Koreans are NOT Spartans!

Back when I used to teach high-school history, another history teacher, Chris, left mid-year and I took over her senior classes because they couldn't find a suitable replacement. It wasn't a perfect fit because Chris was a Material Culture Historian trained as a museum curator whereas, as you know, I'm a Social Historian, which means I look for history in narrative - teasing out the threads of world-view from the stories a culture tells themselves - and really didn't know what someone with training like Chris teaches.

However, normally whenever I've taken over someone else's classes, I've looked through their planning and thought "Oh Lordy, what a moron!" because the work set is usually so puerile and shallow ... but not so with Chris.  Her work was entirely delicious and I felt the urge to cry out "I am not worthy! I am not worthy!"

And best of all that work was the first assignment the Year 12 kids were to be given:  this wonderfully messy research project called "Who were the Spartans?" wherein Chris's huge boxes of data on the material culture of the Spartans AND all the surrounding civilisations were distributed to help the class decide.

As you know, Spartans were not Greek.  They were an unknown and landless people who arrived in Greece looking for a homeland and were given some unused Greek Peninsula in exchange for the promise of help in all future Greek battles ... so because they were unknown Chris wanted this class to decide where they'd originally come from.

Interesting, right?  And, oh boy, it was fun.  It was all new to me too so I was in there with the kids, sitting on the floor and rummaging around, discussing and arguing every point of culture and the three months it took us to work our way through those boxes was sheer joy, and today there's probably very little I don't know about the Spartan "Papa Culture" and "Mama Culture", and I could go on forever about how it was very clear that they were very much like the Straits Chinese of the Singapore region: an unsuccessful 'marriage' of two entirely different peoples with completely different cultures, beliefs, values, ways of doing everything and entirely different world views, who had surmounted the problem by giving up all attempts to blend and simply assigning girls to one culture and boys to another and for the most part living two entirely separate lives.

And this was the Spartan way too: a Patriarchal Tribe and a Matriarchal Tribe who found their way forward by not trying to blend in with each other ...

But to cut to the chase, from going through all aspects of the two Spartan material cultures and those of all the surrounding civilisations, I am convinced that the Spartan "Mama Culture" was the remnant population of Amazon women (there is too much proof that they existed for any valid suggestion these women were simply mythic) from up there near the Black Sea ... and I'll pretty much put money on the Spartan men being Scythian, another people also from up near the Black Sea.

And wouldn't you give anything to find out their story?

However, there was one little niggle in all this surety:  Korea!  There were simply too many meshes between the Spartan Papa Culture and aspects of the Korean culture - stuff like courtyard houses, tumult burial mounds and votive offerings - and ... well, that was something I've always wanted to check out.

Therefore high on my list of what to do in Korea was checking out the Korean Emperors tumult burial mounds because Scythians too built tumult burial mounds for their leaders.

I should throw in the photos here, but instead I'll do a separate post with photos later so you can check it out for yourself. But in the meantime I can tell you that the park containing the Josean Emperors' burial mounds is highly efficient and organised and even before you get to wander around the tumults, there's this gorgeous little Korean-style house where they show films on how these burial mounds were built thus even before we got into the park, I knew that the Koreans and Scythians built their tumults in an entirely different way and thus the fact they both did so was simply a co-incidence.

Thus too is the fact that both cultures did votive offerings in water ... although I think I've decided that Koreans didn't do votive offerings and that this is all a simple misreading of Korean archeological discoveries, but I'll do another post on that as well.

So our visit to Seoul was deeply rewarding in this regard and I now can say with 100% certainty that the Spartans were NOT Korean.

Cheonggyecheon Stream, Seoul.

When Keith surprised me with these tickets to Seoul, I felt a surge of sheer joy and was instantly "I MUST SEE THE SEWER!!!"

Waste disposal is not what you usually most want to see in any country but without a doubt the most inspirational and exciting thing that's happened in world in recent times would have to be Cheonggyecheon Stream in downtown Seoul.

If you don't know about this, what happened is that someone in South Korea went down into an old sewer (that had once been an ancient stream and which hadn't been used for sewerage purposes since they stopped pumping sewerage into Han River back in the 60s) and found - dah dah! - that the water had returned to clean, fresh and potable.

 The water quality!

Isn't Mother Nature so forgiving.

Anyway, they found it so inspirational, they uncovered the entire length of the old sewer, gussied it up and gave it as a gift to the people ... and the people just love it.  Those 5.3 miles of stream are filled with people day-and-night.

