The weeks following the Coup d’état were an eye opener for me. I was used to politics. I was raised in it. My father was a high public servant, and, at one point, was a deputy minister for a few years. My aunty was the chief-of-staff for the prime minister of my province for many years. Discussion of politics were a constant at the table. I quickly learned that perception is never connected to the reality in politics. The motto was always the same: “No matter what, make it look good.” That is probably why, I was not so bad at selling advertisement concepts in my previous life.
This Coup d’état was the proof of concept that reality never matches the perception of reality in politics. In the following weeks of the Coup, all the front pages of the world’s newspaper were all condemning the horribly violent Commander and his minions taking over the country with the pressure of their gun muzzles, military fatigues, check points and summary arrests. Commander Frank Banaimarama was always shown in the papers in military fatigues with a M-16 in his hands. Australia and New-Zealand were the two most vocals about the horrors of the Coup. They saw themselves as the parents of a group of Islands in the South Pacific and were always under the impression that they were the natural guardian in the post-colonial world. This coup was pointing the finger at their failures as guardians. Actually, if you paid attention and dug a bit, the Aussies and Kiwis had failed miserably in their parental duties; Fiji was now under a military leader, the Solomon Islands were marred by political unrest in a perpetual civil war, Tonga had suffered severe civil unrest with massive arsons of all commercial establishments in Nukuloofa and Vavau (I was there!), Papua Guinea was probably the most dangerous place in the Southern Hemisphere, and then, there was the West Papua thorny situation.
The perception of reality was that Frank was a military thug. He had taken the country at gun point in military fatigues with the help of a few faithful criminal grunts, kick-out of the country some ambassadors and cut diplomatic ties with traditional partners, established check points all over the country and arrested all political opponents.
This is Fiji and Fijians are nice and polite. The reality was way different. Both the deposed Prime Minister and Frank were side by side at an important Rugby match the week prior of the Coup. Then they met in New-Zealand with the Kiwi Prime minister as mediator to try to resolve their differences. The talks had failed. Frank had told the sitting government that he had the support of all military branches and would take over the control of the country on December 6th. On the morning of the 6th, he simply walked in the PM’s office with a few aids and ask the sitting Prime Minister to go back to his village in Vanuabalavu Island. There were no gunshots, no arrests, no checkpoints. People were free to go to where they wanted to go, and all public servants showed up to work. There was no run on the banks and pupils had to go to school. Yes, an elected government had been sent home by a military leader, that was wrong. The elected government in Fiji had serious flaws that needed to be addressed like heavy corruption, nepotism, and a very unequal citizenry. Fiji would now test a military leader against a corrupted democracy. Only time would tell which system worked better.
The Coup Leader Baniamarama (his official title in the western press), Frank (for the Fijians), did not give a damn about the image of Fiji or his image. He had no time to deal in the perception of reality. He was not a politician. He came from the real world and dealt in reality. With him, a spade was a spade. He was refreshing. In the first few months following the Coup, I had so much pleasure reading the papers from Fiji and the papers from New-Zealand and Australia. There was this very vocal New Zealand Ambassador in Fiji. Frank expelled him and he would do it repeatedly over the following years until New Zealand and Australia would send diplomats that would do their job properly (ie. keep their mouth shut and not mingle in the internal affairs of Fiji). Then the Kiwis and the Aussies started to threatened Frank that all aid and development funding would stop. Frank’s response: “No problem, we will turn to China for funding, they are easier to deal with and they do not lecture us on anything.”
Now that was probably the most stupid geopolitical stance in modern times from the Aussies and Kiwis. The Chinese would come in and fill the void and it would take years to pry them out down the line when relations would normalize again. The coolest move that Frank did, would be against her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth II. The British Crown, in its pompous stance against the Coup Leader decided to punish Fiji by suspending them from Commonwealth group of nations. Frank was not stupid. The commonwealth suspension was just a political statement with zero effect on the ground. Being member of the commonwealth does not give you anything other than an invitation to participate in the commonwealth games every 4 years. It is not really a punishment. And if you look at the member’s list of the commonwealth, some of those members like Siera Leone, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Papua New Guinea, and many others, are not exactly a shinning beacon of democracy and governance. The hell with the Crown.
That suspension opened the door to Frank for a response of his own. A few years later, after Frank had announced fresh elections for 2014, and the Crown maintaining its stance on the suspension, he decided to strip the face of the Queen off all dollar bills and coins replacing them with the more educative and colorful specimen of local flaura and fauna like the Humphead Wrass, the Tagimoucia Flower or the Kula parrot. My favorite bill is the 100$ bill which is the highest denomination in Fiji. On that bank note, the face of the Queen was replaced by an illustration of a local cicada. An insect was now the new face of the 100$ bill. Still is today. Nowadays, Fiji has been reintroduced in the commonwealth fold, but the face of the Queen never made it back on the notes. Frank had won. The Queen was replaced by an insect.
