The Bush

The Bush

[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 was to attend tikina meetings in Navosa, but the real goal, both mine and the Roko Tui’s, was for me to see Viti Levu’s ‘interior’, the high mountains of the island’s entire non-coast. They call it The Bush.

(A tikina is a collection of villages.)

Like all things Fijian it got off to a slow and uncertain start. Monday morning the Roko Tui came in and confirmed that the transport had been arranged, and I was to spend Tues thru Friday ‘out there’, meetings Tuesday (in Nabutautau, pronounced Nam-bu-TAU-tau) and Thursday (in Nadrau, pronounced Nan-DRAU), returning Friday. It went without saying, as it is the Fijian way, that I’d be well accommodated, each night and each meal, in the villages.

As they say here when all is known and decided (adopted from Australia): SET.

“Nabutautau is where Thomas Baker was killed,” he reminded me, smiling.

(Yes, I’ve heard that, about 40x. And now shall you…

(Fijians, in the old days, were cannibals. Cannibals in the USA, of course, are the subject mostly of cartoons and cannibalism limited to the occasional mass-murderer, but here they were the real thing, and it wasn’t even some kind of noble ‘eat your vanquished enemy and you gain his courage’ kind of thing – they just loved eating people. AND it was even worse than that – they really enjoyed torturing the victims, when they could, before cooking and eating them. AND it was even worse than that – one of the reasons to eat someone was that it was believed it deprived the victim of an afterlife. So they were not only killing them NOW, they were killing their eternal spirit as well. Now THAT is mean-spirited.

(But Fijians don’t tell you about that.

(Thomas Baker was a missionary, pushing deep into The Bush in 1867. He was promised protection, but it was a trick – he was killed, eaten.

(“Don’t wear your boots,” is the joke I hear over & over whenever the subject of The Bush comes up. The natives in 1867, apparently unaccustomed with same, believed The Reverend’s boots were a part of his body, and attempted to eat them too.

(Or so the story goes.

(To this day, Fijians derive a pronounced perverse pleasure from seeing others suffer. Watch a rugby match with ‘em: a player gets injured. Of course the event is replayed. They laugh. THEY LAUGH. Thanks to the missionaries, they are DEVOUTLY religious, yet it seems, only slightly displaced from, yes they have a word for it, vakatotoga, “to torture a person by cutting off his ears, fingers, etc, and eating them before him”.

(The English word ‘before’, in this context, means BOTH ‘in front of’, AND ‘prior’.

(The Fijian Dictionary assures us that that term, vakatotoga, is ‘OBS’. Obsolete.

(We shall see.)

About an hour later, the clerk Qase (pronounced GA-se), came into my office to tell me that plans had changed, that tho’ the 2 places were very close together on the map, the realities of the road system meant that it efficient to approach one from the south, the other from the north; hence I would go in Tuesday, do a meeting, come out, then Thursday likewise.

Fine. A little disappointing as I’d played up this long trip into The Bush with all my various friends, and I’d looked forward to being ‘out there’ for 4 long days, but whatever. Plans change. Constantly. Usually for no obvious reason. So I don’t ask questions. I just go along.

So I proceeded to start making plans for the vacant Wednesday. Chesa (another Peace Cop) and I had been trying to visit Vatuolalai with Health Inspector Semeli for weeks now. Twice the Health Dept had promised transport that hadn’t come thru, 2 days wasted for the Health Inspector, for me, for Chesa, and for the Mata ni Tikina (spokesman for the tikina) Senaila. Vatuaolalai, one of the, in many ways, richest villages on the Coral Coast, due to its proximity and good relations with the Naviti Resort (located on village land – Fijian villages own 85% of Fiji), had drainage ditches that weren’t draining, which meant flooding when it rained hard, and meant sewage pools, yes, their sewage runs directly thru PVC pipes from the valelailai (toilets) into the ditches, thence to the sea, thence feeding the algae which, along with over-fishing, unregulated logging, and global warming, conspires to kill the reef, which is the livelihood of every coastal Fijian and the barrier to the awesome erosive power of a rising ocean. Our goal was to talk the village into a proper sewage disposal system. But we couldn’t get the Health guy, Semeli, out there, because he couldn’t arrange transport, which belongs to the hospital, and the Health Dept is permitted to use it only when the hospital doesn’t need it.

So I proceeded to attempt to arrange Provincial Office transport for the Health Dept for Wednesday.

