of her funds that were in Fiji and even now it is a slow and uncertain process. “It became difficult to get money to pay my school fees last fall when the coup happened and even to this day we have to write a letter of application to the reserve bank to be granted permission to get money out of Fiji - our own money. It’s been two months and my family hasn’t been given permission to take money out. My mom was finally able to get permission to wire my school fees directly to ECU. She was able to send me some extra money directly to the university, but it took us one and a half months to do that.”

Pillai also explained that there is ethnic tension between the Native Fijians and the Indians. “The Native Fijians own 90 percent of the land and it can only be leased from them. About 10 percent of the land is called free-hold land and can be owned forever. This situation has caused a lot of political and ethnic tension because the land holders are Fijian and the tenants are Indian. The cultures are very different. Indians tend to be very economically successful and the Fijians who are also successful tend to migrate. They are a chief system and have a group ownership system of the land. The British segregated the two races, but over the years the races have chosen to mix. Now it’s not such a big deal to have Fijians and Indians to live next to each other. People do get along and interact, but only a minority of them interact freely.

“Whenever there is political tension, it spills over into religious tension. The Fijians and about five to ten percent of the Indians are Christians. The rest are Hindu. I was raised Hindu. My dad and mom don’t conform to all the practices of organized religion. They both have a philosophy of living a good life and helping others over spending all their time going to the temple. My mom is a very generous woman. When we were kids, she would feed beggars that came to our house. The houses in Fiji are raised up off of the ground and the beggars would sleep under the house.”

Despite the political and ethnic tension, growing up in Fiji was wonderful for Pillai. “We lived in an ideal place. We went to the beach every weekend. It was just such a perfect childhood. We climbed trees and there was a creek on our land. I have very devoted, loving parents. My childhood was wonderful. Dad was a high school principal. Mom was taken out of school when she was about 12 to help on the farm. She married my dad when she was 20 and went back to school when my brother and I were toddlers. She took us to school with her. She studied accounting and bookkeeping. Mom had a lot of opportunities for promotion, but she didn’t ever take them. My parents were very excited for me to come here. It has been their life-long dream that I get my undergraduate degree and then go on to study as much as I want. They are glad that I am realizing not only my dream, but theirs.”

Pillai said she knew she wanted to get her education in a Western country because she felt her degree would be accepted worldwide. Her brother is already living in New York City and works at Columbia University. “ECU’s fees are very affordable. I couldn’t afford to go to the East Coast even though I’d live with my brother; I still couldn’t afford the fees. My cousin, Usha Fountain, and her husband Pat are both professors here at ECU. So I came at their invitation. I stayed with them for five months before moving into my apartment on campus. I will hopefully graduate in spring 2008. I’d like to go to graduate school if I get a good scholarship and can afford it. If not then I will try to find work. I have a lot of experience in journalism, I’ve been a high school teacher, and I worked at an embassy. So I’m hoping all those skills combined might find me some sort of job. I’d like for my parents to eventually be able to come and live in the U.S. My brother will be able to sponsor them after he gets his citizenship, hopefully within the next year. The security and political situation in Fiji remains unsure. I just don’t want them to have to worry about these things in their retirement.

“I went home this summer for the first time in two years. It was really incredible, but I also saw a lot of problems in my country that I’d gotten used to that were more evident to me now. There was this huge brawl outside my parents’ house the night before I left to come back. The police took forever to come and they didn’t arrest anyone. After they left, the fight broke out again and there was glass being smashed and broken. We had broken glass thrown over the fence into our compound. Most of the houses in Fiji are enclosed with fences because of the high rate of burglaries. I thought about Ada and how once I’d dialed 911 by mistake and the police turned up minutes later. Before I first left Fiji to come here, my house was broken into. I called the police and said, ‘My house has been ransacked. Can you send somebody over?’ The police took hours to get there and when I first called the police they said, ‘We don’t have any transport.’ So I paid for a taxi to go get the officer and bring him to my house to help me. It’s so nice and peaceful to live in a country where you can relay on the law. It’s nice to have the police knock on your door within minutes,” Pillai said.

Even though Pillai has adjusted well to living in the United States, when she first came to Ada she had difficulty dealing with homesickness. “I really had no idea. At the time I thought, ‘I am 35-years-old,’ and I knew I’d suffer from some of it, but it hit me so hard. I just felt helpless to deal with it for a long time.”

Pillai has also had to deal with some discrimination since coming here. “There was this kid on campus with the Upward Bound program. He came toward me and yelled ‘Al Qaeda.’ It is not just in Oklahoma that this happens. When I was in New York City, somebody came up and said to me, ‘It’s terrible what your people have done.’ I guess they both mistook me for a Muslim woman which is interesting because I dress in Western clothes. It makes me wonder what it must be like to actually be a Muslim.

“It’s very important to know what is happening in the world, not only to your own people, but what’s happening to other people in other countries. To use a cliché, ‘We are living in a global world.’ It’s a lesson for everyone, not just Americans or Oklahomans. We must try to empathize with other people. People have stereotypes about Americans. You have to come and experience life in America to realize these stereotypes are not true at all.”

     

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