Chilling out in Suva

Ni sa bula, everyone!

Before I summarize our new andventures, I'd like to point out that new photos are up on our Flicker Gallery. (We finally found a decent internet connection in Suva and were actually able to load the 118 or so photos still within our lifetime...)

So, 2 weeks have passed by and I can say that Ryan and I have positively settled down here in Suva. That means that we have some food in the fridge, dish soap, an electric water kettle and TV broadcast of Fiji's Channel 1 (this luxury we acquired shortly after we moved in when our neighbor donated to us his old TV antenna, the TV set was already in our apartment). And we got aquainted with our local gecko who visits us every night and whom we call "Our Little Friend" because he eats the bugs in our apartment, if there are any. Ryan is a new owner of a sulu, a wrap-around skirt that Fijian men wear as casual and official attire for school, work and church (it looks pretty good on him), AND it looks like there is NOT going to be another coup in Fiji, despite the impasse between the government, military and police that has been going on pretty much since we arrived here. Fiji has had three military coups since 1987, the last one being in 2000, and the fear of another one is very strong, that's why there seems to be a strong effort on the each side to keep this only as a battle of words, not actions. But don't worry, all the past coups were non-violent and there isn't much indication that this current altercation will turn into a coup.

On a lighter note, we spent most of our 2 weeks in Suva shopping for supplies, settling in and relaxing, so there's not nearly as much exciting news to report on as there was last time (if you don't think that looking all over the city for 2 hours in search of a sink plug isn't exciting, that is). We got the musty funk out of our apartment, cleaned it up a bit, met some neighbors, went out a few times, got bored and few times - and we feel very much at home again.

To break the monotony of relaxing and listening to "Robinson Crusoe" in the evenings (I'm kidding, we're actually really busy with walking around and reading in our Fiji handbook), we visited the Fiji museum - one of Suva's main sight-seeing attractions that not many tourists seem to bother to visit.

It is a decent little museum - very comprehensive and informative about Fiji's past from the beginning of inhabitation till the recent decades. The highlight of the exhibit is a massive drua, a a famous double-hulled type of canoe that made Fijians and other Polynesians such phenomenal seafarers. The other highlights were formidable hardwood war clubs, creepy cannibal forks and cool-looking whale tooth necklaces of chiefs. The double-horned mast tops that were used on the druas also look very intimidating. I could just imagine the cold chill of terror that must have gripped any opponent at the sight of these masts appearing on the sea horizon. Fijians were ferocious warriors - and all enemies were invariably eaten.

But do not fear for our lives. Cannibalism was eradicated in Fiji by the protestant missionaries in the early to mid 1800's and now Fijians are probably among the most peace-loving and hospitable people on Earth. Let us tell you a little bit about the Fijian people here: Fijian men are huge. Not necessarily in height, but in build - they all look like they work out 3 hours a day, (which has got to be impossible since there couldn't be enough gyms around for all the men - and we haven't even SEEN any gyms), they walk erect and confidently and they have the facial features and fierce look of former warriors. Simply, if you see an average Fijian man you might feel a bit intimidated. But that feeling only lasts until the moment the guy makes an eye contact with you, widens his mouth to reveal his perfect teeth in the most charming and disarming smile you've ever seen and shouts: "Bula!" He passes and you wonder why you ever thought this guy looked scary and you feel warm inside because you instinctively know that his smile was genuine. And this happens over and over again, all day long, every day. You learn to produce those smiles simply by saying "Bula!" to everyone - you will never fail to get that smile back.

Fijian women are curvacious and wear tight afros, the younger ones relax their hair and wear western clothes, but you never see them in very short skirts and only very rarely with bare shoulders, mostly at night, almost never during the day. It is a very modest and conservative culture here and the villages are the most traditional and conservative: both men and women have to cover their shoulders and knees while in a village, they can't wear hats or carry backpacks on their shoulders. When swimming outside, Fijian girls wear shorts and tank tops, since bikinis pretty much equal to nudity here. Western female tourists, I noticed, are most approachable by the friendly locals when they observe the local sensibilities and cover themselves modestly (when outside of their hotel resort). Fijians won't despise you if you're ignorant of their traditions, but they'll respect you more if you learn and do try to follow the few rules. In the Fijian society, everything is about mutual respect.

And for all the above-mentioned reasons, and more, Ryan and I agree that Fijians are among the most beautiful people we've ever met.

But Fiji is not only Fijians. Almost a half of Fiji's total population (of about one million) are Indo-Fijians, or people of Indian origins who were brought to Fiji in the late 18oo's by the British colonists to work on Fiji's plantations as indentured workers. About 60,000 were brought here, some came on their own and a lot of them stayed. For all these years, they have kept their language, Hindu religion, their traditions and clothes and altogether this forms a half of the whole culture of Fiji. They live in peace together, but there is some disparity between Fijians and Indo-Fijians: Indo-Fijians have only gained political rights in the last few decades, they can't own land and the two groups don't mix or inter-marry very much (we have noticed some of this in the nightclub). There seem to have been worries in the past about the traditional Fijian way of life being threatened by this arrangement, and the past coups have mostly been a result of these tensions, as well as of some people's private agendas. (It reminds me a little bit of the Slovak-Hungarian tensions in Slovakia. The details are complicated, but, overall, there isn't REALLY a problem of Slovaks and the Hungarian minority getting along. The problem is that some individual politicians use the issue to stir up trouble and create the tensions themselves for their own party interests. Seems to me like this is what might be happening in Fiji.)

So much about Fijians for today. On to the next adventures.

The other highlight of the last two weeks was a visit to Colo-i-Suva [tholo-i-suva] - the local rainforest. It's amazing that only 11km outside of the biggest city in the country, there is an unspoiled and genuinly wild rain forest. We couldn't believe our eyes - finally, we arrived in the tropics! The park is well-maintained with trails and picnic tables, but the flora is left amazingly wild - with the massive ferns, palms, fern trees, weaterfalls and deep-green swimming pools you might think that any minute you'll run into a dinosaurus grazing somewhere on a clearing. In a worst-case scenario, you'll run into a group of village kids splashing around in the pool that you wanted for yourself, but it's actually not a big deal, since you just have to walk up the river a little bit and find yoursefl another, more private pool. Which we did and it was awesome, although the water was a bit too cold and the "beach" too small to lie down. But, needless to say, we felt like Tarzan and Jane in this crazy place.

But even more exciting than the jungle was the trip home. In the village adjacent to the forest, we got picked up by a school bus full of rumbunctious Fijian kids on their way home from school. You should have seen the looks on their faces when two white adults got on the bus (I don't even know if were really supposed to get on it, maybe the Indian driver simply didn't have time to explain to us that we should wait till the next 'normal' bus). Since I saw the excitement on the bus, I pulled out our video camera and started taping the kids - and the bus went absolutely crazy. But you should have seen what happened when I flipped the LCD display toward them so that they could see themselves - the bus exploded in an uproar! It was the most excitement we've had in Fiji so far, I think. The bus eventually dropped off all the kids in their villages (the kids waived to us for a long time) and turned back around toward Suva and we had the bus to ourselves, enjoying the ride through the misty mountains and villages where people waived at us.

To be continued...