O11: TUIQAMEA, JEN MARA

#1

Name: Jennifer 'Jen' Mara Tuiqamea
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Place of Residence: Savusavu, Cakaudrove, Northern Division, Fiji
Language/s: iTaukei, English
Hobbies and Interests: Academics and studying, reading and particularly YA, K-pop, photography, blogging and foodie culture.

Appearance: Jennifer Mara stands at 5'3" and 160 lb. on average. Though medically overweight her weight is distributed in a fairly flattering way and her body shape would be described as an hourglass. She appears stocky, having a torso slightly longer than her legs. Her skin tone is dark brown.

She has a youthfully rounded face. Her eyes are a dull green, indistinguishable from the pupil unless close. She has a short button nose and average pink-reddish lips. Jen Mara's face is generally soft due to the extra weight she keeps, particularly on her jawline and cheeks. She has black hair, which is naturally very curly and difficult to tame. Her hair when grown out even a little will take on a lot of body and form a natural afro with about an inch of height. For convenience's sake Jen Mara will thus crop her hair fairly short to her neck and forehead.

She dresses very casually, opting for a rotating wardrobe of tees, crop tops, shorts, and jeans. There is no consistent color scheme, as a good number of these clothes are second hand. She knows how to use makeup but often does not see a reason to use it. She likes accessories, particularly purses, which she owns a number of, mostly knock-offs but with one or two legitimate brands she received as birthday gifts that she dearly cherishes.

When Jen Mara was abducted it was from her family store, shortly after the letting out of school. She had changed into a plain gray, spaghetti-strap crop top. What she had been wearing for school, a more modest short sleeve button up, black speckled with cream, was tied around her waist. She had battered denim shorts on and was wearing plain black slip-ons without socks.

Biography: Jen Mara was born the eldest daughter of Jacob Hunter Emori and Amelia Torika, and would ultimately have one older brother and three other younger siblings, two girls and another boy. Emori's own elder brother was then a Ratu, or chief, among the membership of the Tovata, the organizational unit of the traditional chiefs and landowners of Fiji. Emori, by Fijian tradition, would be the next in line to inherit the chiefship after his elder brother died. The family however was not especially wealthy despite having a historical claim to ownership of part of the local land of Savusavu, as a chief in the prior generation had sold off large chunks of the family's land to the Fijian government and private investors but had failed to invest the windfall well, squandering it away. Emori's elder brother, Apenisa, had been providing for the family with his salary and clout as a representative in Fiji's parliament but inevitably lost that position during the 2006 coup, returning home with only some savings.

Jen Mara's formative years were thus clouded by the financial anxieties of a sizable extended family that was trying to forge a new destiny for itself, especially when the head lost the job that had been keeping them propped up. Some of Emori's siblings would be despondent, the men of the families falling into alcoholism and becoming layabouts, but Emori and Amelia were strict and disciplined, and maintained their family through the rocky times with budgeting. Amelia also acquired a job at the fledgling local resort, leaving her children to other family members during school hours where she was busy.

The eldest daughter of the family was thus from a young age used to feeling a nascent sense of responsibility, managing the younger ones of both her immediate and extended family, where she acquired a positive reputation among the adults of the family for her even temperament. Amelia was honest with her curious daughter about the family’s recent hardships, and Jen Mara even young appreciated her mother’s honesty and hard work and was motivated thus to be reliable and dependable around the house, helping with the many chores inevitable in a house full of young children, to ease her mother’s burden. Her father, meanwhile, doted on her and approved of the way she was developing.

She experienced only a year in Savusavu’s public school, at the expected age of five, where she enjoyed the opportunity to make friends with people outside of the family. She found she enjoyed learning and picking up on concepts, and did quite well relative to the other students in the class, garnering the attention and occasional praise of the teacher.

Jen Mara’s life changed that summer after her first year: Apenisa intended to start working in the States, staying with the family of a former government acquaintance who had emigrated, so he could send money back home. He had overheard Emori and Amelia’s discussions of Jen Mara’s performance in school and believed Jen Mara would better meet her potential abroad. This led to a lengthy family argument, wherein Emori had little faith that such a move would work, but Amelia eventually convinced him to reluctantly go along with it. Jen Mara was terrified, but also excited, thinking doing well in America would help her family and that she could do them proud.

