The Crossing

The Crossing

[Peace Corps requires this disclaimer: “The contents of this Web site are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. Government or the Peace Corps.”]

I spent 5 days on Vatulele Island, official bizness.

The small boat, open, about 20- or 25-foot, left from Korolevu.

Korolevu was the very first tourist resort in Fiji. Today it is a ghost town. Does not bode well.

It would be about a 40-minute trip across the open sea. There were 5 of us aboard: the captain (the Turaga-ni-koro Taunovo, Vatulele), his assistant Mesake, 2 other fijians, and me. Our gear was stashed under a tarp in the front of the boat. We sat aft. I relaxed on the floor of

the boat laterally, but the Fijians took up positions facing aft - heads bowed, were their expressions of bored bus passengers, or of calm resignation to imminent unavoidable death? We shall see.

It was a good bright day for the passage. Some airborne-over-the-waves/hard-bottom-slapping/splashing, but not too much.

Vatulele is a low-lying island, not visible from the so-called mainland at sealevel. The captain headed out without aid of compass. At about i guess halfway, the peaks of the palms became visible, and everyone markedly relaxed. The Fijians broke out from their resigned huddle and

looked happily ahead. Someone produced moli, offered to all, the fijian way.

The island now close, suddenly we crossed some fluid boundary and the deep blue water of the sea became turquoise green. And i, who had not been afraid or worried on the crossing, was involuntarily overcome with a feeling of such deep, grateful, emotion: LAND, again, imminent.

To describe what i did there in 3 days + parts of 2 others would take a book. So i won't do detail. But...

I stayed in Taunovo with the TnK. I think he and the wife gave up their BR for me, standard procedure.

I visited all 4 koros on the island. All are around a small central pond, their water source for all but drinking, which is why the villages are located where they are.

The drinking water in each koro is from big concrete tanks fed from roof rain, the tanks built by a legendary Peace Corps guy, Don, like 20yrs back.

All the rest of their water comes from the ponds, or from wells along the pond margins.

But they dump their trash, and locate piggeries, septic tanks, and cess pits, along the margins of the ponds.

Somehow, they don't know any better.

I snorkeled twice. Relative to the Coral Coast, the coral is very healthy. But i, no marine biologist, still worry. The branching coral, tho' few, were clearly thriving at one time, but now all dead. And the coverage, live coral over rock, might be only 30%. Why not 100?

In the koros, the women tap-tap-tap tapa, all day, 6da/wk, the principal island export and principal source of income. The guys meanwhile, PLANT the tapa (easy) and fish (easy and fun). How did

things ever get this way?

I visited the resort, which is so rich one needs to be a Tommy Lee Jones to stay there. Their water is from seawater desalinization. Their sewage disposal was to be via wetland, but that, it turns out, doesn't work. So they lie, and simply spray it out, in the bush, on the porous

limestone.

Bastards.

But gawd it's all a beautiful place. Transparent turquoise water.

And there was so much more, too much to explain. The few days would take a book.

Sacred red prawns, limestone candle-lit caverns, ancient rock art. A confused incomplete community hall. Wonderful people.

An old man gave me a polished stone axe-head from antiquity.

I drank a lot of grog.

Saturday i returned, the boat this time a 'cabin cruiser' type, all the former windows plywood-ed over, the only opening out the open back.

So my only view was of the following sea: wind & waves coming from behind, the island Vatulele shrinking, then disappearing from view altogether, then, for a long time, just the grey-cloudy mound-y white-capped sea.

But then the filthy crust of yellow sargosa weed, and immediately the breaking waves on the barrier reef. Korolevu. Land again.

I've not been so exhausted since training, overwhelmed by the reality.

Seta, the nite-watchman from the Provincial Office, was there, patient, waiting, my ride...

...to Sigatoka village: the good neighbors come from their houses: 'Maikeli', they call, 'cola, cola vina.'

'Welcome home.'