Loloma Beach, Fiji

For those folk who are googling for the meaning of the Fijian word "Loloma" and ending up here, roughly translated it means "I give you my love". OK, you can go away now!

Had this photo in the next posting only realised it definitely isn't "a throwaway". People need to know about this because what's happening here really is, in the words of Irish poet Yeats, " a rough beast slouching it's slow way ... to be born!"

Here's a shot of Loloma Beach!

Over my dead body
is it known by any other name!

It's the first decent beach outside of Fiji's capital, Suva, about 30 minutes away, and the next decent beach isn't until well over those Serua Hills in the background, so we're talking about nearly two hours to reach those. Therefore this is where practically the entire city of Suva comes - came - to picnic and swim every weekend.

It's also where our beach-house is so this is PERSONAL, buddy!!!

To realise the hideous significance of what has happened to this beach, you need another quick history lesson:

In Fiji, land is owned by the Fijian people collectively and in perpetuity. This system was set up in the very early days of European colonisation, when Fijians first grasped the difficult concept of "selling land". The word vanua is Fijian for "land", sure, but it is also the word for "people", "family", "extended family", "family stories", and "the individual spirit", so they never imagined that those things could be alienated and sold off to another person.

However, the moment they grasped the concept, Latin-reading Fijian princes scurried off to England to read up on Land Law - they didn't trust anyone else to do it for them so learned Latin for this purpose - and came back to put a caveat on all future sales until they figured out their next step ... which was that King Cakobau's smartest grandson, Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna - who spoke and read Latin and English fluently - hied himself off to Oxford University to become a land lawyer, and, once that was done, came back to Fiji to set up a Land Trust so no one could ever again get their hands on Fijian land/family/stories/spirit!

Ratu Sir Lala is today known as The Founding Father of Fiji, and the beauty and wonder of his accomplishment can NEVER be forgotten! Just you remember that, Fiji!

And I'd like to remind everyone too that this Native Lands Trust is protected by the Constitution of Fiji. No arguments! No wiggle room! If you want land in Fiji, you lease it like everyone else! Fiji has land leases of up to 99 years, so why the fuss?

Yes, Fiji indeed has some freehold. 3%. It's the land sold off "legally and in good faith" before the caveat and before Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna did his stuff! However, that freehold is so rare that today it's worth zillions ... and, besides, a lot of the European plantation owners, who are leaving Fiji since the bottom fell out of the copra market, gift their Freehold back to the Vanua who used to own that Vanua - Fiji gets to you that way - so there's less of it all the time.

Here's also what you need to know: LOLOMA BEACH IS NOT FREEHOLD!!! It is Native Trust, as are all the beaches and banuves - land immediately beside the beaches - in Fiji. Protected by the Constitution of Fiji is the simple fact that all Fijians - regardless of race - must have free access to the waters around Fiji. "We regard this truth to be inviolate"!!!

Our beach-house is right behind the banuve, just off to the right in the above photo. And yes, it is freehold, but that's because Fijians, very early on, sold it off willingly as the land is a Bure Lute - a place where they believe spirits enter our world from the Underworld - and no Fijian could imagine anyone wanting to own or live atop such a thing! (Our place in Tamavua, on the hills above Suva, was also on a Bure Lute!) And yes, Fijians are right, because creepy stuff happens all the time, but, you know, what can you do!!! There's a price to be paid for doing these things and it isn't like we weren't warned! (We Murphys also do a fine line in ignoring stuff!)

However, this isn't about us. This is about Loloma Beach. And what happened was that a "Hollywood Hero!" - my dad's name for him - won't tell you his real name because you probably have heard of it - bought Loloma Beach. Yes, didn't lease it! He BOUGHT it!!!

Although I won't tell you what it is, he changed the area's name into some weird language-fusion word he seems to think means "New Spirit" (which, considering how sinister and dangerous his long-term plans appear to be, bodes well for no one) but which actually means "New Spirit-Protector of the Fijian People", which, surely - and I mean this with the greatest malice possible - will come back to bite him, and hopefully hard too! And then he cut down all the ancient stands of rare buttress trees on the banuve and divied up the land with the plan to sell the lots off to other rich Americans as FREEHOLD.

I don't know what nasty connivance Hollywood Hero used to get this land, but it definitely wasn't legal and definitely wasn't Constitutional, but nonetheless, he got his nasty hands on it, and the sale seems to be for a huge area too, from the hills behind right down to the sea, and which somehow included our land as well.

