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Published: November 17th 2006
School Visit
Me with John and his mateAfter last night's late night due to nonsensical washer-dryer situations I was in no mood to get up and go today, and yet when it came to it I was still the first person up and into the restaurant for breakfast. Luckily it looked like it was going to be a nice day again today, we seemed to have completely lucked out with the rainforest trek and the timing of the little bit of rain we got and today there was very little, if any, strenuous activity so we all were after a few rays.
Our first stop took us to a supermarket to buy lunch and some stationery items we had to take to the school we'd be visiting later in the day as a gift for the kids. It costs something like FJ$30 a term to send a child to school here if you aren't lucky enough to get them into one of the religious sponsored schools or some other type of free education. That may seem like a pittance, but when you come from a subsistence farming community it can become quite an extravagant expense. On top of that they have very little to actually fill the
School Visit ii
Me with the lads schools with so I felt completely guilty when I didn't want to spend FJ$20 on some stationery before thinking that it was less than six and a half quid, which I would spend in England without batting an eyelid. So we bought the stuff and headed off to the school where we were greeted by a group of young lads who were all off lessons for the week because they were beginning their Summer exams the week after and had time to study and prepare themselves. They showed us around, I was accompanied by a little lad named John and his best mate who's name escapes me and we asked them about what they did and what they liked and every single one of them's stock answer was "rugby" with a grin on their face. It was crazy, though, there we were in a school where every single boy plays and loves rugby and their "pitch" was a patch of dirt with one set of old rusted posts on it, so they couldn't even play proper games. As we were shown around we learnt all sorts of things, like some of them wanted to have photos taken with people and
Village Visit
Drinking kava then gave them their address at the school and asked to be sent a copy since they didn't own a single photograph of themselves and they'd like one. Half the girls only went to school on half days because they had to work in the fields the rest of the day and yet you could not fault a single one of them, they were so kind and generous and always had a smile on their face. We even got a rendition of the school song at the end, sung in true 14 year-old boy style as they were messing around and totally embarrased by the whole thing. As we were leaving we managed to get in a little kickabout with them too, where yours truly made a complete arse of himself by tripping in the dirt and almost taking out one of the kids when I tumbled. What a dickhead.
After the school it was on to the local village to have a kava ceremony with the chief. It was all very formal, asking for entry to the village before entering and having an appointed chief and spokesman, Gareth (naturally the chief) and Kev, who sat in front of
the rest of us and we had to wear our sulas again and cover our arms and take off all headgear. You'd think the whole show was just for tourists until you saw Te's whole reaction to it, being a native Fijian he grew up in the whole semi-feudal society of the villages and so the hereditary chiefs are actually important people to him and he was completely respectful, with head bowed lower than the chief's at all times. So we sat down, went through all the formalities, prayers etc. did the first bowl and then the girls went off to one side of the bure to learn to do some weaving whilst the boys went to the other to do "men's things" - drinking more kava. The chief was really cool, interested to know about us and keen to tell us about him and, as inevitably seems to happen in Fiji if you're British, Irish, South African, Australian or Kiwi the conversation turned to rugby; the one common denominator.
So we drank our kava and chatted away for a while and then it was time to leave again. A couple of the village lads came with us down
to the river where we were going to do our bilibili rafting that afternoon as they were the drivers, or punters, or whatever the hell you call the guy who makes the rafts move. Bilibili rafts themselves are just five or six long thick stems of bamboo tied together and you move along on them very much like punting on the Thames. Unfortunately we had JP, our driver, on our raft and he was quickly bored with sitting and started rocking away to try and dislodge us and tip us into the water. These things are not very stable at the best of times so it didn't take him long to succeed and then we got down to what it was he wanted to do from the off, which was play with the volleyball he'd brought along. The other two rafts floated about on the river but it wasn't too long before their drivers had got bored with the whole thing and decided they wanted to play with the volleyball too. So there were bilibili rafting without actually getting on the raft. Eventually Kev and I decided we'd had enough of that and snuck off to hijack a couple of
rafts. Of course, we had no idea how to drive them as we'd only been on ours for a few short minutes in the first place and we quickly managed to lose control, float out into the middle where the river was too deep to reach the bottom with the punt and end up in a current which took us halfway back to the bus before we bailed out into the river and had to swim our rafts out of the current and back up to the others. JP and the village lads couldn't have seemed to care less, people must do it all the time.
After all that we dried off and were back on the bus to Volivoli. This was possibly the best part of the entire Feejee Experience trip. As we left we were driving along this road cutting through villages and gorgeous scenery just as all the kids were getting out of school. Without fail every single one of the people we passed waved and shouted "BULA!" to the bus and the kids were going crazy with it, perhaps just caught up in the flow of it all and it really was like being some
kind of celebrity riding through the country. We're all hanging out the windows as JP slowed down whenever we passed anyone because all the kids were running alongside the buss trying to slap our hands, everyone on the bus seemed to get the idea without being told and the whole thing was amazing. At one point a guy on a horse kicked on just as we went past and chased the buss for a short distance at full pelt waving and smiling the whole time, Kev spied a guy in a field about half a mile away waving the biggest wave he could to try and be seen. On top of all this JP had told us over kava the night before he was going to try and push the bus to 120kph that day as there were some parts of the road you could really open it out so whenever we on a stretch of open road he was really gunning it and swinging round corners like there was no tomorrow. At one point he was trying to overtake a taxi on the approach to a corner and just as he pulled alongside another bus came haring around the
bend. Luckily the taxi driver was going very slowly anyway so we slalomed a bit back into our lane but I have to say for a few seconds it was a little bit touch and go. He managed 126kph.
That night we stayed in Volivoli resort, again an absolutely stunning place with an absolutely unbelievable view - which for reasons unknown to me I didn't take any photos of - which was a great night again. More kava, too many high tides, some games and then a few hours at a beachside bonfire with Andy, a lad we'd met in Mango Bay, otherwise known as the human jukebox strumming out everything from acoustic Hendrix to The Kooks into the wee hours of the morning. We even managed to coax him into playing a couple of his own tunes and they're really, really good. I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't the last I heard of Andy Smith. So I didn't get to bed till about 3 that night, but since the bus back to Nadi wasn't leaving till past 12 I had plenty of time in the morning to catch a little shut-eye.
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Maggie Moore
non-member comment
Freddy Minus
Hi Jon Just read all your blogs and up to date. Your writing is just flowing and sounds like you are having a good time. Just keep on following the signs! Take care allmy love Mx