As a potential foreign investor in Fiji, I had to be prudent and still try to read the cards that were being dealt with the Coup. I was just looking for a sign that the new administration was business and foreign investor friendly, nothing else. That the new administration was a military dictatorship, an elected democracy or a monarchy did not matter to me. I had seen Monarchy that were doing good and monarchy that were doing bad. I had seen benevolent dictatorship that were superefficient at running a country, but I had also seen dictatorship that were terrible in the management of their affairs. As for democratic elected government goes, the planet offered the whole spectrum, from the shining beacon of freedom and governance in Finland to the sad and corrupted Zimbabwe.
Fiji offered an opportunity. Very few people would be standing in line at the Foreign Investment office. The governments of USA, New-Zealand, Australia, Canada and many others had put out a negative travel notice to Fiji because of the unrest. From our perspective, Fiji was in a transformation that wanted to right a few wrongs. Frank was talking about equal citizenry and stemming the power of the local chiefs. He was also meeting with the different business groups to talk about economic diversification, deregulations, and foreign investments. That was beautiful language to me. Danielle and I decided that we would firm up our commitment toward the pearl farm project. We sent an email to all our friends that were following our adventures online announcing our new decision. Most of the email response were the same. Everybody I knew taught we were completely nuts. Only one email came back with a positive vibe in it. It was from my accountant’s wife in Canada. She was happy that we would stop spending money and start earning again.
We stayed in Fiji until the end of Dember 2006. In those three weeks following the Coup, while keeping an eye on the news and assess the situation, we would get our Foreign Investor Certificate, Foreign shares emission from the reserve Bank, start a company called Civa Fiji pearls (Civa is the Fijian translation of pearl), get our pearl farming licence form the Fisheries Department and file in our request for long term work permits. As expected, the offices of the government were empty of customers and public servants were very eager to accommodate us, they had their marching orders from the new boss and Fiji was very “Open for Business”. Three weeks to complete all this paperwork was probably a record for Fiji but these were new times. Crisis can breed opportunities. There was just the little issue of money to sort out. And we would need lots of it.
Like any business proposal, we had to do our homework and try to understand what kind of money we would need for the next few years. Pearls do not grow in 5 minutes and while they will be growing, we will need to stay somewhere, eat something, and move around with a car of some sort. That all translated into dollar signs. Two things were for sure; no matter how much we moved the numbers around on paper, we would need more money than what was left in our kitty and secondly, that meant that we would need to sell our beloved Syjoli III sailboat. There was zero market in Fiji to sell a sailboat of that kind. We would need to go to New Zealand or Australia.
Sailing from New Zealand to Australia is an easier proposition than sailing from Australia to New Zealand. Both wind and currents are generally westerly in the South Pacific. So, we would start first with New Zealand and if we could not find a buyer there for our boat, we would move to Australia afterwards and try our luck there. We were fully committed to this project so instead of prepping the boat and provisioning the boat for the crossing, we did the contrary. We stripped the boat down to its bare bones. The rationale was that importing stuff or shipping stuff to Fiji would be an expensive endevour. We could be in the future years under serious financial strains where every dime would count. We decided to get into savings mode. We rented some container storage space from Brian in Lautoka and removed everything off the boat that could be useful in our future years in Fiji. We pulled out all our clothes, appliances, silverware, pots, pans, books, music, spare parts, tools, outboard, dinghy, dive equipment, spearguns, ropes, anchor chains, extra anchors and fishing gear.
We left for New Zealand at the end of December with only a few clothes from our colder years in Canada. In the boat, there was nothing except 1 plate, 1 spoon, one pot, one cup, one multi-head screwdriver and one pair of plyers, that’s it. Our crossing down toward the southern latitudes were as expected; bumpy and windy. The boat being lighter made for a quick crossing and after 7 days at sea, we were in radio VHF range from Whangarei in North Island, our chosen port of entry. After 3 years going from tropical country to tropical country, we were looking forward to get back in a developed country of the Western World. Life is full of surprises. We should never assume anything about anything.
