Fiji is an incredibly beautiful country, the forests are green and lush, the sea is blue and has an incredibly rich ecosystem. Snorkelling was amazing along the reefs and inlets. The cities and towns are amazingly dirty with little to commend any of them for areas of beauty or architecture. The older colonial buildings are similar to colonial buildings all over the world – one wonders if the British got a little bored with the same style?

The infrastructure in Fiji is in poor shape, years of neglect have rendered the road system poor at best. The main road between Nadi and Suva is a two-lane highway full of twists, turns, potholes and speed bumps. It is not for the faint of heart and probably shouldn’t be driven at night unless in an emergency. Many of the water pipes leak and are ignored, some places end up going without water as Fiji Water struggles to make the system work. Electricity is for the most part reliable in the cities, not so much in the remoter areas. The police force is being re-vamped and corruption and poor practice are being dealt with, but corruption was deep and rank and it will be a long time before past practices are abolished.

The main harvest is sugar cane and last year the price of the sugar cane approached the price of production, so little or no profits for the farmers. Rain followed by drought reduced the crop yield and everyone seemed to suffer. This year (2011) due to some poor planning Fiji is importing sugar from Thailand to satisfy local demand. Next year Tate & Lyle have signed a better contract for Fiji and hopefully the sugar harvest will be better for all concerned.

Politically Fiji underwent a coup d’état in 2000 and is now run by Commodore Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama, who is an ethnic Fijian.

Bainimarama has taken power twice in Fiji’s history, the first time as Head of the Interim Military Government of Fiji from 29 May to 13 July 2000, after organizing a counter-coup to neutralize the ethnic Fijian putsch led by George Speight. He handed power over to the newly-appointed President Ratu Josefa Iloilo. He was instrumental in the rise to power of the government of the Prime Minister, Laisenia Qarase, but his intense criticism of the government’s policy of showing leniency towards persons implicated in the coup later strained his relations with the regime, and on 5 December 2006, he overthrew the Qarase government and announced that he had “reluctantly” assumed the powers of the presidency. He restored Ratu Josefa Iloilo to the Presidency on 4 January 2007, and was formally appointed Interim Prime Minister by Iloilo the next day. The appointment was declared lawful by the Supreme Court of Fiji in October 2008. Fiji’s Commodore Frank Bainimarama stepped down on 10 April 2009 as Interim Prime Minister, after the country’s Court of Appeal ruled the removal of the democratic government during his 2006 military coup was unlawful. President Ratu Josefa Iloilo then announced that he had abolished the constitution, assumed all governing power and revoked all judicial appointments. He reappointed Commodore Frank Bainimarama as Prime Minister. The media has dubbed Fiji a “Bainimarama republic”, a play on banana republic. (Wikipedia)

Bainimarama has declared that there will be public elections in 2014 and he will step down (again) for the elections.

There exists an interesting undercurrent in the relationships between the indigent Fijians and the Indian slaves imported by the British in the 1880s for the cotton crop. The Indians got freedom and have flourished, and now constitute the middle class, a few select areas of the upper class and some of the upper lower class. The Fijian hereditary Chiefs occupy some of the upper class as do many of the white immigrants, and the indigent Fijians compose all of the lower classes. I realise that class structure like this is outmoded but it is simplest to think in these terms for now. The Fijians resent the Indians’ wealth but do not seem to possess the same attitude towards work, planning, and business. At the same time the Fijians seem to be a happy people, content with their lot in life, but I sensed from many conversations with the staff at the resorts and people on the street that this status quo will not be like this for long. Many of the Indians I met were like the spivs of old London and could arrange deals and the like for you, nod nod, wink wink.

My overwhelming impression of Fiji is of the heat and humidity, there are few air conditioners (none in the arrivals area of the airport in Nadi) and you sweat from the moment you arrive. Food is expensive for the imported goods and pretty reasonable for the home-produced goods. Overall I found the people helpful and competent at what they do, but somewhat limited in their ability to think or perform “outside the box”. Fiji is where poor is really poor and wealthy is very wealthy and never the twain shall meet.