Like all things Fijian, this cannot be a simple matter. First I must re-locate the clerk, Qase. (How about these names: Qase, pronounced essentially Gassy, and Semeli, pronounced essentially Smelly. My host mother’s adult son from a previous marriage is named Leisiasi, pronounced essentially, I am not kidding, LazyAssy. God, perhaps, has a sophisticated cross-cultural sense of humor.) This in itself is not an easy task, since people are seldom at their desks, because they do so little anyway, why would they hang around at a boring desk? Once located, he must find the form. After a long search thru the piles of ancient meaningless papers on his desk, he determines he’s out of the forms. So he goes to the secretary, who locates the form in the computer. But they are out of printer paper, which they buy ONE package at a time because otherwise it disappears. One day they needed to order another package of paper, but no one had a phone-card. Yes, we office workers must use a phone card to use the office phone, because if one was able to use the phone without pre-paying for it, hundreds or thousands of dollars in personal calls would be run up every month, and there is no money in the budget for such. And the phone card is a PERSONAL phone card, because, duh, if it was a company card, it would soon be exhausted by personal calls. So to do anything, including business calls, one must spend personal $$. No wonder no one is highly motivated to do anything. So to order provincial office transport, one must find the clerk, who needs a form, which must be printed, which requires paper, which may require a phone card, which may require a half-hour’s walk back & forth to a store that sells the card, which requires money to buy the card. And no one has money.

Is it any wonder nothing gets done in the 3^rd world?

In the midst of this all, yet another guy walks into my office and tells me that plans have changed again, now we’re going into and staying in The Bush Tues-Thurs.

Which in this particular context was a bit much for me, 3 different versions in as many hours. No, I didn’t explode on this guy, whom I’d meant once before - he’d told me that he worked in a satellite office and came to the Provincial Office only occasionally. I assumed he was a clerk. I was a bit abrupt and (by Fijian standards) impolite with him. “Fine, whatever”, is similar to what I said. To hell with planning and preparation and attempted efficiency. (Which I already knew, but I keep slipping back into the old accustomed ways.)

Turns out the guy is the Assistant Roko for Navosa, Ratu Sevu.

Shit.

Day 1-

Per that latest plan, Tuesday I arrive at 7am for the long drive into The Bush. Sevu is there. The driver, Pita, is not. (Yes, there is a driver. Apparently relatively few folks in Fiji KNOW how to drive. Because, duh, they’re poor and don’t have cars. People ask me all the time: Do you know how to drive? (Well, yes, but Peace Corps prohibits me. They say this is because auto accidents have been a major cause in the past of Peace Cop deaths, but I think it’s also because they want us to feel poor like everyone else AND because they don’t want us to have too much mobility.))

Eroni’s going too. He’s a ‘clerk’, but apparently clerk-dom is a route to roko-dom, so he goes along, but perhaps the real reason he goes is, per Fijian tradition, a chief does not speak himself, he uses a spokesman. Sevu is the ‘chief’. Eroni will be the spokesman.

Finally Pita arrives, and we’re off.

Sort of.

Standard procedure, we head downtown, where misc mystery occurs, as always, people are let out, we continue thru the loop, pick them up elsewhere. I don’t know what this is all about and I never ask questions. I use the slack time to buy some cookies which of course I share freely with the guys.

It’s the Fijian way.

And then again we’re off.

A short distance up the Sigatoka River we stop at an Indian auto repair place. We spend a long time there. I don’t ask questions. No one shows any interest in our rig, which is a Japanese 4-dr crew-cab 4WD mini-pickup in pretty fair condition. I gaze across the river, only a little non-oblivious to the oily trash spilling down the bank into it.

And then we’re off.

One of the principal reasons I’m interested in this trip is that for the last 10yrs, the Sigatoka River has been becoming progressively and alarmingly shallower, which results in very severe flooding, either every year or every couple years, depending who’s telling me the story. Of course this can only be because of increased erosion upstream. But no one seems to make that connection. So I want to see what the land is like up there. I’m expecting to see deforestation, over-grazing, agriculture on steep slopes, severely eroding dirt roads, and landslides. We shall see.

As always, it’s a beautiful day.

The hills along the wide river are eminently green. This is ag country – they grow sugar cane, tavioka, corn, dalo, papaya, banana, vudi. Etc. There is not a tractor to be seen – hi tech here is a team of bullocks.