The two ended up in the exurbs of Oakland, California. The house was another one crowded with young children of the Fijian families sharing it, so Jen Mara was at least able to make some friends who knew her language and have a familiar lifestyle at home. Jen Mara was able to adapt well to school, shrugging off the occasional bullying for her difficulties with English, which would last for years up through late elementary school where she needed remedial ESL classes. Jen Mara was self-assured and confident, and had the strength of presence even at a young age to ward off negative attention by not giving into it, though she was as a result often wanting for friends while in school, keeping to herself and the children from her household. She also called home regularly as was possible, with Apenisa being magnanimous enough to cover the expensive international call bill monthly. It would hurt her that she could only be a shoulder to cry on and not actively be there helping her siblings. She entrusted a lot of the work back home in Savusavu to her older brother while the younger siblings had yet to enter school, and found that she disagreed with his more lax and hands-off style. She kept her misgivings to herself, however.

Jen Mara worked dutifully on improving her English during those years when she was struggling, not put off by failures. To develop her vocabulary she got the idea of reading instead of just using the school assigned workbooks. She helped one of the mothers in the house to do the groceries on Saturdays, and afterwards would be brought to the local library to stay a while. She enjoyed this as a time away from the kids in the house to focus on herself. The books she chose to add to her repertoire were all recommendations from the librarian suitable for her age as she entered her tween years: young adult fiction titans like The Hunger Games and Divergent. She finds herself still most attracted to this style of book to this day even after her achieving English fluency. She prefers gripping plot and relative simplicity of prose, as a way to unwind and cherish her second language given that she has worked so hard on it for years of her life.

By the time she entered middle school she felt fully acclimated to an American lifestyle. She had a small group of close friends outside of her household that she’d made by joining a photography club at the start of her 7th grade year, enticed by the news that the club had a few cameras for club members to work with. Though mostly more middle class, Jen Mara never felt out of place, and was important in the group dynamic for having the coolest demeanor, often being able to defuse teen drama that would emerge in the group.

Photography itself appealed greatly to Jen Mara, and she never would get over the reverence she felt for using such a powerful tool to create art. A more technological approach to creativity appealed to her, as viewing life through a lens seemed more elegant and romantic in a way. She also knew that the movies for the YA books she liked drew from a staff of people whose careers as cinematographers had started with developing one’s eye for photography, though she did understand that such a path was realistically unlikely for her. Jen Mara’s friends did try at times to encourage her to be more positive and bold, but such efforts would never stick.

Jen Mara would roam the area with her friends and also got the opportunity to travel into Oakland and San Francisco proper on weekend outings. A favorite activity of the group of friends was hopping through restaurants and food stores that were hyped online. Jen Mara would never feel entirely comfortable accepting her friend’s charity, as they regularly covered her part of the bill, but she kept that to herself for the sake of keeping the peace and being gracious. As they were all in Photography Club their club projects were often as a group tied to their love of being foodies, and Jen Mara began to appreciate the development of her palette, finding herself increasingly passionate about understanding the finer points of food.

Finally, Jen Mara was invited to her friends' various homes often. Guys and girls in the group alike, during these hangouts, mostly played video games and loudly blasted music, usually K-pop as the group had a number of heavy fans of the genre who influenced the others by picking groups everyone would happen to enjoy. Jen Mara was no fan of the video games, finding it hard to get accustomed to a gamer’s mindset of competitiveness and quietly feeling her lack of skills simply brought the group’s good times down despite there being no outward indication of that. She only played when forced to, but she did find she enjoyed the vibe of the music quite a bit. She’d only deepen her bonds with her friends by becoming a fan of K-pop groups in her own right, mostly of late 2nd gen groups at the height of their success such as Super Junior and SHINee. She often didn’t get a chance to listen to these groups, but her devotion to them and sharing a positive environment for expressing herself with her friends led to her memorizing reams of trivia as any fangirl would.

Jen Mara was called back to her birth home right before she was due to start high school. Apenisa had decided to formally step down as Ratu, as he realized he had no intent to return home, so Emori would be next in line per Fijian tradition. Emori wanted his whole family by his side for the sake of ceremony and tradition- he’d never been comfortable with Jen Mara being gone for so long and now firmly found it spiritually unacceptable for his family to be fractured by distance while he was leader. Jen Mara, as usual, had no particular desire to stand up for herself. She was far more reluctant to go back than she let on, but she felt it important to respect her father’s wishes.

Her friends, before she left, gifted her a new purse, and had hidden a DSLR camera inside of it. Jen Mara was overwhelmed when she realized what her friends had done for her, and she would never stop missing them dearly when she was back in Savusavu.

