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Travel and World Culture   
 Image: Fiji
 
 Image: Fiji
 Photo: Bruce Livingstone

Nadi, Fiji: Christmas Day
By Ian Fohrman

“Someone was lying. Looking back, it’s hard to know whom – maybe everyone.”

Rachele and I stared blankly, as travelers often do, at the unfamiliar movie poster encased in smudged Plexiglas. We had been warned about walking around Nadi on a holiday. “Nothing but drunks and bad people” we had been told, and the streets seemed to prove the advice wise. If not for the humid tropical heat, you would expect tumbleweed to bounce past the boarded shop fronts and staggering drunkards.

My first instinct is always to be suspicious- to question motives.

When I try to decide where this instinct comes from I choose to attribute it to the never-ending onslaught of warnings and cautionary travel tales. This is a far more pleasant conclusion than believing that I am a distrustful, pessimistic person. However, questions of psychology and fear-culture were deep below the surface when the toothless tattooed man appeared from nowhere and joined us in staring at the poster.

-We don’t want any. I revealed my suspicion and distrust with a foreigner’s stare.

The man directed his outstretched and heavily tattooed arm to the movie poster encased in opaque Plexiglas. “This is Indian movie. Not in English. Only Hindi.”

“Then why are the catch-lines and credits in English?” I asked, caught off guard and redirected my examination back to the poster, “Even the title.”

“So people like you will pay and go in.” He said, casually dropping his arm back to his side and looking at Rachele. “What do you do today?”

I had already prepared my excuse for why we didn’t want to get in a cab or buy his drugs.

Before I could preempt his sales pitch, Rachele informed him of our mission for Fijian-crafted gifts. And with that, I would never know his initial motivation for approaching us.

“You must come, friends. I know traditional Fijian shop. Only village-owned shop in Nadi.” He said, beckoning with dark spider-webbed hands and already walking.

We followed, unsure of our destination, and listened to a patchwork history lesson filled with tourist-pleasing exaggerations.

“The last cannibal-king. You know him? He’s on Fijian money. He would eat tourists and sailors,” the man said over his shoulder without fully looking back or breaking stride.

When we arrived at the shop the man stood proudly by the door, and ushered us inside.

-How much commission will you get for this? I seriously doubted that there could be only one Fijian owned shop in the second largest city in the country.

The men in the back of the shop stopped their revelry and put down their drinks. They stood and approached us, immediately bombarding us with salesmanship and fake friendship.

“Friends! Sit down. Drink kava before shopping. This is Fiji-time.” The man with the best English handed Rachele a half coconut shell and began the instructions for properly drinking kava. We knew the instructions before we were told.

After a few drinks, we passed the allotted time for friendliness and pushy salesmanship commenced.

“Look friend, this is a fine club. It was used by cannibals to crack skulls. Very nice craftsmanship. I give you good deal,” the man caressed the wooden club. Each item was showcased Vanna White style.

After much bargaining, some yelling and too many cannibal stories, we paid the men and took our bootie into the empty streets. We stood for a moment, exhaled and tried to escape the fight or flight tension of the store. The air on the street was no less anxious, full of vague danger. It was a feeling from which we would not get relief for hours.

“Friends. What do you do now?” again the man with the dark toothless smile had come from nowhere.

-Friend… we have spent all our money. You have won. Let us be.

“You join me for smoking?” He pinched his spider-web tattooed fingers together and held them up to his dry lips.

Rachele and I looked at each other for an excuse or maybe confirmation that the other was not worried – but we were. With raised eyebrows, a tentative crooked nod and a shoulder shrug we agreed to follow in the name of adventurous travel.

Again we followed the tattooed man without any real idea of where we were headed. This time he spoke very little and walked more briskly. We passed an empty market filled with broken empty crates, in front men were laying in gutters. With each block my chest grew tighter. We passed dogs without owners and escaped chickens. When the man finally turned around we were standing in a parking lot full of abandoned cars. He opened a car door and spoke quickly in Fijian to a man whose presence we hadn’t noticed. He motioned us inside.

Again Rachele and I looked at each other for confirmation, this time more frantic, but there was none. Against all better judgment and for no reason other than the lack of any acceptable excuse, I entered the boxy, rust-colored car. The cloth upholstery was stained. Rachele followed and gave me a nervous look.

-At least we have a bag full of brand-new cannibal weapons. I surveyed the area for escape routes, gripped my newly purchased club and thumbed the polished wood.