Entry requirements vary from country to country. They can be super simple and painless, to complex and frustrating. New Zealand fell in the civilized country camp and being a group of Island lost in the South seas had no real security threats with a drug producing countries nearby or migrant boats looking for a new life. Their only neighbors were Australia and Antarctica. The entry should be painless. When you arrive in a new country, you go to the designated port of entry and call the port master who will generally point you to a specific dock and be inspected, or not, depending on the country. Normally the custom official will ask to see you exit papers from the previous country, passports and visas if needed. In our cases, because we are Canadian citizens, nowhere we needed a visa except French Polynesia because of our extended stay there. I had a boat almanac onboard that covered all the requirements and ports of entry for every country. It was not a 2006 updated version, but the information contained in these books tend to be stable. I had the 2002 edition. The book said no visa for Canadians. As usual, we timed our arrival for the morning so we could enter the port in daylight. The only problem we had was that we were quicker than expected and arrived on a Sunday. In some countries, overtime must be paid for the officials for work outside of business hours.
So I raised Whangārei Harbour Radio on the VHF.: -“Wangarei, Whangarei, Wangarei,.. this is Syjoli III, Syjoli III, over.”
-“Syjoli III, Wangarei, Over”
-“Wangarei, Syjoli, we are arriving from Fiji and would like to enter the harbor, can you point us toward the designated Quarantine dock please?”
-“Syjoli, Wangarei, can you spell your boat name please”
-“Wangarei, Syjoli III, sierra yankee juliet oscar lima india space india india india, over »
-“Syjoli, Wangarei, please heave to and stand by on channel 68”.
Now that was odd. We were 10 miles away and they were asking me to stop dead and wait. That was a first. I went back down in the boat and looked at the entry requirement for New Zealand in the almanac and could not see anything unusual. We waited for them to call us again. They did, after one hour.
-“Syjoli III, Wangarei harbor radio, over.”
Different voice. That was weird.
-“Wnagarei, Syjoli, over”
-‘Syjoli, we do not have your boat on the entry manifest. Did you notify us that you were coming here?”
-“Sorry, no, we do not know about this entry requirement.”
-“You need to notify us by fax from your last port of exit your intention to come here with the passenger manifest.”
That was a first for us.
-“Well, we did not notify you, we did not know about this requirement, what’s next?”
-“Give us the passport details of the passengers and the registration number and port of Call of the boat. Keep heaving to. We will notify you on your next step. Standby on channel 68”
That was odd. They were taking their border pretty seriously those sheep herders.
Another hour passed before they finally gave us the go ahead to proceed to quarantine dock. We were told to tie up to the dock, not disembark the boat and wait until Monday morning where someone from customs would come and process us. That was a bummer. We were looking forward for a pint of beer. Staying in the boat for 24 hours with the pub in plain view across the street was very unpleasant. Even if we would have sneaked out, we would have gone nowhere. There were cameras pointed at the boat and the dock facility was surrounded by a military type of fence. We waited till the next morning.
On Monday morning, at 11 am, a car came through the fence and 2 guys in uniform got out. One stayed near the car, and one walked toward us. He was tall and muscular and had short, cropped hair. We invited him in the cockpit, and he asked to come down in the deck salon. He presented himself. His name was Bruce.
-“So you are the ones who did not notice us of your arrival?”
-“Apologies for that, we were not aware of that requirement, honest mistake.”
There was nothing else I could say. It was an honest mistake. Nothing else. We were not carrying weapons, stowaways, or drugs. We were genuine tourists.
Bruce went on (and by the way, what kind of mother calls her son Bruce?).
-“In New Zealand, we take the integrity of our borders very seriously. You must know that since the 911 events in New York, we had to beef up our security measures. Also, a good and competent captain travelling abroad should prepare correctly and learn the rules and regulations of every country he visits. I do not think that you were well prepared. I do not think that you are a competent captain.”
I was in the presence of an A-Grade-I-Am-God-Civil-Servant-Asshole. I am not a diplomat, I am gruff, and I have a short fuse. In the real world and on equal footing, I would have drilled a new asshole to that Kiwi prick. Being lectured by a public servant who had probably never travelled outside of his village was just a bit too much that morning. But I was a guest in a new country, he was holding our 2 passports and he was wearing a uniform. I had to stay on my best behavior. Still, I could not resist, I had to say something back. I have this ailment… I just cannot keep my mouth shut.
-“Yes, I understand. Terrorist could come by sailboat and cross the roaring forties of the South Pacific to come and kidnap a few sheep.”
As I was saying these words, I knew I was not helping our case. Bruce eyes went wide open and Danielle eyes rolled back. She was used to my antics. That did not bother her too much, she had a short fuse of her own also. She would stand by me.
Danielle offered some coffee to diffuse the tension. Bruce declined while he slowly sat down at the galley table. He pulled out a ledger, filled some forms, stamp our passports, filled more forms and process our boat for custom entry. And then he started talking.
-“I am granting you access but on a restricted 30 day visa. It seems that you were not aware that Canadians do now need a visa to travel here. Your boat will also be on a restricted cruising licence where you must report all your movements at all time.”
