Sorry for the blog double up – I have a bit of a backlog and am sending them all now that we have a bit of downtime.
Our jump off point to the Yasawas was Kia Island – a little place where I learned a lot. The island is broken up into three villages, the largest boasting just over 100 people and the second largest, Eakau village, 80. We spent just over a day in Eakau village and I was really struck by the people there. They have so little materially, but they are happy and healthy, grow and catch all their own food, collect rainwater and make the most of the resources all around them.
A local boy called Valance, who wants to be a teacher when he grows up, told Paddy and I all about the island’s resources – the ocean, the land, the weather. He asked us for a ‘blue pen’ (a ballpoint) and was absolutely rapt when we said we would bring him one the next day.
A group of us visited the school in Eakau and donated some books we picked up from the Opua yacht club, courtesy of Opua primary school. We mentioned to Valance the night before that we had books and he rushed straight up to meet me as soon as we arrived, hopping from foot to foot in excitement. I divvied up the books I had among he and his friends and we made a group presentation of the rest to his teacher. I have never seen kids so enthusiastic about books. They were just old school journals with short stories and poems (mostly from the 80s and 90s) but they pored over them like teenage girls with a Dolly magazine. The few ballpoint pens I gave Valance drew still more excited cooing, which gave a stark realization of how much we take for granted.
At the school we were treated like celebrities with all the kids wanting to shake our hands. It was a very strange feeling. A little sad because we have so much and they so little and amazing that we could give them so much pleasure just by turning up in their village. There was no feeling of jealousy or bitterness over the ‘rich’ foreigners – their pleasure at having us there and their interest in who we were and where we came from felt absolutely genuine.
They were also so proud of their village – constantly asking us what we thought of it and beaming when we told them how lovely it was. They have a lot to be proud of too. It is one of the nicest villages we have seen so far. It is beautiful and clean and really tidy. There is not a scrap of litter anywhere, which is a far cry from any of the places in the islands we have visited so far. They don’t have much, but they really take pride in what they do have.
I also have a new best friend – a 20 year old girl also called Anna. She was so taken with the fact that there was another Anna on the island that she pretty much latched herself to me, calling me her ‘nameshake.’ She went to secondary school in Labasa but decided to come back to the village after three years because she didn’t like it. She told me she didn’t want anything other than to stay on the island and that she was really happy there, which I thought was quite amazing. We wondered how the village managed to keep its young people once they were sent away to secondary school, but Anna tells me quite a few come back. It does make you think really. We westerners have so many options, so many things to do and places to go, yet there is so much discontent. We have so much but we always want more, we get bored and unhappy so easily. I guess our lives are much more complicated in a lot of ways, but here you have a group of people who have land, food, a beach, a school and not much else and they seem so damned happy. I am actually a little bit jealous in a way – I wish I could be like that.
The villagers showed Diane and I where they grew their food and a local girl clambered up some trees with a big stick to knock us down some fresh papaya which we bought from them. Each family has their own garden plot for food and the trees – like papaya and bananas – are communal.
Our guide to the gardens gave us a sad example of what we have that they don’t though. The very matter-of-factly pointed to a grave and told us her youngest son was buried there. He was born with a cleft palate and died of complications when he was two years old. In many other countries surgery could have fixed that and in all probability that little boy would still be alive. She just seemed to accept it though and wasn’t fishing for sympathy – she even pointed out that he had a lovely view where he was buried. I’m afraid I was a little lost for what to say to that.
A western influence is definitely apparent in other ways though – particularly in their education system. At the primary school, written up on the blackboard along with ‘strive to learn’ and ‘live a clean life’, is ‘always speak in English’. The kids’ grasp of English is amazing – even the tiny ones – but a Labasa local told us that because of this the Fijian language is going into decline. You still hear people speaking it and there are posters in Fijian on the walls at the school but English is definitely the main focus. In a way it is good because it gives the kids more options and opportunities, but there are definitely shades of the way speaking Maori was discouraged in New Zealand schools back in the day and it would be a real shame for them to lose that part of their culture.
On a brighter note our fishing drought has been broken. On its first outing the mighty Speights lure came up with the goods – a 15kg Waloo (Spanish mackerel) which tasted absolutely delicious. We’ll keep you posted on progress but so far the score for Fiji is; Speights can: 1
Fancy expensive lures: nil
PS – I have lots of photos of Eakau village and me and my nameshake which I will post when we have better internet connectivity xx
Photos! Photos! Photos!