Bula, Bula!

    We slid from one world into another, alien in comparison. We landed in very humid 31 degree heat in Nandi. We picked up four bottles of local over-proof (58%) Bounty rum at the duty free shop.  We were rubber stamped through customs in spite of having checked off that we had a tent and had recently visited forests and farms.  

    We were found by “Jit”, an Indo-Fijian taxi driver in a yellow rattle-trap. He drove carefully through lush green fields and neighbourhoods at 60 kph even though the speed limit was 80 kph, and we arrived at Viseisei, a traditional Fijian village – said to be the one where Fijians first landed on the island. 

    Our hosts are Fi and Api, and their three year old niece Kalesa. Fi works in Laukota as a reservations clerk for local “hostels” and resorts, in particular the Coral View, out in the Yasawa Islands, while Api owns the home and a small family farm here for vegetables: cassava, which he calls tapioca (but it isn’t what we call tapioca; we call it manioc), bananas – regular, sweet ladies fingers, and plantains to cook - spinach, sweet potato (the Maori kumara), eggplant, coconut, and taro (the poi we had in Hawaii). 

    Together they also sell sweets and biscuits and other things to the homes in their neighbourhood, right out of their kitchen cupboards. That’s what the rum was for: Fi told us quite frankly all the details of her business – she can sell the rum for double the price she reimbursed us. Api told us the younger villagers who drink kava will wash it down with rum or beer, and they literally call it “wash-down”. 

    Api is adamant that if you haven’t at least tasted kava, you haven’t been to Fiji. I had hesitated when I got the rum request from Fi. I’d realized that at least half of the couchsurfing hosts in Fiji appear to be quasi-travel agents, so their motivation differs from our Australian and New Zealand hosts. But the references were still clearly positive, so I took a chance. 

    They turned out to be very lovely and candid people. They are relatively poor, even in comparison to some of the other homes in this village, but perhaps that’s also because this is Api’s older hereditary home and he sees no need to live anywhere else. It is small, but they seem comfortable in it. 

    Deb and I slept in a small room on bunk beds, behind a curtain…but once you close your eyes, it doesn’t matter where you are. The house is constructed of wood rafters over bare concrete walls, stucco over concrete block; the roofing is corrugated steel panels. There are vinyl tiles on the floor and the living room is covered with 8’ by 10’ mats of some kind of thick grass, very soft to the touch and to walk on or sit on. Fijian’s have couches and chairs but spend a lot of time lying or sitting on the mats, often directly in front of floor fans. 

    There are front and rear verandas that are like two extra rooms.  They are used for relaxing, playing or visiting; they are graced with more breeze than the indoor rooms. Laundry tubs and machines are on the back veranda, along with the clothesline for drying. The windows are louvred with no screens, and the doors are left open – maximizing the potential for cross-flow of air. 

    There is power, and indoor plumbing; but cold water. Not icy cold, mind you, but the showers are to cool you down as well as get you clean. 

    At night the geckos on the walls make a loud “took, took, took” sound as they hunt for insects – the first time I’ve heard geckos make a noise. In the morning the roosters crowed quite early, in succession, but they were polite – they each crowed only a few times. Once the sun was up there was bird song everywhere, finches and others, and much of it myna birds, which are terrific mimics with multiple dialects. 

    Fi also provides the services of a travel agent to the young couchsurfers she gets to know, operating out of her home in the evening at the kitchen table, and working on small commissions. If we can find one of her offerings that fits our schedule and budget, we’ll take her up on it; so far the boat schedules, which the trips to outlying islands depend on, don’t mesh with the dates of our other pre-arranged plans. 

    We went for a walk around the village. There is a building, the traditional Buré built from traditional thatch and sennit walls and roof, that belongs to the paramount chief here, of five sub-tribes. There is a community center, a church, and many initially puzzling concrete monuments, dotted only a hundred metres apart from each other, which are actually cemeteries. The villagers live with their dear departed close at hand forever. 

    In addition to their village farms, the village is filled with trees of edible fruit: breadfruit, lemon, mango, coconut, banana and pawpaw (papaya); and there was taro (poi) all along the ditches. 

    The villagers are very friendly and will explain everything to you – and to the two or three busloads of tourists who will also arrive throughout the day wander and about and, hopefully, purchase some of the items on the souvenir tables. 

