It’s hard to say many good things about the transportation infrastructure in Fiji. With regard to getting around in Fiji, it is definitely a third world country. If you want to get somewhere, nothing is easy in Fiji. I’ve had days where I would relish being stuck on a transcontinental flight in coach next to a talkative guy named Del who is a shower curtain ring salesman that likes to air out his socks while flying. As Peace Corps Volunteers, we are not allowed to drive anything…period…not even an outboard motor…so we’re stuck with being dependent on a less than stellar public transit system. However, only part of the difficulty is simply the poor infrastructure. There is also a cultural component to traveling in Fiji that can be far more challenging than finding a functional mode of transport.
One of the most frustrating things about traveling around Fiji is the sheer lack of concrete schedules for any form of transportation, be it ferry, bus, or even aircraft. Even if you hire a private taxi to pick you up you may find yourself waiting around for a lot longer than you expected. There is a “general understanding” among Fijians as to when buses go by or when planes leave, but they never know exactly when a bus goes by a particular stop or even when the ferry arrives. Nonetheless, when you’re on “Fiji time” it doesn’t seem to matter if you get there in an hour or in four hours (or even the same day, for that matter), so it seems to work just fine for the locals. For us valagis who are used to trains, planes, and automobiles designed to run like clockwork; this can be a little more than frustrating.
Take for example a trip Michelle and I were taking to Suva, the largest city on the southern island of Viti Levu, for a Peace Corps training session that we were supposed to attend. We had planned to travel from our village to Labasa, where the flights seemed to be more reliable than in Savusavu, to catch a flight to Suva. Before leaving for Labasa, however, Michelle needed to stop at a nursing station on the way in the village of Nabalebale for a meeting with the Village Health Aides. She had asked the head nurse when the buses go by for Labasa and the nurse responded, “oh, there are buses almost every hour.” We were looking at about 1.5 hours on the bus and had arrived in Nabalebale at about 9AM and didn’t need to be in Labasa until 4PM, so we felt pretty safe about making it to our flight on time.
As the meeting progressed, we watched a bus go by at about 10:30AM and then another at 12:30PM, so it was clearly not “every hour” that a bus went by. I was feeling a little nervous about making the flight, so I asked when the next bus was going by and the nurse said, “I think about 2PM.” This statement was from a woman who works every day next to the stretch of road where the buses go by and waves at most of the drivers because she knows them personally, so why would we have reason not to trust her, right? Oh, how wrong we could be…
If there is one thing Peace Corps Volunteers learn in Fiji, and usually it’s the “hard way,” is that you never, ever trust what any Fijian tells you about when any form of transport arrives, passes, or leaves. This moment was our lesson. Some volunteers use the “law of averages” and simply ask multiple people what time the bus comes and pick a response somewhere in the middle. We were not that well versed in Fiji travel to have considered that method, although it could be as equally uncertain as asking one person.
We sat at the bus stop until 2:15PM when another Fijian told us, “Oh, the nurse was wrong, there used to be a 2PM bus, but it doesn’t run anymore.” We were reaching the point where we would not be able to make our flight riding a bus, but in what seemed a bit of luck, a taxi full of Kiwis (tourists from New Zealand, not flightless birds or fruit) stopped to buy some drinks at the canteen at the bus stop. We asked the cabbie, who was obviously coming from Labasa, if he could pick us up on the return trip from Savusavu. This would be perfect because return cabs are required to charge the same $4.50 USD as the bus and would be a whole lot faster. He agreed and we assumed that, given the timing in a car between Savusavu and Labasa, we would have just enough time to make our flight…but you know what happens when you assume…
Lo and behold, the bus that was supposed to come by at 2PM showed up at almost 2:30PM. Given how long it would take for the bus to get to Labasa, we would barely have enough time to make our flight…maybe…if we took that bus. But we had already asked the cabbie to return and trusted that he would be back by soon enough and would likely pass the bus on a more direct route to the airport. So we watched the bus pull away from the stop toward Labasa in a cloud of dust. (Sigh) We were so naïve…
When the cabbie didn’t arrive by our crunch time we only had one choice left. The canteen owner at the bus stop had a truck he was willing to “charter” to the airport in Labasa. We negotiated from an outlandish $45 USD (about 20% of our monthly stipend) down to $30 USD and he swore he could get us to the airport in 30 minutes, which would allow us to just make the flight. So we hopped in the truck and zoomed down the road toward Labasa. When my watch indicated we were at 50 minutes I just conceded that we were not going to Suva that day, but Michelle insisted that we go to the airport anyway where she hoped to plead to be allowed on the flight.