Bruce-A-Grade-I-Am-God-Civil-Servant-Asshole walked out to never be seen again.
I guess that we got lucky. They were not kicking us out, but they were making our stay in New Zealand an unpleasant one on first impression alone. After a bit of research, I found out that this new regulation on entry was a fairly new thing and part of a general security agreement between New Zealand and Australia. The security problem was not in New Zealand but in the northern territories of Australia who had to deal with constant inflows of migrants and drugs from Indonesia. I would have to keep in mind this new regulatory step if we had to move to Australia.
SYJOLI III berthed in Whangarei, New Zealand
We stayed 3 months in New Zealand. We did have to jump a few hoops to extend our visas. We moved to Auckland to list our boat with the biggest brokerage firm to increase our chances of a quick sell. It was a complete flop. Our boat was probably not suitable for that market, and we decided to move to Australia. At the beginning of April 2007, we started our crossing of the Tasman Strait towards our target in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. But not without noticing Australian Authorities of our arrival. I would not make the same mistake twice.
We were expected. Followed along the way. Tracked like dangerous smugglers. 200 nautical miles from the Australian coast, we were hailed by an Australian Custom aircraft who asked us a bunch of questions by radio. A day later and 75 nautical miles from the coast, a military helicopter hailed us on the radio and asked us the same bunch of questions. I could not help myself in thinking that our friend Bruce-A-Grade-I-Am-God-Civil-Servant-Asshole had contacted the Australians and told them on our intentions of kidnapping koalas. Twelve nautical miles from the Coast, we did not need to contact Brisbane Harbor Radio. They contacted us first. They knew exactly who we were. And guess what…. they asked us the same bunch of questions again. They were probably testing our story, which was a non-story. They pointed us to quarantine dock and we stayed onboard until somebody showed up. Danielle was constantly reminding me to stay on my best behavior and not to be a smart ass for the time the officials would be onboard.
A few minutes after we arrived, a car came in the premises, 2 uniformed guys came out, one stayed with the car, the other one asked to come on board. He was in a good mood. Australia had just won the Cricket World Cup the night before. He asked us the same bunch of questions. I did not comment. He gave us our papers back with a 3-month visa. They were taking their border security very seriously, but they were not taking themselves very seriously and the whole process was painless and very amicable. We moved the boat to the marina next door and booked a 1-month berth.
Danielle and I had a bit of a routine when we landed in a new country. Since we did not drink during a crossing, a nice meal with a pint of beer was always on top of the priority list. This was always our way to celebrate a safe passage. This one had been without pain and had taken 10 days. It was one or two days too long, but winds and currents had not been exactly cooperative. We tied our boat to the dock, took a shower, put a clean shirt on, locked the gangway and went on a prowl to find a pub. Not 20 meters into our walk, we were stopped by a guy who presented himself as a local boat broker.
- “Excuse me to bother you but my name is Peter, and I am a broker for sailboats, and I was wondering if you wanted to put your boat on the market? Your boat has nice lines and would sell easily here.”
- “I am Claude. As a matter of fact, we came to Australia to sell our boat because we were unsuccessful in doing the same in New Zealand.”
- “I know the designer of this boat. This is a Ted Gozzard design. We just sold a Bayfield 40 last month and a Gozzard 41 a couple of weeks ago. I can find somebody for your boat.”
I had to like the guy. He knew boats. I did not need him to explain what the story on my boat was. He could see the Canadian flag on it, he knew the boat had some mileage, but he also knew that our boat was well maintained and in shipshape condition.
- “Listen, we just had a crossing from New Zealand, and we would not mind a pint. Can we discuss this later?” I asked him.
- “Sure, here is my business card, please call me when you want to discuss this, my office is right there next to the marina office.”
We went to a nice pub in Manly, a few blocks away from the marina. We had gummy shark fish-and-chips (we were still in the burger-fish-and-chips commonwealth) with a pint of Guiness. The place was packed and had a cool vibe to it. The Aussies were a real funny bunch who only wanted to have a good time. On our way back to the marina, I could see from a distance that Peter the Broker was standing by my boat with a mobile phone on his ear. As I approached, he turned toward me and had a smile on his face.
- “Claude! I sold your boat.”
I was taken aback. We had not discussed terms and price. He had not checked the boat out. He did not have a list of the equipment on board. How could he sell the boat?
- “Is this a joke” I replied.
- “I never joke about money. I have a client in Newcastle who missed out on the last Gozzard. He wants your boat. How much do you want for it?”
I told him what I wanted, and that the buyer would have to pay his commission. He pulled away to make another phone call and came back after 2 minutes.
- “He is OK with the price as long as you pay for the inspection. He will be here in 3 weeks to do the settlement. Come by my office in the morning to do the paperwork.”
