There's a song they sing in Fiji, and if you go there, if you end up in a place like I did, you'll understand why they sing it..."When I'm dreaming...please don't wake me...please don't make me...open my eyes...'cause I'm dreaming...dreams of Fiji...Pacific Islands...Paradise..."
Here's how it all began...
17 September 1998...After a long haul through Houston, LA, Honolulu, and finally into Nadi (pronounced "Nandi") at the crach of dawn, Fiji time and date. Fiji officially is changing it's clocks two hours so they, rather than Kiribati, will boast the first sunrise of the new millenium.
I got in a minivan headed over to the Coral Coast, nothing remarkable between the city and the coast but a lot of brown and brush, hills of yellow-green sugar cane and emaciated farm animals. My stop, Sigatoka, is a river town. The Sigatoka River, the longest in Fiji, gorgeous and calm, sparkling in the early morning sun, dwellings on either side of the banks and a huge Indian mansion towering above on the hillside (an Indian guy who made his fortune importing potatoes).
Fiji is made up of 48% Fijians, 46% Fiji Indians, and a small percentage of Chinese and Europeans. When it was made a British colony in the late-1800s, the first governor forbade the use of Fijians as laborers so people were brought instead from India. So besides the large number of Protestants and Catholics. there are also a number of Hindu and Muslim people here.
The place I had planned to stay wasn't open at 6:45 a.m. and as I was milling around with my backpack wondering where to go/what to do, a woman who lived next door came out and introduced herself as Una, suggesting I try a new place right across the river. So I hoofed over and found a line of tiny pale-blue wooden structures dangling on stilts on the riverbank.
Kesa, the woman who runs the place, gave me a room for two nights at half-price--a tiny, but neat room with a window on the river, shower/bathroom facilities behind her home/office. She's extremely soft-spoken, gentle, arranges tours and other things from her palce. She has a tiny week-old baby named Emilin.
I got settled and headed off the dirt path behind her house to take a cold-water shower and don my sarong and clean clothes. Except in the resort areas it's customary to dress in a sulu, a kind of skirt. Shorts aren't appropriate, especially for women, and even the men here wear a sulu for men, which looks like trousers from the waist to just below the hip. Indian men are also seen to wear sulus, while the women wear traditional saris.
Around 7:30 a.m. schoolchildren and high school students parade across the bridge and along the paths on their way to school. Boys in khaki shorts and white shirt uniforms, girls in lilac uniform cotton dresses. The common language is English, but Fijian is spoken all around, and the Indians, of course, speak Hindi amongst themselves.
FRIENDLY people. Everyone you pass says Good Morning, or more often, "Bula," which literally means "life", a standard greeting and welcome. At 8 a.m. the sun is already high in the sky and hot.
I took the half-day river boat cruise a ways up the Sigatoka River, saw more brown, dry hills and found out this area is kind of the "desert of Fiji", suffering the worst from drought and months of no rain. Sugar cane is the main crop in this region, but they end up burning everything to start again each years, so the hillsides are scorched black and brown. A water conservation plan is in effect: no car washing, watering plants, etc.
Railroad tracks run along one side of the river, a mini locomotive used only for transporting sugar cane, makes two trips a day. On either side, breadfruit trees, papaya, cassava (a kind of potato), vesi (hardwood trees used for building)...Red flags next to houses indicate a Hindu family or temple, forest sounds of coconuts crashing to the ground.
On the way back downriver, we arrived in Lawai village, myself and an Australian family of four, plus Tony our guide and the boatman. We pulled up a a little dock and climbed up a path to the village, waiting for our arrival to be announced by our boatman who ducked under a little wooden open-air structure to beat on the lali (drum). In the old days it was also to signal approaching danger from unfriendly, enemy tribes.
While we waited, Tony pointed out the foundation of the chief's old house, damaged by a hurricane. the new one was built alongside, and for generations past, generations to come, only the chief lives on that plot of land. And if someone is born on one side of the village, they never move to the other side.
