Fiji -
SPAM
Dear All,
Well, the next chance we will have
to write to you all again, it will be when we are in Australia. We
could not, with a clear conscience, write to you all with the subject heading
as it stands now and therefore, it pains us to inform you all, this is
the final installment of Gullable's Travels.
The termination of this mailing is also the best Xmas present we can think to give you all.
Speaking of which - being the last correspondence of the year 1999 we are obligated to wish you all a very merry Xmas and a happy New Millenium. But we're not going to do that.
Now, where did we leave you last?
We're not even sure. Let us assume, that you have remained uninformed
about our lives since our arrival in the Pearl of the Pacific - Fiji.
Many countries and regions have a
similar respect for time keeping. The Indonesians call it Jam Karet
- Rubber Time, Thais just don't show up for stuff that they're supposed
to, and Fijians have taken the concept as their own and called it Fiji
Time. Time doesn't stand still, it simply stops having any relevance
in society at all.
Our
first lesson of this occurred when we landed in Fiji at around five AM
Fiji Time. We're not sure whether it was a mistake of the people
from Air New Zealand, or that the Fijian Government had just failed to
mention to anyone else their intention to ignore time an hour later than
usual - this is their first year of daylight savings. It seems odd
to us now, the concept of daylight saving in Fiji, because watches don't
count. You do things at random intervals throughout the day and when
the sun goes down, you start drinking Kava.
Our fist placement was to be in the
village of Mau. We departed for the village Tuesday (Wednesday) morning
(afternoon) at 9AM (2.30PM) and traveled in complete innocence, or ignorance,
of what we were going to do there. We picked up a lovely German Lass
called Vanessa (we have to say that, she's on the list now! Hi Vanessa
(Alias:Amanda, Alias: Nicole, Alias: Angela)) and headed on to the coast
near Suva.
We were to do a feasibility study
for a small ecotourism development in the village. Where they could
put lodgings, the sort of activities could be on offer, what needed to
be changed and so on. The concept was - have a holiday, pack it with
fun, then write about it.
First thing that we were required
to do was a sevu sevu, where we gave the chief of the village a gift, told
him what we wanted to do and asked permission to stay with them.
We were given a gift in return and taken in as honorary members of the
village, which was kind of flattering. It is hard to be humble when
these people immediately love us and treat us like their children (except
we got Mum and Dad's bed and they slept on the floor - now this is uncomfortable
for selfish people like ourselves who practice the "Bring your own bed
or do the best you can with anything else" theory).
For the next week we were treated to everything fun in the village of Mau. We went swimming under a beautiful multi-level waterfall, walking through the jungle to visit an old fortified village from times of war and cannibalism, a nearby trig station, fishing in the ocean, lounging on the village's island and copious amounts of food. We will speak briefly on the food topic.
The Fijian language, as far as we can tell from our lessons with Lucy and Natonga, consists entirely of words regarding food. "Eat Plenty", "Thankyou for the food", "Thankyou for eating the food, use it well" (our personal favorite), "Would you like some food?", "Your too skinny, get all of this food into you RIGHT NOW" (said regardless of the amount of body fat a visitor has), "Rest, then we eat" etc etc. You see the pattern. We're not sure whether they really eat like that all the time, but we suspect there might have been some degree of sport as to how much fatter they could make us before we left.
They asked us whether we liked fish. Of course, we said yes, which was fortunate because we ate fresh Sea Fish every day, in every conceivable style of preparation. We had found Nirvana.
We had lost a little bit of weight whilst travelling (Leigh had plenty to lose), but we went away 7 days later fatter, slower and more content than ever. If we could sell the village of Mau as a possible Culinary-Tourism project, it would flourish!
It should also be noted that Fijian people are among, nay, are the most religious people on the face of this earth. Every single person in the village could be ordained, and when we accepted their invitation to go to church with them, we feared the building may indeed collapse. As it turned out, it only shuddered a little.
Not being religious people, certain
things were hard to cope with. For instance, we must admit that church
is a little dull at the best of times. Try it in another language.
Especially when your presence in the village is evidently a fairly special
event. We were gazing around the interior of the church oblivious
to all, listening even less than we would expect ourselves to listen to
an English sermon when we heard our names and saw the preacher looking
right at us. It's hard to look attentive at the correct times...