It was our first stop on our first day in Seoul and was everything I hoped it would be and so much more ... like how cool is it that this ancient sewer was built a long time ago using bits of even older temples and palaces and other blocks of carved granite:

 Look at those carvings. 

Could there be anything so cool!

I've already told you about how Hong Kong heard about this and immediately went down to test the waters in our own old nullahs (our word for old streams used for sewerage) which had also not used since we stopped pumping our sewerage into the Harbour also back in the 60s - and discovered - dah dah! - that again the water is fresh, pure and potable, and thus is currently in the grip of Seoul's inspiration and we are currently uncovering our own nullahs, greening around them and returning them as gifts to the people ... and aren't the people grateful.  All the old men are out daily fishing, and old ladies do their Tai Chi on the banks and everyone is saying things like "I've lived here for 60 years and never knew that life could be this wonderful."

Hong Kong Island has uncovered eight nullahs so far and have another 16 to go, so life for us will become increasingly pleasant as more and more of us are given back our pleasant places to walk.

So everyone who doesn't live in Seoul or Hong Kong, please also find inspiration from this and discover what's happening with your own disused sewers ... and perhaps you too will find yourself with a pleasant addition to your town or city.

Korean TV

When traveling, I can never resist taking in the local television usually because it's just so unusual and so frequently quite bizarre.  South Korea is no exception.

From what I could see, there are two English stations - one the BBC and the other a Hollywood movie station - plus they appear to have a French station, an Indian station, a couple of Chinese stations. The rest are Korean.

Korean TV is great; endless channels playing Pops in Seoul, and an entire channel devoted to Games of Go, which was like watching paint dry, but our very favourite show was definitely ...

... Korean Top Gear.

We watch the English version of Top Gear every week in HK and both of us adore it, and seeing it in Korean, even without subtitles, was an absolute joy. Neither of us could stop laughing, particularly at how right the three Korean hosts got Jeremy, Hamster and James.  In fact, the Korean Jeremy got British Jeremy's entire schtick down so pat that it was a joy to watch ...

 Look at that smug "I have a secret stiffy" smile.

Where have we seen that before?

 ... even those things that Jeremy Clarkson does that we'd never noticed before, like the way he fondle-taps the steering wheel.

And when Korean-Stig came on ...

... we were falling about laughing.

But then the helicopter crashed!

Seriously, the helicopter crashed.  Korean James Mayes was seeing if a Corvette was faster than a helicopter so they were racing ... and the helicopter crashed.

Let me see if it's on youtube, because I can't see how it wouldn't be:



That most certainly stopped our laughter. 

And after that we weren't game to watch any more Korean TV and switched over to watch BBC where we knew exactly what we were getting.

The Josean Emperor

Back in the 7th Century AD, The Josean Emperor was looking at the Chinese signs on his palace and said "It's so wrong that we use the script from another nation.  We need to have our own." and so went off and in a single afternoon came up with an entirely new phonetic alphabet that is so logical, scientific and so language-representational that it's not just still used today, but also beloved of language experts the world over AND also has become the alphabet of choice for those people who have no written language of their own - like the tribes of Sulawesi in Indonesia - who are worried about the loss of their own tongue and want a record of it before it disappears forever.

Naturally, Keith and I had a great argument over this.  It blew me away that a person, an Emperor, who had grown up learning pictographic script was able to even image phonetics. Think about it: how subtle would your mind have to be that you could think so far "outside the square" as to come up with a phonetic alphabet?  Most Chinese I know cannot even get their mind around the idea of phonetics and simply refuse to believe that the English alphabet is based on sounds, insisting that each of our words is actually a picture of something. Honestly!  Yet this Emperor did it.  Oh my, what a hero!

On the other hand, Keith was saying that Sanskrit is phonetic and if they were in contact with the Hindu world - and I do believe they were - I even have proof - the idea of a phonetic alphabet wasn't new to them.  However, I've always believed that Sanskrit was ideographic and not phonetic ... and so we went on and on about it.

Soul to Seoul!

We both love Seoul.  "Why don't people ever tell you how civilised it is?" Keith said on our second day here.  I have to agree. The city is exceptionally clean, well-organised, well-planned, with fabulous infrastructure, and we've found all the people we've met are exceptionally pleasant and kindly.  It's like Japan only without the underlying vaguely hostile Master Race attitude, and I'd say it looks and feels exactly like being in Sydney, Australia, except we found the Sydney folk most unpleasant last time we were there. The blustery winter winds feels the same as Sydney too, by the way.