I just could not believe it. 5 minutes in the country and my boat is sold at asking price. So we went on board, pulled out a nice bottle and sat in the cockpit. The sun was setting behind the mountains West of the city. It was a weekday, and the marina was full of boats and empty of people. Everyone who has a boat knows this. A boat sits at the marina alone for all but two weeks in the year. It is just how it is. As we were sipping our Rosé, a guy walking on the dock who was probably going back home after a day on the water stopped by us and looked at our flag.
- “The port of registry of your boat is Montreal. Did you sail from Montreal to here?”, he asked.
- “Yes. The boat is registered in Montreal, but we did sail from Quebec City to here.”
- “Panama Canal and all?”
- “We did not want to go around Cape Horn.”
- “Incredible. I will be back in fifteen minutes. I have a few questions if you do not mind.”
He left without waiting for a response. He was back half an hour later. He was not empty handed. His name was Chris Shapcott. He was in his late forties, very bubbly and enthusiastic. He had this incredible thick caricatural Australian accent that I liked, a crocodile Steve Irwin of some sort. We invited him on board. We sat down together in the cockpit. He just could not believe that we had sailed to Brisbane. He had a bag with him. He emptied the content on the cockpit table. There was a vacuum-packed kangaroo steak, a road atlas to Australia, a keychain in the shape of a kangaroo, a block of the local chocolate and beautiful bottle of Shiraz from the Barossa valley.
“Claude and Danielle, this is for you. Welcome to Australia.”
He spent an hour with us asking us about everything and anything. He was very engaging. He was a teacher in high school and loved the sea. As he left that night, he promised to come back the next day after work to drop his second car so we could have a set of wheels during our stay in Brisbane. As for first impressions of a first day, Australia was doing much, much, much better than New Zealand.
The rest of our stay Down Under was filled with backyard barbecues at Chris’s place or at his friends’. And in a blur, our stay in Australia was over. The boat settlement was uneventful. One month to the day of our arrival in Australia, we were boarding a 747 bound for Fiji with only 2 small suitcases. The rest of our lives was in a bank account in Australia and in a container in Fiji waiting for us to comeback. As we were flying over the Tasman Strait for the 3-hour flight to Fiji, I was looking down at the ocean and could not help in thinking that it had taken us a total of 18 days of sailing to go from Fiji to Australia via New Zealand. 3 hours against 18 days, that was the proof that nothing goes to windward like a 747.
The minute we arrived in Fiji, we got to work right away. I found and bought an old pick-up truck that we loaded with our stuff. We loaded everything on the ferry and arrived on Taveuni the next day. We found a house close to where the farm would be and managed to rent it out from a local. The house was on the beach at the head of Vurevure Bay, on the windward side of Taveuni. There was a small village across the street and nothing else for kilometers in both directions. Even though the house was the nicest on that side of the island, it was a serious downgrade from our previous house in Canada. It had 3 bedroom and 2 bathrooms but there was no running water, no electricity, and no screens on the windows. All the critters of the rainforest were moving in and out of the house at will. The cockroaches were the size of rats, and the rats were the size of cats. Danielle even found a massive pacific boa snake while cleaning the roof gutter. She simply grabbed it by its tail and threw it in the bush.
First, we organized a gravity fed water system so we would bring the house in the 21st century. Then we installed a hybrid generator-battery system to keep the lights on. Danielle really got cracking on a super scrub of the house completed by a total repaint. I screened the windows, retiled the shower and built cupboards in the kitchen and the garage so I could park my tools somewhere and Danielle could park her pots and pans somewhere. As we slowly got organized with the housing bit, I was slowly sourcing material for the farm. The oyster spawning season was coming fast and in 3 months, a good portion of the material would have to be in the water if we did not want to lose one year of production.
Pearl farming is a bit like winemaking. There are a few steps involved. And every one of these steps takes time. The first step is to find oysters. You can either collect them in the wild or you can deploy spat collector lines where natural occurring larvae in the wild will come and settle on. There are pros and cons to both methods. Fishing them out of the wild is expensive and time consuming. It involves scuba diving, boats, fuel, and fishing rights. It does have the advantage of having ready to implant oysters that will produce a pearl within 18 months. As for spat collecting time is the limiting factor. There is some lead time in importing the material (4-6 months), followed by a deployment that is also costly (water lease, boats, anchors, ropes, and floats). If luck is on your side, you will get ready to implant oysters in about 24 months after the deployment.
