Vanua Levu Christmas

Vanua Levu Christmas

[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.”] [Exchange rate: F$1 = US 60cents.]

I live on Viti Levu island, Fiji. Vanua Levu island is the second large island of the Fiji group, to the north. Several of my Peace Corps friends are stationed up there, so of course at some point in my 2yrs, I wanted to visit their sites and see their countryside.

Like any vacation anywhere, when to go can be hard to decide, but my Namada host-mom Nina decided it for me when she invited me for Christmas up to her home village on Vanua Levu, Savudrodro (pronounced: Sa-vun-DRON-dro). (People from the same village generally do not marry, as everyone’s related. Traditionally, a new wife always moves to the husband’s village.)

Katrina, the other Peace Corps Volunteer here in Sigatoka, agreed after some indecision to come along. She too wanted to get up there to look around, and didn’t want to go alone. We planned to leave Dec 21, return Dec 27, taking max advantage of a dispensation from Mark the PC Country Director: extra holiday leave Dec 24-27; hence we’d need use only 3 vacation days.

(We get plenty vacation time, 49days for our 26months here, tho’ it’s not quite as much as it sounds because if you leave your assigned site, Saturdays, Sundays, holidays, and any partial days count against it as well. Back in the states, one could leave Friday evening, trek about for 2wks, return on a Sunday, and consume 10 vacation days, but here that plan would cost 17. Sorry for the bureaucratic trivia, it’s just 1 of the many things that uselessly fills a PCV’s mind.)

I’d secured my boat ticket when I was in Suva the previous week, but Katrina planned to get hers the morning of the 21^st, which seemed quite reasonable as we’d be just walk-on passengers on the big ferry, loading 6pm that eve, sailing at 8pm. BUT: the day before, we heard rumors that the boat was FULL! We hoped it wasn’t so.

Day 1

Tuesday morn, we bus from Sigatoka to Suva. Checking the shipping office across from the bus yard, yes, it’s true, this ship and the next one (leaving Thursday), are both full, no more tickets are being sold.

Well dang doesn’t that put a crimp in the plans.

It’s raining torrentially. K cabs up to Peace Corps HQ, while I check another shipper along the way.

The Peace Corps office is a very tidy and upbeat 2-story place atop a city hill, newly painted white with dark blue trim, a big Peace Corps emblem on the front, rows of new white SUVs lined in front. The guard, Jonasa, always greets me as if this was the high-point of his weeks, like he’d been waiting there for me, personally, anticipating the moment I’d return. I’m sure he treats all the PCVs the same way. (Maybe he treats everyone that way.)

The place is newly remodeled and furnished. Everything is clean, modern, professional, carpeted, quiet, air-conditioned against the sultry humidity. The individual offices have glass walls facing the hall. As i pass, each occupant is always busy at the computer or on the phone or meeting, but each face lights and each hand waves. It’s always like a home-coming, so welcome.

In the back room reserved for PCV business, K calls other shippers as I wring out my sopping shirt. The news is all bad – they don’t carry passengers, or they don’t leave for days, or round-about routes that will take 16 hours only to put her (or me, I offer her my ticket, she won’t take it) on the wrong side of the island. Etc. Flying is another option (we already plan to fly back, another story, later), but it may be F$125 or more vs the F$47 each we expected.

She calls the original shipper again on the faint chance of a cancellation. “Are you Katrina?” they ask. Yes. “We reserved a ticket for you.” It seems like Divine Intervention, but it turns out that her best PCV friend Lien, based in Suva, became concerned and called days in advance to reserve the ticket, but had been unable to get hold of K to tell her. (It approaches useless to leave phone messages with the good folks in the offices where we work – nothing is ever written down. The day before we left, one of the provincial office secretaries advised me that someone had called about my boat ticket. She didn’t know who, had no call-back number, & no details. I called the shipping company, but they knew nothing, and no wonder, it hadn’t been they that called. Actually it’s a wonder the secretary told me even that much – more usually I might hear nothing at all.)

We taxi back thru the rain to the shipping office to secure the ticket. Like all vehicles in Fiji, it seems, the fan & defroster doesn’t work (or: I always wonder if the driver knows they exist!), the windshield steams up, indeed it’s like a sauna inside the cab. My nose runs uncontrollably from a cold I acquired only the previous day. The driver wipes a small circle before his eyes with a scrap of newspaper.