We turn off the main road, travel to an isolated government compound, why it’s HERE I don’t know, and pick up a young man from the Ministry of Youth, Job Opportunities, and Sports. (Yes, that’s what the national cabinet-level agency is called. It’s common to group such together as that. There is one, I’m not kidding, the 'Ministry of Local Government, Housing, Squatter Settlement, & Environment'. God help the environment.)

(God help the environment.)

And we pick up a lot of local folks whom we encounter walking along the lightly-driven mostly-unpaved road. They ride in the back, and are most grateful. Providing such transport to real people is one of the principal actual things we shall accomplish in the next 3 days.

We head into the hills. I’m surprised to find that (1) no, there doesn’t seem to be the erosion evidence I expected, and (2) this is an EMPTY country up here. Villages are few, far between. Given that the area has had hundreds of years to develop, and that tavioka can be grown just about anywhere – where is everyone?

Up on the bright plateau we come to Keiyasi. There’s a school, a government dentist, government offices, community hall, a police post, a dispensary (nurse’s station).

Here, Sevu works out of his government house. There is, for him, no electricity, no phone. Next door is a rapidly deteriorating bure, the traditional Fijian meeting house made from mats, bamboo, logs, and thatch. They are wonderfully constructed, cool in the heat, warm in the coolth. But this one is caving in, unmaintained.

Ratu Sevu wants me to write a project paper to replace it with a concrete structure.

Too bad. The knowledge & energy & will to build and maintain a traditional bure is rapidly being lost.

[Outside my home, now, at this moment, here in this place, tiko as they say in Bauan, or koto in Nadroga, there is the sound from the church of an angry preacher on an electronic sound system, the specific intent to deliver the message even to those villagers who don’t attend the service – it is expected that one attend church 3x on Sundays. It is raining, but that’s no big deal because it’s a warm rain. There is thunder. And I’m thinking: this country is going to hell, environmentally & practically, and no one, even the environmental types, sees that. Maybe: because the place is so beautiful. Even as the pieces all fall apart.]

We push on into The Interior.

The road, bad, becomes horrible. There is no government road to the center of Viti Levu – our way is a logging track never intended for public use.

But what a country, green, beautiful, empty!

We park and walk down the mountain a half mile on a steep rutted path amidst the tavioka and yaqona to Natoka. There are 8 homes, crude wooden or corrugated iron, on the hillside overlooking, far below, the headwaters of the Sigatoka River.

The meeting is in a wood house. Every house in Fiji has a very large usually furniture-less main room, able to accommodate large numbers of folks sitting on the floor around the tanoa (yaqona bowl), and this one was no different, except that its truss lumber had been crudely sawn with a chainsaw by hand. The toilet was a very crude outhouse without a seat.

The meeting was quite long, over 6hrs. Only men attend. Imagine the room bisected, the tanoa in the center, all the common villagers behind it, us visitors and a few village chiefs and elders lined along the 3 walls in the other half of the room. We provincial office folks are dressed in sulu vakataga (a formal skirt, yes, I wear a dress, which as a Scotsman I find most satisfactory) below western business shirt and tie. The tikina leaders are mostly neatly dressed, some in sulu vakatoga (informal sulu, simple wrap-around) and bula shirt (the bright flowery shirts associated with tropics everywhere). The villagers, come from their fields, are often in worn faded sulus and tattered T-shirts. It’s a hard life in The Bush.

Everyone is barefoot, sandals left arrayed at the door.

We drink ‘grog’, gunu yaqona.

The talk is all in Nadroga dialect, but it was clear that (1) the folks are upset that no progress had been made on requests to the Provincial Office since the last meeting in July, and (2) they are most reluctant to pay the soli ni yasana, essentially a per-head tax, when they are getting no services from anyone.

No wonder.

The Roko argued back that a lot of the money collected was used for scholarships, a good thing that benefits all.

[At the time, such a cynical bastard, i wondered if there is any accounting of the money that supposedly goes to scholarships. Then in Suva last week, i met a young man from Sigatoka, the beneficiary of a Nadroga/Navosa scholarship - it pays all his expenses as he seeks a degree in mechanical engineering, and he was so extremely appreciative. And he asked me to give his regards to his uncle, the Roko Tui Nadroga/Navosa.]

[Another budget-item concern of mine is the Nadroga-Navosa Development Corporation, run by the Provincial Office. In theory, it builds/rents office buildings, to make money. In reality: who the hell knows?]

Also, in the meeting discussion, I keep hearing the word mariwana.

As it gets dark, I take leave the meeting, lay out on the deck, watch the stars come out. Other than the coconut palms, the country looks very much like southern Trinity County, California, where I was a resident deputy for a year. A thousand square miles and me.