Once you have oysters, you need to seed them to make pearls. The process is called nucleation. A technician will implant 300-400 oysters a day with a small nucleus. The pearl will develop for 15-18 months. I am not a pearl technician, so I would need to fly him in for the process once or twice a year. The same technician will harvest the pearls down the line while re-implanting the oysters for a second round of pearls. Once you have pearls, you are not out of the woods yet. The pearls need to be value added, packaged, marketed and sold. This is what we were getting ourselves into… in a foreign country. All our friends and family agreed; we were completely nuts.
A boat would be the next hurdle. I was still without a boat. New boats were not cheap, and my little rubber dinghy would not be a solution to build a pearl farm. I needed a small barge. I needed something fit for purpose that would be able to handle big loads, cement anchors and dirty ropes. Boats are like planes. They are a compromise. Planes can go faster than the sound, far, high, carry a lot of goods and be economical, but you will never be able to find a plane that can carry a container load at Mach 2 between 2 continents on 300 pounds of kerosene. The same rules apply to boats. My priorities were to be able to carry big load and be economical. My little dinghy outboard would push the boat, that would be economical, but I could not find any boats that would do the job. Therefore, I decided to build one on plans and shapes I had seen in the Gambier Islands.
The house we were renting had a long and wide covered veranda that would be a great place to build the boat. Danielle would have to cope with fiberglass smell, dust, and the noise of sanders for a few weeks. The design was very simple. It was a double floor mini-barge of twenty feet by seven made of marine plywood, mahogany and encased in fiberglass. It would be able to carry at least 1.5 tons of material and had a lot of workable space.
We launched the boat within a few weeks and quickly put it to work. To park oysters, you need to put a network of long cables underwater. Both Danielle and I are divers, but we would need a third person to help us. With two divers underwater, one person needed to stay on the boat to feed us the material. Danielle is not the biggest person either. At 50 kg, she can move only so much material and anchors underwater. I would need more muscle at the bottom. Working underwater is complicated and dangerous. We would be mostly working at 25 to 30 meters which is close to the normal safety limits with compressed air. There was no way around it. We would need to hire some help.
I had heard a lot of horror stories about the local staff. If I listened to the expat community of Taveuni, the locals were untrained, lazy and tend to walk away with your tools and your beers. Whenever we went to the local pub, it was the only topic of the resort owners. Taveuni does not have a big expat community with no more than 20 employers and no more than 100 snowbirds on temporary holiday residency. We knew most of them. Danielle and I had hired a lot of people in our previous life and like everybody, we had been very happy with some of them and very disappointed with some of them also. I could understand that there would a big training gap in Fiji. The education system was basic. Fijians of Taveuni were not really exposed to work other than farming or fishing. Most villages had no electricity, that meant no internet or TV exposure. We were prepared for this. We had seen the Gambier and seen how Yves Scanzi had adapted. We would have to adapt a bit more because Taveuni did not have all the training resources and citizen support that the Gambier Islands had. Yves had told us that it had been a lot easier for him to adapt himself to the local culture and customs than try to change and force a whole Island to adopt the ways of the White-Man-Yves-Scanzy. It sounds reasonable when you think about it but in fact, it is really hard to do. And if I looked around me. Every expat employer of Taveuni was imposing the western ways of doing things with constant clashes and disappointments.
In the western world, we have our own understanding of what laziness means. Absenteeism, lack of enthusiasm and engagement are the typical signs. We lived across the road from an off-the-grid Fijian village. When I looked at them, I did not see laziness. I saw lives burdened by the inefficiencies of being off-the-grid. A life without lights at night and without refrigerators. The whole family gets up at 430am, the men walk up the mountain to the planting field to attend their crops while the women starts the cooking fire so they can prepare breakfast for the kids and organize the lunchboxes. The kids starts their walk to school at 715am so they can be in the classroom by 8am. The women will go to the river to do the laundry by beating the clothes on rocks and bars of soap, then go to sea or the river to gather some protein for tonight’s dinner that will be mixed with tapioca and coconut milk that the men bring down the hill at around 11am. They have been weeding pretty hard from 5 to 11 and they need a break. They will not do much during the heat of the day. The kids are back at 330pm. That is the signal for the men to climb back up the hill to work a bit more on their patch before dinner. The women will then deal with the dinner, the school uniforms and the kid’s homework. No laziness there. It was just the hard grind of life without electricity.
It was time to find a helper. The first few months in Fiji were really weird for Danielle and I. And they were more so in Taveuni because of the rural setting. I was in learning mode regarding this new Fijian culture and ways to communicate. I went to the village to meet the headman Tomasi to find some help. He was just back from the fields.
-“Bula Tomasi. Do you have a minute?” I asked him.
He was looking at me with interrogative eyes. I asked the question again.
-“Do you have a minute?”
He had the same look in his eyes but this time he said something.
- “Bula Claude. I don’t understand what you want.”
