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A Brief Travel Adventure at a Fijian Village

“Bula!” The Fijians greeted Princess cruise ship passengers as they descended the ship's gateway. “Bula” added the tour bus drivers on the Suva dock. We were to hear “Bula” (hello, to health) often during our one-day port call.

From the ship's Adventures Ashore booklet, I'd chosen to take a four-hour trip, via bus and riverboat, to an authentic Fijian village.

The Rewa Delta Village Tour promised a traditional Fijian welcome, complete with a kava ceremony, and a close encounter with the Fijian way of life. And wear old shoes, the booklet warned, for the ground along the delta can get muddy after a rainfall. That's authentic, I thought.

As we rode through the countryside in the open-air bus on that hot April afternoon, we passed many palm and papaya trees, tapioca and taro plants. The smoky aroma from outdoor cooking fires mingled with the damp, fresh mildew scent of the dense vegetation.

The end of the line for the tour bus was the Rewa River. Waiting for us were motorized tin boats, eight passengers maximum. We crossed the glassy river to the communal village of Nasilai. Fijian men, sporting t-shirts and aloha shirts, waited on the sandbagged river bank to help us ashore.

As we followed the pathway through the village to the meeting house, we passed elevated, tin-roofed houses, surrounded by grasses and flowering bushes. The traditional thatch-roofed bures were destroyed in 1992 after a devastating flood and cyclone.

Four young Fijian men, those handsome Melanesians with a trace of Polynesian ancestry, performed the kava ceremony in the traditional thatch-roofed, open-air meeting house.

First, the men pounded and squeezed the roots of the yaqona plant in a three-foot wide wooden bowl. Then they offered a potion in a half-coconut shell to those of us who wished to try kava, the Fijian national drink. But we had to agree to follow the traditional ceremony: the drinker claps once, then drinks the kava in one gulp, after which everyone claps three times.

Okay, I thought. One big gulp. Yuk. The kava tasted chalky and woody, not worth downing a lot to try to anesthetize the lips, as it's rumored to do.

Then, the party began to jump. Tattooed young men, in skirts of long, fresh plant leaves, urged us to dance. Villagers clapped to the rhythmic drums, while smiling children bounced to the beat. Within a few minutes, the conga line grew to include two-thirds of the visitors, as they snaked throughout the open-air building.

After awhile, we strolled back to the river bank for a taste of Fijian food, cooked emu-style, over coals, beneath a mound of fresh green leaves and flat rocks. The meat dish was a mixture of taro leaf (like spinach), milk squeezed from freshly-grated coconuts, and unexplained chopped canned meat. The tasty dish equaled some fine cruise ship cuisine.

As we ate we talked with some of the villagers. One young mother said she'd left her village behind when she married. Tradition says the husband's village must be the couple's home. A mid-sized boy in his school uniform bounced from one guest to another, eager to talk. This brown-skinned, black curly-haired boy, who introduced himself as Donald, spoke perfect English. Of course, he would, I thought. Until 1970, for over one hundred years, Fiji was British.

“Do you want my card?” he said. The business card had his name, address and title--Boy Scout.

When it was time to leave, the villagers smiled and made Wanakas, thank-yous, for coming.

On the hour-long ride back to the ship, Fijians waved and smiled along the roadsides and from the fields. Unrestrained now, we all shouted “Bula” out the open windows.

Everywhere we went that day, Fijians impressed us with the story, “Little more than one-hundred years ago we Fijians ate foreigners, Ha-Ha. Now we're the friendliest of all the South Pacific people.”

Indeed they are.

Nell Raun-Linde is a traveler and writer who lives in Benicia, California.

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