"But why did you go all the way to Fiji just to sit around and read books?"
Good question. I suppose it's because Fiji is cheaper than Queensland, too far away for telephone calls and somewhere different (but not inconveniently so). I mean, if you want to you can have Vegemite for breakfast in a comfortable room and pretend you haven't left Australia; on the other hand, if you poke your nose outside the tourist resort the place is positively Ruritanian. The letter column of the Fiji Times (the only forum for public debate in the entire country) reads like something edited by E. O. Parrott. Anyway, we did more than just read books.
Getting there is all part of the experience (I hesitate to call it fun). It appears that I am on the QANTAS computer for life, ensuring convenient seats, airport wheelchairs and assistance with baggage and queue-jumping. On the flight out we were able to spread ourselves out over three seats. I would have been more comfortable if the fellow behind me had not spent most of the flight banging his head - which was covered by a blanket and a jacket - against the back of my seat, all the while making strange noises. I was partially distracted by the sight of the First Class food being wheeled past me, not to mention the leftovers being wheeled back. Those people did nothing but eat for the whole four hours, about six courses.
On arrival we were first at the baggage carousel as usual. The luggage was there, but the wheelchair wasn't. After a while a worried looking man appeared with the chair in one hand and a wheel in the other. He was greatly relieved when Derrick explained that the wheels were supposed to come off and then expertly put it back on. We discovered that the modular bits and pieces that make up the modern lightweight wheelchair have a tendency to get loosened or pushed out of place in transit - taking a simple toolkit when travelling would probably be a good idea.
There have been some changes at The Fijian, which was where we stayed eighteen months previously. The place is now overrun with cats, which the guests are specifically requested not to feed. The Vegemite was absent from the breakfast buffet, but on request the supervisor brought it out from under the counter where it is kept "for people who need it." I suspect he thought it had quasi-medicinal properties.
The new management, a South East Asian chain of hotels and resorts, are evidently trying to smarten the place up to international standards of efficiency. I think that they are meeting with mixed success, as efficiency is quite an alien concept to the laid-back Fijians. You soon get used to the idea of "Fiji time", which is entirely in keeping with a relaxed holiday. Despite the fact that everybody wears very impressive watches nothing ever runs on time.
Derrick had already bought himself an impressive watch at a Melbourne duty free store (which of course announced special reductions on all stock the day we arrived home). I hadn't, as the tickets were very late in arriving. In any case we needed a short-wave radio and a few other bits and pieces, so we decided to take the first opportunity to go shopping in Sigatoka. I suppose this could be called an experience - you could say the same thing about breaking your leg.
Sigatoka must be one of the most gratuitously inaccessible places on earth. The gutters are about a foot high, presumably because the river floods from time to time. There are no ramps at the kerbs, and the roads and footpaths are not in a particularly good state of repair. All of the shops have at least three steps at the entrance. If you find yourself in Fiji and you have mobility problems, do not expect to enjoy shopping in Sigatoka.
Even if you don't have mobility problems, the same advice applies. On the whole the shops all seemed to have much the same rather limited range of stock; watches, cameras, French perfume, some sound and electronic equipment, jewellery, sporting goods, Reeboks and garish t-shirts. The prices are not visible. The salesman, who follows you around the shop, eventually shows you the price-tag, but the price you actually pay is about two-thirds of the marked price. "I will do you special price." You are expected to bargain. Once you have enquired about something considerable firmness of purpose is required to get out of the shop without having bought it. I found myself more convinced than ever that shopping, like washing the dishes, is not something that you should be required to do while on holiday.
We were rather hot and bothered by the time we finished up at Jack's Handicrafts. This establishment seemed to be full of American ladies buying indescribable objects made out of shells. Nevertheless they had some attractive souvenirs for sale. Derrick bought a very handsome hand-carved traditional food dish. He totally failed to bargain, so the salesman threw in a piece of tapa cloth. I had a fairly pointless conversation with the salesgirl who was following me around about the undesirability of selling ivory carvings. It wasn't until we returned home that I learned that they are now a prohibited import anyway.
On our previous visit to Fiji we had a fair dose of traditional Fijian culture; the lovo, the meke, kava drinking and a tour of a rural village. This time we were more interested in finding out about modern Fijian life. The way to do this, of course, is to find someone local with whom you share a common interest. At Edith Hall's suggestion we went to Suva to visit Frank Hilton from the Fiji Rehabilitation Council, and the folk from the Fiji Disabled People's Association.