Unfortunately, just weeks before, Pacific Sun Airlines had instituted a 30 minute check-in policy that they were strictly following (never mind that they frequently cancel or change flights when you are there hours in advance). We watched the other passengers board what would’ve been our flight and take off for Suva as I watched our driver sheepishly slink out the airport entrance. Luckily, there was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Labasa that was kind enough to let us stay with her for the night until we could catch the next flight the following morning.
The thing about the whole situation was that nobody intended to be malicious or dishonest about what they said or did. Time, for the Fijians, is simply relative. Nobody worries about missing a bus because they’ll just catch the next one. They don’t necessarily have to be at their destination at a certain hour or even on a certain day in many cases. Why worry about a specific schedule or time for transport when your own schedule is so flexible? So when you ask someone what time a bus arrives, they don’t look at their watch (rarely do you even see Fijians wearing watches), they just recite this vague notion of when they recall a bus going by the previous day or week. Unfortunately, this vague notion is almost never accurate and certainly not precise enough for us westerners.
In any event, our adventure in missing our flight to Suva was not my only painful travel experience. In early December, I had another meeting in Suva I had to attend. This time, I planned on flying out of Savusavu, knowing personally the schedule for that city much better and feeling more confident about being able to make my flight. I scheduled my flight for 4PM on Monday afternoon, giving me ample time to return on Monday morning from another Peace Corps Volunteer’s site we were going to over the weekend to assist with a project in his village. Unfortunately, on Friday afternoon, as we were on our way to the other volunteer’s site, the regional carrier, Pacific Sun Airlines, called me on my cell. This is the conversation that transpired:
Me: Hello?
Pac Sun Representative: Hello, is this Mr. Cook?
Me: Yes, this is he.
Pac Sun Representative: Yes, Mr. Cook. I regret to inform you that we are rescheduling your flight on Monday from 4PM to 8AM. We are very sorry for the inconvenience.
Me: What? Wait, don’t I get a say in this?
Pac Sun Representative: I’m very sorry Mr. Cook, but you understand that there is only one flight per day out of Savusavu and we are experiencing mechanical problems on one of our planes. Thank you very much for flying Pacific Sun. [click]
I sat baffled for a moment about the conversation that had just occurred. I suppose I should be thankful that they called, but the fact that the decision was made for me was a little more than irritating. Moreover, there was really no other choice at that point as I was forced to take whatever flight was on Monday because of the bus schedule from the other volunteer’s village of Nakobo…which presented a whole suite of problems in itself.
