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Fiji, August 2007
Fiji has been a mix of depressing and wonderful.
Nadi Town (10-13 August)
I arrived at Nadi, the tourist town on the west end of the main island of Fiji. I had booked for three nights a private room in a youth hostel that sounded nice. It was on the beach, free breakfast, free internet (conditions apply). The reality didn't bear much resemblance to the advertisement The beach was brown, the ocean muddy, visibility of about 12 inches. The free internet (conditions apply) was free only if you booked a trip to one of the outer islands and even then was only good for 30 minutes. After that, it was $2 for 30 minutes. The free breakfast was toast, butter, jam and coffee. The people staying at the hostel kept to themselves.
I walked to Nadi Town (about 90 minutes) the next day. As with many tourist towns around the world, the street vendors were relentless. Within seconds of reaching town, I was approached by a gentleman who had the "best shop of native Fiji art in town" on a back street. What's more they provided the welcome of a kava ceremony, the national beverage of Fiji. Well, I got suckered in. The kava was interesting: It is a beverage and mild sedative, looking like a mud colored tea made from a mashed and dried woody tree bark (tasting exactly what it looked like), brewed in a large wooden bowl and served in a half coconut shell. Then, the sales person hit me with the guilt trip of how expensive kava is, and that the expensive trinkets ($27) in the shop were made by school children, even orphans. I didn't want any of the trinkets, but donated a dollar for the orphans. In response, I got a look of hurt and sadness from the shop keeper.
Well, those orphans must have been really prolific, because every gift shop in Nadi had the same identical trinkets (typical price was $5 to $8).
I had planned to visit Fiji as cheaply as possible, staying away from the tourist destinations and hanging out with the locals. However, the depressing and mercenary atmosphere in Nadi started to drain me. With the street vendors, the uninviting beach, the heat, the loneliness, and the expensive and not very good food, I found that I was spending almost all of my time in my room, sleeping or reading.
After a couple days of this depressing state of affairs, I decided I had to get out. I booked passage and accommodations to the least expensive offshore excursion, about $300 for three nights. This was way over my budget, but then this was a matter of mental health.
Kuata Island, Fiji (13-21 August)
The splurge was money well spent. I had the good luck to stay at a small Fiji village that maintained a youth hostel. The 30 or so villagers each contributed a few hours a day to maintaining for the resort and caring for the guests. They also shared social space with the visitors, so that I not only got to know many of the people, I made a number of friends. At the end of the three days, I asked if I could stay longer, and they let me stay for four more days at about US$25 per day, all meals included. I later found out from some of the other guests that I had been lucky. Kuata is perhaps the most authentic Fiji experience. Other resorts were party islands with lots of booze, separation between islanders and guests, and more westernized foods.
In contrast to the draining feeling of Nadi Town, the first day I was on Kuata I played volleyball, went skin diving, climbed to the highest point of the island, had woken up before dawn to greet the sun, and walked nearly all the beaches of the island (well, all 200 meters of sand). The second day, I went kayaking to the neighboring island, climbed the summit again, walked the beaches again. By the fourth day, my regimen was to do one thing athletic, usually skin diving, then to either talk with people or read.
The meals were excellent, prepared by a villager who had trained as a chef in the US. In fact, without a watch, meals were the principle way of marking each day. I would no sooner finish breakfast, then I would start wondering what lunch would bring. Each night there was some kind of entertainment staged by the villagers, either kava drinking, dancing, and/or a bon fire. The dining area contained a small bar.
Kuata Island is one of a ring of islands that forms the edge of an ancient caldera. All of the islands have volcanic stone (as seen in the picture of caves above). The island was first settled in 1970 by Joe, the current chief of the village, and the resort was built around the year 2000. The island supports a lush forest, but with not much variety of plant or animal life. I counted only four species of birds (chickens, a minah bird, something that looked like a warbler, some kind of heron). Of mammals, there are large fruit bats who flew at dusk, making a sound with the trailing edge of their wings like a small flag flapping in a strong wind. There were about 50 wild goats on the island, which were occasionally hunted, and about 20 domesticated pigs. Once upon a time there were small snakes on the island, but they have disappeared in the last 10 years. In contrast, the water contains an incredible diversity of sea life: bright blue sea stars, brightly colored reef fish, giant (100 lb) trigger fish, parrot fish, coral of many colors and shapes. I didn't see any sharks, but a place where tourists are taken to snorkel has about 20 regular sharks. The natives even have a pet shark out there that they have named.