A few minutes later, a Fijian woman led us around to a kind of community center. All the homes/buildings are Westernized these days--simple, one-story concrete structures, usually with electricity and water, sometimes TV, but every other aspect of village life and custom remains the same as it has been for centuries.
We entered a large room where a group of about 10 women, wearing flowered dresses and sporting natural Afro-ish hairstyles, were seated on a large reed mat on the floor. An elderly man also sat cross-legged on the mat facing us. "Bula!"
To welcome guests, or for just about any social gathering, the yagona (pronounced "yang-gona") ceremony is performed. In a large, three-legged bowl, kava powder is placed in a thin cotton cloth. (Yaqona=kava, and kava's medicinal properties, as you may be noticing, is gaining popularity in the States. It comes from a kind of pepper plant.) Water is poured over the cloth and powder to make a thin brothy drink which looks like dirty laundry water.
The men are served first, but can also do the serving. A half-coconut, or "bilo" (cupful) of the kava is scooped and passed, the person accepting the cup claps once, takes the cup and downs it, hands it back and claps three times. If drunk in large quantities, the kava can have a kind of narcotic effect, but in mild doses, one notices a slight novacaine (sp?) sensation around the tongue and lips.
After the yaqona and some Fijian dancing, they demonstrated pottery-making, everything completely done by hand save for a few tiny wooden instruments for cutting and designing. Needless to say, the items were extremely primitive looking, baked in an oven outside and glazed with eucalyptus sap. We were asked to make donations to the Lawai women's group, money which goes towards community education, and to shop around at the makeshift pottery "stands" in the room.
The pottery created by each woman was arranged on newspaper and she sat behind on the flor, pointing out prices and what each thing was. It was really cheap, but you felt that guilt-induced compulsion to buy something. We learned "vinnaka" for thank you, and "mothay" for goodbye, climbed back in the boat and headed back.
It's a strange blend here, Indian and Fijian, accents are odd and hard to get used to, but everyone smiles and welcomes you. After lunch I headed off down the Laselase village road toward the Tavuni Hill Fort. Waiting for the bus, Philly, brother of the boatman, stopped to talk to me and wait for the bus. Finally just ended up walking along the RR tracks all the way to Tavuni.
As we were walking along we came upon an area of stones piled up in rectangular shapes--village graves, one of them a friend of Philly's who had dropped dead playing rugby. The bodies are prepared in the same way we prepare them, coffin and all, then buried and piled on top with stones. City areas have cemetaries, but not so for villages due to the cost and lack of access to carved headstones.
We reached the hillfort about 45 minutes later, all the while making smalltalk about family, sports, but there felt like this huge gap in there somewhere, even though he's 21 years old, nice kid, but at a point there just wasn't much to talk about. I felt like I was being hasty in my judgment, but Fijian culture seems so simple, not only with respect to lack of haste and living simply, but the culture itself doesn't seem to have lots of ins-and-outs, difficult aspects of understanding. One gets the idea that when the Christian missionaries and colonialists did away with black magic, cannibalism and witchcraft, there wasn't a lot else left. Of course that's my narrow observation after having been here less than one day. Gorgeous views from the Tavuni Hill Fort by the way.
18 September...Took the Paradise Valley bus, a local open-air one, all the way up to the end of the Sigatoka River near a village called Keiyasi. Miles and hours of bumpy, bouncy dirt roads, dust flying in my nose, eyes and ears, but digging the scenery, villages and people. Made friends with two junior high school girls, sisters, who wanted my address.
2-1/2 hours later we finally reached the turn-around point, sate there awhile and started the long crawl back. Some dips and bends brought us to beautiful spots, field after field of tobacco and different kinds of fruits (a valley called the "fruit bowl" of Fiji), shack homes here and there, but I kept trying to imagine it all being green, rather than dry and brown(kind of like SF's East bay in summer), scarred and scorched after the sugar cane harvest, and parched from the drought.