Clearly lost in translation. He was looking at the ground and was saying nothing. I rephrased.
- “Do you have some free time? I need to ask you something.”
That worked. His eyes lit up. Then it dawned on me. I had asked him if he had a minute like if he had a screwdriver I could use. He was looking for something physical that was called a minute. He just did not know that expression. When we arrived in Fiji, Danielle’s English was very basic, but she had no problem in getting her message across and getting understood. I had all the misery in the world in getting understood. My phrases were too complex or using metaphors that were not part of the local culture. Only years later when I would start to understand the rudiment of the local language, I would understand the way they build phrases and their thought process which was much more descriptive and down to earth than my way of communicating. If Danielle asked them: “Do you have fish? I want to buy fish.” That was very efficient, and they understood that very clearly. If I asked a similar question:” Any chance we can get some fish?”. That did not work well. The “Any chance” at the beginning of the phrase was the killer. It could sound for them that I wanted them to be lucky to have fish. It was very confusing for them and very frustrating for me. Still is.
Of course, Tomasi had a minute. I was the highlight of his day breaking his routine. The-White-Man-Across-the-Street wanted something. I asked him to send six young boys for paid work to help me the next day in lifting our water tank off the ground to put it on stilts. That would be the occasion for me to work with them and see who would pop up as a likely candidate. The day started at 7am and it took only 5 minutes to spot the one I would offer a job to. He was the youngest of the lot. He was a leader by example. With his work, he made the other boys look bad. His name was Daki. At the end of the day, I paid everyone, thanked them, and took Daki aside. He was 24, married with 2 kids. His wife was pregnant with twins. He worked his own small kava and taro farm to keep the household floating. I offered him a job and asked him how much time he could give me in a week. I explained to him that I did not want him to give up his farm and that that I would take only the hours he could give me. He said that he would think about it and show up in the morning at seven o ‘clock.
He did show at seven the next morning and that was a good sign. The Taveuni expats were constantly complaining about staff being late or not showing up. Daki told me that he could give 4 mornings from 7 to 11. Why four? Because he needed to give one day a week to the village on Tuesday. That suited me. That would keep the payroll low while providing me with much needed muscle power. Over the years, I would push that hiring model to the maximum where the staff would decide of the roster so they could fit work into their lives without too much disruptions in their communities. Nowadays, I never really know who will show up in the morning. I always need 3 guys (with at least 1 diver). To achieve that, I have nine workers on the payroll. They set up the schedule between themselves as it suits. Sometimes, 1 boy will work 30 days in a row because he needs to buy some building materials to extend his house while another one could disappear for 6 weeks because he is on a spiritual retreat discussing Bible with friends. It seems to work; the same group of workers have been with me for more than 15 years. Scanzi was right. It is easier for to adapt to the local ways than try to fit the locals in the rat race model. The pearl farm is probably more suitable to that flexible arrangement. My oysters do not really care if they have they are cleaned up on a Thursday or a Monday. Resort owners have 100 more time constrains than I do. Their guests need to eat 3 times a day and show up on time at the dive boat or at the airport.
Very few Fijians knew about pearl farming in Fiji. For them, this was a completely new thing that they could not understand. I was myself not a real expert. For Daki, this was a bit scary. He would have to learn how to dive. Even though Fijians are Islanders, scuba diving is a rare occurrence with the locals. The equipment costs 6 months of the average wages. I am not a dive instructor, but in 2006, I had more than 1000 dives under my belt in different conditions. I took on me to teach him diving until he was proficient enough for me to call in a resort dive instructor to come and certify him. Daki went to school but was not a strong enough English reader to go through the theory book on scuba diving. I basically had to teach him every concept slowly and supplement with a lot of hands-on diving. It took 3 months for me to be confidant enough to bring in the instructor. I just did not want him to kill himself. He became a great and very efficient worker underwater. Danielle did dive with us a lot at the beginning but as Daki became better, Danielle was happy to outsource her time underwater to Daki.
From this teaching experience, I learned that I could deal with the “gap” in local training. I just had to be a bit more patient. Danielle and I were also on a steep learning curve. The social structure was very different than what we had been raised in. Poverty is very common in Fiji and dictates a lot of the social dynamics. In the western world, we take everything for granted. Here, there is nothing. You have to build your own sceptic tank. You have to burn your own trash and do your own recycling. You have to grow your own vegetables and fish your own fish. You also have to know someone who raises pigs or cattle. Giving birth at home is common. Most people have built their home themselves over a long period of time without a bank mortgage. Sometimes, timber is not available, you then have to go in the bush, find a tree, fall it and rip it.
