On our first Sunday Richard drove us all into Suva under A's guidance. (Anare has a painful knee at present so R is driving when possible). A had warned us it was small and sped through in the space of lighting 3 matches, but that is an exaggeration. It is set along the shore and a mixture of modern, usually Indian entrepreneurial shops and organisations, and touches of colonial grandeur with plenty of greenery and shade under palm trees and a huge market for fresh fruit, vegetables and fish of every imaginable colour. The roads here are smooth and traffic reasonable.
We went back on foot next day to explore some more, though it is quite a walk! We passed innumerable varieties of Church, including a huge Mormon Temple on the hill as the Fijians are naturally very religious. The other delight of Sunday was family prayers, mostly in Fijian, though with translations for our benefit. The singing in 4 parts is normal and makes a beautiful sound. The Fulaga islanders are Methodists and Sunday is generally a day of rest and prayer and very peaceful.Apart from Sunday lunch, the main meal is in the evening and bedtime is generally very early, ready for an early start the next day.
Tuesday was fantastic fun. We went with Mele (4) and her kindergarten class and mothers to Pacific Harbour by bus with Asinate and Alison.
The bus was an unforgetable joy infusion. An hour of rollicking along bumping over potholes with singing at the top of their voices to the very loud Fijian music and even occasional dancing when it got too much to bear to sit still. Everyone laughing and happy. The bus had a fixed top but no proper windows and a tarpaulin with plastic not-very-see-through panels for the sides when it got too rainy and windy. The scenery going along the coast road was glorious when we could see it.
Pacific Harbour itself is a tourist set-up so that you can see what it was like in a traditional Fijian village, complete with singing, dancing,
fire walking, dramatic rendering of a story about a couple of lads who are planning to run off with 2 young maidens, fight and are then put in the pot (off scene) for their trouble. It is well done and there are lots of shops selling handicrafts etc. to tempt you, but we had to go back by the end of the morning.By Wednesday the sky was blue and clear after a dramatic storm on Tuesday afternoon and we drove to the Fijian museum in Suva with Anare. It is small but with his explanations it was much more interesting. The huge exhibit of a restored boat was originally made by his own islanders and restored by his cousins. It was a magnificent construction holding many islanders at 13m long, with large sails and an outrigger, but a dwarf in comparison with the largest one they had built which was ocean-going and held hundreds at 36m in length.
On Thursday we were taken inland into the hills in a 4 wheel-drive with a driver (pot holes a real challenge here) and Anare's cousin Jim in the back seat had it worst of all being bounced into the car ceiling every now and then. Everything en route was massively lush
and A explained that although much of it is heavily cultivated they need no fertiliser. However, the down side of this is that weeds grow just as enthusiastically. We passed countless beautifully kept villages, mostly with houses built of corrugated aluminium on posts and often highly coloured. We travelled over rivers that were pretty high after the recent rain and A said that only the British bridges had survived the serious flooding after the last hurricane caused by El Nino. We had the privilege of being taken to visit Ratu Solomone, the Paramount Chief of the inland district of 9 villages, 15000 people. He arrived at his large house in the hills at the same time as we did, also in a 4 wheel drive car, and was entirely gracious and welcoming and asked us all to come and sit cross-legged on woven mats. (In Richard's case only whilst drinking the cava as it was clear that he doesn't bend naturally that way!) First we offered him a cava root, presented formally with a speech by Jim, Anare's spokesman for the tribe and equally formally accepted with all names and titles of everyone concerned included and then A made a speech I think. After this the large wooden cava bowl was brought out by his son-in-law and the ground cava was mixed in a bag with water poured into the bowl. Polished coconut shells were then dipped in and formally presented by his son to the Chief, then Anare, his spokesman and then Richard and myself. A had stipulated that we should have no more than 2 bowls as the effect of minor numbing of the mouth becomes more pronounced as more is drunk until it would be difficult to converse coherently, but the tradition is that the contents of the large bowl are finished so the others manfully kept drinking until it was empty. Each small bowl has to be drunk in one go and it is a pleasant fresh flavour unlike anything else I have ever tasted, so difficult to describe and each drinker is clapped formally. We then chatted on about life, the universe, travel, the Foundation (Fijian tribal development), government, pensions and herbal healing and were impressed that as a young fitter at the Fijian Sugar Corporation Ratu Salomone had decided that he wanted the Chief Exec's job and patiently went through life till he reached it. Running a huge company and fulfilling his own tribal duties simultaneously must have been a 36 hour a day job.After leaving and looking forward to his visiting us in Oxford we travelled on higher to the special administrative village and hospital that the Brits had laid out as centre of the province and then bumpily returned to Suva and an excellent Chinese meal at a local restaurant together with Asinate and Tim.
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