I enjoyed my time there and would love to go back and perhaps work on a volunteer basis, but I couldn’t live there long term and I probably wouldn’t go back there for a holiday unless I was able to afford the better quality resorts.

Hope that’s helpful and I stand to be corrected on any and all information included.

The dazzling white beaches, clear warm waters, colourful coral reefs and sunny dry climate make the Yasawa Group an ideal tourist destination, but until recently a visit involved a rough sea voyage from Lautoka in an unsafe village boat – or an expensive seaplane flight from Nadi. Blue Lagoon Cruises has been plying the Yasawas since the 1950s, but passengers aboard those upscale vessels sleep in staterooms and local residents receive few benefits from their presence.

Until the 1987 Rabuka coups in Suva, it was the policy of the Fiji government that the Yasawas were closed to land-based tourism. The long years of military-backed government brought few changes to the Yasawas, although Australian investors were allowed to construct the deluxe Yasawa Island Resort (www.yasawa.com) in 1991 and a couple of village-operated backpacker camps sprang up on Wayasewa and Waya. Since the early 1980s, local families have operated three small low-budget resorts on Tavewa Island, thanks largely to Tavewa’s status as a freehold island beyond the authority of the Fijian chiefs. For decades local church leaders have portrayed tourism as a corrupting outside influence to be kept at arm’s length from village life.

It would be hard to imagine anything more removed from real Fijian life than Turtle Island Resort on Nanuya Levu Island, Fiji’s ultimate hideaway for the US $1,500-a-night crowd. Nanuya Levu has been freehold land since 1868, and in 1972 Richard Evanson used US $300,000 he earned in the Southern California cable television business to buy the island.

Evanson’s Turtle Island Resort (www.turtlefiji.com) became the prototype of Fiji’s current crop of boutique island resorts, hosting notables like Hollywood stars and millionaires. Brooke Shields stayed here during the 1980 filming of the escapist classic The Blue Lagoon.

A self-styled environmentalist, Evanson has planted thousands of trees on his island, and has converted the mangrove forests into tourist attractions by cleverly creating boardwalks. The resort’s food is grown in organic gardens and power is generated using solar and wind energy. Each year a group of volunteer California eye specialists visits Turtle Island Resort to perform eye surgery on needy villagers or to equip them with donated prescription glasses.

Yet for most Yasawans, life has changed little since 1789 when Captain William Bligh and loyal members of his crew paddled past the group in an open boat shortly after the famous mutiny on the Bounty. Even today, most villages are without electricity or running water, and opportunities for economic development are very limited. The Yasawans have felt neglected by politicians in the distant capital, envious onlookers as mini-cruise ships and yachts carried wealthy foreigners along their shores.

In May 2000, rabble-rouser George Speight and assorted thugs seized the Parliament building in Suva, turning Fiji on its head. Speight’s pro-indigenous rhetoric struck a chord in the Yasawas. Villagers from Nacula Island staged a mini-coup on Turtle Island, locking Evanson in one of his 14 luxurious bungalows as village youths rode wildly around Nanuya Levu on Evanson’s golf carts.

When the excitement died down, plaited mats were spread and kava roots were pounded, and over many bowls of grog, Evanson and the villagers came to an understanding.

Rather than killing the golden goose, Evanson convinced the Nacula people that they’d be better off opening resorts of their own and allowing him to continue running his business in peace.

Evanson offered interest-free construction loans and promotional support, and the Nacula Tikina Tourism Association was born. The association’s Web site (www.fijibudget.com) currently describes a dozen locally-operated resorts around the Blue Lagoon in the central Yasawas, including the three existing properties on Tavewa. All resort operators must conform to a strict code of conduct intended to preserve the environment and guarantee acceptable levels of service. Though primitive compared to the luxurious Mamanuca resorts off Nadi, the Yasawa backpacker camps provide basic food and accommodations at a relatively low price.

