"In a Mana of Speaking"

Last week, an Old Fiji Friend, Tony, sent me a poem he'd written about the fall-out in his life from growing up in Fiji; as one of "the children of paradise" he calls us! I posted it below.

In it, he doesn't do more than suggest a few possible reasons for why we're all kinda different from folk in the rest of the world - and he's right, we are - so I thought I'd cast my mind around our shared past and try to work out how and why we would be this way!

Here are my thoughts and I'd love other Kai Viti Loma to add to it:

Influence 1) We grew up messing around in boats. We did this from, gosh, the age of two or three? Very young, anyway! How many of us had our own little dingy with our own little one-stroke outboard motor, shared with siblings? Or our own little yacht? Remember our P-Class? I've never come across anyone anywhere else who's heard of P-Class yachts! Was it a Fiji-thing? Or, if we didn't have a shop-bought boat, we'd make our own little canoe out of a folded sheet of corrugated iron? Or a bilibili made from roped-up bamboo? So much fun! And we used to be out there on the sea or on rivers all day, everyday, messing about, always unsupervised ... except for the formal yacht races each Sunday at the Royal Suva Yacht Club, when we were forever giving the duty-boat adults a rough time.

Possible Fall-Out: we all share a confidence in our physical presence in the world. It's not exactly a fearlessness, although others may see it that way. It's more that we know our physical limits and what we can actually accomplish, and we do what we know we can without asking permission. Also, we have no expectation that we won't get hurt but know that getting hurt is just part of the process and so we mostly just shrug it off. And maybe we have a faster reaction time, and when something goes wrong, we probably know how to fix it. And we can usually work out how to rescue ourselves when we get in trouble.

Influence 2) We grew up diving on reefs with sharks and moray eels and other killer sea-life from a very early age. No adult supervision there either, although I remember dad used to always be near-by fishing off the boat, and he'd always come and get us if we saw an especially big shark that looked especially interested in us. Although I recall he never hurried!

Possible Fall-Out: these experiences would definitely make us different from everyone else, but how? Mmmm, maybe this explains why we all have a different alertness. Our eyes constantly move across scenes looking for things that may cause us harm. But we don't do it in a frightened panicky way. It's more just a cool-eyed assessment at all times and in all situations, except when we're comfortably on home ground.

Influence 3) Our parents were enormously admirable and busy folk who did great humanitarian or community-spirit things, which meant we were usually left behind with the house-girls. Gosh, there's nothing nicer than being looked after by an older Fijian women! That almost-preternatural calmness! Remember that? And all that deep-seated, to-the-core kindness? That goodness? That outright sensibleness? And remember those wise eyes and how it was like they could look into your soul and know exactly what you needed at any time?

Possible Fall-Out: Is it that we know how to access an inner peacefulness? Or that we all know the enormous pleasures of being at peace? Or being around people who are at peace? But what is definite is that we all love being around older Fijian women! And we always want to know what they think about things because, yes, they really are wise! To this day, I notice how they always know what really matters in every situation and what they think about things is always - always! - exactly the right way to think about things! (Ah, the stories I could tell you!)

Influence 4) Our housegirls told us Fijian stories and passed on Fijian wisdom, and so, through their wise direction and guidance, shaped us on so many levels into functional-Fijians! What Fijians are, we are! Kinda!

Possible Fall-Out: We read and judge people by their Mana! If you don't already know, this is a Pacific Island concept about the energy people give off; the belief that people carry their own history, their ancestors' history, their own deeds around in their energy. You can see it and you can very definitely feel it. And reading Mana is definitely a trait we Fiji-Folk all have in common, although we definitely, definitely can't do it as well as the Fijians can.

On this subject, let me tell you one story to illustrate: when we lived in Australia, I was telling our Fijian neighbour, Clara, how I couldn't stand the teenage boy who was briefly staying with us - we took in at-risk children for a while - because he had such bad energy.

