by David Yeadon
His high-pitched laughter bounced down the narrow street, echoing off the little stores and cafés. “I know what you wondered! But it isn’t. This is kava. This is powdered kava. In the old days, most people took the yaqona (yanggona) roots and they bashed them up and chewed them too.”
“They eat it?”
“No, no. they chewed it up till it’s like a paste and then they added water and stirred it up and—well, in a while…you drink it.”
“And that’s kava?”
“Oh, yes. A good drink. Makes you very happy. Very nice. You will enjoy it.”
“So what do you do with this powder?”
“Well, you don’t need to chew this. You just add water and stir.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“About the chewing—I’m glad to know no one has to chew it first.”
“Oh—I told you—that’s the old way. The best way, really. The chewing has to be done by virgins of the village. But the powder is faster. So—you will go and visit them?”
“Well—I’ll certainly try.”
“Good. So have a nice journey.”
“Yes—thank you—vinaka—I will.”
One last, flashing smile and off he went, back to his desk and to his hair polishing.
I tucked the bag deep into my trouser pocket and hoped that this wasn’t some kind of setup for vulnerable tourists.
I’d never really given much thought to Fiji before my arrival and I certainly hadn’t expected to find a South Pacific nation of 322 islands and a population of close on a million. But there they were, a few thousand feet below me as I floated above a sapphire-blue sea in a tiny twenty-seat Sunflower Air plane peering down at dozens of little palm-shrouded islets and atolls, each edged by pink-white and gold-white sands. Most of them seemed uninhabited. Tiny tropical paradises, untouched, unmolested. And in the hazy distance, more and more of them, fading over a blue-on-blue horizon.
But it’s all a little deceiving.
Fiji’s complex and convoluted history is in marked contrast to its benign South Pacific “paradise” appearance. Tribal chiefs exercised ruthless “club law” here for centuries and, according to a missionary in 1830, “No eastern tyrants can rule with more absolute terror than the Chiefs do here, and few people are more thoroughly enslaved and trampled than are these islanders.”
Looking into the shining, smiling eyes of a typical Fijian today, it’s hard to imagine the great wars that were fought between and across the islands here; the hideous ritual slaughters, sacrifices, and feasting on the bodies of enemies; the guile, cunning, and open graft of intertrilbal conflicts; the multigenerational grudges that set clan against clan for decades; and the unfortunate fates of so many widowed women, strangled by their own sons so that they might accompany their husbands into the afterlife.
Intrusion of the West and Western values came slowly in the wake of such notable explorers as Wilson, Tasman, Cook, and the unfortunate Captain Bligh, who was pursued through much of the archipelago in 1789 by armed tribesmen in huge drua boats. Bligh and his eighteen loyal officers, who had been left only the ship’s launch and meager supplies by the notorious mutineers of the Bounty, would have doubtless met gory deaths among the treacherous reefs had it not been for sudden storms and other fortuitous occurrences that enabled them to escape bloodthirsty Fijians and Tongans and eventually, after over forty days in the open ocean, reach the relative tranquility of the Dutch island of Timor, over four thousand miles west of Fiji. Somehow, despite all the horrors of this journey, the indefatigable Bligh made accurate charts of the “Bligh Islands,” as he called them, which were used for almost a century afterward by other explorers and traders.
At first the Fijians regarded such intruders with suspicion and resentment, but as the gifts from these outsiders increased, they willingly allowed them to gather precious sandalwood and later the odd but oh-so-valuable bêche-de-mer (sea cucumber) in exchange for muskets and mercenary assistance during the almost-constant tribal conflicts.
Slow consolidations of power were made, particularly during the reign of Chief Cakabau, one of the most Machiavellian of all Fiji’s rulers. Described by one observer in the mid-1800s as “arrogant, cruel, cunning, devious and bold…a man who thinks of nothing else but war” and by another as “every inch a monarch,” Cakabau ruled as self-proclaimed king of Fiji from the tiny island outpost of Bau off the southeastern coast of the main island of Viti Levu. Early missionaries sought to convert the firebrand chief to Christianity but he was quite content with his own gods and spirits, who seemed to be forming his fortunes most advantageously, and sent them packing.
