Sushila's story

"We come from a very rich culture"

I came to Canada in 1987. At that time, my husband had passed away and I had a very hard time. I was teaching back home in Fiji. I had two boys and one is still back home - he's a high school teacher and the other is working at UBC. I came for a holiday, to spend some time with my son. I took a leave without pay and came over here. My son went to the immigration and got the papers for my permanent residency. I was very lonely, very depressed because I was no longer working full time in Fiji with kids. I love children.

My son says, "You're sitting here crying - why don't you go and do some volunteer job?" There were two schools nearby where I was living and some daycare centers. I went to one of the schools and the principal was really nice, so she gave me a volunteer job. I started at the library, helping the children, doing book-keeping and then after a month they let me get totally involved with the children, telling them my background and doing programs and stuff.

So I started full time for three months and I applied to university but I couldn't afford the money. Then I tried volunteering in the daycare in the afternoons so I was balancing it. Mornings I was in the elementary school and the afternoon I was at the day care. The day care supervisor was very, very good and she said to go and take the training in ECE (Early Childhood Education). So I applied but it was late so Gyda (at the college) told me to go and do out-of-school care. So I did one year of an out-of-school care course and I was upgrading my English, too. Then, the next year I got into the program for ECE.

I was lucky because I was then hired by the place where I was doing the volunteer job. So I was working full time and going to school at night. It was really, really hard for me - all the stress - but I was so lucky that I was involved in what I wanted to do. Then the supervisor became sick at the day care, so I took over from there as the supervisor. We had 40 children and I worked with five staff, I was doing everything - administration too, down to working with the parents, everything. In the ECE program, Gyda gave me the support I needed.

I learned a lot, because in our culture, the children were very respectful to the parents, everybody. But over here, it's totally different. I was so fortunate to do the volunteer work at the elementary school to get that side of the story and then to go to the day care. It seems to be really different, the children are so independent, whatever they want to say, they say. Whatever they want to do, they do it. Where I am from, we have a mixed culture, Fijian and Hindu. These cultures always have a lot of respect for parents and older people. We come from a very, very rich culture.

It was different coming here compared to our culture. At first I was very disturbed. My son, who is now 26, he would never talk back to me and now sometimes he does. I have to take it, I have to accept it. I was so disturbed that he was very different - all of sudden he changed. He lost his values of our culture and I have, I guess, lost mine too, working with kids in this society. With my son, we have to communicate, and problem solve. We are very good friends now and it works. At the day care, I teach some songs and counting in Hindi and tell them about my country and clothing. After that they want to go to Fiji and drink coconut juice. Now when they go to the superstore they say; "There are the coconuts!"