"Be nice to him, Denise. His dad's in jail!'
"How do you know that?"
"You can see it. Just use your eyes."
"OK, Miss Smarty-pants - and know that I'll be checking up on this - you tell me what his dad in jail for?"
"Mmmm, from his Mana I'd say domestic violence. I think his dad stabbed his mum repeatedly in a fight."

And what do you know! I checked! Clara nailed it!

So, from that story, you can see for yourself that Fijians read Mana to astonishingly high degree, wayyyy better than anyone else can ever hope to do it, but, nonetheless we Fiji-Folk all read Mana. That means we don't judge or even notice what a person owns, we don't react to their status, we ignore their appearance: what we do see and judge people on is their Mana!

Influence 5) As Tony points out in his poem, we grew up surrounded by many different races all living in close quarters. We all played together from a young age and so ingrained into us is a knowledge of others' cultures. "A bride wears red!", "A bride is wrapped in tapa.", "A bride changes her clothes a dozen times during the wedding ceremony."; all are as fundamentally valid to us as "A bride wears white." Diwali and Ede, Chinese New Year, all are equally held along with Christmas and Easter because we celebrated all these along with everyone else ... although ... remember how much fun the Fijian contribution to those festivities always was: those bamboo cannons! That throwing flour and water over others! Remember how it would be dry by the time you got home and you'd have to scrub so hard to get it off? Yup, no matter what the festivity I'd usually end up playing with the Fijians. Fun, fun times!

Possible Fall-Out: Race doesn't faze us. We know and appreciate the deep underlying humanity of all people and that others think and feel the same things we do, only often expressed differently. This means we don't pussy-foot around the subject of race and talk about it frequently, often vigorously but never judgementally or assuming we're the ones in the right; we just see it as folks being different from other folks. And we have no expectation at any level that other folk should be like us. We also know that other races and other cultures are vigorous and unfragile, and that that's the way things should be. And we never ever would be apologists for our own race since we see ourselves as simply one race among many, all equally valid (although Banaban Island culture, mmmm!) and we all actually cringe when other western folk do this.

Influence 6) We frequently shared no language in common with the children we played with yet it never stopped us.

Possible Fall-Out: We all learned language wasn't important; just about everything can be conveyed in various forms of Meta-language! And I must say that nothing has stood me in better stead my whole life!

Influence 7) We grew up playing with Fijian kids which was definitely something different from playing with kids of other races. Fijians all possess that enormously adept physicality - probably as the result of at least three thousand years of breeding a race of warriors - and could always do everything and anything, usually on their first try. Oooh, that was annoying! But we would never let our side down and so would try anything and do anything, usually badly, in order to avoid being seen as "Savi and Vulaci!" (weak and white), which was the usual Fijian pronouncement on those new-comer western kids who weren't raised in Fiji!

Possible Fall-Out: Actually, I think this only left us with an enormous admiration for the Fijian people! Damn, they were so good at everything. Annoyingly so. The stories I could tell you!


So that's a start on my assessment on what we Fiji-Born, Fiji-Raised, Kai Viti Loma share in common and how and why we're kinda different from every one who wasn't lucky enough to be "Children in Paradise"!

Please feel free to add to it.

Influence 8) Keith points out that all of us tell stories! We all do, don't we! Guess that's another Fijian-thing we learned as children from when we went to stay with our housegirls at their village, sitting around the yaqona bowl with all the men-folk. Or just sitting on the laps of our housegirls! (Hey, remember how they always smelled of coconut mixed with mokasoi oil! Ylang Ylang, they call it in the west. Gosh, that was wonderful, that warm spicy smell, and to this day I always associate that aroma with a deep sense of peacefulness.)

Influence 9) Lyn sent the comment ... actually I'll post a copy of what she said up here:

"I think another thing we took away from our Fiji upbringing was a distaste and almost ennui for all things mediocre. Growing up in Fiji was almost an assault on the senses; sights, sounds, smells, tastes etc were so exaggerated and became an expectation and a comfort. I think it made us "passionate" about things as well as inquisitive and empathetic. It's almost as if we had been empowered rather than inhibited by our upbringing on our tiny little speck of an island and I know that, for me, "ordinariness" has always been hell boring!"