Savusavu by now had developed considerably due to the decade of reputable resorts setting up shop. There was fairly quality internet coverage. Amelia had used savings and a loan to open a general goods store, that due to a nice location got a lot of tourist dollars. The family now had a computer, and older model smartphones for each of the children. Jen Mara could stay connected to her friends, though she’d no longer enjoy the same diversity of experiences or conveniences as she had before. She'd known about her family's ascent to relative comfort and stability through her still regular calls home- at least weekly and often more- and had been sending her photo work home regularly, along with promising her younger siblings she'd teach them to use a camera, which was indeed her first priority when she got back.

She remained resourceful, however. Her talent for photography found a new playground and her artistic senses percolated: she could now do plenty of beautiful nature shots of beaches and Fiji’s wilderness with her DSLR. She started a blog, which evolved into a review of the local resorts’ restaurants and local eatery options, which got a surprising amount of traffic as the years passed due to her tasteful eye for detail, having a simple and earnest narrative voice, and being able to effectively navigate the nuances between the local and the international tastes and interests. She would even be known by some of the resort managers, and be invited even further afield from Savusavu, to other resorts nearby on the island of Vanua Levu to review food options for tourists. Her friends back home were impressed and happy for her: she was now living the life of a true foodie.

Savusavu’s school, though improved from the ramshackle place it’d been all those years ago, was still not particularly engaging. However she had enough to go off on her own. She studied, applied to scholarships, and kept up all her other hobbies in the meanwhile. She had local friends and was happy with them, but kept her friends in America in her heart, remaining an obsessive K-pop fan chatting with them all hours about the promising debuts of the month, fancams, and so on.

Jen Mara works, for free, in the family store sometimes while Emori and Amelia attend to tribe business. In theory Jen Mara’s older brother should be helping her, but he prefers to spend his time as a lazy womanizer, which Emori tacitly approves of while expecting his elder daughter to handle all the work. Jen Mara's younger siblings aren't shy about their preference for her, feeling that even when she was gone she invested more care into being there for them emotionally while he flirted with girls at school. She reluctantly encourages them to be respectful to family, but his flippant attitude and shirking of work and family time also sours her respect for him, a massive source of stress she keeps to herself, remembering that he'd used to be kind and sweet.

Indeed, Jen Mara has become increasingly jaded with the men she’d once respected as a little girl, which makes her feel quite guilty and conflicted. He does not respect her and she understands now, talking to other adult women in the family who she is functionally counted as one of now, that Emori is super traditionalist and does not think women are able to live lives separate from men. She has to live with the fact that he expects her to be married off, and that he won’t entertain the idea that she could go to college, despite her potential and proven ability.

Even Amelia and Jen Mara's own younger sisters and brother have started urging Jen Mara to ignore him, and to return to the US when she graduates. There is some tension brewing up to present in the extended unit of the family, with the women of the family feeling that Emori's sexism and favoritism for the men of the family has allowed their hard work in restoring the tribe's financial security to be cast down and trivialized. It affects Jen Mara's immediate family too, as the eldest brother has started hanging out more with the other men who were deadbeats and still remained alcoholic and distant from their own children. A few months prior to the kidnappings Apenisa called, having heard about what was happening from one of the tribe's wives who remained anonymous. Apenisa chewed out Emori, trying to get his younger brother to see reason, but a furious Emori accused Apenisa at legnth of having run away from his family and of having lost respect for tradition with his extended stay in America before hanging up. Things have remained quiet since this episode, with nobody openly acknowledging what was said.

Jen Mara continues to feel meek and scared of damaging the bonds of her family irreversibly if she makes a decision she can't take back, and she has yet to apply to colleges, being vague and noncommittal when the people on her side like her friends and mom try to get her to take more decisive action. She reluctantly believes, for now, that she’ll stay on the island and in the store when she graduates and that this is the right thing for her.

Advantages: Jen Mara is naturally mature and should be able to handle herself with self-awareness and clarity while she navigates the challenges of the island. Photography has given her a strong eye for detail and she might be able to maintain this observational nature in crucial moments, both socially and in terms of physical environment.
Disadvantages: Jen Mara is very subordinate to the wishes of others and the abstract ideal of keeping peace, and has a personality that can be too passive and differential even in situations where her way would obviously be best or her interests are at stake. She also keeps her misgivings to herself, and not knowing how to healthily vent stress may overwhelm her more composed nature in a dangerous way.

Designated Number: O11

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Designated Weapon: Leader T2 MK5

Conclusion: On the surface this girl looks like she has everything, a good weapon with an assault rifle, an eye for detail, and a good head on her shoulders. Just a shame she's a meek coward looking for "peace". She'll probably not even use the damn thing. Not someone I'm hedging my bets on, early out. - Quaker