Oh dear, just like in Taiwan, there's a multi-lingual keyboard and I keep pressing the wrong buttons and getting Korean script - which I totally love - but it's all so frustrating I'll have to continue this later when we're back in HK ... thus  watch this space.

Back in Hong Kong, however there's a problem because you forget so many things you think folks should know.  Blogging while away, you get so much more flavour and detail.  But here goes:

Coming into Seoul looks so much like coming into Townsville, a town in the north of Australia, that, taken aback, we had to do a quick "Where are we again?" to get our bearings. However the moment we got into Seoul's Incheon Airport there were no doubts that this was NOT Townsville, which has a "make-up on a pig" renovated airport, staffed by passive-aggressive gits who seem to take pleasure in screwing you around, and so counter-intuitive in its entire organisation it only makes sense when you realise their main job is to sell you stuff.  In fact, the best thing that can be said about Townsville Airport is that it's so much better than Cairns desperately desperately vile airport.

Oh my, Incheon is a beautiful airport!  All light and airy, glass and chrome, sane and sensible, with so much of the latest technology all geared up to just one thing: getting you through there as quickly and as pleasantly as possible. Everything is so state-of-the-art, it took us both exactly fifteen minutes to get through Immigration and Customs.  Compare that with Nakita, Tokyo's new airport, which took us six whole hours to get through because, while they had 16 counters to process Japanese, they had only five to deal with the entire rest of the world.

Hong Kong's Lap Kok Airport used to win "Best Airport in the World" every year, however we've lost out for the last few years to Incheon but, take it from me, it is DESERVED.  Everyone should learn from these guys because they get it exactly right.

However, it took over an hour to get from Incheon to Seoul by "Limousine" - which we already knew, thanks to our visit to Japan, actually means "Airport Bus" - but the trip was great: very sensible and quite beautiful highway system consisting of enormous avenues all lined with what looked to us like dead trees, BUT ... oh my, before we left for this trip everyone said to us "Why are you going to Seoul now?  If you wait two weeks it will be cherry blossom season." but that meant nothing to us. However, over the week, when we saw the buds appear and then fatten by the day ...

... and when we saw the first three trees burst into bloom ...

... it was so very lovely we were very sorry we didn't listen.  Those "dead trees" we saw everywhere ...

... were wintering cherry blossoms and the hour-long trip into Seoul would have been absolutely sublime in two weeks time.

That's something for your bucket list, people: Seoul during the cherry blossom season.

However the other notable about that hour long drive into Seoul, apart from the hundreds of miles of "dead trees", is the astonishing numbers of bridges they have.  Everywhere! There's barely a single vista where you don't see at least a couple of these magnificent 'feats of engineering' bridges. Truly, they're everywhere; across the mud flats and across everything can vaguely constitutes a water-way, and even a few which don't actually join anything to anything else and just sit there on river banks being less bridges and more like "Architecture!".

"It's like they're showing off!" I said to Keith after counting twenty-three mighty bridges, each different from the other, on a single stretch of the river.

"No." says Keith.  "I think it's more primal than that?"

"You think this is some deeply-felt expression of something that lurks in their collective unconscious?"

"Yup!"

I had to slap my forehead at being so dim-witted.  Of course Korea would have 'bridge-building' lurking right there in the forefront of their collective psyche: North Korea! South Korea!  A single nation and a single people divided by ideology.  It isn't like North Vietnam and South Vietnam who are two entirely different races that hate each other anyway.  North and South Korea are not just one people but they're actually family, with those poignant border meetings between brothers and sisters, mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, every time North Korea permits it to happen.

So those endless bridges everywhere are clearly an unconscious acknowledgement that South Korea desperately wants reunification, only North Korea won't permit it unless South Korea comes into its fold and South Korea is perfectly content being exactly what it is - a slick, chic, so-civilised, so-elegant, so-rich and clean capitalist cafe-society - and thus won't surrender.  It's all so very sad ... and what on earth are they going to do when they run out of things to bridge?  Or maybe they already have and that explains those bridges that simply sit there on the river banks.

The city of Seoul itself looks very First World and is visually very much like inner and downtown Sydney, with hills of structured gridded main streets - exceptionally pretty tree-lined avenues - lined with mirrored high-rise ...

 

Not a representative photo.