The mass influx of backpackers only began in 2002 when Awesome Adventures (www.awesomefiji.com), a subsidiary of New Zealand-owned South Sea Cruises, launched a fast catamaran service up and down the chain. You can now depart Nadi’s Denarau Marina on the Yasawa Flyer any morning at 09:15 and be at the resort of your choice in time for lunch. As many as 150 backpackers do this every day and the village-operated resorts on Kuata, Wayasewa, Waya, Naviti, Tavewa, Nacula, Nanuya Lailai, and Matacawa Levu are booming.

Reservations can be made upon arrival at Nadi Airport through any one of a dozen 24-hour travel agencies right inside the airport terminal itself. All of these offices sell catamaran tickets with a bus transfer to the harbour included. Deluxe lodgings and gourmet food should not be expected at any of the Yasawa resorts – yet the friendly people, spectacular natural beauty, and low prices make most travellers overlook these inconveniences.

About the author

David Stanley is the author of Moon Handbooks Fiji . He is also the author of an online guide to Fiji at www.southpacific.org, and you can find his Fijian travel photos at www.pacific-pictures.com .

One of the things I have realised since coming to Fiji is just how many of the things I do and feel are triggered by the weather. Christmas is approaching and yet I don’t feel like it is Christmas. Even though the local department stores blare out their reminders, just as in the northern hemisphere, I don’t have the cold weather cues to do my usual Christmas things like carol singing, baking puddings and cakes, driving around to find holly to steal, and putting up decorations etc. It just doesn’t feel the same. I am more inclined to think, “Should I visit the Village Six cinema or Cost-U-Less supermarket, to spend some time in an air -conditioned environment?”

Events in Fiji

On the local scene this year, following the attempted coup, military take-over and army mutiny of last year, we had the parliamentary elections (with the most blatant vote buying I have ever seen) and the return to racially based democracy. The SDL, representing the indigenous Fijian side of the divide, won the most seats and the Labour Party, representing the Indians, won the most votes. After a short spell of Pajero buying, things have settled down to mutual mud-slinging.

George Speight is still enjoying his time in Nukulau Island prison camp, along with the more senior of his fellow conspirators. A year and a half after the attempted coup and their trial has yet to start. However, he has been kicked out of Parliament for not attending sessions. This is not a great cause for celebrations though, as the electors of Tailevu North will just vote in another clueless thug when the by-election comes around.

For those of you not familiar with the UK, there is no national celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s birthday there. However, here in the Republic of the Fiji Islands (to give the country its full name), her birthday is a national holiday. Marijke and I were fortunate enough to be invited to the formal celebrations at the High Commissioner’s residence. Held in the beautiful gardens, the occasion was a delightful mixture of formal speeches, the Fiji Military marching band, good food and socialising.

We were also invited to lunch with the new Ambassador for the Netherlands, who was making her first visit from New Zealand, where she is based. All the Dutch expats (and their spouses, which is how I sneaked in) were invited. It was much like the Queen’s birthday celebration, but without the marching band and the sunset.

Articles

This year, in response to either press requests or my attempts at explaining psychology to a wider audience, I wrote papers or gave interviews on virtual communities, adolescent suicide in the Pacific region, the psychology of terrorism and the psychology of expat workers. Articles on these can be found at http://www.blue-oceans.com/education/

Family matters

This year we only had one burglary and no muggings, so it was a distinct improvement on last year. We improved security around our house and since then, the only thing that has gone missing is a rubbish bin.

A year ago, Marijke and I went to the Big Island of Hawai’i. It was our second trip to that island and our sixth to Hawai’i. We had a fabulous time. Christmas Day snorkelling with turtles, seeing in the New Year with a Hawaiian band and crashing surf behind them, and scuba diving with Humpback Whales on my 50th birthday, all shared with my ipo – it just doesn’t get any better than that.

It has been a good year for scuba diving – we managed to get out most weekends and we also went up the PADI hierarchy a notch when Marijke and I were both made up to Master Scuba Diver Trainers. When we go out we usually head for the nearby Beqa (pronounced beng-ga) Lagoon, although we also dived along the Coral Coast and around the island of Nananu-I-Ra, off the north of Viti Levu. If you are into diving, you can find more at http://www.blue-oceans.com/scuba/fiji/

One of the people I taught to dive later became Chairman of the Conservative Party in the UK. That is not an inevitable consequence of learning to dive with me, though. We were observed by sharks on one of our training dives – so nothing new for him there then.