The second meal we had with Lucy
and Natonga, Leighroy was called upon to say Grace. Not having said
too many prayers in his time, the poor boy was put on the spot and was
stuck thanking this and blessing that, mixing up names and sweating a great
deal (he felt he had to do justice to the epic prayers the Fijians offered
each meal). After the week he did get a little better (he thought)
and started improvising and adding things that incited words of thanks
from our hosts. We simply never said Grace at the following placement
as they must have immediately assumed we were Godless heathens, and the
chief at Naqasau, the final placement, asked once and never again, obviously
unhappy with the effort.
There
were some wonderful things to do here and we had a great time. We
walked a lot, swam a great deal, rested and ate. Oh, and we also
learned to drink the infamous Kava. This was a bit of an anticlimax.
We had a certain image of Kava. A root, ground into a fine powder, infused with water and drank, leading to a slightly narcotic effect. We were told to expect to feel sleepy, a little relaxed, that conversation would be easier. The major narcotic use this drink has is it is an excellent, and we mean Top Shelf, diuretic. It's been a part of Fijian culture for a long time, and we have come to the conclusion, that for most, the addiction to Kava is simply the environment in which it's drank. The social interaction is fantastic. There are stories told, jokes exchanged and a great deal of grimacing as people down liquid that tastes like Adelaide Tap Water.
Every night the house, built to resemble a good old-fashioned Aussie-shearing shed - except it has beds in one end, would fill with people from the village. We would be invited to drink Kava with them and we would sit around the bowl for a while before we ate. Once you leave and eat, it sort of tastes even worse when you return, but everyone carried on without us. It was their way of keeping us company and entertaining us while we were part of their village. They would all watch us out of the corner of their eyes and when the signal was given, they would all thanks us, say goodnight, grab the bowl and the Kava, and troop of next door to continue and we would go to sleep. Leighroy yawned and went to the toilet one night, came back and thirty odd people had simply vanished without a trace.
So, after we had seen and done (and eaten) as much as we could, we made arrangements to leave. Our man came the following Wednesday morning (afternoon) at 10am (5pm) and we headed back to Lautoka where he is based. We spent the night there, had a hot shower and got ready for the next placement.
Next, we went to Avaca (pronounced umbathar). Promptly, at 11am (2.30pm) we left to go up there.
Avaca is a village that runs a national
park. That's about all the nice things we have to say about Avaca.
We felt uncomfortable. We felt as though the money we were supplying
the village for food was being spent on the village children who seemed
to individually receive more food than the three of us put together.
We did not get a "return" sevu sevu, which is not
a cool thing apparently. Vanessa,
whom it turned out did not own a Sulu (sarong) was immediately pressured
into buying a Village one. And we essentially did nothing, no matter
how hard we tried. On two occasions we were given a brush cutter
and a cane knife between the three of us and told to cut grass...
But we had a great weekend when we walked up Mt Batilamu and stayed in the highest Bure in Fiji. Let's concentrate on that.
The walk was only about 2.5 or 3 hours but the bure was stocked with a cooker and lanterns. They gave us some food - some rice, 3 potatoes, an onion, a packet of two-minute noodles, and tinned fish, and off we went. It was the first time since we arrived in Fiji that we were away from loud children, and people. It was great. While the view on the Saturday left a lot to be desired, Sunday morning was spectacular. We looked out towards Lautoka and the islands and just sat in silence. And then we went back down the mountain.
Then we left.
This is where we lost Vanessa, our
Kiwi speaking German (on more than one occasion we heard her say "Shivers"
and we are positive she pronounces seafood and potatoe as "Fooosh and Chooops").
We later heard she had trouble getting to the airport when the taxi she
ordered for 4am did not show up. When she rang the "24 hour taxi
service", another prime example of the infamous Fiji Time (hard to claim
24-hour service when you have no concept of time), there was no answer.
But she did happily make it out to New Zealand, though we never found out
if the plane was on time....
The
next placement we did was in Naqasau, a small settlement on the coast halfway
between Nadi and Suva, near Sigatoka. The people here are from the
Lau island group over towards Tonga, and are master carvers. The
people were really grateful for having us as they could make good use of
our degrees. After our "useful" grass cutting we were told that we
were to plant trees. To our relief there were no trees and we were
told by the villagers that they also wanted us to look at the possibility
of ecotourism.