On our last day in Seoul 

the Gobi Desert rolled in 

from the North.

... and tiny winding interesting back streets of low-rise red brick small shops selling interesting things in between nail-bars and coffee shops.

Fabulous infrastructure too.  Beautiful roads, wonderful Mass Transit System, and, best of all, genuinely safe and sane traffic, something virtually unheard of in most of Asia.

But the main feature that makes Korea so different would have to be those coffee shops.  Oh my, you have never seen so many coffee shops in your life.  About every second shop.  Everywhere. And they're all full of people, day and night. In fact, I think you can safely say that Seoulites use coffee shops for every social and non-social function imaginable.  Perhaps they're like the Cantonese and don't like to invite people into their homes, but whereas the Cantonese meet at restaurants for meals, the Koreans meet at coffee shops just for a cuppa.  And they also do their computer work in these cafes, and read books, and read newspapers and pluck their eyebrows and put on their make-up or just sit around and watch the world go by.

But do you think I could find a decent cup of tea?  Oh boy, cafes serving every single type of coffee imaginable but the only tea was Japanese oolong and I detest oolong. It's darjeeling for me everytime.

 Although when I couldn't get a cuppa 

at this Bukchon artist's cafe, 

they offered to make me a Japanese green tea latte 

and it was AMAZING!

And so the hunt turned desperate and it wasn't until the second day we discovered the chain "Tom n Tom's Coffee" made a magnificent cuppa and thus the little one in a backstreet near our hotel became our base-of-operations for the duration.

I'll do separate posts on our different adventures, but what else I should throw into this overview?

Oh, I loved how folks dress up in Korean dress to go about their lives ...

 

....although I did notice that a lot of those had American accents so I'm just guessing that they're visiting Korean-Americans in Seoul to learn about their own heritage and making the most of it.  However, as you'd expect, everyone connected with the King's Palace wears Korean clothing ...

 I meet The Officer of the Guard.

 ... as do random folks you meet on their way to-and-from something Korean-related.

Keith asked this fellow if he could take a photo of him

and the lovely fellow called me into the shot.

My favourite Josean Emperor is there in the background.

And they do do a lot of Korean-related stuff as they obviously have for millennium. Like, that Korean stuff is old; really really OLD. Take a look at this ring connected with some Korean ritual.  How many centuries would that take to make those grooves in that granite?

These grooves blew us away.

And everyone is so gosh darn proud of their history.  Their accepted history that is.  There is also a hidden history that they deny ...

 A "votive offering" found in a Korean well.

You tell me that this isn't Ganesh, 

the Hindu god of New Beginnings.

 ... which I've noticed all over China and Indo-China and other bits of non-Indian Asia; destroyed relics of a past full of Hindu deities.  (In fact, I should do a separate post on this.)

But as far as accepted history goes, you couldn't go anywhere even vaguely connected with something historical without seeing little groups of kiddies clustered around an adult who was telling them all about it ... and whenever you show the slightest interest in Korean history, everyone clusters around to tell you all about it.

And they have great history too.  I loved some of the stories, like the 7th century Josean Emperor ...

This lovely fellow.

A new hero?

... who is such a big deal, I should do a separate post on him.

And I completely loved all those Elderly Korean Power Ladies.  Oh man, the young Koreans may seem vapid - although very stylish and chic and fashion conscious and with the most amazing skin that seems so pure it reflects the light so they all glow - but those Power Ladies were anything but.  Stylish as all-get-out, nth-degree elegant, all noblesse oblige and kindliness ... but with this almost-scary air that they could and did run everything in the country, only discreetly and behind-the-scenes. 

Keith and I quickly began to take real pleasure in them, and whenever we'd see groups of them gathered in coffee shops, in elegant and subtly nuanced conversations, we'd imagine what they were talking about.  I kept insisting they were talking about politics and how they were going to lobby - only discreetly and behind-the-scenes - to make stuff happen, but Keith insisted they were talking about recipes.  Men really don't grasp the concept of how women do power, do they!  Oh, and we both particularly loved their stiletto heels which they still wear into their nineties and decided it was all "You don't take my heels until you prise them from my cold dead feet."

So that's the overview of our lovely week in Seoul.  It's a city I can't recommend highly enough.  We are going back soon, mainly because we couldn't get to DMZ over the border in North Korea because of the rocket launch tensions, and we've both decided we really really want to.  And we also want to see the tunnels that South Korea found, dug by North Korea to send hundreds of thousands of troops into Seoul to destroy the city, and which are now a great tourist attraction ...

