September 30, 2007

Fiji; the land, farms and gardens
I’ve had a tooth bothering me for a couple of years now, with it particularly being very sensitive to cold. Knowing that we were to be in Fiji, and aware that there are a number of very skilled dentists here who charge a fraction of what it costs in New Zealand, I waited to have it repaired here. Monday was the day of my appointment with Dr. Kumar in Labasa. We caught the 7:30 AM bus from Savu Savu to cross the central ridge of Vanua Levu Island and arrive for my appointment before 10:30. It takes most of three hours to make the trip, and knowing that the actual road distance between towns is about 50 miles gives some indication of what the terrain is like. But it was warm and sunny, and traveling at an average 18 MPH allowed us to get a good look at the scenery, especially on the uphill sections.
On any given day the busses will all be pretty full. Sometimes the baggage will include chickens, goats, or pigs, but we were lucky enough to have all of our co-riders human, many of them children on their way to school. The busses are all British Leyland models, 1960s vintage, equipped with smallish but heavily built and crude diesel engines, linked to gearboxes intended to haul heavy loads slowly. I suppose that decades ago there was padding under the covers of the bus seats, but there’s precious little there now other than naugahyde covers over steel frames. Where the windows once were there are now roll down tarps with hooks and straps, so they can be lowered if it starts to rain too hard. We arrived at the station at a few minutes after 7:00 and got a seat together, before the bus filled up. We noticed as passengers arrived that everyone, including the students who ranged from 8 to 18 years old was courteous and pleasant to each other. I guess that’s almost imperative if you’re going to be shoulder to shoulder for three hours.
On time, with a nearly full bus, we pulled out of town, but then proceeded to stop every half mile or so to pick up more students until the aisle was packed with riders. The road skirts SavuSavu bay for over five miles, and I noticed that at each stop there was a small group of houses, comprising a distinct village, with some rain forest and fields between. On the approach to each village we saw a communal farm plot, with a few rows of kumara (sweet potoato), onions, carrots, long green beans and Chinese cabbages. Surrounding the rows were areas of mixed crops. Tall, spindly coconut trees topped shorter papayas, with neither providing enough shade to retard the growth of the low bushes of cassava and yangona. In the low, wet areas around streams or swampy land there were mixed crops of bananas and taro (pronounced “dalo” here). Vines of pumpkin (squash) and watermelon covered the ground among the trees and bushes, and at the edges of the farm plots were big old breadfuit trees, with the big round light green fruit contrasted against the dark green deeply serrated leaves . Next to these were equally large mango trees of several varieties, the leaves long and slender, like extra large willow leaves, the branches festooned with oblong fruit showing red or gold highlights depending on the type and state of development. We know that in addition to the community plots there are individually owned farms and garden plots, growing crops like sugar cane, dalo, rice, and corn for sale and even for export, but the land near the village is reserved for feeding the community.
As we neared the head of the bay, we stopped at three district schools, where all the students left the bus to the adult riders. A couple more stops were made for workers going to a lumber mill, a copra mill (dried coconut) and the BP fuel storage and distribution center. Then we turned away from the coast, and started to climb. Like the other Pacific Islands, Fiji is the top of a mountain range that protrudes above sea level. In the case of Vanua Levu, it protrudes about three quarters of a mile above the water, the land being generally steep, rocky, convoluted with ridges and gorges, covered with forest anyplace it isn’t sheer vertical, cut with fast moving streams and waterfalls from the frequent rain. It is spectacular to look at, but one hell of a place to build a road. A 65 year old dalo farmer I talked to told me of going to Labasa to repair a ship motor when he was a young marine engineer, in 1969. To get over the mountain pass and down to the road on the north coastal plain, he carried his toolbox on his shoulder for an 8 hour walk along a jungle track. That was the last year before they cut the road through from the south to the north coast. But it is still a lot of work to keep the road open, with washouts and landslides frequently causing blockages. It’s not a place to drive fast around the tight, blind corners.
No reason to fear the bus drivers exceeding the speed limit on the uphill side of the ridge. The grade often exceeds 1 to 6, and I judge the bus engines to make about 100 horsepower or less. With a load of 5 to 6 tons of riders and baggage, on a 7 ton bus chassis, they frequently end up downshifted to low gear, with the motor slowing to the RPM where it makes the most torque. There it settles into a steady hissing bellow, as it drags the bus uphill at 5 to 6 miles per hour, until it crests that wrinkle of the ridge and hits the level, where the driver can sometimes make it all the way into high gear, and cruise for a few minutes at nearly 30 MPH. As rough as they look, the busses must get pretty fair basic maintenance. They still run after 45 years, and they always seem to slow down when the brakes are applied. That’s very important here, when you’re going back down one of those 1 to 6 grades.
I was looking at the types of plants along the way, trying to identify indigenous species, as well as those imported for commercial reasons, decoratives, and the inevitable pests. This isn’t an easy place to run a logging operation, but it has been for a couple hundred years a source of timber, both exotic and construction grade. The first tree harvesting, other than for subsistence use by the native population, was the sandalwood trade. It was driven by traders from Europe and Asia, beginning while the Pacific Islands were first being explored by sailors from the continents. A few years ago, the Fiji government set aside as a protected park the last few square miles of forest containing sandalwood. The traders were intent on taking the last tree. To me, an example of the limitations of “free market self regulation”.
