Anyone who knows me more than a superficial "Hello" knows that I spent 10 - 12 years voyaging to the South Pacific about 5 times a year. I traveled to some incredibly remote places you've probably never heard of -- Manihiki, Pukapuka, Rakahanga, the Lau Islands, the Tuamotus including Rangiroa, all the major islands of Samoa, the three major islands of Tonga, and so on.
If I left my heart somewhere, it was in Fiji. I traveled from Suva, the nation's capital, by bus for an hour or two, then stopped at the mighty Rewa River, where I got into a motorized launch -- really a large rowboat with a motor on it. We would go upriver for an hour or two, then climb ashore via a slippery, muddy bank to a place at the foot of some mountains. Either there were horses there, or more usually we simply hiked for about three hours up the mountains to our village destination.
Make no mistake about it -- in doing all this it was as though we slipped backwards in time three or four hundred years deep into primeval Fiji. In some places in the mountains, you could look across the valley at the meandering river, and see giant clumps of bamboo thrusting their feathery fronds a hundred feet high. The houses in the village I visited were a combination of split bamboo or thatched homes. There were no water pipes (the river flowed just a hundred feet away), nor was there electricity. Time there seemed to have ceased and you could easily think that you had slipped hundreds of years in the past.
In one of the villages I visited, the houses were huge, thatched dwellings perhaps forty feet long and 15 feet high. The door into these houses were only about three feet tall. You stood outside the house and proclaimed loudly, "Ndua o!" I do not know the translation of this greeting, but it seemed to me to mean something like, "I am here." If you were welcome, permission to enter was give loudly by someone inside. The three-foot high doorway was short because you would have to be stooping over to enter. If you were an enemy, this relatively defenseless posture would allow the occupants to club you to death.
While these days Fijians do not eat human flesh, and have not for many years, I did meet one old man who told me stories of his youth -- and his cannibalism. Elsewhere I have described an incident involving him in a short piece called "Lunch with a Cannibal."
But I have said enough here to make clear that I shall never forget my ventures into what could have been ancient Fiji. And I have made it clear why one of my favorite stories is by that consummate storyteller and experienced South Pacific hand, Jack London.
The story is called "The Whale Tooth." Read it, and you'll know why I've included mention of it here. While you're at it, read his other South Pacific tales, too. They describe the real thing, the real South Pacific as it was perhaps 80 years ago and as isolated areas of it still are. Conrad once wrote that the job of the author is "to make you see." That's what London's tales do.
If I left my heart somewhere, it was in Fiji. I traveled from Suva, the nation's capital, by bus for an hour or two, then stopped at the mighty Rewa River, where I got into a motorized launch -- really a large rowboat with a motor on it. We would go upriver for an hour or two, then climb ashore via a slippery, muddy bank to a place at the foot of some mountains. Either there were horses there, or more usually we simply hiked for about three hours up the mountains to our village destination.
Around the Yaqona Bowl in the Village in Fiji
Make no mistake about it -- in doing all this it was as though we slipped backwards in time three or four hundred years deep into primeval Fiji. In some places in the mountains, you could look across the valley at the meandering river, and see giant clumps of bamboo thrusting their feathery fronds a hundred feet high. The houses in the village I visited were a combination of split bamboo or thatched homes. There were no water pipes (the river flowed just a hundred feet away), nor was there electricity. Time there seemed to have ceased and you could easily think that you had slipped hundreds of years in the past.
Fijian Portrait
In one of the villages I visited, the houses were huge, thatched dwellings perhaps forty feet long and 15 feet high. The door into these houses were only about three feet tall. You stood outside the house and proclaimed loudly, "Ndua o!" I do not know the translation of this greeting, but it seemed to me to mean something like, "I am here." If you were welcome, permission to enter was give loudly by someone inside. The three-foot high doorway was short because you would have to be stooping over to enter. If you were an enemy, this relatively defenseless posture would allow the occupants to club you to death.
In a Fijian Village
While these days Fijians do not eat human flesh, and have not for many years, I did meet one old man who told me stories of his youth -- and his cannibalism. Elsewhere I have described an incident involving him in a short piece called "Lunch with a Cannibal."
But I have said enough here to make clear that I shall never forget my ventures into what could have been ancient Fiji. And I have made it clear why one of my favorite stories is by that consummate storyteller and experienced South Pacific hand, Jack London.
The story is called "The Whale Tooth." Read it, and you'll know why I've included mention of it here. While you're at it, read his other South Pacific tales, too. They describe the real thing, the real South Pacific as it was perhaps 80 years ago and as isolated areas of it still are. Conrad once wrote that the job of the author is "to make you see." That's what London's tales do.
Should you wish easily to find the text of "The Whale Tooth," you may find it at:
http://readingsandstuff.blogspot.com/
