While Fiji may be big on it’s premier sunrise location, on
the things Fijians are not big on is punctuality. They call the standard tardiness “Fiji Time.” But tardiness isn’t the point. The point is that there are things that
are more important than being on time.
Plus, there isn’t much to do today that couldn’t really be done
tomorrow, so too brief encounters with friends and relatives or hurrying off to
be in another place are unnecessary.
This is something the new Country Director of Peace Corps –
Fiji realizes. He came up north
recently to talk with the volunteers and the divisional heads of various
government departments. He kept
his schedule very flexible and stressed to the volunteers that he may not
arrive on time, depending on whether there were customs he needed to observe
(drinking grog) at other sites. As
far as I know he was on time everywhere, but I’ve heard there have been other
Peace Corps staff that have missed meetings altogether because of such customs
and the notion of Fiji Time.
At a tikina meeting (like a meeting of all the mayors in a
county hearing about goings on at the national level) I was sitting with a
newly appointed Roko (a representative from the National Government to the
people at the local level) and he told me that he enjoyed the drinking grog and
socializing part of the meeting best because he could get to better understand
the people. He mentioned that
because of this part of the meeting they never knew when they would get
home. They could drink yaqona for
half and hour or for three hours – but they weren’t doing nothing. At the time I was a little antsy,
however, because I was getting a ride with the Rokos to Savusavu where there
was a Rotary Club meeting I needed to be at. In the end everything worked out and I realized I just
needed to embrace another Fijian truism: “Maka Leka” or no worries (No wonder
“Hakuna Matata” plays constantly on the radio here).
But it is difficult for me to give up my notions of finite
time. This, I believe, has much to
do with latitude (and climate and other stuff…) Besides in the cities and towns
where people have schedules, jobs and deadlines, time passes quite differently
in Fiji than it does anywhere I’ve been.
Days seem to roll into one another; weeks and months glide by without
being accounted for. And suddenly
I’ve been in Fiji for six months.
It’s my theory that being so close to the equator and with no real
distinction between seasons (at least not like the planting, growing, harvest
and rest cycle of the North) and with the same staple foods available year
round, it would be easy to oblivious of time. If food is available, if you have no need to make stores for
the winter and if everything is good – then there is really nothing that NEEDS
to be done at any given time, nothing that couldn’t wait a day, a week, a month
or 15 years (which is how long it took to build the church in the
village). And so Fiji Time is
born.
Being from a land twice as far from the equator with
distinct seasons, time here feels stale as if it has been summer too long. And I feel like I’m constantly waiting
for fall. Yesterday I heard a
Christmas song on the radio and was shocked to realize the holidays are right
around the corner despite having Thanksgiving plans for next week. I’m not sure if time here sneaks up on
Fijians as it does me. But as far
as I know there are not traditional seasonal celebrations (at least there weren’t
before Methodists brought Christmas and Easter). It leaves me wondering what time was like in Fiji before
Europeans brought their calendars with them.
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