Rachele shot me another nervous look as the cab, or friend’s car, or whatever, wound through the potholed packed-clay streets. The road uncoiled uphill between earth colored houses without doors and makeshift clotheslines. My chest became increasingly tight, filled with the empty dull feeling of unsure fear. Periodically I would return Rachele’s nervous looks with a slight shrug, raised eyebrows, and an “I don’t know either” crooked jaw.

When we arrived at what seemed to be our destination the man spoke to the driver quickly and in Fijian, and the driver sped off leaving us alone in an unknown neighborhood with the toothless, tattooed man.

“Come.” The man said and beckoned us toward the small angular house, smiling his dark bottomless smile.

The inside of the solid clay, boxy house was more inviting than I expected. Family pictures and Fijian flags shared the wall with framed newspaper clippings and CD jackets with worn edges. The collage feel of the room was filled with vibrant reds and greens contrasting soothing tropical blues. The smiling people in the picture frames calmed my busy head but my chest would not let go.

-Serial killers have families. Would they hang pictures of smiling people? I eyed the room for alternative exits

A single adjacent room sat ominously in the background, colorless and unwelcoming. A heavily worn mattress sat naked on the cold floor.

While the man crouched by the surprisingly new stereo and turned on old Eagles songs, I made eye contact for the first time with a young woman sitting by the stove. Her presence had gone curiously unnoticed, and I wondered why she had not been introduced.

“Hi, my name is Ian.” I said reaching an open hand in her direction.

“Hello.” She said quietly. Her eyes met mine only briefly as she spoke. I would say they were filled with a frustrated disapproval of our presence, but they were more filled with nothing. She looked back to her folded hands.

“This is my girlfriend. She will you make something to eat,” the man said briefly pointing to the young woman, then returned his attention to the stereo.

“You like the Eagles?” the man asked. “What do you do for dinner? I think you should eat with us. We will drink beers and my girlfriend will cook us chicken curry. You like curry?” The man alternated eye contact between Rachele and me. He was excited and looking for approval.

Again Rachele and I were forced to speak silently with eye motions and facial contortions. After another hesitant consensus to yield to the whim of circumstance, or fate, or whatever, we said we would join him, but we had to go to the hotel first to pick up my medicine and some money.

***

As the man’s house shrank into the distance my chest released momentarily. We decided we would save a few dollars by having the cab drop us off downtown; we would take the local bus the rest of the way to the hotel.

Sitting about 15-feet from the bus stop was a Fijian man, or boy, he looked about 18. He had the kind of look that makes women hold their purses tighter as they pass. His glazed eyes did not leave us from the moment we stepped out of the cab. We sat for a moment glancing over our shoulders before an older man approached us.

“Hello friends! Where are you from? You take the Quantas flight here? I know this flight. I used to travel with the UN. I’m kidding. I was a flight attendant. I’ve been to Chicago, Portland, L.A., New York.” His tone was jovial but his eyes were dead serious with a kind of lucidity that was out of place.

Then he drastically changed the tone of his voice to match the urgency of his eyes. He shifted his stare directly toward the boy sitting near the bus stop. He tilted his head toward the boy subtly and widened his eyes.

“You must be very careful in Nadi. There are bad people. They will steal and rape.” His eyes still pointed at the boy. He looked back at us to be sure we understood.

I must have given the impression that I did not quiet understand his message. He grabbed both my wrists with startling quickness, “Do you understand friend? There are very, very dangerous people out today.” Again his eyes pointed at the boy. “These people will steal and rape!” He made a thrusting motion with his hips in case something had been lost in translation.

Immediately another man approached us and asked where we were going. He offered us a taxi ride at half the usual price. We understood his good intentions and immediately agreed, leaving the glazed, malicious stare of the boy with haste.

Back in the crisp, dry, air-conditioned air of our hotel room I exhaled. My chest released for the first time since the movie poster. Rachele and I shared a look of relief.

“Holy shit.”

“I know.”

There was a pause and Rachele went into the bathroom to wash her hands. The ability to breath freely only lasted until man’s dinner invitation dawned on me.

“So are we going to go back tonight?” I asked, hoping for a concrete no.

“I don’t know. What do you think?” she asked, maybe hoping for the same.

After weighing the pros of sharing dinner and beers at a local Fijians house against the cons of being robbed, raped or worse, we chose to procrastinate.

“Lets just shower, think it over, then we’ll decide. We have two hours!” I said cherishing the relative safety of the hotel.

***

In the cab I reminded Rachele, “we’ll tell the driver to take us all the way to the house and make sure he knows to pick us up in two hours.”

-This will do us no good. If the man is going to hurt or kill us it will be too late.
-At least someone will know where we are.

 

 

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