She secures the ticket. Set tiko.

The rain has relented some. K drags me to McDonald’s. I (and perhaps you, the reader) remember the last time I was here, late November 2003: I had giardia. This time, I opt for the Big Mac.

After lunch we continue downtown to the Air Fiji office to check on our flight back. The previous week when I made the reservations, I’d requested seats for the 27^th, but the flight had been full, so the nice lady had put us on the afternoon flight the 26^th, but also on waiting lists for the 2 flights for the 27^th. When I made the reservation, the lady told me we could pay at the airport the day of the flight, but the Peace Corps Executive Secretary has warned us that we should check again, so they don’t bump us off because we haven’t paid. We explain to the Air Fiji man about the reservations. Tap-tap-tap on his computer, and he finds them. We offer to pay now. Tap-tap-tap. He says that’s fine to pay, but that means he’ll have to take us off the waiting list for the 27^th. After some extended negotiations, and several minutes of keyboard-tapping, he semi-assures us that it’s ok, we are guaranteed the seats on the 26^th, with our option for the 27^th, and will pay at the airport. But he leaves us feeling unsure. 10 minutes of tap-tap-tap, and we’re in exactly the same situation we were in when we walked in.

On the street we run into Randall & Bekka, the 2 PCVs who will be our principal hosts on Vanua Levu. To this point there’s been some vague Fiji-style emailing back & forth, but, other than the boat schedule, nothing definite at all. We don’t actually even know if they’ll be home while we’re there, as Randall will also be hosting his parents, and they have plans for diving, deep-sea-fishing, Taveuni island, and New Zealand. Talking now face2face, it’s still unsure how our various priorities will coincide, and further it turns out that most of the other VanuaLevu PCVs are leaving for the holidays. At least they assure us that if all else fails, we can stay with Emily, another PCV.

Set. Sort of.

K’s being very good about all the uncertainty. She doesn’t get mad/worried/frustrated/frantic at me, nor does she sit by passively and expect me to fix everything, subject to her approval. Actually we seem to do very well together, each of us taking the lead when it seems appropriate, seamlessly. No conflict, it all works, thank goodness. In Sigatoka, she’s a health educator, her title is West Division Health Promotion Officer. She’s 24, grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I kid her, I tell others she & I went to school together, that I sat behind her, dipping braids to ink well. She doesn’t believe I’m from Michigan too.

We return to PC HQ to retrieve our luggage. It’s once again a blinding tropical downpour. We call for a cab but none comes. The back side of the office faces on a main street – Jonasa offers to go out there and flag one down for us. We go to the other side, lugging the luggage. He positions us under a secure roof, while he braves the vertical flood with a brelly. The taxis are numerous, rush hour, but none stop, perhaps all committed. Finally, he’s successful, and we’re off. Moce.

The big ferry, the Suilven, is at the dock. We just walk on up the ramp. Inside the cavern interior, sailors tag our luggage and heave it up atop a mountain of same along the wall. We join a line, give our tickets, get our hands stamped so they can differentiate the various classes of passenger, then up a narrow stairs to a confused mass of folks, where we are directed away from the nice cabins, away from the air-conditioned 1^st class airliner-style seats & in-flight movie, and up to the upper deck (fortunately roofed, fortunately not walled, given the heat) where we will spend the next 12-or-so hours, like the other passengers, sitting at cramped little tables, wandering back&forth outside looking out at the sea, or lying trying to sleep on the white fiberglass “10 life jackets” boxes or bare deck. The Fijians and Indians who clearly have done this before are prepared, with mats, meals, even portable music, but to K&I it’s all new, all uncomfortable, but bearable. She reads an entire book, and sleeps. I marvel at the wildly insensibly bobbing single bright white lights which must be riding high distant waves but in the relationless blackness look to be right there. And, fitfully, sleep.

Suva Harbor

Day 2

We wake sore to the last of an awesome sunrise, orange multi-layered clouds across the entire horizon + God-light.

We dock at Savusavu, the island’s 2^nd-largest town. In the just-post-dawn, it was classicly “sleepy”, yachts in the still harbor, steam rising from hot springs.