But missionaries were learning their own ways of wile and guile and used the influence of Christianized Tongan islanders, who had long traded and resided in Fiji, to “persuade” Cakabau that quick conversion could be the key to his kingly ambitions. He acquiesced but, in doing so, alienated many of the independent chiefs he sought to defeat or cajole into mutually beneficial alliances.
Then, when an unfortunate priest, the Reverend Baker, was unceremoniously clubbed to death, decapitated, and eaten by a tribe in the remote highlands of Viti Levu, Cakabau was obliged by the increasingly dominant British traders to lead a reprisal attack. The Kai Colo—the hill people—denounced Christianity as “Cakabau’s religion” and decimated his forces.
Cakabau’s power began to decline as news of his defeat spread and by 1874 he, along with other chiefs, finally ceded the islands to Queen Victoria, at which time vast colonial-development plantation schemes were initiated, requiring the importation of indentured laborers—mainly Hindu and Muslim Indians. Thousands of these virtual slave immigrants lived in appalling conditions at “coolie-line” barracks until Gandhi’s vehement protests led to an abandonment of the system in 1920.
Fijians proved to be loyal supporters of Britain and the United States in the two world wars and the Malaysian conflict, and this led, after years of political machinations, to the granting of independence in 1970. The young Prince Charles officiated at the elaborate ceremonies and has remained a favorite “royal” among islanders ever since.
“He is like our sugar,” one Fijian told me in Nandi, “sweet and very civilized.”
And sugar has certainly been the “civilizing” element of the islands, along with such other lucrative economic staples as copra, cocoa, ginger, and, more recently, tourism. Somehow the organizational skills of Indians, Europeans, Chinese, the Kai-loma (part-Europeans), and the Tongans have helped balance the subsistence agrarian traditions of old Fijian society and the debilitating kerekere ethics of shared wealth to form a richly varied cultural mix (hardly homogeneous, as the Fijians cling proudly to their special “rights”) that is certainly fascinating, friendly—and fun. And graceful too. I had sensed that already in my brief stay. Generosity, quiet pride and dignity, a love of ceremony, politeness, and enjoyment of good and plentiful food and drink all combine to create a graciousness of living even in the simple villages of thatch and mud bure huts strung around their central green, or rara. At appointed times during the day the village lali drums can be heard echoing in the hills and you know that life goes on, slow-paced and warm-spirited, permeating every nuance of this intriguing society, still happy with its old ways in the midst of inevitable and ever-increasing change.
I hoped to learn and see much more in my brief stay here.
“Please fasten your seat belts. We shall be landing in a few minutes…you can see Taveuni to our right.”
And there she was. Third largest of the Fijian archipelago, about twenty-eight miles long and six miles wide, and with a population of around nine thousand. Bolder and far more dramatically profiled than most of the other islands. A buckled spine of volcanic cones cloaked in thick green forest running her whole length, tiny bays with white sand, flashes of waterfalls tumbling from the ridges, scatterings of cottages with palm frond roofs, large coconut palm plantations, sinewy paths disappearing into dense fore
st, and tatters of clouds trailing off four-thousand-foot Uluinggalau, Taveuni’s highest peak. All in all a rather mysterious-looking place (no sign of exotic tourist resorts here), a place to explore rather than tour.
We landed with a sudden thump on a grassy strip at the northern tip of the island and taxied to a standstill by a couple of huts that made do as the terminal, set in a profusion of flowering bushes—great showers of red hibiscus and explosions of bougainvillea and frangipani.
Most of my fellow passengers were Fijians visiting family and friends for the weekend. The remaining half dozen or so were avid Australian scuba divers, whose conversation on the flight over had been full of convoluted aquatic technicalities and references to such exotic-sounding diving locales on Taveuni as the Great White Wall, the Ledge, Pandora’s Box, Rainbow Reef, Blue-Ribbon Eel Reef, and the Pinnacle. Apparently I’d arrived in one of the South Pacific’s finest scuba-diving islands and wondered if I’d have the time, or the inclination after that near-death fracas up in the Ningaloo, to do a little subaquatic exploration myself.