So we got to cruise around, check
out the beach, the water that was flat from the reef and warm as bath water,
their pine plantation across the highway (80km/h road) and check out their
lookout. There wasn't as much to look at as Mau and the old man had
only been there for 30 years, and some of them only one year, but also
being the wet season it rained so much that we
could hardly get out. So we
played cards, read and got to see the carvers do their stuff. They
were really great people (contenders for the worlds nicest) and very friendly.
They bought big steaks for our leaving party, and cooked fish - we've always
liked Reef and Beef. We watched and drooled as it cooked and the
sweet heavenly aroma sifted through to our nostrils.
Being master carvers, and us wanting
a Tanoa (Kava bowl) as a souvenir, we gave a guy $50 to make us one as
big as reasonable. It turned out to be 50cm in diameter, the guy
carved some stuff in it for us - we could of thought of better words, say
Nicole and Leigh, Naqasau 1999, but oh well. The old man also carved us
a turtle. They hold turtles with high regard,
and most houses we found a nice carapace
hanging on the wall. Good to know we did good work in Greece.
We figure, based on the fact that 1 in 1,000 hatchlings that reach the
ocean survive to maturity, we helped 5 or 6 turtles reach adulthood - we
have seen 4 of these loggerhead turtles over doors in Fiji, not to mention
other species. The woman wove us a nice tea
tray - as nice as tea trays can be.
A favourite conversation starter for
the Fijians with us was how the Aussies went in the World Cup. We
had no idea about it before we arrived but soon learned to use it to our
advantage. Mainly the common situation of mocking another country
- New Zealand (imagine losing to France).
So we were fairly laden when we boarded
the three-hour bus trip for 120km (express bus) back to Lautoka.
We got back to our organisers house, finished our placements only to write
our reports. The next day Nicole had caught a cold - how this is
possible in this climate remains unknown. We finished the reports,
our organisers left for Australia, and they kindly let us stay to look
after their house and keep out burglars.
Getting a little bored and wanting
to see one of those post card beaches, we decided to check out an island.
Nananu-I-Ra is right up in the northeast of Viti Levu and is possibly one
of the cheapest islands here. One resort it would be possible to
spend our whole year's budget on 6 days - including airfares. The
island was a pretty little place and we did find a nice long beach, white
sand and palm trees, which we had all to ourselves. People quickly
picked us out as Aussies as soon as we got there, being in holiday mode,
we had beers on the beach and laughed at people who couldn't catch fish
when we could see them jumping and swimming 30m away.
It was a beautiful place but we had
our fill and returned to Lautoka with another couple for a $58 taxi ride.
House sitting again. The good thing about Lautoka is it has a brand
new cinema with fairly new releases for $4. Being only one TV station,
which during the day only shows Stock Market fluctuations - the cinema,
is a great relief. The dubbed videos in the shops seem to be fairly
new releases, if not newer than the cinema, which to our advantage keeps
it cheap. Ironically to hire pirated videos, one is
required to supply a passport photo,
a $50 deposit and pay a non-refundable $30 fee. Honor among thieves?
We checked out the Garden of the
Sleeping Giant that has the biggest collection of orchids in Fiji.
It did turn out to be an impressive collection. Tomorrow we are going to
check out another island and see what it is like. It is on the south
and since the husband organiser is back, we can get the trip for local
prices. We get lunch in the price, but it wouldn't be right to get
on an ocean going vessel without taking some good old-fashioned Rum.
Fijian Rum is quite nice, although it appears you can't
buy anything less than 58% proof
- suits us fine.
There will be no computers so this
is our last before we touch Aussie soil. We do hope New Years and
Christmas are favourable, wherever everyone may be. We will probably
spend Christmas eve with a few quite ones, maybe even splash out on dinner
out somewhere. Then spend Christmas day lounging around the water
veging out. New Years we will be back in the motherland, having
Melbourne Bitter, lamb roasts and trying to get used to the Australian
English language again. Oh, and not to forget the Bundy (that lovable
thing called duty free).
Have lots of fun and merriment.
Next time we see you all, we will be normal people again, no longer globe trotters. The real world beckons.
Us.