On the way back, my new pal was this adorable Indian boy, 14 years old but tiny, looked about 9, sitting next to me with the sweetest smile and big happy euyes. We passed another bus going the same way and every time we stopped to drop someone off, it overtook us, but within a few minutes we'd catch up again and pass him. We'd be neck and neck, two rickety buses racing down dirt roads, swerving to avoid the cows, and everybody on the bus would get all excited and start laughing as we passed yet again. The kid and I would just look at each other and chuckle as the back of the other bus would come into view and we'd start gaining on him again.
Came back and hand-washed my laundry, caught a taxi a few miles out of town to the Sigatoka Sand Dunes, massive windswept dunes of volcanic sand--thought I'd never reach one peak as I climbed straight up, feet slipping and slipping through deep sand with each step, like treading water and going nowhere, but finally stumbled over the top and down the other side as a Fijian boy caught up with me.
Once I'd caught my breath he introduced himself as Tony, working as a volunteer through the Children Forest Programmed (I'd seen signs for it everywhere out in the fields and villages: compulsory volunteer work in sugar cane and other farm or environmental industries for all high school students for all three years of high school. Students can choose their place of work, then go there for a few hours after school every day to get work experience, and also to stay out of trouble.)
Anyway, Tony had come running after me to be my guide because an Australian girl had been robbed and raped in the park the week before. Great. Anyway, I was very happy he came along to walk and talk with me.
Coming back from a trip to the toilet that evening, I heard the no familiar "shwit-shwit" hiss from some Indian guys hanging out a few doors down. I had met them earlier that a.m. on the street and they invited me to sit down and hang out and drink kava with them. I watched one of the guys rubbing the powder in a small sack in the murky water with his hands and though, "Oh God, this is it, the moment I fall violently ill..." but nothing happened, and I had a nice evening hanging out with the locals, including Philly with his guitar, playing gospel songs (all he knew), and the pastor from the local church.
19 September...8 a.m. this morning I was on a bus bound for Suva, and my whole perception of Fiji began to change--green, lush, tropical landscape. We took the King's Road which hugs the ocean almost all the way to Suva. You can see the waves breaking far out on the coral reefs and villages by the coast are surrounded by green lawns and even some traditional bure (thatch houses).
Nirbhay (my Indian friend the night before) had warned me to be careful in Suva, more thieves and crime, but I was kind of glad to somewhere different. Got settled into South Seas, a great hostel located on the edge of town by a big park and playing fields (reminds me of the tip of Waikiki Beach area in Honolulu).
Wandered through the exhibits at the Fiji Museum, a pretty neat collection of Fijian pottery as well as all kinds of tools of "destruction"--bizarrely shaped and intricately carved wooden forks, used only when eating human flesh, massive wooden clubs with big, beaded nubs for bashing and breaking...So Fijian people were an incredibly violent group! People were eaten when they were conquered in battle, men, women and children alike, or when a visiting chief came by a village and they were short on "enemies" they roasted some poor slave of lower caste person.
In times of "plenty" only arms and legs were savoured and the rest discarded. Brains were ceremoniously offered up to the gods.
Decorative scarring and tattooing were practiced, particularly among the women. At puberty girls were tattooed below the waist, and after having children, women often tattooed around their mouths and eyes. (Forgot to mention that facial tattooing is common with Mexican and other Latin American women, mostly the upper classes, permanent eye and lip "liner"--owww....)
Tattooing nowadays is still popular, though less significant in terms of religion and custom. Kids have tattooed black letters on their hands, their own initials or often the name of their schools, just for fun. But I've also seen a lot of arm tattoos, even old Indian womn with huge line designs on their forearms, definitely a Fijian custom as India-Indians don't mark their bodies at all.
At the museum also was a piece of the mutineed "Bounty" which had been dredged up from somewhere. The mutineers had set Captain Blight off in a boat and as he tried to make his way to New Guinea, he passed through the Fijian Islands, mapping them remarkably accurately and probably setting the historic course for future encounters with these South Pacific islands.
20 September...Early morning conversation with Louise, one of the maids at South Seas. The place is like a giant summer camp lodge, lots of backpackers, wooden floors, walls, beams, very breezy, nice people, safe. She warned me to be really careful at night though.