Nothing in my life had prepared me to that morning that Tomasi the headman came to see me to ask for something. I was surprised that he came. We respected each other and unlike many villagers, he never came to ask for something. There was this constant movement of people who were always coming to ask for something like fuel, tools or advice. It was very annoying, and we were not used to that. There was nothing we could do about it. We knew better. It was driven by poverty and desperation.
As Tomasi walked the driveway towards me, I greeted him and asked him what he wanted.
“Bula Tom, what can I do for you this morning?”, I asked.
-“Bula Claude, I have sad news for you today. Bussa died last night.”
That was sad. Bussani was an old woman who lived alone in the village. She used to be a domestic at the governor’s house when she was young during the colonial days. After the Independence and out of a job and because of her qualifications, she had moved back to the Taveuni to become a governess in a big copra plantation. She knew of the ways of the white folks of the times and now was well into her late eighties. In the last few months, she would come often to pay visit to Danielle and have tea with us while showering us with tales of the past. She was now gone. Tomasi was probably here because he needed help with the funerals. Funerals are always a very big deal in Fiji. Families can really put themselves in real financial trouble with funerals. Everyone is always invited. And because they are invited, the family of the deceased must feed all these peoples for one- two and sometimes three days. It is not uncommon to see more than 300 guests at a simple village funeral. If you have a bit of clout in the community, your funeral can gather much more guests and require more than five bulls and 10 pigs. Families have no savings, therefore, when someone dies, it is always a terrible scramble to call in favors to find cows, money, loans and pigs for the burial.
Since we knew Bussani, it opened the door for the headman who probably felt that we should also share in the load of preparation for the funeral. It would probably be a relatively small funeral since Bussani had no kids and no immediate family in the village. I was wrong again with this assumption. The headman had a weird request for me.
Tomasi went on: “Claude, the hospital is out of fuel for the generator and the morgue is closed because the cold room is not working. We brought the body to the hospital, but they turned us back. All we got is a death certificate.”
-“What you want me to do? Find fuel for the hospital?”
-“No, no, no. This happens often. We bury the same day.”
I still did not know what I had to do with all this. Obviously, he had something on his mind, and he was beating around the bush.
-“Tom, what do you want?”
-“Some of her family is on the main island and will be here in the morning tomorrow with the ferry and they want to see her before we burry. It is very hot today.”
-“Tom what do you want?”
-“Sorry Claude. You know, it is very hot for the body today. We need a coffin. Can you build one quick now? Daki told me you have good tools, good hands and plenty wood. Please. Kere kere.”
That request needed a bit of processing. I knew that if a sentence starts with “sorry”, it is never a good thing. In this case, it was a big “ask”. And when the Fijians add the words “kere kere”, that means “please, help me”, and you are not supposed to say no. And with this heat, the body was not doing well. They needed help.
-“Tomasi, ask Daki to come and help me and we will do the coffin.”
I am not a good carpenter, but when you are forced into something, you kind of become one. My only reference was what I saw in the movies, a plywood box wider at the shoulder height with handles. Bussani was about the height and size of Danielle. Danielle would have to do some coffin modeling today. I had Danielle lay down on a sheet of plywood and draw the lines. We slapped the box together quickly within an hour. I even found some nice ropes to make 6 good handles on the sides. I put the cover on top and drilled screws in to shut the box. Then I undid the screws while leaving them in place so they could shut down the cover in the village without my assistance. I did not have it in me to be there for that part of the ritual.
I told Daki to go get Tomasi so he could pick up the box. Daki did not seem enthusiastic about our box. I thought it was fine, considering the circumstances and options they had. Tomasi arrived five minutes later and did not seem happy either. I showed them the nice handles and the pre-drilled holes for the cover. Still, there were no thank yous.
One thing that is always difficult here is that you have to press hard with questions if you want to go to the bottom of a story. Nobody wants an argument or create a disturbance in the force. A lot is left unsaid, too often.
- “Tomasi, what is wrong? You do not seem happy about the coffin.”
After long seconds, all I got was a cryptic response.
-“Claude, the family arrives tomorrow and they want to see Bussani.”
-“Tomasi, I do not understand. You asked for a coffin. What do you want?”
-“It is hot. We need to close the box now. They will not be able to see her.”
-“Tomasi, please tell me. What do you want?”
-“Claude, we always put a window on top so we can see inside.”
Back in Canada, nobody deals with that stuff. Somebody picks up a body at the hospital, cleans it, embalms it. You then choose a coffin that fits the need, and you choose the ceremony that fits the need and the caterer that has the right menu, and the whole thing is pretty easy as long as you have a good credit card. Here, it is a bit rawer and in your face. An hour later, the coffin was out of my hands. I had put a nice little window on the top cover and a little wooden cross. Everybody was smiling. Mission accomplished.