When we got to Nakobo, I told Ben, the volunteer there, what had transpired with the airline. Not at all surprised, Ben said that there was a guy in the village with a truck who could take me back at least as far as the next bus stop, if not all the way to Savusavu, on Sunday so that I could make my flight on Monday. So I didn’t worry too much until Saturday night, when the guy with the truck had not returned to the village. Not to worry, according to the folks in the village, because there is a bus that comes by Bagasau, the nearest village with a bus stop, on Sunday at 10AM. Moreover, one of the men in the village could take me to Bagasau by boat for $4.50 USD. Problem solved, right?...wrong…some of us never seem to learn…
My day started early on Sunday. At about 9AM, I waded out into the bay where an older Fijian man wearing a truckers cap and Oakley knockoffs was waiting in a wooden punt with an outboard mounted on it. This started what was actually the most pleasant part of the whole day. There was just a breath of a breeze and the crystal waters were slick calm. Our captain poled the punt out to deeper water where he pulled the cord on the outboard and the smell of 2-cycle and salt water filled the air. As we pulled further from shore you could see large stands of coral of every different color and kind passing beneath the boat. A little further out, about a half dozen small blacktip reef sharks cruised the surface chasing bait. Ten minutes later we approached the shore at full speed, clearly aiming for an entrance that only he could see. I had started to grip the rails and grit my teeth right before we skimmed just beneath the overhanging trees and into a river. As we entered the mouth of this small river, I was awestruck at the beauty of a complete canopy of mangroves covering the winding stream that was probably 40 feet across at its widest point. The cool, shaded breeze ran across my face as we wound our way up to a bridge where I disembarked and paid him for his kind service. “What a great way to start!” I thought to myself.
Unfortunately, things just went downhill from there. On my way to the bus stop someone told me that I had just missed the bus, which actually comes at 9AM and not 10AM. “No worries,” he said, “another bus comes at 11AM. I should’ve known where this was going. But I had a copy of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time and a covered bus stop, so I wasn’t too concerned. I just kicked back and started reading about temporal anomalies and event horizons, which made me wonder if maybe Fiji is at the edge of a black hole where time almost slows to a stop.
There was a bus at 11:30. It stopped at the bus stop and people filed off. When it appeared everyone who wanted had gotten off the bus, I reached for the handrail and stepped up with my right foot…and the bus pulled away with a purpose, nearly knocking me off my feet and leaving me standing in a cloud of dust and exhaust. “What the f***!” I thought to myself, as I turned to look at a group of equally surprised Fijians. “That bus is an express bus that does not have an agreement to pick up passengers here,” a Fijian told me. I restrained a growl and asked when the next bus was to which the answer was “12PM”.
At 12:30PM another bus came rumbling up the road toward Savusavu. By now I was alone at the bus stop and anxious about being stuck in Bagasau, so I stepped toward the edge of the road, raised my hand, and mouthed the words “Savusavu”. The bus did not even slow down. The bus driver just looked at me with a grin as he passed with a half empty bus. Agreement or not, he just passed up an additional fare on a bus with plenty of room. With that, I looked at a pile of fist-sized rocks at the edge of the bus stop and thought, “the next bus driver is getting one of those in the face if he doesn’t slow down or tries to pull away.”
Some locals in Bagasau had been watching this all transpire and took pity on me, inviting me over to have lunch with them. They told me the next bus was not until 3:30PM. “Sure it is.” I thought to myself. In any event, their kindness and generosity was greatly appreciated and the conversation was good, too. About 3PM, we walked back toward the bus stop and a commercial truck was driving by that Semisi, the patriarch of the house that took me in, flagged down. Abrahim, the driver, pulled over, invited me inside, and I hopped in, thrilled that it finally looked like I was going to make it to Savusavu to catch my flight the next morning.
The day that started well, but almost climaxed in a potential assault charge ended well when Abrahim refused to take payment for bringing me what would’ve been an almost 3 hour bus ride to Savusavu. So all in all, it wasn’t a bad day even though I had started traveling at 9AM and it was now almost 5PM…just to go about 30 miles.
In America we have public transit systems in many cities like Washington D.C., New York, and San Francisco that virtually eliminates the need for a car and an amazing array of options for air travel anywhere in or out of the country, but watch folks reactions when a train is a minute late or their flight is delayed an hour. We live in a society that is built on strict schedules and a pumping, repetitive cycle that has us living to work and not working to live. Thus, there are some things that we could learn from the Fijians about slowing down. Learning to slow down and enjoy life is something that we Americans have all but forgotten as we strive to make more money and buy more stuff. God forbid we don’t work ourselves to death in order to buy that 5 bedroom, 2 ½ bath home so that we can fill it full of crap that we’ll rarely use and ultimately dump in a landfill in a few years.
