Daydreams Of Paradise - Still On Fiji Time...

It's been a few hours since we landed back in Incheon. Back in the dull, wintry chill of the Siberian winds that ravage the Korean peninsula, the balmy, warm and bright climes of the South Pacific seem to be a couple of light years away, on an alien planet in a distant galaxy...

Landing at Incheon Airport and we were greeted by the traditional Korean impersonal efficiency which is far cry from the warmth that the ever-smiling Fijians exude.

It is said your personality evolves to be a sum total of your experiences and your travels shape you in no small measure - you may return from your travels, but a little intangible and invaluable bit of the place that you have visited will always remain with you. 

This trip to the South Pacific was indeed one such epochal event in our lives. There is indeed something about Fiji in specific that will always stay with us forever, till we die.

The Fijian vibrancy is so perfectly reflected in the colourful banknotes that we used there...

It was particularly interesting to see how Indians who were brought into the Fijian islands of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu over a century ago, as labourers (girmitiyas), were persecuted, were at the receiving end of repressive colonial policies and then persecuted by a government dominated by ethnic locals, the vibrant community and prospered economically...

We were a bit startled to see an example of this in a jewelry shop in Denarau. Ornaments with the primordial Hindu symbol - Om - ॐ, were being sold. These were designed by a Fiji-Indian, Romil Patel...

The media too had a strong Indian imprint. The television has a significant Hindi content - both from India as well as local Fijian-Hindi content. And it appears to be really popular...

A news report on Amazon India in a local Fijian newspaper...

News on India's renewable energy revolution in Fiji Sun...

Obviously Bollywood stars are popular amongst all Fijians, cutting across racial lines, a clear example of India's soft power...

And then Titan watches seem to be quite popular in Fiji...

In Fiji, we did feel at home. You may attribute that to the significant presence ethnic Indians here, but we truly believe it was also because of the warmth of the Fijians...

As we settle down at home, it is hard to believe that we are back here in this icy urban "wilderness". It feels as though our consciousness is there, in sunny Fiji, and not here in Songdo. But thankfully, we have a weekend to recover from the weariness of the trip...

And to cheer ourselves, we treat ourselves to cups of hot chocolate - chocolate that I bought in Samoa...

Clearly we will enjoy the taste of the sunny Pacific for a bit more into wintry and snowy months that lie ahead of us...

Tales Of The Girmitiyas...

In our quest to explore the Indo-Fijian heritage, we entered the Indo Fijian Gallery of the Fiji Museum...

And it was interesting to note that the gallery had contributions from a Indo-Fijian company and the LIC of India, which incidentally has its outpost in the Pacific located here...

The Indian presence in this remote corner of the Pacific was the result of exploitation and machinations by the colonial British. Between 1879 and 1916, Indians were brought in on tenured agreements (giving the migrant labour, the name of girmitiyas), lured by a promise of abundance of wealth and prosperity. Nearly 60,000 people were brought in onboard 42 ships that made 87 voyages, between India and Fiji. Living conditions onboard were atrocious and many did not make it through alive. On reaching Fiji, the recruits were kept in quarantine on Nukulau Island before being allocated to the plantations. On the day of allocation, the recruits were formed into groups for plantation owners to transport them by boat to their destinations. The largest number of girmitiyas were allocated to the CSR Company, an Australian sugar company...

Besides sugarcane plantations, girmitiyas were made to work in tea plantations. Quite a few Sikhs came in, willingly, to serve in the police force, and they enjoyed slightly better conditions than the girmitiyas who spent long wretched hours working in plantations, in abject poverty and misery...

Houseboats of Indian traders...

A girmitiya hurricane lamp...

A hookah...

Seals of Brahmins from Madras...

Girmitiya women resting in the fields...

The quarantine station at Nukulau...

Indians playing checkers...

The accommodations for the girmitiyas were derogatorily called "coolie lines"...

A recreation of a Hindu prayer room...

Sikhs in Fiji...

Girmitiya women had a sense of style, wearing jewelry even while working!

Hindus in Fiji have proudly kept their heritage alive till this day...

Lord Krishna and the gopis...

Islam came to Fiji with Muslim girmitiyas...

A Hindu tapestry...

Gramophone records popularised Hindi film songs in Fiji in the 1900s...

Musical instruments of the girmitiyas...

A recreation of a girmtiya living quarter, with a charpoy or an Indian rope cot...

The prayer corner...

The kitchen area...

Girmitiya artifacts...

Implements and tools used by the girmitiyas...

Hard work defined the success of the girmitiyas who have emerged as the economically dominant community in Fiji...