... it's just a great pity that we arrived only weeks too early to see the cherry blossom trees in bloom.  And THAT is now definitely on our bucket list.

P.S. All these photos were taken by Keith.  He appears once again to have lost all of mine!

Fly to Seoul, Dance, Dance, Dance, Boom, Boom, Boom, Dance, Dance, Dance,

Keith has just surprised me with a trip away for Easter and his only clue for where we're going is this:



I think we can all work out where we're going tonight, and because I've never been near Korea I've been googling and have decided that these are the places I'm really excited I get to see:

1) Gyeongbok Palace of course
2) Bukchon Village
3) Cheonggyecheon Stream (the old sewer that's currently inspiring HK)
4) Namdaemum Markets
5) Itaewon!

Gosh, I'm excited!!  And naturally you'll hear all about these places when we get there.

Bummer!, just looked up the temperature so I know what to pack, and the weather has been beautiful until today. There's been a sudden cold snap and the temperature has taken a plunge and it'll be between 1c to 10c the whole time we'll be there.  Oh, bummer, bummer, bummer! I've already packed away my winter gear.

Still, I'M EXCITED!

The Swamp People!

With most of northern Viti Levu in Fiji underwater, Molly is currently working in a Nadi Evacuation Centre.  When Jamie told me, all I could do was laugh because, well, Molly is someone who you both do and don't want around in a crisis because she has the most extraordinary ability to turn any disaster into a really great fun experience, and, thanks to the Night of the Swamp People, I know just how well she excels at it.

Molly isn't like anyone else you've ever known and not just because she's unbelievably clever with a general IQ in the 150s and all sorts of strands of even higher beyond-genius-and-thus-untestable in her Multiple Intelligences package. What makes her so unlike everyone else is that she's completely without ambition and simply wants to have fun.  She is also wickedly funny and able to improvise the most exceptional comedy routines that make you sick with laughter. Thus if you met her you'd probably never spot that extraordinary brain that's undoubtedly already summed you up and is already several hundred steps beyond you. And if you're not very bright yourself, you may even watch her in action and think "Space cadet!" but you would be so very very wrong.

Despite doing Sciences at school and being offered scholarships to eight international universities including the Sorbonne she used to work (or do I mean "play") for The Fiji Times as a journalist where she got up to the most breathtakingly stupid-but-wonderful things, including ... gosh, spoiled for choice here ... but choosing only one from hundreds ... going into the Suva Gaol during the 1976s riots to interview rioting prisoners - yes, mid riot - and telling them she had a hidden mike in the champagne bottle she was carrying and having them speak into it.  League of her own, right?

She was beyond anything you've ever come across and you can't tell any stories about her adventures without leaving folks incredulous.  "No one behaves like that." people who don't know Molly always say. However people who do know Molly have stories of their own to tell and the late great journalist Robert Keith-Reid used to call her "The Mighty Moll", designating her a Super Hero Extraordinaire, and he frequently recounted "The Adventures of Mighty Moll" which told of her latest unbelievable deeds of derring-do but under the guise of fiction.  Yup, she's such a natural-born cartoon character, that's the only way he could get away with it.

And I have always wanted to write a "The Adventures of Mighty Moll" film script based on what she got up to during Fiji's first coup because it's all there, a fully fledged adventure/comedy script, and I wouldn't even have to make up a thing.

But I wanted to tell you about Molly and the day the Swamp People came to burn down my house.

It was the year after I left High School and was stalwart in my refusal to go to university, so mum bought me a little house in an insalubrious area of Suva, Vatuwaqa, down by the river.  Mum said the neighbourhood was up-and-coming and that it was good to get in early, and it seemed like she was right because just about everyone in the street, nine houses in all, was building upper storeys and extensions, big-time gentrifying, and mum thought my house too had distinct possibilities for future gentrification as well, because it didn't really didn't look too bad from the road ...

... but mum never looked behind the orchard of fruit trees in the back garden.  The six foot fence should have been an indication of the horrors that lay back there, but mum didn't register that.  To be honest, neither did I. Not until I had to live there. Alone.  Shudder!

Those were indeed the most terrible times. Sure, I was desperately lonely and sad because my parents had moved down to the beach house and my closest friends had gone off overseas to attend uni. and I wasn't too fussed on anyone else, but it wasn't that which made that year so terrible. That was all down to The Swamp People, all disgusting old Indian men in dirty dhotis and the hordes of kiddies who lived beyond my back fence in wooden boxes deep in the mangrove swamp.