Sunrise, nearing Vanua Levu

Docking

Randall (he & the others had a cabin – he searched for us 3x enroute but couldn’t find us) locates us on deck, and we finally make a real plan for the week.

Below, the ship disgorges the vehicles, then they call for the passengers to come down. What follows is alone enuf to make one opt for the extra $78 of a plane ticket… Remember the mountain of luggage? Well it’s still a disordered stack, only now a mob of a couple hundred people are pressing in around it, as 3 or 4 seamen pull out a case at a time to hold it in the air for someone to claim. Is this ridiculous or what? Those at the front are going to stay there til they get their bags, and once they do they can’t get out of the way for the horde behind. This goes on forever. And it would be stressful in the extreme, were it not that we expect such now. It’s a good attitude to have, I think: nothing will ever go right. So when it doesn’t, well, whadya expect?

Reclaiming Luggage

Unloading

Outside, finally, it was only a little better, no direction to the traffic flow, such that when a truck or taxi picking up people at the front was ready to go, how to escape of the press of lorries from the back? One’s Western mind cries for some sensible ordering. Unlike the US, however, throughout, no matter what, there are no anger, harsh words, pushing, hoisted middle fingers, fender dents, cops, fist-fights, gunfire. Somehow it all “works”, in the end, it’s just that the end is a long time away. Everyone’s patient, because: whadya expect?

We get a taxi and head toward Emily’s house, fortunately encounter her biking to work enroute. Yes, somehow she had some vague notice that we might be coming. We get the key, unnecessary really since the neighbor would’ve let us in, & each continue our separate ways.

Emily’s house is a standard concrete 3BR place in an Indian neighborhood, well-constructed, -furnished, and –equipped. K&I, exhausted, collapse and sleep thru much of the day, save for lunch with Emily. We retrieve her from work at the Fisheries Ministry, where she has her own dark windowless airless office barely bigger than her desk, but Katrina, who has no office of her own, is envious. (Myself, I have a light breezy spacious office with new desk, file cabinet, rocking desk chair, fan, maps on the wall, 2 phones, computer, printer, even internet connection. I am so lucky.) Lunch is at the ‘Copra Shed’, a hip new modernly constructed restaurant and shop complex on the water, frequented by the yachties. Emily reports that they have her working on tilapia (fish) farming, something she knows nothing about, and they won’t send her to training, but it doesn’t seem to bother her. Nothing seems to bother Emily, always smiling, always seemingly genuinely happy, tho’ with a surprised look that hints: I don’t quite believe this is happening.

Emily (foreground!)

Evening, we walk her to the ferry, she enroute Suva, she leaving her home to her visitors. K&I dine at a nice small restaurant, “Jeanie’s”, run by an attractive middle-aged americanized Chinese lady. Good music, sponge-painted walls. We each order the burrito grande. Very fine. It’s been a long time.

Day 3

We taxi far up the coast to a good snorkel site Emily’s told us about. The driver tells us how he hates the LTA (Land Transport Authority), excellently uniformed and equipped guys who set up roadblocks on the highway, stop all the regulated public transport (taxis, vans), and write F$80 tickets for equipment/license/seatbelt violations. The driver is Fijian, but is anxious to vote Labor Party in the next election. The Labor Party is Indian. So far, every time Labor wins, a coup follows.

Signs say no trespass, but we get permission from the landowner to use the lagoon (F$5). It’s a sunny day in a perfectly beautiful place, white sand, turquoise water against deep blue, waves on the reef, palm trees, and we have it all to ourselves. K’s never snork’d before in her life. She’s genuinely afraid of sharks, sea snakes, poisonous coral, poisonous fish, and much everything else, but she’s brave and does fine. The coral here is almost entirely dead, I don’t know why, it’s not my island, but there’s a very good variety of colorful & interesting fish, including the incredible Lion Fish, the first I’ve seen (and, FYI, poisonous to the touch). We return to the beach, dry in the breeze, then go out and do it all again.

