Fiji

When I was about 6 I got my first passport: my family was thinking of taking an overseas holiday. I was thrilled. Even then I was, apparently dreaming of the sheer number of fascinating places in the world. I admit that my first thought was Europe (hey, as Australians we had a heavily British influence… especially since I grew up watching the ABC, with all its BBC programming)—but the plan was a trip to Fiji. Unfortunately it never happened, and I still haven’t been to Fiji. Though I plan to make it to that corner of the world sometime. So let’s celebrate Fiji Day, and keep your fingers crossed that someday I will realise this first-proposed international sojourn. (My parents went a few years ago and brought me back some Fijian black peppercorns. I’m a pepper-fan.)

From archaeological evidence, it looks like there have been people in Fiji for around 3000 years, though it took until 1643 for Europeans to show up. The intrepid voyager in this case? Abel Tasman, while he was looking for the Great Southern Continent. It took until the 19th century for outsiders to settle in the islands, starting in 1822, and Fiji became a British colony in 1874. (Incidentally, one of my most vivid memories of a lecture from my undergraduate Arts degree was from Robin Grove’s closely reading of a passage of George Eliot’s Middlemarch—part of the passage mentioned “Feejee.” Middlemarch was published serially in the few years before Fiji was officially made a colony, and published in a single volume the same year. Middlemarch was set during the early 1830s.)

After nearly 100 years as a British colony, Fiji gained independence in 1970. Unfortunately after 17 years things democratic rule was tripped up by a pair of military coups. And of course that wasn’t the last coup—the new millennium brought a new coup. Ouch. That was followed up most recently with the coup of 2006, which really occurred after the pressure continued to build after the 2000 coup, and 2005-2006 political crisis. Fiji has been suspended from the Commonwealth of Nations a few times—after the 2006 coup the nation was suspended again, and it remains in suspension. Following the coup, human rights groups such received reports of human rights abuses such as arbitrary detention and torture of critics of the coup into the early months of 2007. Meanwhile it’s reported today that the interim leader, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, seems to be determined to resist any return to democratic rule.

Today’s poem, “Ballet for a Sea-bird,” is by Satendra Nandan, and comes from Nuanua: Pacific Writing in English Since 1980.


Ballet for a Sea-bird

in the blue lightning-lashed sea
the black wave-thrashed rock
entangle, entwine and mock
perhaps some common destiny!

the dark waters rise to fall:
the rock resists, bits crumble;
the waves hiss, boil over, tumble
above it all, a lost bird’s call!

from the green sea it rose—
an extension of the sea foam?
to rest its breast on a craggy home—
the immensity of death still so close!

it wobbles, flutters, loses its hold:
cries, crashed into the marbled ocean
an act larger than its last emotion:
the sleepless sea rocks it in its fold!

but in the cracks of the rock, moss
had seen the bird search for an answer
with the myriad movements of a dancer
touched by another life’s tenderness!

the waves swirl to reach evermore
the infinity of a blind, birdless sky;
only in my heart, the tiny gull’s cry
sings as I scuttle from shore to shore!

—Satendra Nandan
from Nuanua: Pacific Writing in English Since 1980