Unfortunately Joe needed to decline the offer to go with Tom into his village because of her thesis but I said very happily, “Yes, I would love to see your village with you!”<\/p>\n
There is nothing better than getting such a chance to see something really Fijian.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, on the way to the shore, he picked me up with his tender. After getting of at the shore, the boat was kept in deep water with a bigger piece of metal at a bow line as an anchor, and a stern line to a branch of a tree.<\/p>\n
We stopped by at the place where he and the young guys, who he trains on boat work, have their meals. A friendly guy charged over night his mobile phone and offered us a cup of coffee and a piece of scone from the backing tray. We declined because we wanted to go to the village and took off. When we reached Lami, the next village, Tom recognized he forgot his phone. Thus, we jumped a taxi, went back, got the phone, and his friend who offered us coffee and scone, came with us. Back in Lami we bought a few packs of candies, Tom wanted to give to kids.<\/p>\n
Then we took another cap to Suva’s bus terminal where we changed to a mini bus. “They depart as soon as all seats are occupied”, Tom explained. Passengers carried all kinds of things they bought in town and helped each other with placing these things in the mini bus not having really space for load.<\/p>\n
Then the bus took off. On the way to Sausori the bus stopped stopped scrambling times to let passengers get off. We got off in Sausori to change the bus.<\/p>\n
Right at the beginning of the town Tom explained the story on how the place got his name.<\/p>\n
‘A young boy and his “sau” which means “grandfather”, stood close to a tree with bats. The boy threw a stone, which bounced back from a branch and hit the grandfather. The boy apologized and said “grandfather, sorry” which translates into Fijian to “sau sori”, which gave the place the name “Sausori”.’<\/p>\n
Since Tom wants to publish videos about himself and Fijian culture on Facebook, he asked me to take a video of him explaining the Sausori story. I took the video. It was the first video of the day, more should follow.<\/p>\n
We walked through the town towards the bus station. A very normal town with simple shops and street sellers, all kind of people with friendly “bula” greetings. Just before the bus station, Tom went to a street seller and we bought some wraps filled with boiled potatoes, and juice to quench our thirst. While eating the wraps we walked to the bus station. As these busses are running cashless, Tom charged his card at one of the charging booths pretty solid built to make them safe. Although it’s difficult to imagine that these friendly Fijians burgle somewhere. However, reality seems to be different. Unfortunately.<\/p>\n
Then we left Sausori with the bus to our final destination Nakaile Village. After a while it stopped directly at a river. Here people get off to be picked up by small boats. A common way of traveling along the river.<\/p>\n
We finally got off shortly later in the middle of nowhere. A sign said “Nakaile Village Stage 3 Road”. We walked the rest of our way to the village.<\/p>\n
When we passed one of the first houses on the right sight a call came out of it. A former fellow fisherman, who was with Tom on Canada, recognized and called him. They greeted each other very warmly. Tom explained me about him and that he had, while working in Canada, a brain cancer surgery in the US, and just recently another surgery in his stomach area in Suva. Tom asked me for the next video and I recorded what he wanted to say about his former fellow fisherman during their time in Canada.<\/p>\n
We continued walking into the village.<\/p>\n
At one rather big house there were, visible to me, about 8 children. It seemed to me that in that place 2 – 3 families are living. Tom gave the children of the candies we bought and kept walking to the river. That spot there was important to him and I understood that it had to do with his childhood in the village. Another video was taken in which he explained about the river and the fields.<\/p>\n
We went back into the village and again people recognized him, came out of their house to welcome him. Videos were taken and we continued. We also walked to Tom’s parents house. It is empty since his parents passed away. I felt that Tom’s heart wanted to see the house but not to go inside.<\/p>\n
Tom also paid respect to the ‘head of the village’ but he wasn’t there.<\/p>\n
We finally reach a house of a cousin of Tom. About 2 – 3 families just finished lunch outside on the terrace sitting on a palm tree mat, the typical ‘furniture’ to sit on and even lay on.<\/p>\n
Immediately Tom and I were invited to eat although they just finished. We took off our shoes and sat down on the palm tree mat.<\/p>\n
A very young lady, with an incredible smile, moved the remainings towards us, gave us a plate and spoon, and asked us to eat. With no idea about Fijian eating customs, I watched Tom carefully and did what he did. I had a very delicious Fijian meal combined of real Fijian cuisine and one dish was Fijian-Chinese fusion.<\/p>\n
I had to take two more videos in which he explained about the people around us. Being too focused on taking the video I did not really understand what Tom explained.<\/p>\n
I learned in this village that these people are very rich in happiness; it’s something money can’t buy.<\/p>\n
After having a good time with these people we left for going to Tom’s farm. It was quite a distance to walk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Unfortunately Joe needed to decline the offer to go with Tom into his village because of her thesis but I said very happily, “Yes, I would love to see your village with you!” There is nothing better than getting such a chance to see something really Fijian. On Sunday, on the way to the shore, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-16"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}