    In the afternoon we took the bus into Lautoka, famous for having been declared the cleanest city in Fiji last year, and met Shalon. We had lunch with him at a delicious Indian restaurant called Chilli Bites, and coffee at the café of a French Swiss coffee expert named Serge who has relocated here. Serge made me a delicious strong coffee.  He's truly an expert, very professional barista, although he had to do it twice because the beans were young and a bit acidic and they curdled the first cream he gave me; but he knew enough to give me a tiny amount of rich, liquid cream, just enough to smooth out the very robust coffee. 

    Shalon nicely offered to let us move to his flat a night early – good timing, because Fi and Api would have had six of us at their house if we’d stayed a second night; four young Germans were arriving. 

    In the evening Shalon took us to the first night of a nine day Puja (prayer celebration) in honour of Lord Rama. His friend Maureen’s son Kishan organized this for children his age, and his mother helped him. They set the living room of their tiny home up as a worship meeting place, with pictures of Hindu gods and offerings to them strewn out in front. A large group of neighbours, mostly women with children of Kishan’s age, came and squeezed into every available space on the floor. A woman who could read Hindustani read aloud from the Ramayan, and there was a lot of singing of hymns, and praying. 

    They all live in a village of uniform dwellings constructed by a Rotary group from Australia who do something rather like Habitat for Humanity. Maureen has a stall in the market where she sells vegetables that she buys wholesale from the farmers. She had a bad stretch recently because of a hurricane and flooded rivers in Fiji which washed out some of the farm gardens that supply her. 

    After the prayer meeting we had food and then a bowl of kava. Kava is the one thing that unites Fiji’s ethnic groups, but it is a bit of a social scourge; it makes one lethargic, and it is addictive, apparently. I had four bowls and felt no effect, except perhaps a general feeling of being relaxed, and a very slight tingle in the tongue. It tasted like some kind of cold tea made from twigs and muddy water (they have to pound the kava to make the drink). 

    We sat cross-legged for most of the evening; Shalon joked, “You know the worst part about having your feet go to sleep? Now they’ll be up all night…” 

    Shalon is an interesting man. A former Jehovah’s Witness missionary, after three years work in Fiji he became convinced that there was more to other religions around him (Muslim, Hindu, Sikh) than he’d been taught to believe. He left his own faith and became, as he describes it, “Less religious…more spiritual”. He has a Hindu guru, Sri Sri Ravishankar (not the sitar player), and reads the Ramayan himself. 

    He grew up in Duchess, Alberta; his Dad used to drive him into Medicine Hat for trumpet lessons, but now he lives on Salt Spring Island in the summer, and Fiji in the winter. He’s a piano tuner by trade, but lives off the oil/gas company revenue and farm rent that he gets from the farm his father owned. He had an eventful life and a fascinating personal story to tell, especially about recent events, but it has to be related in person, so I won't expand on it here in the blog. 

    Shalon told us that the ethnic composition of Fiji, which leads to a lot of strife, and the current military dictatorship, is 50% Melanesian Fijians, who are very nervous about losing political supremacy. They’ve already lost their economic supremacy (because they are “lazy”, according to Fi and several others I’ve heard this from) to the Indians, who make up 43% of the population. The first Indians were brought here by the British to work the sugar plantations; a later wave came looking for business opportunities. The remaining 7% are Chinese, Caucasians, and others. 

    The original Fijians, although south sea islanders, look somewhat African compared to the Maori; they are large, very athletic and love physical outdoor games of all kinds, but don’t have the same focus and head for business as the Indians, apparently. They, like the Maoris, used to be cannibals.  The past President of Fiji, when asked once what he would like for dinner on a flight, is famously said to have replied, “I don’t know…let me have a look at the passenger list.” 

    Todays photos are in two separate albums: Viseisei, where we spent our first night, and Lautoka (mostly of the childrens' Ram Navami (sounds like "Ram-nomi" when Indo-Fijians say it) Puja at Maureen’s house in the Rotary-built village of Koroipita). 

    On Saturday we met Kirty, Soni’s daughter; then went into town, and afterward to Nadi (pronounced "Nandi"), with stops along the way to visit a seaside resort and a marina. We had Chinese supper with “Ash” Yeshoda, a rolfing masseuse friend of Shalon’s, and when we got home the Sevens Rugby tourament was on. Deborah has discovered a taste for rugby – she seems to intuitively understand the game well enough to enjoy the plays.

Next post: Saru Full Gospel Church