One of the ships carrying girmitiyas from India, The Syria, was wrecked on Nasilai Reef on May 11, 1884 at around 8.30 pm. Of the 497 indentured men, women and children and crew of 43 onboard, 56 indentured Indian immigrants and three lascar (South Asian) crewmen lost their lives. The shipwreck was blamed on navigational mistakes and poor decision making by an inexperienced captain and crew led to the Syria running aground, further poor decisions being made by the Captain immediately afterwards adding to the disaster. When the news of the wreck had reached Suva, a rescue operation was immediately launched by Dr William MacGregor, the Chief Medical Officer and Acting Secretary for the colony. Nine boats set sail at around midnight and reached the site of the wreck shortly after midday on Tuesday. At this time the majority of the Indians were in the water on the reef, although many woman and children were still trapped on the ship...

With most of the passengers unable to swim, they were completely dependent upon their rescuers. Despite worsening weather and rough seas the rescue went fairly smoothly and the last rescue boat reached Nasilai village at about 8 pm, where they were received by the chief with warm food, water and shelter for the night before being transported to Nukulau quarantine station the next day. As there weren’t enough boats to transport everyone, the strongest 100 Indian men marched to Rewa, receiving food and fruit from Fijian men and women along the way...

In addition to the 59 people who died at Nasilai, another eleven died in the following fortnight. The loss of life would have been much higher except for the courage of the rescue crew, especially its leader Dr MacGregor who was awarded for his role, although writing that he felt hurt and ashamed that so many people had died while he had suffered nothing more than a few scrapes and bruises...

The Syrian tragedy quite really was a defining moment for the girmitiya community...

A cloth painting of an Indian farmer...

The bust of Dr. Timoci Bavadra, the Fijian prime minister who got deposed in a coup in 1987 was overwhelmingly pro-Indian. At that time, Fiji was a Commonwealth Realm, with the Queen as its head of state, represented in Suva, by the Governor General. Dr. Bavadra sought the Queen's intervention in resolving the crisis, but she refused to even give him an audience. That led to Fiji's expulsion from the Commonwealth and led to a political mess. Years later, the perpetrator of the coup, Sitiveni Rabuka regretted his role...  

Besides Indians, Chinese too came to Fiji in the 1800s, as traders in the search for commodities like sandalwood. Even though their numbers were far lesser than Indians, they too did make their mark in this remote Pacific outpost!

Tālofa Samoa... Ua Mai Oe? ... Part II

And finally my 30-hour journey has come to an end. And for the next 5 days, Samoa will be home for me. For now, I have just enjoyed a long relaxing warm shower, followed by a light dinner - Samoan chicken soup with vegetables. And now I am reflecting back on the day today and preparing for the meetings scheduled for the next few days.

After collecting my baggage at the Faleolo Airport, it was time to get hold of some local currency - the Samoan Tala. There was only one money exchange counter open at the airport and again over here, there were local ladies with 100 Watt smiles. Such is the infectious enthusiasm of the Pacific, and specifically the Samoans, who are called as the "happy people"...

The delightfully colourful Samoan currency is called the Tala which is subdivided into 100 Sene. The Tala and Sene are apparently Samoanized  names for Dollar and Cent!

The drive from Faleolo to Apia was along a beach road with lovely views of the sea. The driver did mention that rising sea levels had caused beaches along the roadside to go under and there was increasing salinity inland, which is a big issue in the Pacific and the Caribbean, as much as in other low lying countries and cities, like much of Bangladesh or Jakarta.

As we drove, we passed by hoardings that advertised imported used Japanese cars being sold by a Sai Motors. I was instantly reminded of the automobile dealer, Sai Service back home in Mumbai. While I imagined "Sai" may be a Samoan name, out of curiosity I googled this up and what I discovered was amazing. Sai Motors is indeed managed by an Indian, Vijay Jashnani! Hats off to the Indian diaspora whose spirit of enterprise has brought them to this remote region of the Pacific. (There is apparently a saying about Indian diaspora being found in all countries except North Korea and Pakistan!)

It's not funny how the remoteness of these Pacific islands influences the political and economic decisions their governments make. Two examples from Samoa stand out - one is the shift across the International Date and shifting from driving on the right of the road to the left.

In 2009, the government decided that the country would shift driving on the right side of the road to the left to align it with its regional partners in the Pacific and particularly, Australia and New Zealand from where most cheap used-cars are imported. That decision was contested in courts but was finally implemented. The implementation came along with a two-day holiday to get Samoans used to the change and a three-day ban on alcohol sales, to avoid accidents due to driving under influence.

In December 2011, the country shifted west over the international dateline - Samoa skipped a day to align their business days with their main trading partners, Australia and New Zealand, which was expected to impact the country's economy positively by aligning the work week with its major trading partners. This was done by quite literally skipping December 30th, making Samoans lose a day of their lives as they jumped the clocks 24 hours ahead (imagine your woes in 2011, if you are a Samoan and your birthday is on December 30th!). When the clock struck midnight on Thursday, December 29, 2011, the calendar flipped over to Saturday, December 31, 2011, switching from the same time zone as American Samoa to align with the rest of Asia, New Zealand and Australia. 

The international date prior to the change...

(Source: Daily Mail UK)

The new alignment of the international date line...