Lion Fish (photo by Patrick J. Kelley, courtesy the Internet)

It was a $10 taxi ride out, but return cab is only a couple bucks, because that’s the way they do it. The driver obeys the speed limit, drives cautiously, and it’s a good thing because as we get back to the outskirts of town, suddenly from behind the parked truck a small girl runs out in front. The driver instantly brakes but there’s no avoiding. At the strike, her head comes up over the hood and I see her face clearly, the frozen terror, then she bounces off as the car stops, disappears in front. As I get out I’m thinking trauma care but feeling I don’t want to do this. But before we’re even out, the child is running to her screaming mom, who gathers her up and disappears into a house. Around the cab, Indian guys have appeared and are all babbling loud in Hindi. One is telling the driver in English that he should complete the fare, ie take us to where we’re going. The driver doesn’t know what to do. K&I, it’s interesting, both seem to have the same reaction – we wait til all the confusion subsides, no use adding to it with our own insensible stream, then advise the driver that he should take the kid to the hospital. I go to the house. A whole family is in there, the poor kid is in mom’s arms crying. I tell them that she should go to the hospital, the driver will take them. Dad says she’s OK. I persist, but it does no good, he says if there’s any problem he will take her himself.

The driver takes us home to Emily’s house. I offer to give him my name/address in case there’s any legal question, because we know he was driving properly and there’s nothing he could’ve done. He refuses it politely, “I think it’ll be OK,” he says. I force it on him, telling him he can always throw it away later.

Damn, the things that happen.

We get cleaned up. K stays at Emily’s waiting for Randall/Bekka/Randall’s-parents who will by prearrangement meet her there at 3 or 4pm, while I xmas shop in town. At 5, they track me down. Another dinner at Jeanie’s, then we’re off via their rental car and a ‘carrier’ pickup, first to Waisale (Why-SAL-ee), then toward Dreketi (Dre-KET-ee).

The carrier discharges its load on the highway, Waisale being 2km down a bad road from there. K,I, and Randall’s mom Diana wait there while Randall & his dad Lee take a load of gear plus Bekka down to the village in the rented mini-4WD. We talk in the dark, aware of the silence, and presence of the star sky and the black bulk presence of the high forested mountain peak across the deep valley.

(There’s a story behind the boulder there on the ridge where we wait. There’s a distinct depression in the rock. To make it rain, the people of Waisale poured water into it. To make it stop, they took water out. This worked for them til the highway was built, and the boulder was bulldozed over the side of the mountain. When the contractor learned of the rock’s importance, he hired a crane at great expense to hoist the rock back into place. But it hasn’t worked right since.)

When the 2 men return, we cram into their rig and continue thru the nite on the empty highway to Dreketi on the north side of Vanua Levu.

There, 2 neighbor women wait with flashlights in Randall’s front yard. How long have they waited here, or alternatively, how did they know we were about to arrive? A mystery.

Day 4 – Christmas Eve

Randall has a very good 3BR house in a government ‘compound’ atop a hill with an awesome view of the surrounding ag land, on to the distant sea on one side, mountain range on the other. We sit in the shaded backyard in the morning, talk, drink coffee, and move closer and closer to the shelter shade of the house as the intense sun advances higher to the sky. Randall climbs a rickety ladder, picks coconuts, “sharpens” the tops like pencils til the hollow interior is penetrated, and we each drink. There is fresh papaya, mango, pineapple. He is an excellent host. His Fijian neighbor Ranadi, the older woman who met us the previous nite, is a delightful character, entertaining us with stories of how she takes good care of Randall like a mother, and of the hard time she gives the ministry about the water that is seldom working. Finally the pump comes on and the hilltop tank fills til it spouts excess. We all shower, the water very pleasantly cool-not-cold-not-hot from the sun on the reservoir.

Randall and Folks

Randall’s Government House

Randall and his folks are going on to Labasa. They drop K&I at the junction, midday, intense-hot, no traffic moving. K shelters under a sulu and reads. Still it’s not more than ½ hr before a return-cab comes by, picks us up.

Bekka was to meet K at the hwy above Waisale, but the man there tells us she’s gone on to Savusavu, so K waits there for her return. She will spend this nite in Waisale. I continue to Savusavu, where, despite the crush of last-minute-shoppers (tomorrow will be a feast, and no one has refrigerators) I soon encounter Nina, with her dad and her 2 kids. We buy pineapple & yaqona in the central marketplace, chickens, candy, & pop from the supermarket, etc.