Taveuni also apparently had a more recent claim to fame. A cinema poster on the wall of one of the airport huts proclaimed proudly, TAVEUNI—HOME OF THE BLUE LAGOON.
“What’s that?” I asked Maika, the young, bright-eyed driver of a ramshackle “cab,” who had appointed himself as my instant guide as soon as my bags were unceremoniously dumped from the plane onto the grass.
“Oh, we are very famous here,” he gushed. “All the movie people came to film Return to the Blue Lagoon. Very big drinkers—all of them. Some crazy times…they filmed not far from here, near Bouma on the other side of the island, very beautiful waterfalls and beaches.”
I vaguely remember reviews of that unfortunate movie. New York critics blasted just about everything except the scenery. I think it ran in Manhattan for three days and then vanished.
“Have you seen the movie?”
“Oh, yes. It was at the cinema in Wariki two weeks ago.”
“Any good?”
“No—it was a very bad film.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes—very bad…except for the waterfalls and the mountains.”
Well—chalk one up for the New York critics.
“So—where are you going?” Maika asked.
“I’ve no idea—let’s just drive for a while and when I see a place I’d like to stay, I’ll tell you. Okay?”
“Okay.”
And so off we went, at first on a narrow tarmac road following the wriggles of the western bay-dotted coastline, which soon became an even narrower dust and gravel road, generously punctuated with potholes.
“Many holes and bumps, we have much rain on this island. Thirty feet a year.”
“Thirty what?”
“Thirty feet, three hundred and sixty inches. Sometimes more.”
“Is this the wet season now?”
He turned and smiled another one of those gleaming Fijian smiles. “It’s always the wet season on Taveuni!”
Great. No one had thought to mention that. But at least this day was blue and cloudless. The water in the bays sparkled, the palms by the roadside wafted in warm breezes. There were fishermen offshore in tiny dugout canoes carved from single tree trunks. Night-black mynah birds squawked in the bushes. Children played in the shallows and waved when they saw my pink, sun-scorched face. I waved back and heard their screams of “vinaka, vinaka” (“thank you, thank you”) echo through the trees.
I breathed in the rich air that rushed through the open window and smelled the moist perfumes of blossoms wrapped in that deeper, more mysterious aroma of jungle—a peaty, rotting, musky mix of tumultuous growth and death made more pungent by abundant rain and thick mossbound decay…the aroma of irrepressible life.
We passed through a small village where the men, wrapped in traditional skirtlike sulus, walked in a kind of cheerful stupor and called out welcomes of “Bula! Bula!” waving their arms like drunken traffic cops.
“They seem happy enough.”
“Oh, yes—they are—today is a kava day. A national holiday.”
“Really—which one?”
“Prince Charles’s birthday.”
“Prince Charles of Britain?”
“Of course.”
“You celebrate his birthday!?”
“On Taveuni we celebrate all kinds of things. We like celebrations—parties. One a week, usually. Sometimes more. Prince Charles is very special man to us. We have named a beach for him. He wrote us a lovely letter to say thank you.”
How strange. I’m sure most Britishers have no idea of the Prince’s birth date. Certainly there’s no national celebration. But here, in this little outpost of ex-colonialism, one discovers a whole day of fun and frivolity for the monarch-to-be. (Even Queen Elizabeth II looks young and happy on the bank notes of Fiji—very different from her stern, aged portraits on British pound notes.)
“Any other celebrations in the next week or so?” I asked.
“Not official ones, I don’t think.”
“No fire walking and that kind of thing?”
“No—that’s only in the island of Beqa, off Viti Levu.”
“What about nagols—jumping off hundred-foot-high trees with vines tied around your ankles?”
“Oh, no—we never had the nagols here, sir. Never on any island in Fiji. That’s to the west in the Vanuatu Islands, near the Solomons. Are you going there?”
“No—not this time.”