Don't feel sorry for them. They were pure evil.  I could tell you so many many stories to illustrate but I won't because I prefer to forget them.  OK, just one story:  being particularly slow-witted, young and very naive, it took me a while to realise the set-up there, over the fence, was a Swamp Brothel where these revolting old men used to prostitute these Swamp Kiddies from about the age of three, but apart from Usha and Shelley - the two little Swamp Prostitutes, about 8 and 12 years old, who seemed cleverer and nicer than the rest - thus I tried to get them out of there - except they were sold off to Canadian pedophiles before I could make it happen - those kids were so unbelievably vile I developed the most desperate hatred for them even greater than that I felt for their hideous pimps.

After several events I prefer not to recall but which slapped me in the face and made it unquestionable what I was seeing back there, I tried to let others know so we could do something to stop it, but no one would believe me, with mum forever saying "Don't be silly, dear. Things like that don't happen.", echoing what everyone else thought, and when I started working on my own, going out there at night to photograph license plates on the luxury cars, I was threatened most horribly by a couple of policemen, and when I tried to make it public was when I discovered just how tight the whole set-up was with certain important people in the Hindi community who I won't name despite them deserving the worst sort of shaming.

So naturally I spent most of that year as a yacht sitter, looking after the yachts of people who had to leave their boats behind in Fiji for whatever reasons.  However there weren't always yachts to mind, so I frequently had to return to my house.  Shudder!

When I was there, I tried to tune them out, no matter what they did, but they'd never let me. And there was one little girl in particular who I hated more than the rest.  She was about 12 years old and I never found out her name but I used to call her Fagin Black-Heart. She was the vilest little sociopath and I'd forever see her torture the other kids and all sorts of stray animals and she ran the littlest ones as her private gang of Sneak Thief Break-and-Enterers, and it was because of her that the whole "burning night" came about.

What happened was that the Fagin Black-Heart Gang frequently broke into my house and stole just about everything I owned, so to keep them - and the hideous old Swamp Men I'd forever find hiding in my closet masturbating while watching me get changed - out of my life I borrowed two doberman, Macho and Tiffany, to scare them off.  However, dammit, Macho and Tiffany were too well trained to bite, so just about every day I'd come home from work to find both dogs in the garden sitting atop members of FB-H gang, and because I don't have it in me to order dogs to bite children, no matter how vile they are, I'd just call them off, all the while having Fagin Black-Heart crooning at me through the fence "You're weak.  You're just weak."  Shudder!

So the obvious solution was to add a bad-mannered mongrel to my pack and that's indeed what I did.  Soda!  A biggish red dog of no determinable breed and with intelligence to burn!  And yes, Soda was indeed the solution because any FB-H or Dirty Dhoti who climbed over that fence was savagely bitten without me having to order it and so it stopped and I was free of them.

Only not for long. Fagin Black-Heart didn't like to be bested by a dog so early one Sunday afternoon, with me right there on the veranda, clearly to taunt me, she climbed over the fence with a burning stake and thrust it deep into Soda's eye socket, then pulled it out to go for the other one.

Stupid girl!  Leaving out a great many details that don't add much to the story, the upshot of it was Soda, as any reasonably intelligent person would have expected, leaped on her and ripped her face off. 

Seriously, her face was ripped off and hanging around her chin. Shudder!

It was horrible, that dangling face and for some reason, undoubtedly wrong, I had the idea that the skin would shrink back leaving it impossible to sew back on unless the ends were held together, so amid all the shouting and screaming, with Swamp People pouring over the fence and barking charging dobermans, neighbours running from everywhere and everyone screaming and useless, hitting at me and stopping them hitting me, with no one helping me, as I tried simultaneously pull Soda off her, all I could think about was that it was imperative to hold Fagin's face back on, keeping those ends together.

However through all this chaotic agitation the most crystal clear memory is Fagin Black-Heart, the only one not upset, looking at me through the most dreadful wound with the sly-est eyes and the nastiest expression and crooning "I've got you now.  I'm going to get your house for this."

