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!