The folks there bitched of no services too.

And they grew a lot of dope.

That nite, we, the provincial office people and turaga ni koro (the various leaders of the tikina) stay in the small traditional bure kept for guests. I was worried of bugs and cold and hard floor, needlessly. It is cold enuf that there are no bugs. I sleep under my sulu most satisfactorily, the small glowing coal fire sufficiently warm. (There is no chimney – the smoke simply seeps thru the thatch. What a concept.) And the floor, woven mats over earth, has been comfortably contoured by past unnumbered bodies.

My gosh this was an experience!

At this end of a long day, there is more grog, then I fall fast asleep. But the elders keep up the gunu yaqona til about 1am. Once, I wake, briefly, to their quiet good-humorous conversation, their talanoa.

Day 2-

Next morning was beautiful, as always.

The village water system is black PVC pipe issuing from a spring. The pipe terminates at a central location, and simply flows continuously. It’s a good strong flow. I talk to the folks, and they tell me they’d like a water tank. I ask why.

“Because then we could have the water indoors, so we would not have to go out into the rain.”

This makes sense, eh? “But you do not need a tank for that,” I say, “you can just run the pipe inside the house, and add a tap.”

A man looked at me in confusion. “But then where would the water go?”

At the time I took him to mean: now the water flows from the pipe continuously. If prevented from that, by the tap, what happens to it?

Later, I realized, maybe what he was asking was: if all that water flows into your home, how does one get rid of it?

Either way: wow, how removed from the modern world!

We say our moce (good-bys) to this beautiful and difficult place, and trekked back up the steep hill on the horse path to the vehicle.

The road is horrible.

We stop at a village of traditional bures, Nabuabua, change clothes, sevusevu, drink some grog.

Then we continue on above steep deep canyons, dark volcanic geology showing thru bright green grassy vegetation.

At a high point, there is a forestry station. Here it is cool, and the whole region is planted in an amazing variety of non-native trees.

Then, crossing a divide, the north coast of Viti Levu is arrayed below. Awesome. It’s a long steep fast hang-on windy way down to the coastal plain sugar fields and the town of Tavua.

Out of The Bush.

Why? Well, I didn’t ask, but it’s volunteered: the asst.roko’s son is starting college, and he needs to pay the tuition. Which means he has to go to the bank.

There was no bank in The Bush.

So the 5 of us go hours out of our way on a personal errand.

We have some cheap lunch (a big plate of good rice & curry, about US$2, typical) at an Indian café, then to the bank, then to the post office. It takes forever. He talks a long time too on the phone. I think it turned out that it was too expensive to wire the money, and/or it would take too long to mail it.

This will lead to another adventure. Later.

We drive up to the hospital to visit one of the guys’ relatives, then to a house to again do same. Then to the central open-air market. I don’t know why. I don’t ask. I have an icecream cone, here, as is typical, about 40cents US.

Fiji. No rush.

It is hot. I sit in the shade of a concrete building wall next to a lady selling freshwater mussel. At intervals, she douses them in a long-practiced manner with water. It seems they don’t often see white folks here, far outside the easily accessed tourist area. I’m an object of some minor curiosity. But I just smile widely, happily, purely, honestly, like the Peace of Jesus is upon me, i.e. LIKE A FIJIAN. And they do likewise.

I love this country.

And finally we’re off again, back up the hang-on-tight windy mountain road with the awesome coast view, back beyond the cool piney woods, picking up and depositing pedestrians, and finally back to The Bush, and finally to Nadrau.

The road there is newly, freshly plowed.

We park in front of a house, and I am alerted to an older very large man rolling a 55-gal oil drum nearby.

“There is the Tui Nadrau”, I am told. The king of the tikina.

I go to him, lower my head, clap, cobo (pronounced ‘thom-bo’), 3x. OK, he seems a bit amused but also appropriately honored, for this is the proper greeting when meeting a chief.

We stay in the home of the tikina representative to the Provincial Council. He is a thin, wiry, strong, intense man. There were tools hanging from the walls of his home. “You must be a carpenter,” I say.

“I TRY to be a carpenter,” he answers, modestly.

Here, despite its remoteness, there is electric power, thanks to the village’s land being part of the area of a massive hydroelectric project which supplies 90+% of the power used in Fiji. This family, in this place, is relatively well off. They pre-pay for the power – a meter box on the wall tells approximately how much electric time they have left. There is a stereo and TV. We watch the news, and then a PBS program about Fleetwood Mac.