Savusavu Market

Savusavu on Christmas Eve

I check in at the local Fiji Air office, and again get a story of I’d-better-pay-now-or-someone-might-bump-us, this delivered over 20-or-so-minutes between incoming phone calls and walk-in interruptions. Finally tap-tap-tapping, she finds a note in the computer file telling whoever might find it NOT to bump us. But I am now sufficiently nervous to fear that whoever is electronically in charge of bumping might not find the note, so I pay for the Sunday 26^th tickets. We’ll go home a day early. No big deal.

Sufficiently provisioned, Nina sends me for a cab for the trip to Savudrodro. I stand in the taxi parking area, along with groups of others, filling the little puddles of shade, and try to make sense of the ‘system’. It’s an extremely busy day, so there are not the usual waiting taxis. Today a cab pulls in, folks get out, and simultaneously someone steps up from somewhere, talks to the driver, sometimes to be turned away before the driver speeds off, sometimes to be admitted. I want to wait my proper ‘turn’, but there is no line, indeed it isn’t even clear who is actually waiting for cabs and who is just standing around. Sometimes cabs even just proceed right thru the parking lot, and the only sense I make of this being that people are intercepting them before they even enter.

(If there’s one thing I’ve learned in Fiji, it’s how a smart dog must feel in the company of humans: “There’s so much confusing going on, i only understand a few words, and sometimes the body language. I must watch intently to try to discern when there’s an opportunity for food and when I next get to go for a walk. In the meantime, I’ll just sit dumbly, pretend unconcern, and hope for the best. Rarely another dog might walk by and we exchange a brief enjoyable sniff.”)

I’m not the type to push ahead. After a long wait and watching, a cab appears, I wander over, and he’s available. Hell, that wasn’t hard.

We drive the 50yds to where Nina waits at the market, only to find that her son Waisele (pronounced with emphasis on the last ‘le’) has vanished. Damn. The driver is nervously calm, this is a big day for him, $ to be made by driving, not by standing waiting. Finally we decide that dad will look for the kid, and Nina, her daughter, & I will “take the lead”. It’s a short drive out of town and up a dirt road toward the hills to Savudrodro koro. I give the driver an extra buck for the delay, which he appreciates.

Fijian villages are remarkable for their non-diversity, Savudrodro little different. Surrounded by small overgrown subsistence-ag gardens and The Bush, a collection of shabby concrete or wood-sided homes with tin roofs, separated by trimmed lawn and rows of decorative tropic plants, outhouses, ragged kids playing, skinny dogs lazing, smoke more-falling-than-rising from the cooking huts behind each home, & always a substantial central church.

The house where I stayed

Nina, out back

Welcomed to the home of one of Nina’s relatives, I am immediately put to work on the TV/DVD-player, clearly brand-new, just out of the box. They’d set it up and it worked ‘some’, but now it shows only a black-white picture, and some of the sound is missing, ie we get music & sound effects (explosions, etc), but almost none of the dialog. Electronics anywhere are a nitemare. The brand is one I’ve never heard of before, no doubt Chinese. The manuals are truly minimal, and, I’m sorry, make no sense at all. And both units truly are hi-tech, ie, made to interoperate with any of the various possibilities present in the modern world, hence: about 14 different places to plug in the audio cable on the back of the DVDplayer; needless to say 2 remote controls; and for each about 10 software menus each with 2 to 8 crytic options, all of them conveniently repeated-but-not-explained in the manuals. A half-hour’s trial-and-error frustration and I have everything working, thank god. We all watch ‘The Making of Rambo-II’. (Fijians love Rambo and any similar action thing. If allowed to vote in the US presidential election, it would’ve been unanimous here for Bush.)

Nina & I go over and present sevusevu (raw yaqona root) to her dad, the head of the mataqali (extended family). He is quiet & stern, but I think a good man. His wife (whom I’d met before in Namada) is wonderful, always grabs my hand and kisses it.

In the evening, we take a walk up the road to the next village, Lau, even smaller than Savudrodro, maybe 6 or 8 houses and, of course, a church, Nina greeting all her old friends and relatives along the way.