But that's the only clear image in all of this. It was pure tumult and I couldn't believe the abject insanity of it all, with lunging, growling, warning-but-not-biting dobermans, and everyone shouting and screaming that they'd call the police and have me arrested or have the others arrested, and how no one, not a Swamp Person nor a neighbour, was talking ambulances or making a single helpful or logical move. But thankfully the noise and mayhem attracted folks from the Fijian village up the road and they immediately arrived in numbers and things immediately kicked into sanity with some Fijians grabbing Soda and hauling him off and away, and others holding my dobermans, and others removing Swamp People from my property and others running to the main road to stop a taxi for me to get Fagin to medical attention.

I have to say that when I got in that taxi with her, still holding her face on, blood finally flowing and dripping down my arm, my plan was to take her to a plastic surgeon I know and worry about payment later, already thinking about how that afternoon's events meant I had to sell my piano because I didn't have a cent to spare. However, she was just so nasty she quickly scuttled that idea. "I'm getting your house. I'm getting my policemen and they'll see that I teach you. You'll see. I get everything you own." 

Yup, she never cried and she never registered the pain she must have been in. Her entire attitude was unbelievable and I realised I was right designating her a sociopath. All that smug nastiness and vicious crooning and I could see despite not wanting to that she was enjoying herself and actually liked what had happened.

I saw red. "You don't threaten me while I'm holding your face back on." I told her. "All I have to do is twist my hand and you'll spend the rest of your life looking like the monster you are." But she kept doing it and I realised I didn't have it in me to twist my hand.

Nonetheless, she made me so angry I discovered I did have it in me to give the taxi driver a new address:  Baily's Clinic!  The free medical centre!  This girl definitely wasn't worth selling my piano for! (I eventually did have to sell it to pay my vet bills for Soda!)

I forget the doctor's name who set up and ran Baily's Clinic.  He was a grumpy old Australian man and we knew him well, and the minute we arrived with me still holding on the girl's face, he didn't ask a single question and indicated we were to skip the long queue. And in the surgery when Fagin Black-Heart crooned at him "You do me properly or I'll get my policemen on you too." he looked at me and said "This child is vile.  Do you want me to sew her up badly or properly?"

I couldn't do it.  "Properly!" I told him.

"You're weak.  You're so weak." crooned Fagin Black-Heart.

And when I eventually returned with her back to my house there was so much more to come: Indian policemen there to arrest me, plus, courtesy of the lovely Fijian village further along the river, Fijian policemen there to ensure that the Indian policemen DIDN'T arrest me.  A true Mexican stand-off which never came to blows but the upshot being that the Indian policemen left and the Fijian policemen didn't hang around long afterwards, following behind to see that their car did actually leave.

And that's when the Swamp People told me they were coming back that night to burn down my house.

"You burn down my house and you'll have to burn me with it because I'm not leaving." I shouted at them.  And the dirty old men in their dirty dhotis made gestures showing that they were completely indifferent either way.

There was no sign of my dogs. As I raced around the garden, calling them, frantic, convinced I'd find them dead, lovely Mrs Shareef called out to me. While handing me a plate of a curry over the lower fence between our two houses, she told me that Frank - who? - had taken Soda, and that someone else I didn't know either had taken Macho and Tiffany to hide them with someone else I didn't know because they feared reprisals.

And there were indeed going to be reprisals. Later, as the sun set I could see them through the orchard back there in the mangrove swamp gathering in numbers, drinking, shouting, screaming Hindi rage, getting psyched up, lighting fires, more dirty dhoti-wearers arriving all the time, so I walked down to the public phone box near the Chinese shop to ring mum to tell her what was happening, hoping she'd be able to help me somehow.  "Don't be silly, dear." she said fondly. "Things like that don't actually happen."

I felt very alone, but I was determined to stay there to defend my house, and too embarrassed to ring anyone else to come help me, I went home and sat there playing my piano, waiting for it all to start.

And just as the last slither of sunset left the sky a taxi pulled up!  The Mighty Moll!  "Hey there." she said cheerfully.  "I hear they're going to pull a Joan of Arc on you."

"Are you sure you want to be here?" I said.  "I think it'll be nasty."

"What?  Go away and not see you burn.  I wouldn't miss this for the world."

She seemed entirely over-joyed at the prospect but I was so entirely moved to tears that she came and that she intended to stay for the duration.