After a three hour drive along the scenic Coral Coast, stopping for passengers at all the resorts, we arrived at the Suva Travelodge in time for lunch. Phoning Frank was complicated by the fact that the phones had been out of order for three days and there was only one outgoing line! We had to join all the businessmen waiting about the foyer for their calls - not much of an advertisement for the recent privatisation of Fiji Telecom.
Frank took us on a drive around Suva, which is like a miniature Sydney. Up the steep winding roads there are magnificent views of Laucala Bay. There is a suburb named Toorak, but Melburnians should note that it is far from a desirable residential area. It is, however, the location of the mosque, and on Friday - the Moslem holy day - the footpath outside is crowded with people sitting waiting for alms.
We visited the Rehabilitation Council's sheltered workshop. In Australia it is currently the fashion to denigrate "factory model" workshops, but in Fiji the whole idea of sheltered workshops is relatively new and seen as a great advance . There is no social security or government provision for disabled people in Fiji - the government is still struggling to provide adequate basic health care for the population as a whole. The official theory is that people's families will look after them, but the reality is that with the best will in the world families do not have the knowledge or the resources to do so properly.
The workshop employs people with every disability except total blindness. It seems that there is a separate organisation for blind people, but not for the hearing impaired. Apart from an assessment section which produces pot plants, rag rugs and the like, there is a printery, a screen printing shop and an industrial sewing operation which was very busy machining sheets when we visited. The conditions in the latter section appeared to be far better than in the couple of sweatshops we had noticed in Sigatoka. We were really very impressed by the whole setup, which tenders competitively and generally pays the workers in the industrial sections at normal rates (which in Fiji, it must be added, is not very much). They pay the workers in the assessment section what they can, which is usually a very small amount but, since the alternative is staying at home doing nothing on no income at all, nobody complains.
After a quick stop at the Rehabilitation Council's Prosthetics and Orthotics shop - located at the hospital - to replace a screw that had come off my wheelchair (no, they don't make them like they used to), Frank dropped us at the premises of the Fiji Disabled People's Association.
The FDPA's premises, in a modified suburban house, would be the envy of any equivalent Australian organisation. Of course, they are paid for by the British Government - just about everything in Fiji seems to be paid for by foreign aid, a situation accepted by the locals as part of the natural order of things. After some initial confusion - it seems that they had been expecting Edith Hall - we had quite an interesting discussion with four of the members. They were very busy organizing the Disabled People's International conference, which will have taken place by the time you read this. Usually they are occupied with promoting a positive image of disabled people; there is still a tendency in Fiji to see disability as the result of ill-wishing or a punishment for sinfulness, which results in families feeling ashamed of the victims and hiding them away.
I don't think Fiji is quite ready for its own Disabled Motorists' Association. We were told that there are only two such people in the whole country. None of the FDPA people we met had cars, though all of them would have been perfectly capable of driving. The explanation, of course, is an economic one.
After this meeting a taxi was summoned and we set off for 54 Domain Road. Taxi drivers, the Travelodge visitors' guide warned, have to be dealt with firmly. Either request them to turn on the meter or fix the fare beforehand. We settled on a fare of F$2.50. Unfortunately when we reached Domain Road we couldn't find number 54.
The street numbering seemed to be completely random. The explanation eventually turned out to be to do with the way the area, originally government quarters but now a quite posh garden suburb, had been subdivided. Even had we known the history of the place it would have been no help. We cruised up and down, eventually pulling into a driveway to ask directions from an extremely helpful lady whom we had noticed standing at her kitchen window.
On arrival at number 54 the more ablebodied occupants were standing at the bottom of the drive, having spotted us when we drove past earlier. In the circumstances we felt obliged to pay the driver an increased fare and he was happy to take $4 in Australian currency - so happy that he agreed to come back at 9.00pm.
Dinner was most enjoyable. The occupants of the house, Joyce, Julietta, Karaline and Sashi, and their friend Inice, made us very welcome and served a delicious meal of roast chicken. The vegetables included the local delicacy darolo, which looks a bit like sugar cane before it is peeled and which when cooked in coconut milk tastes just like artichoke. The conversation was lively to say the least, and we were rather sorry to see the taxi driver when he turned up at 9.15, apologising for being late.
He was clearly hoping for our custom the next day, but he was out of luck. Frank took us out to the Rewa area to deliver a hearing aid, in company with a district health nurse and a physiotherapy aide whom we collected on the way.