Back at the house, dinner is good dalo-leaf soup. Then we watch ‘Master & Commander’ on the DVD, a relatively recent movie about early 1800s sailing ship combat. The Fijians enjoy the intense battle scenes at the beginning and end, but wander off during all the dialog in between. Personally, I very much enjoy the movie, especially the period historic detail. (An annoyance: The movie is in ‘letter-box’ format on the screen, good, but the hi-tech DVD controller allows ‘zooming’. The Fijians insisted on zooming the thing 4x so that the picture fills the entire screen. I try explaining that we’re missing half the action that way, to no avail.)

After the movie I “go to bed”, which is to say, I sleep on a folded comforter on their main-room floor, covered by a sulu. It turns out to be very uncomfortable, oh well. The family, meanwhile, instead of retiring, moves the TV around the corner of the (doorless) doorway into the kitchen, and watches Rambo-II, then –III.

Day 5 – Christmas

There is no gift-giving like in the US. The day starts with us gathered about the TV, watching ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’. The kids really enjoy the slapstick. I have some minor gift bags for Nina’s kids, but nothing for the residents, so I give the presents to Nina to distribute at her discretion. Breakfast is scrambled eggs with onions & rice, very good.

Then church. The choir is great as Fijian choirs always. The service, being Christmas, is long, with 3 preachers plus 3 testimonials of some sort from lay members as well. After, we have a tremendous lunch (fish, curry, Fijian pudding, chop suey, juice, dalo, pineapple, tomatoes, cucumber, etc, etc), laid out on a long cloth on the floor, the whole extended family in attendance, overflowing from the main room into the kitchen. After, I drink a little grog (yaqona) with a couple guys in the kitchen. (‘Kitchen’ perhaps a misleading term – actually it’s just another empty room where the food is prepped for presentation, and the dishes washed in big plastic basins after. There are no cabinets, counters, sink, or water supply, and the cooking is all done on wood fire in a semi-separate shed out back.) Yaqona drinking doesn’t seem as important to the folks here.

Christmas Lunch

When it seems right, I say my goodbyes to all, and give whatever I don’t need (candles, matches, pens, 2 bags of yaqona) to the family as my tautau (farewell gift). Nina’s sent kids down the road to get me a taxi. It poured earlier but now the sky is clouded but rainless. The driver wants to charge me F$24 to the Waisale turnoff, which is the proper rate but more than I care to pay, so he drops me at the main road, and I pace pleasantly, privately, quietly, such a relief from the busy village sociality, for 2hrs. The scheduled bus doesn’t come, it being a holiday, but shortly before 5pm a 4WD rig stops with a grizzled old Aussie, an open bottle of Fiji Bitters beside him, and whom I assume is his Fijian wife & 2 kids inside. They say they’re going to Labasa. Perfect. We ride to Nabalebale, 1 village short of the Waisale turnoff, where now they say they must visit 2hrs before going on. Oh well. I get out, hoist my suitcase onto my back, and proceed up the empty highway thru the village, greeted by everyone I pass, some offering na bilo, a cup of yaqona, if I come sit with them, but I thank them and push on. The road is steep uphill. Hard work with a heavy load, but whadya do?

As good luck has it, at the far end of the village, Randall’s dad Lee happens by in his rental car and I ride effortlessly the rest of the way, a good thing because it’s a steep 2-km walk from the highway down to the koro.

There, I present sevusevu in the vale ni soqo, where I find Randall, his freshly-arrived brother Ryan, and Donnie, PCV from Labasa, drinking grog with the village men. I really like these guys, they call me dreu (DRAY-oo) because I’m from Nadroga province, with which for some ancient historic reason the VanuaLevuans have a special friendly relationship. We all sit around telling stories for a while, then we PCVs excuse ourselves, go to Bekka’s vale, and do a small Christmas gift exchange. K&I pass out bags of PC survival supplies – candle, matches, notebook, pen, telecard (for telephone calls), and lolly-pop. I receive a ball-cap emblazoned ‘Nadroga’, and a yoyo.

Bekka’s house is of wood, with a small front porch, small main room, small kitchen, and bathroom with flush toilet (the only one in the koro) and cold-water shower. There seem to be only 8 or 10 vale in the koro, which is surrounded by high mountains, dense rain forest, and scattered hillside gardens. Tonite we all sleep in a bigger house, which seems otherwise unoccupied.

