A Day In The Life Of A British High Commissioner

It’s not every day that you get to be an ambassador, but for 18-year-old Tanisha Lal, this was an exciting one.

The motivated student became the successful candidate to become the British High Commissioner for the day on Friday.

Tanisha is in Year 11 at Swami Vivekananda High school in Nadi.

She began her day with travel from Nadi to Suva at 3am on Fri­day. She admitted while felt a little tiredness during the course of the day, Tanisha was more eager and excited of the prospect of what lay ahead of her and the network she’d have created.

She set off to the Central Division Women’s Expo at the Vodafone Are­na in Suva where she met Minister for Women, Children and Social Protection, Lynda Tabuya.

She then visited the women at the United Nations Office, before hav­ing lunch with women of the diplo­matic corp.

Her day culminated at the Fiji Sun, where she dived into her career goals and asked further of the role of women in the media industry.

Tanisha was among a number of young girls who applied for the dip­lomatic position on International Women’s Day.

What made her stand out from the rest of the applicants was her strong sense of conviction and fem­inism having begun the advocacy trail of paid menstruation leave.

“I was brought up in a fam­ily which was led by women – my mother and my older sister,” she said.

“Why can’t a woman be entitled to paid menstruation leave? Any­one can apply for paid leave when they have a migraine or a torn liga­ment.”

Tanisha argued that women go through hormonal changes dur­ing their cycle and when it came to period cramps, the pain could just be the equivalent to a headache or torn ligament.

“Why do women have to choose between their livelihood and their health, why can’t they have both?”

Throughout her tour, she was ac­companied by none other than the British High Commissioner him­self, Dr Brian Jones.

He said she was chosen after sub­mitting a video recording of her stance of becoming a High Com­missioner for a day.

“It was very well technically put together and she had a confident presentation,” Dr Jones said.

“She is a strong feminist with a good policy to back her submis­sion.”

Fiji Sun acting Publisher/CEO, Rosi Doviverata, welcomed and congratulated Tanisha to the of­fice which boasts many women in managerial roles including making up more than 50 per cent of the edi­torial team.

Feedback: Beranadeta@fijisun.com.fj