And then he tried to force my father off our land.

We all laughed. You have to know my father to realise why it was so funny. "Hollywood Hero" played a Manipulative Machiavellian Monster on the small screen, but ... my dad was the real thing! Trained by Jesuits at their best school in Ireland, St Malachys, dad was a scholarship boy, acknowledged as the smartest kid in Ireland - won every award every year, and he was up again Cahal Daly too - and with the most brilliant brain, but ... you know ... dad, well, used his powers for good, sure, but also for evil because ... ummm, dad enjoyed nothing better than making grown men cry.

Dad was a "man who saw true", yes indeed, but he had a way of gathering up that truth and forging it into a knife that he plunged repeatedly into your heart. But there was more. Dad's father was a famous Irish stage actor and dad very definitely inherited "the voice", and, boy, that was some weapon! It could do anything! He could make you laugh, he could make you cry, he could make you fall to your knees in abject grovelling, he could sway a crowd, and honestly, when he got angry, he'd lower his voice and that pitch would freeze every molecule in your body. Just like a tiger can! Back in British Colonial days, word among dad's bosses in The Colonial Service was "Don't take Denis Murphy on! Don't even try!" and so he was pretty much left to do whatever he wanted. Fijians even believed he was the reincarnation of The Eel God, such was the power of "the voice"!

Oh yeah, and when Gregory Peck was in Fiji making "The Dove" he heard dad talk and from then on it he was all "Oh, that voice! That voice! What I wouldn't give to have that voice!" (Sorry, Mr Peck. There is only one Reincarnated Eel God on the planet at any time and, for your lifetime, that was my dad!)

So there you have it! A Jesuit-trained Manipulative Machiavellian Monster up against A Hollywood Machiavellian Monster! Can you guess the outcome? Three forays Hollywood Hero made against dad and each time - every single time - that whole Hollywood persona unravelled and he was reduced to a grovelling, blubbering wreck. Dad totally got to hang on to his land, no question! And the villagers up the road got to stay as well, as well as everyone else who has leased land in the area. Dad had him beat, like bigtime!

But then, most likely to get back at dad, Hollywood Hero built a massive wall behind the banuve, cutting off all access to the beach for dad and everyone else too. Illegal and Unconstitutional to boot! We thought dad would have that one defeated too, quick smart, but around then was when dad had the accident and hit his head and was never the same, and so ...

Well, then the Battle for the Banuve was on and things started to get weird, and the upshot was a bizarre and unfathomable piece of legislation that P.M. Qarase tried to pass - retrospectively making it OK for Hollywood Hero to keep his wall - that would, in defiance of the Constitution, make all the beaches in Fiji freehold and thus available for sale and to permit Hollywood Hero types to build walls to shut off access to Fiji waters ... and so, yup, Varaq Bainimarama, the head of Fiji's army, had this current coup to stop this piece of legislation going through ... and things have been haywire ever since!

Politics in Fiji is a dangerous game, so I'm not playing, except one does have to ask who on earth would want that legislation? Who was behind it? It doesn't serve the interests of Fijians in any way shape or form, so who is there in Fiji, in a position of power, who is so willing to screw over the Fijian people - of all races - in this way? What on earth is going on?

And the question one really does have to ask? Why the hell does everything Americans touch turn to crud? What the hell is wrong with that nation that they have to be so downright and ridiculously dangerous, even when they imagine they're doing something good! But, like, what can you expect from a people who keep rewriting world history to suit their own purposes! (Note to Americans: America is not the oldest democracy in the world. Greece was! Neither is it the longest continuous still-surviving democracy in the world either! That feat belongs to Iceland! Although, umm, one does wonder how much longer that will survive!) I think the rest of the world should gang up on them and force these dangerously stupid people to stay in their own country and just leave the rest of us alone!

But this is meant to be about Fiji! A wall in Fiji! But it's not just a wall, folks, it's "the thin edge of the wedge"! Once the beaches go, it's only a small step to selling off the rest of the land ... and the family and extended family and the stories and the individual spirit that goes along with it! The simple fact is that the ONLY reason the Fijian people have held together so well is that they have kept Na Vanua! Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna gave this gift to Fiji and the Fijian people and no one should ever, ever, ever even think of giving that away.

Remember your Yeats, folks. "Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world and the blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is lost!"

IT ISN'T JUST A WALL!!!