Sunday

Suva Fiji

If you ever come to Suva then don’t come on a Sunday morning; the whole place is closed down; the streets look like someone is making a film about the end of the world, and they are filming the part where all the people have disappeared.

At 9am there are three places of business open; Prouds (as in Australia), Jack’s Souvenirs (with a genuine Fijian warrior located on the footpath outside waving a spear at pedestrians to encourage them to step inside the shop) and McDonalds. Otherwise the streets are empty except for passengers from the ship, a few enterprising traders who have set up shop on tables on the footpath just outside the dock, and taxi drivers touting their services for guided tours of the delights of Suva and environs. The traders are selling such must have items as wooden crabs and fish, grass skirts made out of man-made fibre (they didn’t have my size) and a variety of wooden masks, spears, clubs and various sizes of cannibal forks (say what you like about cannibals but the Fijian cannibals weren’t messy eaters).

I was last here in 1973 and many of the fine colonial buildings that filled the city at that time have been demolished and replaced by medium rise (5 to 10 floors) buildings that are uniform in their ugliness and unsuitability for a tropical climate. Next to the waterfront park a multi-story car park has been built and then painted bright red to make it stand out even more, so that no one can miss this town planning disaster.

I saw the hotel where I stayed in 1973 with my school friend Christian and his parents. They lived on the other side of the island in Lautoka and we visited Suva for a couple of days of sophisticated living. In those days I think the hotel was called the Travelodge, now it has fallen on harder times and looks like the sort of place you’d stay if you were hiding from the police. At the same time we were there the contestants from Miss South Pacific 1973 were also staying there. The word to describe each and every one of them was ‘plain’, or you might have gone as far as ‘nice personality’. An unkind person might have said that they could have easily conducted Mister South Pacific using the same group of contestants.

Christian’s father Joe was at that time the world’s leading sugar cane geneticist. When he received reports or letters that he felt lacked sufficient intelligence then he would stamp the offending document with the word “Bullshit” in large red letters and return it to the author without further comment.

I went ashore again later in the day and there were more shops open but none to interest the discerning shopper.

On the waterfront road I watched a couple of men painting road markings with paint brushes and tins of paint. A small crowd of passengers from the ship also stopped to view the activity (and to take photos) and then the workmen realised that they were being watched and became very meticulous with their brush strokes.

Another group of workmen taking advantage of the light traffic conditions were filling in cracks and holes in the road with liquid bitumen. You’d be very upset if you stepped on this before it had completely cooled because you’d never get the black mess off the bottom of your shoes. I was very careful crossing the roads after I saw this crew in action.

All the passengers who walked around Suva today will be very tired tonight. This is because you couldn’t stop walking without someone wanting to engage you in conversation and sell you a tour of Suva by taxi, give you an introduction to a relative who has a shop nearby or just to waste some of your time. Their conversation starters were sometimes novel; an almost toothless elderly gent, in a pristine safari suit of the type not seen outside captivity in Australia since the 1970s, was sitting on  bench on the harbour front and said to me as I walked past him “my sister in Melbourne is married to a doctor”. Maybe he thought I looked like I needed long distance medical attention. Maybe he thought he’d put to rest immediately any ideas I may have had about asking him if I could marry his sister. Maybe all the polyester in the safari suit had affected the balance of his mind. Maybe all of the above.

I had the same taxi driver ask me three times within two minutes if I wanted to take a tour in his taxi. He was driving around the block in one direction; I was walking around the block in the opposite direction. If I’d been thinking a bit more quickly I would have told him that I didn’t want a tour but that there was a man around the corner who wanted one and then told him the same thing when he pulled up next to me again. I could have had him driving around that block until he ran out of petrol.

The local buses overcome lack of air conditioning in a sensible way; they don’t have any windows, just roll-down plastic sides for when it rains.

We sail in 30 minutes. In a car park about 200m across from the ship and beyond the stacks of shipping containers lining the port area there is a Sunday afternoon religious service in progress. A stage was being set up this morning as the ship docked. At lunchtime hundreds of chairs were set up in front of the stage. Unfortunately the chairs were set up so they would feel the full force of the afternoon sun. All of the audience, except for about 20 people, are standing in the shade of two large tree and the chairs are being moved, a couple at a time, from the sun to the shade. I can clearly hear the speaker; he speaks in a torrent of words when he follows his prepared text but when he deviates from this line he seems to talk himself into a corner. He then takes a deep breath and plunges back into his prepared text, ignoring any contradictions or confusions that he has caused. The speaker is standing in the sun and he is wearing a coloured shirt with white collar and cuffs, such as those that Christopher Skase, the unlamented  Australian corporate crook from 1980s and 90s, used to favour. Whenever I see someone wearing a shirt like that I know that I can’t possibility take him seriously.

The people in the cabin next door are on their balcony and I can hear them, but not see them, clipping their toe nails. The cadence of the clipping seems to be in time with the cadence of the preacher who is now getting very worked up. Those nail clippers are going like a machine gun as the preacher is hysterically telling the crowd what they will face on Judgment Day; hopefully it’s not having to listen to old people clip their toe nails.

Next stop is Vanuatu on Tuesday.