Day 6

In the morning, we all discover that each of us has the same story to tell, of rising in the nite to go out to the toilet, and surprise! backside-sliding down the hillside on the slick wet grass.

Bekka’s house, right

Mountains above Waisale koro

It is a beautiful bright day. Back on Bekka’s porch we have coffee. Donnie asks K if she’s still troubled by the memory of the man who died in her aerobics class, and she glares at him softly and answers: only when people bring it up again, and, likewise reminded, I can feel the man’s sandpaper stubble beard, mouth-to-mouth, but say nothing. We go to a neighbor’s for breakfast (roti (like a sweet tortilla), salted fried vudi (a thick banana) chips, pineapple), laid as always out on a long cloth on the floor. The people here are very nice, honored by the presence of so many visitors, especially Randall’s elders.

We trek a short distance down the steep recently improved trail to a waterfall in The Bush. I kid Bekka about the tropical bird calls, surely broadcast via hidden speakers for our eco-tourist benefit. Waisale is a Forest Preserve or some such, one of the few protected forest areas in Fiji, tho’ the folks have just decided to log all their land outside the Preserve boundary, for which I’m told they will receive F$60k. Too bad.

Bekka & Friend

Waterfall in the Preserve

Time to go. K&I are deposited back to the highway, while the rest head toward Taveuni. Traffic is rare. We have a plane to catch at 4pm. What time is it now? Doesn’t matter. There’s no way to speed it up. We’re not concerned.

Finally a pickup truck comes by, brakes smelling very bad. The man stops and gets out to check them, opens the hood, says, “The mechanic was supposed to fix the hydraulics.” We take the ride anyway, K&I in the back. I plan in my mind how to react if the brakes fail on the mountain road, but there is no problem. Deposited in Savusavu, the streets are empty, the stores are closed, barred, padlocked, save for the ‘Copra Shed’, where we discover PCVs Rafael & Dan, from Labasa & Taveuni respectively. We do a long pleasant lunch by the yacht harbor. Dan & I have some beers. Another beautiful day in paradise.

Rafael

Dan

K&i taxi to the rural airport, early. We sit on benches, sheltered from the sun but otherwise open to the cooling breeze. She reads. I try to photograph her and as always she hides her face or grimaces. At 3:15 a 2-prop-engine plane arrives and the man tells us to get on. We protest that our flight is for 4pm, but he insists we should go, so we do, and find ourselves enroute Taveuni, serendipity, with lovely lo-altitude views of the islands, beaches, reefs. I’m almost disappointed to find that the plane does indeed continue on from Taveuni to Nausori.

Arriving Nausori Airport, we find no busses are running there this holiday, or so the cab company claims, so we taxi to Nausori town (the driver first implying no busses running from there either, but we know better than that). Approaching the bus station, the driver instructs us to take the bus just pulling out of the lot, even pulling in front of it to block its path. I am headed for the Suva bus station, but K is staying in the Suva area for a medical exam Tuesday, so she tells him she’s going to Raiwaqa, and he points out another bus, also leaving the yard at this very moment, he honking, waving it down, and we throw dollars to him, grab our separate bags, and run our separate ways to separate busses, no time for so much as a moce.

Moce mada, Katarina, my traveling partner. It was a good time.

Katrina

My bus deposits me at the Suva station, only to discover that the last bus back to the Coral Coast departed 10 minutes before. A holiday, the whole city is closed save for a ‘Hot Bread’ store, where I get a dinner of 2 hot cheese rolls for 50cents. I walk the few blocks to where the vans congregate, surprised to find a crowd waiting there but no vans. Holiday. No worries. One will come along in a while. One does, and the people rush to it desperately as it pulls up, bad sign, folks don’t act that way in Fiji, but: whadya do? Within a half-hour wait, another van arrives and it’s my turn, ten of us plus one small child, enroute home as the sun sets in the Pacific.

To me, after little-over 15 months here, it all seemed so normal, the town, villages, beaches, reef, rain forest, chaos, of Vanua Levu. I didn’t even plan to write it all down. ‘Cept there was something that tugged inside, like anything ending, passing the last miles home.