(Source: Daily Mail UK)

And it wasn't Samoa that did that shift. Tokelau, a territory administered by New Zealand to the east of Samoa, also did the same, for similar economic reasons.

The momentous event was celebrated in Apia with fireworks. Postage stamps commemorating the occasion were issued with the message "Into The Future". So Samoa, along with Kiribati and Tonga are the first countries to welcome the new year! Till 2011, Samoa was the last country to celebrate the new year!

Another strange thing I witnessed in the hotel lobby was the presence of men dressed as women, with long hair, lipsticks and all that stuff that they call eye-shadows and the likes. I was told that these are people from the third gender of "Fa’afafine", which when translated literally means "in the manner of" (fa’a) "woman" (fafine). 

Fa’afafines as a concept has always existed within Samoan society. Pre-Christian Samoans accepted that every individual, man or woman, had a separate role in society. Accordingly, it was and still is still acceptable today for a male child to be feminine, for example. Boys who display marked effeminate behavior in childhood are recognized to be Fa’afafines and are fully accepted within their families and society.They have a very specific role in Samoan society, an interesting contrast to how transgenderism in the rest of the world are yet to be widely accepted. 

How interesting...

I will resume my discovery of Samoa but for now, slumberland beckons!

Morocco - Discovering Its True Identity?

A lot has happened in this region, the Middle East & North Africa or the MENA region, since 2011, starting with the Arab Spring. And imagine how the Arab Spring began - in December 2010, a poor Tunisian orange seller, Tarek el-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi was humiliated by a municipal official who confiscated his wares. Tarek immolated himself resulting in his death and that incident triggered a series of protests.

And what followed was the Arab Spring. the Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was forced to step down, triggering significant "tectonic" shifts in the MENA region. The Tunisian Revolution had an immediate domino effect in five other countries: Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, where either there was a regime change or major uprisings and social violence occurred, including civil wars or insurgencies. 

Other countries - Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Sudan, Djibouti, Mauritania, the Palestinian National Authority and Saudi Arabia, all had been witness to these tensions and upheavals.

Morocco was not insulated from these shifts that have been happening in its immediate vicinity. But the deftness of the monarchy ensured the spark didn't trigger a major conflagration.
The monarchy leveraged on the tremendous religious, social, economic, and symbolic capital that they enjoy and is seen as a unifying force, legitimizing his political leadership. To deescalate the anger of young protesters on Moroccan streets, the king, Mohammed VI, announced major political reforms, including a new constitution with ‘less powers’ for the royalty, and showed a willingness to allow moderate Islamists to assume power. He did not resort to slander or harsh repression, like the way other Arab leaders responded.

Dirhams, the Moroccan currency issued by the central bank, Bank Al-Maghrib, proudly carry images of the monarch...

And the turmoil of the Arab Spring, that engulfed the MENA Region resulted in the downfall of strongmen in African polity - Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi, resulting in a power vacuum, that King Mohammed VI has tried to fill in. It has doubled up efforts to rejoin the African Union, from where it was expelled in 1975 after the occupation of Western Sahara. The cozying-up to Africa is quite evident with the ongoing Morocco-Africa summit ongoing at the Palais des Congrès next door.

Moroccan businesses too see Africa as a continent with infinite business opportunities. Interactions with counterparts here were insightful, revealing how Moroccan companies and banks have spread across the continent, growing inorganically through acquisitions.

But there is a domestic challenge. There are multiple shades of biases against the darker Africans evidently visible in the attitudes of Moroccans in every day life. Numerous articles on the internet point to local sensitivities and fears on job losses following an influx of workers from sub-Saharan Africa into the country. 

As far as the domestic policies go, a revival of a traditional identity as a broader push toward pluralism and openness by King Mohammed VI. Prominent among these initiatives is the revival of the previously banned traditional Berber language, Tamazight, which was named as an official language in the 2011 constitution. The language spoken by 40% of Moroccans, the Berbers was banned till the early 2000s. 

The Tamazight language is a bit unique. The Berbers have had a written tradition, on and off, for about 2,500 years, although the tradition has been frequently disrupted by cultural shifts and invasions. They were first written in the Libyco-Berber abjad writing system, and is still used today by the Tuareg tribes. And the Roman influences brought about the development of the Berber Latin alphabet. And banners I have seen here not only have French (de-facto language of business in Morocco, given that it's in the Francophone world), but also Arabic, English and Tamazight.

And this is particularly appreciable given that the neighbouring countries - Mauritania, Algeria and Libya had long persecuted people for the use of the Berber language, in favor of the language of the Bedouins, Arabic.

But people on the ground seem to be able to reconcile with the past and embrace the future. The Moroccans I have met seem to indicate that they are a modern people with an ambition, a seriousness to succeed and yet they respect their traditions.

Clearly, Morocco is trying to reconcile between discovering its true ancient identity and it's place in the modern world. Only time will tell how effective Morocco is, in this endeavour...