Reece’s Place
Fiji
“Oh, East is East,
and West is West, and never the twain shall meet...”
Rudyard Kipling, The
Ballad of East and West
The big Fijian
island of Viti Levu is divided by more than its central mountain range, and
West is East, and East is South. Robyn and I found out about the West is East
part, during a two-week Fiji diversion, on our way to begin a new life in New
Zealand. We landed at Nadi’s airport at the same time we would always land at
Nadi’s airport- in the heaviest frangipani-laden tropical torpor of a Southern
Sea predawn. We carried our packs and lethargy onto the tarmac, and into the
dimly-lit incandescence of the shabby open terminal. We were greeted by massive
moths on mustard walls, and massive black men, with massive black brillo hair.
A deep resonant noise came out of the blue shirt and white triangle-hemmed sulu
skirt, who took our passports.
“Bula.” He
said, stamping them with such force that the imprint, but for the fixed date,
might have been good for a few more arrivals. Colorful posters were tacked on
the walls, warning of AIDS and elephantiasis. Outside, the insect swarms around
the streetlights grew smaller with the increasing crimson of the horizon, and
the flame trees that burst into the day, along the curb. Robyn and I had landed
on the Cannibal Isles. All we needed now, were cannibals. Instead, a thin dark
moustache pulled his car alongside, and rolled down his window, like he was
using his last ounce of energy. A flock of mynas, black heads on
chocolate brown bodies, squawked and foraged around us.
“Nadi town?” Asked the Indian taxi driver. West is East. We
negotiated a price that converged on correct, when his head bobbled, and piled
in the back. He drove out of the airport slowly.
“First time to Fiji?” He said. But he didn’t really care.
I was reminded of what James Mitchener had written. It is almost impossible to like the Indians
of Fiji. They are suspicious, vengeful, whining, unassimilated, provocative
aliens in a land where they have lived for more than seventy years. They hate
everything: black natives, white Englishmen, brown Polynesians and friendly
Americans. They will not marry with Fijians, who they despise. They avoid
English ways, which they abhor. They cannot be depended on to support necessary
government policies. Above all, they are surly and unpleasant. It is possible
for a traveler to spend a week in Fiji without ever seeing an Indian smile. I
wasn’t convinced that any of this was true and, if it was, I had some
understanding of why.
The
tragedy of Fiji’s Indians began in 1879, with the arrival of the Leonidas, a Mayflower of misery,
bringing 463 indentured workers from Calcutta to the sugarcane plantations
beyond the port of Levuka. It was the predecessor of other labor transport ships
that would land another sixty thousand over the next 37 years. Indentured
Hindus and Moslems from Madras and Calcutta were herded down into the lower decks of
these coolie ships. The women were often victims of sexual predation by the
European crew. Condemned to eat, sleep, and sit amid their own waste, many did
not survive the long brutal ‘middle passage.’ Their dead bodies were
unceremoniously thrown overboard. Every one of them had signed agreements,
which they knew as ‘girmits,’ requiring them to live in the squalid shacks and
work in the cane fields for five years, before their bond would be repaid,
until the planter paid their passage home. It seldom happened. Their
descendents were called ‘girmityas,’ like the one driving our taxi.
“The
Polynesians brought black rats, and the British planters brought us, and the
mongoose to kill the rats in the cane fields.” He said. “But the mongoose is
awake during the day, and the rats are awake during nighttime. They never
meet.”
Just like the
Indians and the Fijians. I asked how everyone was getting along.
“The situation
is dormant.” He said, like he was describing a volcano. The Prime Minister at
the time was Major-General Sitiveni Ligamamada Rabuka, OBE, MSD, OStJ, otherwise know as Colonel Steve Rambo.
Rambo had previously staged two military coups the year before we arrived, and
was on record as wanting to ‘send the Indians home,’ even the ones that had
been born in Fiji. The Indians considered the Fijians ‘jungalis,’ poor backward
hillbillies occupying the southern coasts and mountains, and the capital of
Suva. East is South. Mitchener liked
the Fijians as much as he disliked the Indians. It is doubtful if anyone but an Indian can dislike Fijians. They are
immense Negros modified by Polynesian blood. They wear their hair frizzled
straight out from the head...They are one of the happiest peoples on earth and
laugh constantly.
In
some peculiar Disney fashion, the unintended admixture of Fijians and Indians
worked for us, tempering happy, sleepy and dopey Melanesian dysfunction, with
an Indian dose of bashful, grumpy and stealthy Indian efficiency.
Our taxi turned off onto a dusty side road lined with
multicolored Bougainvillea,
yellow orchids,
red hibiscus, bananas, palms and papayas, and pulled up in front of a white
trellised façade. There was a hand painted sign above the entrance. Sunseekers.
“It is the most economical hostel in town.” Said our driver. We paid
him, and entered to a hospitable reception, scoring the only double room in a
ramshackle rabbit warren of dorm beds. I locked the door with our own padlock,
and Robyn and I headed back down the lane, across the Nadi River Bridge, and
down the single market street of double-storied pastel houses, demarcated by
external air conditioners, like rows of double-six dominoes. The shops sold
clothing and jewelry and too many duty-free tchotchkes and trinkets, heavy on
the trinkets. The largest emporium of artifacts and handicrafts and souvenirs
was Jack’s of Fiji. Robyn and I entered the air-con, to look at jack shit.
Inside were brash Australians, sizing up the Kava tanoas for salad bowels, and the hardwood cannibal weaponry for
serving implements. I picked up an iculanibokola replica, the multipronged fork that had
been used by attendants, for feeding chiefs considered too holy to touch their
own food. I seemed to have touched off a homing signal, and was immediately
surrounded by several Indian floor staff.
“Fork.” Said the tall one who had closed the gap the fastest. “For
eating.”
“For eating people.” I said. Head bobbles all round.
“You are needing one perhaps?” Another asked.
“Perhaps.” I said, picking my teeth with a fingernail, and watching
them all back away.