At the recommendation of the pastor I met in Sigatoka, I attended 9 a.m. church services at Calvary Temple, high up on a hill overlooking Suva and the harbor.
I'm generally not a church-goer, but this morning probably came closest I've ever been to a Chirstian conversionary experience! At 8:30 a.m. I filed in with the other parishioners, catching the last few minutes of the choir and band practice before services began at 9. I sat front and center in the second pew next to an 8 year-old Fijian girl, Melanie, and her father. By 9 a.m. the place was packed and servies begun with soulful praises--a lot like black gospel, with bluesy guitar and organ music.
The hymn leader encouraged everybody to shake hands and sing along as the opening song moved into a clap-your-hands and sway song--the choir members came down onto the floor, filed by and shook hands with us one-by-one, singing all along as they moved through the congregation and back up to the front. We all grabbed hands (Melanie kind of led me through things) and sang the chorus over and over: "Let there be-e-e...thanksgiving...and we'll be living...tried and true...we are finding...sanctuary..." Looking forward at the choir, the men and women swawying, eyes closed, hands raised, authentic feelings of the Power and the Glory as the breeze flowed through the open church doors and seemed to drink in everyone's good energy and distribute back around the church. Tears came to my eyes and I felt an elated shiver--a physical manifestation of incredible spiritual energy. Wow.
By the time 9:30 rolled around I had to pee really bad, so as the choir moved down the aisles again and people were getting up to move around and greet and shake hands again, I took my opportunity, shaking hands all down the aisles till I made it to the back door and got a personal esort to the bathroom.
The sermon was related to the theme of the weekend: Mission Emphasis, going out to the villages, starting churches and support in remote areas...I felt a poke in my side and Melanie pointed at her writst, the "what time is it?" gesture, and I angled my watch for her to see. Smiles. I opened up my knapsack and pulled out some stickers for her, which she proudly displayed on her Bible Study book a few minutes later.
I must've had my eyes closed for 20 minutes as the sermon was delivered in rising/falling tones, prayers for the people of Western Viti Levu (where I had just come from), prayers for rain for those people was they're suffering the worst from the drought. Kids can't get to school because there's no water, which affects their foor supply and the livelihoods of their parents, many of whom are farmers. Everywhere I've been I've seen so much concern for the welfare and education of children, despite poverty and hardship, priorities are given to kids and getting them to school. And every kid I've talked to says they like school and actually enjoy going.
The Fiji Times and Post are filled with pleas to the government to provide more relief and aid to suffering areas--billions of dollors already having been provided, yet cries of bureaucracy and corruption among officials, which are hindering aid to affected peoples. One article points out that many of the worst hit areas are within sight of the ocean--"water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink" ("The Albatross"), and people next to rivers (as I saw in Sigatoka), but no desalination plants to serve them. The crisis is soon to be brought to the UN table for foreign aid and global assistance.
Here in Suva, this area of the main island being one of the wettest in all of Fiji, water is plentiful, as are "things" in general. It's nice to be walking down paved streets and sleeping in a cozy dorm, hot water showers...
At 10:30 a.m. the service was over and everyone filed out the side doors, making room for the 10:30 parishioners coming in for the Fijian (the 9 a.m. one was in English). Lots of smiles and friendly welcomes to me. (I saw one other white guy, an older man, who'd been seated in the pew opposite me across the aisle.)
If I ever decided to go back to church in the States, I'd definitely seek out a small black congregation where I could feel the power of their voices and the looks in their yes as I did this morning. Reverend Cecil Williams' Glide Memorial in San Francisco one Easter Sunday was a good one...
Things open up slowly, it's 11:45 a.m. and still the streets are relatively quiet (Sunday rest), except for the central marketplace and shopping, which is noisy and bustling, and people are more aggressive and pushy.
I'm finding the Indian guys are more assertive and womanizing, constant proposals and sly comments. A deranged Fijian guy also approached me in the Internet Cafe yesterday evening, but aside from that, the Fijian men seem a little more noble and respectful.