Kamisese Mara

摘要

The islands of the Fiji archipelago are surely a good approximation of Paradise. Blue waters lap around bays shaded by coconut palms. Jungle-covered hills rise up into a cloudless sky, and dusky maidens proffer bowls of yaqona, or kava, to dull the minds of grateful visitors. So the South Pacific has often seemed to Europeans. The more sensible sailed past Fiji, heeding talk of cannibals who did not hesitate to cook missionaries in clay ovens, serve them with wild spinach, and take their own knives and forks to them. When Europeans grew bolder, they found a land which, though proud of its taste for human flesh, was prouder still of its noble indolence. The first British rulers in the late 19th century, wishing to establish sugar plantations, chose to bring in indentured workers from Calcutta and the Punjab. Though confined to barrack-huts and fed on worm-infested rice, the Indians prospered. By midway through the 20th century, there were more of them than of the Melanesian, Micronesian and Polynesian fusion that made up the ethnic Fijian population. Indians were Fiji's shopkeepers, doctors and civil servants. The races did not mix, but neither did they fight. Mostly, they rubbed along together.