Surviving Paradise

Travel Stories: Visiting Fiji in the midst of a coup, Jim Benning stumbles over the line that divides stimulating anxiety from real fear. He has the T-shirt to prove it.

I cleared customs and carried my bags out the airport’s front doors. A warm, moist breeze washed over me. Palm fronds clattered in the gusts.

I had little idea what to expect. While I’d read that the violence had been contained in a small part of Suva, a city two hours away, I couldn’t imagine the rest of the country being unaffected. After all, martial law had been imposed, and tensions between Fiji’s ethnic Indians, who comprise 40 percent of the country’s population, and indigenous ethnic Fijians, who felt they were being squeezed out of wealth and power, were at the heart of the rebellion. The country’s Fiji Indian prime minister was still being held hostage. The ethnic Fijian rebels were still angry. The U.S. government was still warning its citizens away. Nothing had been resolved.

I walked down the airport’s driveway. Several uniformed soldiers chatted nonchalantly, rifles dangling from their shoulders. I crossed a narrow highway and walked to a small resort several hundred yards away, its parking lot empty but for a few cars, its modest rooms melting into the landscape. Beyond the gates, vast green fields stretched in every direction. Lush rolling mountains rose in the distance, their tops obscured in velvety white clouds. A mile away, the blue Pacific shimmered.

I checked into a room and asked about the local situation.

“Everything’s peaceful,” said a Fijian clerk, smiling politely. She wore a long tropical-print dress and a bright red flower in her hair, but she looked forlorn.

“Not much business, huh?” I said.

She frowned.

“The tourists are scared. They’re canceling trips. They see the news and think all of Fiji is bad. It’s only Suva. Now our people are losing jobs. We just want it to end.”

I walked out to the swimming pool to look around. A sullen bartender, backed by bottles of tropical rum, played absent-mindedly with a cocktail umbrella, waiting for orders. Several dozen lounge chairs dotted the patio, their seats devoid of lazing bodies. I spotted a lone couple soaking their feet in the water and asked about their trip. “It’s been great,” the man said in thick Australian. “The travel agency tried to convince us to go to Tahiti instead.” He shook his head. His lobster-like complexion suggested he was more than happy to spend the week cooking in this exact spot. “This place is empty,” he chirped. “It’s perfect.”

Perfectly awful, I thought. Get me another banana daiquiri, barmaid, and don’t bother me with your silly political turmoil. The resort wasn’t sleepy; it was catatonic. I called a cab to take a 15-minute ride into Nadi’s town center.

“You don’t want to go there,” the cab driver, an Indian man, insisted as I got into the car. “You want to go to a beachfront resort. It’s much nicer.”

“What’s wrong with the town?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Then I’d like to see the town.”

After a few minutes on country roads, we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of Nadi, stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. We sat in the same spot for five minutes. Then the driver came clean, telling me what he and the hotel workers hadn’t wanted to reveal. Nadi, too, was plagued by ethnic troubles.

“Every business here is owned by a Fiji Indian,” he said. “They’re scared that their shops and restaurants will be torched and looted, just like the ones in Suva.” Since the coup, Fiji Indian business owners in Nadi had locked their doors early and left the city en masse, creating gridlock. The military had erected barricades, blocking the streets.

“It’s been like this every night lately,” the driver sighed.

“Are you worried?” I asked.

“We’re all worried,” he said. “The rebels have a lot of sympathizers around here. Who knows what will happen? I go home each night, surrounded by others like me, and just pray the crazy men don’t target us.”

That night, I awoke with a start each time I heard the faint hollering of men in the distance.

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