Another example is the earlier harvesting method of trees from the mountainside rain forests. The economical way is to clearcut sections, so equipment need not be moved often, and felled trees are easily brought out. The soil is shallow there, and the roots of the trees grow on or near the surface, taking a grip on any crack in the rock, but also intertwining from tree to tree to form a gigantic mat. As a unit, the section of forest is powerfully anchored, able to stand in the cyclones that sometimes rip over the island. But if you take too many trees from the stand, when their roots die and rot the anchoring mat is damaged. Heavy rain and wind can take down the remaining trees, and as they fall and slide down the mountain they take the mud and loose rock with them. That precludes any regeneration of the forest there in a normal human time frame. Also, at the bottom of the steep slopes, where the land levels out some, is where people plant crops and build villages. We’ve heard about it from the Caribbean to Asia; heavy rain resulting in a million tons of mud landing on a village. But no logging company takes responsibility for the loss and deaths. They left years before, with the logs. Some people wonder why it’s so hard for a foreigner to get licensed to do business in these countries. I find it frustrating, but I sure understand it. There’s a trust issue here.
I’ve noticed that on the areas where native forest has been stripped, now they have planted pines, a hybrid that grows fast in the tropics, and provides economical and utilitarian building material. There is a growing export business, as well as internal market, for boards and plywood made of the pine and of a native mahogany, as well as Fijian kauri. They are struggling to keep the harvest sustainable, but it seems far better than the first wave of logging was.
As we neared the top of the central ridge of the island, the air grew noticeably cooler than down at sea level. The vegetation changed, with an increase in the number and types of mosses and ferns. As our altitude passed a half mile high I started to see giant tree ferns, like those in the sea level forests of New Zealand. The view across the valley was, in fact, pretty similar to that in the mountain ranges of New Zealand, with dark rich green forest canopy broken by patches of bare vertical rock, and slashed by the sparkling white of tall waterfalls where the many streams leap off the edge of the cliffs. The moist, warm trade winds are pushed up over the mountains, where they cool and the moisture condenses into clouds of mist and rain. I had to be grateful that the terrain was so harsh and difficult that the lessons of the logging destruction were learned before the harvest could penetrate the interior of the island. I fervently hope that legal protection will be firmly in place as future technology makes it possible to reach these verdant, wild places.
Having spent two hours climbing to the top of the central ridge pass, the bus stopped next to a small waterfall, which had a plastic pipe projecting out of it to the roadside. A number of the men disembarked to disappear briefly into a stand of bushes. They then went to the pipe to wash hands, and some refilled their drinking bottles. None of the women got off. I guess there was no “ladies bush” available. In five minutes we were headed down the north slope, the engine getting a rest while the brakes got a workout. 30 minutes brought us down to the rolling hills that separate the mountain ridge from the coastal plain. The forest was entirely gone from this easier terrain, but the soil was deeper and richer than in the upland rain forest. As the trees were cleared in the last century, crops and grazing land were quickly established, so there was little erosion, and it remains a productive agricultural area. The villages on this side of the mountains seemed to be dominated more by descendents of the Indian immigrants who were brought to work the British sugar cane plantations nearly 2 centuries ago. For all the time they’ve been cut off from India, they’ve still maintained the major character of their culture, and many of them are still pure blood, though there are many thousands of mixed Indian/Fijian citizens too. As we rolled on down to the plain, and then east to Labasa, I saw both mosques and Shinto shrines as well as churches in the villages. They seem to have learned to accommodate religious differences, though the proclivity of the Indians to excel at business (not always with completely honest and open practices) does cause continuing friction.
Entering Labasa I was again struck by its similarity to small southern US citys , like Greenville Mississippi or Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The reason for its existence is to support the surrounding farms, and provide a central location for processing and shipping their products. The businesses at the outskirts of town were dealers and repair shops for farm equipment, seed stores, and auto parts suppliers. The side streets were all gravel and dirt until we reached the central 10 blocks of the city, near the docks on the Labasa River. There we passed through residential areas of mainly cement block houses, duplexes and small apartment buildings. Every one had gardens in the yard, and the gardens were a mix of ornamentals and food crops. Bananas, carrots and pumpkins look fine between the colias and hibiscus.
When the bus stopped near the town center, we got off and asked if the driver knew where Dr. Kumar had his office. He sent us in the general direction, saying “Near the civic center.” As we saw that building a couple of blocks later, we asked a passer by, who promptly recruited his 3 friends to lead us around to the side of the building and show us the staircase that leads up to the office suite. Service with a smile. The visit to the dentist was as good as such can be, with friendly, competent staff, the doctor both very capable, and communicative about what he was doing and why, and the bill shockingly low. It all went so quickly and smoothly that we were back on the street with an hour to shop in the big central market before we caught the 12:30 bus back to Savu Savu. We picked up a variety of foods, which I held back on until the feeling returned to my mouth two hours later. We boarded early, which was good since we left with standing room only, and it was a good two hours before enough riders had gotten off for everyone to have a seat. By that time we had the side curtains rolled down, as we passed through one rain shower after another. It turns out that it was a good thing we did the trip when we did. It’s rained pretty much continuously for the 8 days since we went, and it wouldn’t have been nearly as informative, or as much fun to have spent 7 hours on the bus with the tarps over the windows.