6:30 PM local time Friday, August 3rd. (0630 August 3rd UTC) 18 07 S
178 25 E. Temp. 81, Humidity 82%, cloud cover 100%. At anchor at the
Royal Suva Yacht Club, Suva, Fiji.
As luck would have it, soon after your correspondent sent the last
post, Ship's Street Guide Terry Shrode and I were strolling down the
lane in Suva and were approached by a friendly gentleman who volunteered
rather proudly that he himself was from the fabled Lau Group. So your
busybody Captain, in the very politest tone he could summon, asked him
why it was that we cruisers were not permitted to visit what must be one
of the most wonderful places in the world, and here the reader will note
a bit of exaggeration by way of flattery to soften the cheeky nature of
the question. Mr. "I'm proud to be from Lau" acted as though I had
suddenly begun speaking Swedish, and muttered something like, "It's one
hundred miles east of here." This man was on holiday in the big city,
dressed in modern clothes, spoke good English (not the native tongue-
where did he learn it?), and could not possibly have mistaken us for
anything other than what we were, yachties from elsewhere or beyond. I
bet he's seen a few Britney Spears videos, too, not to mention Get
Smart. Why did he even seek us out for conversation and tell us without
prompting where he lived? Didn't he realize the prohibition might be a
source of, at the very least, curiosity on our part? He probably thought
we'd never be impolite enough to ask; but no. So I asked again, thinking
perhaps he didn't hear me. Same response. Can their culture really be
that fragile? Is it like Bolinas? The Amish live right in the belly of
the beast with no fear.
Musical notes: Mr. Shrode and the Captain have seen far less
Polynesian or Melanesian (we're technically in Melanesia now) music than
we would have liked. One reason is that because we tend to vaguely
adhere to our watch schedules even when in harbor so that we don't fall
asleep when we get underway, Mr. Shrode retires early. The Captain, who
stays up, generally does not take the dinghy into town at late hours by
himself to observe the local culture as he might have twenty-five years
ago. But the other night we actually went out after dinner to a club
that had a band. Two guitars, bass, drums, keyboard, and a chick singer.
They sang modern Fijian pop music, which was very palatable indeed, to
an empty house and the Captain felt right at home. Every song featured
astounding four part harmonies, based on traditional singing, that they
performed effortlessly. I asked them if they had a CD out and they
seemed surprised, since they considered themselves just an ordinary
cover band. And in fact it appears that all the bands in this area are
capable of the same kind of impressive singing, so it's tres ordinaire.
Further: How does the style of having the bass turned up really
loud in your car stereo so that it's muddy and distorted, the way the
kids under 35 do back in the US, become a fad in the South Pacific with
a completely different kind of music? Or, maybe not that different. The
pop hits of America are ubiquitous, but even slightly more interesting,
you be the judge, is that native music here and in other parts of the
South Pacific is now routinely recorded using sequencers so that it
sounds ever so modern. You can in Fiji hear these records, as well as
equally modern East Indian recordings, on the FM stations which are,
like American stations, formatted for different demographic units.
Unfortunately, this means that the Fijians listen to their stations and
the Indians listen to theirs. Some of our readers will remember when, in
the fifties, there was no formatting, and you would hear Little Richard
right before Patti Page and right after Buck Owens. The Captain believes
that that catholic arrangement was in the long run really better for all
concerned, however many awkward times there may have been when Mitch
Miller had his moment.
Here in Fiji, the political problems seem to boil down to the fact
that there are two main groups, each of which believes the other has too
much power. Quite original. Otherwise the crew of Maverick is a bit out
of touch with world affairs, getting as we do our updates from casual
remarks other folks may make. We heard that there was some really
entertaining and, one supposes, comical cowboy stuff with Bush and the
Chinese, and that the Senate went Democratic. Despite our lack of
awareness of these and other matters we request that our readers resist
the temptation to take this opportunity to tell us about some news story
of supposed universal interest, unless it involves Howard Tate appearing
in our vicinity or the recurrence of the black plague. It's really not
that we seek to escape the alleged real world, although on the other
hand, we're not really in it at the moment; but space and time are
limited. Or are they?
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