One dive trip illustrates cultural differences quite well. Marijke and I were out on a dive boat teaching a group of Fijians to dive. There were also tourists from USA and Australia on the boat. We went to a dive site where a large batfish had become used to being fed by divers and it used to follow divers around the coral heads. After the dive, the tourists were still throwing bread to the fish when the Fijians caught sight of it. Out came the fishing lines (carried for just such moments as these) and in seconds it was being hauled in and clubbed. The Fijians were whooping and cheering their great catch, while the tourists were all looking shocked, but saying nothing because, well, this is Fiji and they are Fijians. Boy, did they complain afterwards, though.

It reminds me of the green turtle that was tagged and released by the University of Hawai’i, that swam a couple of thousand kilometres to Fiji and then ended up in a Fijian cooking pot. The local people have different priorities to visitors.

On the job front, I have less than a year left on my three-year contract with USP and I am looking around for somewhere else to go (my CV is at http://www.blue-oceans.com/ohana/pmfcv.html if you know of anything in community psych). I may be offered another three-year contract here though and, if I can’t find a nice job anywhere else, I may stay at USP. By the way, the Education & Psychology department here is having a really hard time filling a counselling psychology position. If you know anyone who might be interested and who is fairly heat-tolerant, I would welcome hearing about them. There are plenty of other vacancies here too, so check out the job ads at http://www.usp.ac.fj/ if you are interested in working on a tropical island.

Finally, Marijke has had some stunning successes in the garden this year. We have had bananas, mango, coconut, limes, chermoya (called soursop here), breadfruit and others. The supreme achievement was getting orchids to flower in a little over a year.

That’s it from me until next year. Now it’s back to the eternal conflict – stopping ants from taking over the kitchen.

Ni sa moce!

Peter Forster

[Thanks to Dr Peter Forster for sending this to us. If you're keen to find out more about Peter's life in the Pacific, especially loads of fascinating information on diving and beautiful pictures of Fiji and Hawai'i, why not visit his excellent site?]
Peter Forster’s home page

It took us nearly two months to find a place to live, but we eventually moved into a house in the “up-market” area of Domain. We already knew that crime levels in Fiji were high, but it seemed like a safer area, being close to Parliament, Government House (the President’s official residence) and with government ministers and other officials as our neighbours. Like almost everyone else’s, our house has burglar bars on all windows and doors, and other forms of security.

The kids settled into their school, I settled into my job and my wife discovered that the government did not like granting work permits to foreigners. Our main impressions for the first six months we were here:

• Politicians and business leaders of Fijian businesses are very corrupt.
• The educational standards at primary, secondary and tertiary levels are low compared to Europe and North America. Also, the degree to which education is valued varies widely.
• It rains a lot, but when it is sunny, be careful or you will burn in minutes (if you have white skin).
• Litter and pollution levels are high, environmental awareness is low.
• Expats were roughly equally divided on whether they thought there would be a coup against the People’s Coalition government or not. It was a fairly common topic of conversation and I was with those who thought it was likely.
• Fijians say “yes” when they mean “no”, if that is what they think you want to hear.
• Before we got here, people also gave us the “tourist version” of what Fiji is like because they were desperate to get us here.
• Procrastination and incompetence are normal parts of life.
• Just about everyone is racist. Many Indo-Fijians think that Melanesian Fijians are dirty, stupid and violent; Melanesian Fijians think that the Indo-Fijians are greedy, self-serving materialists who should get out of their country, but leave their money behind; both groups think that white expats are arrogant, power-hungry snobs and the white expats look down on everyone else. No-one knows what the Chinese think.
• The lowest temperature it gets at sea level is about 21° Celsius. At that temperature, Fijians feel cold and wear several layers of clothes, while the expats are still in shorts and T-shirts.
• From a scuba diver’s perspective, the undersea world is fabulous and teeming with life compared to just about everywhere else in the world.
• Everything grows fantastically well, from fabulous tropical plants to mould on your clothes, cassette tapes, floppy disks etc.