So I made her a cuppa and, in order to avoid any flying missiles, with the lights off we lay on the floor to drink it and spoke in whispers coming up with increasingly absurd plans for how we were going to save the house, but when we heard roaring shouts coming from the swamp and we peeked through the low windows at the Swamp People's set-off, "Ah, Dr Frankenstein, ziz time you haf gone too far! Za peasants haf cried 'Enoff' und now zay come to burn down your castle."  the Mighty Moll said and under the circumstances it was the funniest thing I'd ever heard ... and I started to laugh and from that moment onwards we talked only in Transylvanian accents and did comedy skits and rolled around on the floor laughing ourselves stupid.

They didn't come.  They left but they didn't arrive. For many weeks I didn't understand what had actually happened that night, but slow-witted as I am it eventually dawned on me ... all those neighbours who had those wild parties that night; every house around, nine of them, all with lights fully ablaze and each with about 50 men drinking and carousing in the gardens or on the verandas, and all the Fijian village sitting there, playing guitars, singing and dancing beneath the street lights. "Ve haf all come to zee you burn. Ve haf all long vanted to sing und dance az you go up in flames." said Mighty Moll and that's what I thought was happening that night.

However, these days I know what had happened.  I didn't know any of these neighbours, only nice Mrs Shareef next door,  but still they were there for me, my street of strangers, folks I'd never talked to, who'd only really ever seen me out walking my dogs, and who proved to be the greatest friends I have ever known.

And they were all still there the following morning, all looking very hungover and very very tired, but still they waited until the authorities arrived to sort out the whole mess and the Swamp People were warned off and I was officially told, in front of the Dirty Dhotis, I had done nothing wrong and would not ever be held accountable, and that Fagin Black-Heart would get free medical care provided by them and they were all to not have dealings with me ever again.

And my mother, when she found out, took my house off me saying I was too irresponsible to run a household, so moved in other people who I had to board with ... but who were so generally unpleasant I still spent most of my time yacht-sitting or house-sitting or anything else just to stay away ... until I'd raised enough money to move to Australia to attend university and get started on my life.

But the real upshot of all this is Molly was there for me in such dire circumstances, in such a crisis, in a way that I find unfathomable and which still makes me want to cry, and she was mighty and magnificent and never have I laughed so much in my life as that night when we lay on the floor of my little house, pretending we were Transylvanians and laughing ourselves sick. 

Someone you want in your Evac Centre, yes?

Yee ha!

Still Flooding in Fiji!

It's horrible.  Most of Viti Levu is still under water and we're currently threatened by Cyclone Daphne, like the Weather Gods are on the warpath and determined to do us down. The photos I've been sent just break your heart.  I should show you some:

This is Nasoso where Molly, Colette, David, Jimmy and Mike all live:

Trying to spot their houses.

And this is their road home ...

... and how they have to get home:

 

 And here's what it looked like in close-up, although this is taken slightly further along at Lamaka, you get the idea:

However Jamie assures me that everyone's OK and are currently working at various evacuation centres around Nadi, set up to take in the 15,000 folks who are now homeless.

But how about this shot:

 

 It's especially tragic because I've shown you this street back during the Great Flood of 2009:

And those places where the flood has receded are heartbreaking:

 

That's the worst part of floods; the mud;  having to toss out so much. Poor Julie is currently mourning the loss of her photo albums but I'm mourning the loss of her Pacific Green furniture on her behalf because she had such treasures - the old furniture designed by the genius fellow who ran off to China a decade ago, after being bribed away from us with enormous sums of money, who had absolutely the BEST eye for furniture design I have ever seen, and I mean that on a global scale - and not the too clever-clever stuff they're making now. 

However everyone is still cheerful and I've seen some very funny shots:

 Yes indeed, only can anyone afford it?

 Tell that to the flood!

And several that are so sublime I probably shouldn't post them because folks will want to lift them:

 And here's absolutely the best one that most captures the spirit of Fiji in a crisis:

 

This photo is copyrighted so please don't download it! 

I once had a TV journalist in Australia tell me that the Australian media hates covering natural disasters in Fiji because they can never find anyone to cry for the camera and because people always look like they're having fun.  And it's true, we do, but nonetheless this is all very real and after our series of disasters (the last one the floods back in January - although this one is much much worse) everyone is broke, there is no money anywhere, and because everyone international hates Fiji because of Voreqe ...  

 

 "Our Evil Dictator" out-and-about, 

checking the damage and 

finding out who needs what.

... no one will come to our aid. Nonetheless, Fiji ex-pats are doing trojan work getting stuff donated and Voreqe has stopped tariffs on goods coming in, and Air Pacific is flying stuff to Fiji for free, so we'll get there for sure.  Fingers crossed!