Taking initiative in the projects was my way to recompensating for the time I’d lost from my injury last week. But that proved itself to be harder and harder than I had originally thought. Time wears people’s patience down, and we started seeing that among ourselves, the team and the villagers. I started going for morning runs to get the anxiety under control, when I felt that I also had less patience even for myself. I felt my social battery dying in social settings, which seemed to be ever-present in a small community like Dreketi.

In this vulnerable point in the project, people’s opinions seemed louder than my own,

and I felt small in where I stood when everything seemed to be pulling itself in all different directions. It was hard to get things up and going, and more and more it seemed that my contribution in the group was a lot less than I expected it to be when I started off. I felt drained to even hold an opinion, feeling that it was pointless to really have a stance. 

Was I less of a leader because I didn’t seem to be the loudest in the room, or that I didn’t want to assert an argument about my own opinions? What did leadership feel like to me? What impact did I even want to make? I thought of myself and the person I wanted to be, realising that this was something that I knew to think about, but never really actively considered. Being in a community of scholars and Fijian youth who all had different talents and communication styles showed me all the different ways that people can make impact despite their differences from the “leadership norm”. While some might be considered shy, they were the ones that took most action to create change and show that they care. During Culture Course, which is an afternoon course led by the Fijian women on how to traditionally make items, accessories and food. In order to show our appreciation, some scholars took it among themselves to make cookies for the Na’s. Is that not also a valid form of leadership? To dedicate your efforts to a cause that you believe in and executing it? 

Thinking back, I never was one to gather everyone towards a cause, and explicitly tell people to do things. If I wanted something done, I would do it myself, and hopefully that would lead by example. That’s not to say who’s form of leadership is better or worse, but we all come up with our own brands of leadership, through the little ways that we interact with people. I wanted my form of leadership to guide a motive, and to be firm in the reasons why we act. Hong Kong was a difficult space to realise what that reason was, but being in Fiji lined out exactly what my motives were -- to care and to love. 

I’m a firm believer that “You can only love when you know you have been loved”, and the way that our community in Fiji loved and welcomed us so openly made it so much easier to love back. I had never felt such a sense of connectedness to people that I had only met for several weeks, and all of this made sense. Love was our Na’s soft voice in the morning telling us to wake up for breakfast. Love was our brothers walking us to someone else’s house in the night and waiting there until we were ready to leave. Love was Buka running after me during my morning runs, yelling “Wait for me!!” so that we could walk together. Love was all the Na’s remembering our names and saying “Yadra (YAN-DRA; Fijian for Hello)!” whenever we passed by. “We love you guys, we don’t have a lot but we try to give you what we have.” Our Ta explained one day when we were short on food, and so we weren’t eating a lot that day. I remember breaking into tears, feeling the depth of care given in that sentence, and how, truly, I was loved, and that was shown all around me.