I think it is worth saying that I use the words “Melanesian Fijians” to refer to the ethnic group that is also called “Indigenous Fijians”. Whatever phrase I use will be considered highly contentious by one or other of the groups here. Many of these people have a nationalist perspective and think that only they should be called Fijians and everyone else should be called Indians, Chinese, Europeans etc, no matter how many generations they have been here. Such people will also object to me calling the other main ethnic group ‘”Indo-Fijians” rather than just “Indians”.

You probably saw the news about the armed take-over of parliament and the hostage taking, as part of the coup against the People’s Coalition government. My wife got caught up in the rioting and looting in Suva on the first day of the coup, 19 May, and it was a scary experience for her and for the Indo-Fijians who were the targets of the personal violence. There were lots of small events that you probably did not see. This includes things like: the complicity of some police in the coup and in the robbing and burning of Indo-Fijian homes, farms and businesses, which went on for a lot longer than the time foreign journalists were here; the immediate emptying of tourist resorts, most of which are still empty; the queues of people outside the foreign embassies, as Fijians of all ethnic groups, although mainly the skilled Indo-Fijians, tried to leave the country. They are still trying and many expats have left or are looking for work elsewhere.

One of the things that struck me as I walked around Suva and watched the Indo-Fijians clearing up the remains of their businesses after the looting, was the indifference of many Melanesian Fijians and their apparent belief that it is okay for them to simply take what they want from Indo-Fijians because they are foreigners, no matter how many generations they have lived in Fiji.

Now that we are nearly a year past the events of May, the country appears more stable and life looks like it is getting back to some kind of normality. However, the attempted mutiny in the barracks a few weeks ago, the on-going economic decline and loss of skilled workers, the increasing levels of violent crimes and property crimes, and the attempt by the interim government to fulfil the intentions of the coup-makers by introducing a wide range of racially biased policies, all point to an underlying instability and tensions that could flare up into large-scale unrest and further attempted coups.

I have been trying to understand what lies behind the coups in Fiji (there have been four or five since 1987, depending on how you define a coup), to see if these conditions can be prevented from leading to the same results elsewhere. Here is my best guess, as an outsider living in Suva, of what I think the reasons are, in no particular order:

• An attempt by George Speight to avoid prosecution for alleged crimes of business corruption. Speight was due to be tried for fraud and other offences, which would have meant about one to two years in prison if he was found guilty. His co-offenders in the scams he took part in, in Australia, received prison sentences of up to nine years.
• The people who invaded parliament are the front men for corrupt Fijians who benefited from former governments and who lost a lot of money, and important jobs that paid well for doing very little, when the Chaudhry government took over in the election of May 1999. The last straw was when Chaudhry announced that he was setting up an investigation into corruption associated with the sale of mahogany (in which Speight was one of several implicated).
• Racism/Indigenous People’s Rights. The rhetoric of these may be different, but the practical effect is indistinguishable. Melanesian Fijians don’t like the Indo-Fijians doing better than them in business and education, even though there are “affirmative action” laws that favour the Melanesian Fijians in many areas of Fiji life. When Indo-Fijians get political power as well, there is a coup. The view of most Fijians, including those in the police, army, judiciary etc, can be summed up in the often-quoted, “We don’t agree with George Speight’s methods, but we agree with his aims and with what he says.”
• I am in two minds about saying this, because I don’t think it justifies what Speight and his supporters did and the man has been treated appallingly and unjustly, but I think Prime Minister Chaudhry himself has an aggressive style and does things that come across as biased in favour of Indians, and thus triggered off resentments in Fijians that a less combative person (Indian or otherwise) would not have.
• Power struggles between various groupings of Fijians, including east against west and chiefs against commoners – the latter being a bit like traditional power against new power.
• A voting system, adopted with the 1997 constitution and used in 1999, that was supposed to be simple, easy to understand and to minimise extremist positions. It succeeded in none of these – quite the opposite in fact.
• The legacy of British colonial power which: brought the Indians here and left them too poor to return when their period of indenture was finished; left most of the land in the hands of Melanesian Fijians and gave the Indo-Fijians leases to work the land, many of which are coming up for renewal about now (and which are not being renewed – many Indo-Fijians are being forced out of their homes and off the land where they have lived and worked for the past few generations); left the Melanesian Fijians as subsistence farmers owning the land and its resources, but with education for only a few chiefly families and not many opportunities for advancement into the positions that the British (and later others such as the Australians and New Zealanders) kept for themselves; and for leaving this cauldron behind at independence in 1970, with only a few democratic structures in place to try and cope with it, when powerful Fijians regard democracy as an alien system that gets in the way of them getting what they want.
• A poor education system, including a lack of education in their own constitution, democracy, human rights and civil society. Many rural Melanesian Fijians still follow what their chiefs tell them, rather than having the education to participate in a democratic system. Many of the chiefs are also uneducated and/or corrupt.
• Many Fijians of all backgrounds spend a lot of their time “out of their heads’” on yaqona (also known as kava or grog), an inexpensive, culturally accepted and widely available drug. This impairs judgement and really doesn’t help the situation.
• A wide gap between rich and poor. When people here are poor, they are very poor – malnourished, unable to afford bus fares to send their kids to school and so on. They also see people who are very rich, driving around in big cars, with things that they will never be able to afford. If you combine this with the perception that there are no legitimate routes out of their situation, this is bound to lead some to crime and will be a destabilising influence.
• Corrupt politicians and high chiefs, who pay lip service to alleviating poverty, indigenous rights etc, but who in practice are serving the interests of a few rich people and help keep their poorest constituents in poverty, supporting their traditional chiefs and thus maintaining the status quo.
• The role of the church is mixed, but is very powerful and so must be mentioned. On the one hand, prominent church leaders spoke out against the coup and were undoubtedly influential in turning some people against it. On the other hand, some churches demand money from parishioners who can ill afford it, but who feel obligated, in order to fund fancy buildings and projects. This money would be better spent on their children’s education, their health and on a decent diet. Some churches make poverty worse not better.
• Last and by no means least, a traditional attitude towards land ownership which gives Melanesian Fijians the view that Fiji is theirs alone, that the way forward is to demand ever higher rents from those who live and work on their land and they don’t need to do anything for those rents, and that violence is an appropriate method of settling land disputes or dealing with anyone who threatens their right to own land and demand rents.

Inevitably, because this is looking at the causes of the coups, it all sounds pretty negative and for those people, mainly Indo-Fijians, who lost everything and who suffered racist intimidation and violence, it really is very negative. For us, it has often been stressful, particularly when gunfire broke out close by, or when rumours of violence caused the whole of Suva to empty out, and it was often hard to concentrate on work. However, when I looked around at possible jobs elsewhere and thought about moving back to cold, grey Europe, to large urban landscapes, to universities which are more like commercial entities than places of education, then I found myself reluctant to leave.

We took a short holiday in the Cook Islands a couple of months ago and that was a delightful contrast to some of the worst aspects of Fiji – crime levels are very low there, so there is no need for all the security measures we need in Fiji; the people are much more environmentally aware so the whole place is cleaner – we were able to simply relax and let down our guard without worrying that we might be attacked and robbed (as we were a couple of times in the streets of Suva). We could happily move somewhere like that, but Europe? Fiji just doesn’t seem that bad yet. On sunny days by a pool, or diving in a blue ocean; walking among tropical plants or just sitting looking at our garden, it can be very beautiful here. As long as we don’t get ill so that we need proper medical care, or we lose our possessions to a burglar, or somesuch, I think we’ll stay in the South Pacific for a little while longer…

Peter Forster

[Thanks to Dr Peter Forster for sending this to us. If you're keen to find out more about Peter's life in the Pacific, especially loads of fascinating information on diving and beautiful pictures of Fiji and Hawai'i, why not visit his excellent site?]
Peter Forster’s home page