“They say it is very frightening. Many people badly hurt.”
“Yes—so I’ve heard.”
“I can take you to our Lake Tagimaucia—very strange place high up by Des Voeux Peak—in an old volcano, in a crater.”
“What’s up there?”
“Very rare flowers—the tagimaucia—big red blooms with white hearts. Only grow here. Nowhere else in the world. We have a very sad tale about these flowers—everyone in Fiji knows it. It happened when Taveuni was very young—when the first people came. There was a little girl called Maucia who lived in a small bure—a cottage—by the ocean. Very pretty. But she had a stepmother who was very cruel to her, so one day Maucia ran away—ran far away—deep into the forest, into the mountains. But she became lost and the vines wrapped themselves all around her. She tried to get away, but the vines were very strong—like those strangler figs—” he pointed to a group of forest trees at the roadside smothered in snakelike vines, “you see them everywhere on Taveuni—and as she struggled more and more the vines got tighter and tighter. And she cried—she wept—and the tears became red blood and they rolled down her cheeks and down her arms and her legs and fell onto the ground and when they went into the earth of the forest they turned into tiny red flowers—the flowers we call tagimaucia. It means ‘Cry Maucia.’”
I waited for more, but Maika had apparently finished his tale.
“So what happened to the little girl?”
He seemed surprised by the question. “She died,” he said.
“You mean there’s no happy ending?”
“Well—there are the flowers. The tagimaucia. She became the flowers.”
“I was hoping for a Cinderella sort of ending.”
“Cinder-who?”
“Never mind, Maika.”
I found my small hotel in the village of Waiyevo, about halfway down the western coast. Perched right on the beach, the Garden Island Resort was well within my modest budget and refreshingly devoid of scuba-diving enthusiasts at the time of my visit even though Rainbow Reef was only half a mile or so offshore.
“D’you think you’ll be doing any diving?” asked Lela Prym, owner of the hotel, as we sat by the pool sipping cocktails brimming with freshly squeezed mango juice.
“I’m not sure. I don’t know what I’m going to do—except explore and enjoy myself.”
“You sound Fijian already.” Lela had a real Julia Roberts grin that filled her face.
“And with a smile like that, you look Fijian.”
“You’ve obviously recovered from that.”
“Taveuni does that to you.”
“Let’s hope it does it to me.”
“Oh, it will,” she said, still grinning her Pretty Woman grin.
The days slipped by so gently. From time to time there were showers punctuated by brilliant shafts of sunlight that made the leaves and blossoms shine as if hand polished. One early morning there was a rainstorm so powerful it pounded the weaker palm fronds off the trees and flattened them into the running rivulets of gold and ocher mud. By lunchtime the rain was gone and the whole island basked under brilliant skies, smelling so richly of washed earth and moss and refreshed jungle that you could almost drink the air in great liquid gulps.
I did silly, pointless things, for no reason.
On a nearby beach, shaded by thick vine-bound jungle, I built a sand castle out of the damp white sand. Quite an impressive affair, really, with turrets and battlements and an enormous arched entrance across a moat which filled as the tide edged in and began to crumble my creation. I remembered that as a child on the beaches of Yorkshire I would cry as my castles collapsed. And even though this time I was laughing at the idiocy of this middle-aged world wanderer building sand castles after decades of abstinence, something deep down, very faint, was crying a little as it fell.
On another beach I discovered a sign proclaiming that I now stood astride the international dateline—the 180 degree median—so I bounced backward and forward from Tuesday into Wednesday and Wednesday into Tuesday and smiled at what a funny thing time is.
In fact, time became irrelevant. I discarded my watch and marked the days’ progress by the movement of the sun over the high volcanic ridges. If it became too hot I wandered off into the forest dappled with musty light and followed narrow trails up the lower slopes of the mountains. Parrots, fantailed cuckoos, and pigeons floated in and out of the trees. If it rained that silky warm island rain, I’d lie back on the ground and let it soak me with its freshness, sip its sweet taste, and listen to the land crabs clicking their claws in their earthbound burrows.