The hearing aid was provided by Fiji Sixes, the local non-computerised lotto. This is the main source of funding for aids and equipment and even medical treatment.
The tourist literature would have you believe that villagers will welcome you with kava, and warn you to drink up without grimacing. This is rubbish. You certainly get a welcome, but what you get with it is big cups of tea with the milk already in it (and refusal to believe that you don't take sugar). You also get biscuits - which if not eaten promptly attract streams of almost microscopic ants - and lengthy chitchat. The Fijians really do prefer to sit on the floor, after matting has been put down for the visitors, but Europeans are allowed to sit on the chairs. The children crowd the doorway, giggling occasionally and hoping, forlornly in our case, that there might be some lollies to be had.
The village that we visited was really an urban settlement. All of the houses were fairly new, as the whole village had been relocated out of the flightpath of Nausori airport. Unlike the rural village we saw on our first Fijian holiday, town power and water were connected, and the houses were located a reasonable distance from each other. Most of the villages that we saw along the Coral Coast would have an Australian building inspector in fits.
Frank brought us home the long and scenic way, along the ridge above the Rewa Valley, a road which is being substantially upgraded. I don't think I would care to drive myself around Fiji - the roads are generally not too good - but I must say that, at least in the towns, the traffic was quite orderly. P.J. O'Rourke (I was reading Holidays in Hell at the time) insists that all Third World drivers blast their horns continuously, but this is not the case in Fiji. His advice about avoiding cattle, goats and chickens on the road, however, was quite apt.
We caught the tourist bus back to Yanuca. Clearly the next best thing to driving for a tour company is knowing someone who drives for a tour company. Apart from being able to cadge a lift in airconditioned comfort, you can have parcels delivered and all sorts of errands attended to. The tour guide, whose official purpose was to make sure that people got on and off at the right places, was quite busy on both trips with unexplained excursions.
Towards the end of the trip we stopped at a little general store, the very place - if I am not mistaken - that features in Geoff Raymond's hilarious memoirs Footprints in Fiji. The idea may have been for people to buy souvenirs, but what they actually bought, apart from cans of Coke, was bread and milk and margarine. If you go to a holiday resort with no self-catering facilities you're trapped. You have to accept that you'll pay $1 for 250ml of milk from the mini bar, when the price at a supermarket is $1 a litre. Well, we accepted it, but a lot of Aussie tourists are desperate to bring in food from outside their hotel. Buying bananas at the roadside is understandable (Fijian bananas taste wonderful), but I question the wisdom of buying meat pies in Sigatoka.
Waiting in the bus while people stocked up on groceries, we got into conversation with a most attractive Indian girl who had been on the bus into Suva the previous day. She had an Australian "friend" with whom she had spent the previous week, a gentleman who was going to arrange for her to come to Australia to join him. In Suva we had heard stories of how desperate people are to get to places like Australia. I had been asked what I thought of the Australians who advertised for wives. Now I had a girl showing me her friend's business card and telling me what an important person he was back in Melbourne. The laws of defamation prevent me from giving identifying details, but I think she's in for a bit of a disappointment when she eventually gets here.
Two days of the real world was enough, especially in the slightly steamy inland climate. We were quite happy to go back to lotus land, though reality kept intruding in the form of the Fiji Times.Fijian reality, of course; a group of teenage Fijians were being tried for burning down the Lautoka Mosque in an apparently sincere but totally misguided attempt to stamp out idol-worship (orthodox Moslems are dead-set against graven images of any kind).
Among other things we occupied ourselves with trying to translate the menus (which, although written in English, were often mysterious) and watching our fellow tourists. The Japanese honeymooners were interesting. Without exception they were dressed in the height of fashion, no expense spared. They did try to get their tongues around the obligatory greeting "Bula!" Apart from that they kept to themselves. By this I don't just mean that they didn't socialise with the English-speaking tourists, something which you would hardly expect them to do; they didn't mix with each other, didn't even wish the other Japanese good morning at breakfast.
We went to the Pacific dancing display and saw the knife dancer stab himself (not seriously, he came back later to do the fire dance). Derrick went out on the lagoon in a canoe and gave himself blisters. Actually he got quite a bit of exercise because the goods lift broke down and we had to walk all around the buildings to get to the beach. One afternoon there was a wedding on the lawns outside our room, complete with the village choir. I took a few photographs of my fingers (all modern cameras are uncompromisingly designed for use by right-handed people).
And yes, we did read a few books as well.
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