There is a saying that goes something like: "If a nice person is not nice to the waitress, he is not really a nice person". The variant that I endorse is that people who do not treat their animals well are not nice people. In all the time I was on Fiji, even in Nadi Town, I never saw an emaciated, sickly, mangy, or cowering animal. Cats living around the lodge in Nadi Town, whose jobs were to catch rodents and lizards, had flea collars and would climb up in your lap. Dogs would bark, but while sitting or laying down with their tails wagging. Puppies wanted to play. Horses were alert and curious. An adult dog walked down the street as if he had as much right to the road as I did, passing me about a foot to the side of my feet. On Kuata, the pigs would talk to you politely and one even politely stepped off the path for me to pass as it chirped and grunted at me. My favorite was the minah birds. There were about 30 minahs on the island, mostly in the village, where they would scrounge for trophies, squawk at visitors, and gather in social groups to chat and to impress the girls with the grandeur of their fluffed feathers.
In keeping with cheap, I stayed in a dormitory with as many as 8 other people. I had been concerned at first about the lack of security (I probably should continue to be concerned) and about being an old guy in the midst of recent university graduates. The concern about being the old guy was not a problem. I spent many hours talking with the other guests and have exchanged email addresses with a few. I never felt left out, either on the volley ball court, during meals, or during evening parties. When the grouped danced, I was asked to dance (or grabbed in some cases) by native women, college students, and in one case a very polite 10 year old Japanese girl.
There appears to be a tradition among British university graduates to do a year of travelling, typically including South Africa, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, and the US. They stay in youth hostels, don't have much money, and are eager to connect with people. I also met a few Germans, Irish, Swedes, and Aussies travelling, but notably absent were Americans. Do American students not travel, being swept up with getting a job? Or, do they travel in shorter stints to more luxurious accomodations? I began to wonder if Americans are afraid to travel, fearing either terrorists or at the least hostility by natives. Or maybe its because Fiji just had a military coup d'etat and the state department has been warning people to not come to Fiji. Locals here do say that this month has seen fewer tourists than in past years. But the Brits keep on coming.
But the tourists kept on moving. Seldom did one stay for 3 days, let alone a week (as I did), but the villagers were there the whole time. In the end, I spent most of my social time talking with the locals. On the last day I was there, Joe, a dignified 70 year old man and chief of the island found me and we had a couple of long conversations. Some of the conversations were about the history of his island. Later we got onto the topic of the inevitability of change. Many of the young people (including his sons) have travelled overseas and brought back phones, internet, television, and impressions of a larger world. He said that it is hard to keep young people in the village, because they get caught up in the material world that they discover. I also got a chance to talk to Wonga, Joe's youngest son, who just returned from Japan, where he had taught guitar and his wife had taught English.
My karate teacher and friend Skip Hancock told me that his time in the Peace Corps in Tonga, a neighboring island nation, taught him how not to work for a living, but to simply live. Since then he has never had a "job". I saw the same thing on Kuata. People supported the lodge with about 3-4 hours a day of work, then went off to fish, farm, and socialize. Without the outside barrage of advertisements and views of the petty lives of the rich and famous, people value the simpler and more important things of life. Joe told me that the most important thing in his life were his people.
I found Kuata relaxing, welcoming, and accepting. However, I'm afraid that I am guilty of bringing my own baggage. By the end of the week, I felt anxiety. I felt as if I were being lazy, or as if I were ignoring obligations. As if I need a job, or mission, or purpose in order to deserve to be alive. I think that I have a long way to go to know how to live.
Copyright (c) 2007 by Dick Delanoy
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