Lightning strikes, maybe once, maybe twice.

I miss Fleetwood Mac.

We sleep on the main room matted floor.

Day 3-

Next AM I attempt a cold shower. No water pressure. None. I ask why.

I’m told that the village had a water system, but that the national Public Works Dept had placed the big water tank at the same elevation as the water source. Hence, it never filled.

Of course, they’d complained to the government and requested action at tikina meetings. But there had been no action.

I hear very similar stories in every single village I go to.

Enroute to the meeting hall, my host shows me the drainage ditch which keeps the village from flooding in (very common) heavy rain. The government had done this too, except the money had run out (or the contractor had just quit, which?, who knows?) before the cement lining had been completed. Hence the walls were soon to all collapse.

The meeting is eventful, except that one turaga ni koro whom I’d met, clearly asks, late in the day, tho’ it was all in Nadroga, if the Peace Cop would speak. The Asst Roko, whom I really do like, despite his human faults, clearly answers, tho’ in Nadroga, no, he’s just here to listen & observe.

I would tell them that clearly the government of Fiji needs reforming. But heck, I ’spect they ‘spect that.

For a very long time during the meeting, it pours torrential rain on a hillside right across the compound while the community hall where we sit remains dry.

I am so amazed by this country, it seems constantly like magic. People appear, and disappear, as if from/to nowhere. People just know things, as if by telepathy. Once I saw a half-coconut cup, a bilo, spinning fast like a top alone on the floor, how did that happen?

But then the deluge envelopes us.

And then it’s time to go. But the driver is missing, off drinking grog somewhere. The Roko is disturbed. He has important business to attend to. He has to get to Suva to deliver his relative’s tuition money.

Recognize that Suva approaches the far-eastern tip of this 150km-wide island. Recognize that Sigatoka, our home, approaches the far-western tip. We will be a bit out of our way.

Oh, and we can’t take the most direct route to Suva, from center to southeast, which would be past that major hydro project, which would be interesting to see. Why? Because we are almost out of gas. We must head to the nearest civilization, straight north: Tavua.

Remember Tavua? We were there yesterday.

Why didn’t we fill up THEN?

I don’t ask.

The northeastern coast of Viti Levu is most-severely dry, and over-grazed, reminding me of eastern Oregon

We visit a home out of the way in the sugar mill town of Rakiraki, no doubt someone’s relative, but no one home.

The sun goes down.

The road, the main road which circumnavigates the island, is dirt, dusty, & very rough. The bridges are wood-plank.

Hang on.

Stores are few, and, late, closed. Finally we find one open. I buy cookies to share.

Finally, we cross the big river at Nausori, across the steel bridge lately in the news as falling apart.

We survive.

We continue to the Roko’s relative’s flat in Suva. Have a nice tea and assorted associated food stuffs. It is relaxed and takes a long time.

We leave the Roko there. He gives me $6 for gas for the trip home to Sigatoka. I pass it on to the driver. This may be a mistake.

We stop by another house, yet another relative? But no one home.

Now quite late, stopped outside a store, one of the guys gets out of the rig, and next thing I know he’s following some fat giggling Fijian gal down a slope into the bushes.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Three days in the bush, he needs a massage,” the driver giggles.

I should not have asked.

After a while he’s back.

“I need to borrow some money,” he says to me.

Shit, did he spend our gas money on…? “I spent my last dollar on the cookies,” I swear. “I have about 40 cents.”

Well, actually, I have a little bit more, tho’ not much. If we run out of gas, I’m hitching home, alone. This is bullshit.

After a short while we stop for gas: $6 worth.

We make Sigatoka at 1:30am.

Friday, back, the people ask: how was The Bush?

Green. Empty. Beautiful.

After work, I help my Sigatoka village friends relocate a couple thrashing squealing unfortunate hogs, then in the torrential rain we proceed to tear down the ex-pen, which, as I comprehend it, is in the way of a new rugby field.

At one point in the rain I step in the what-is-wrong-place, leg half-knee-deep in liquefied pig crap. Yuk.

Then, working a corner post back and forth with the intent of removing it from the ground, it quite suddenly snaps off, striking me in the forehead. Eyeglasses fly. There is a gush of airborne blood, blood running down my arm, blood running into one eye.

The 2 Fijians with me instantly appear with medicinal leaves from some magical unseen-by-me place and press a wad to the wound.

One trusts, in this so-strange land. No questions.