When we arrived in Fiji is was a little after 5:30am, when we walked off the plane an onto the small concourse. We walked through a duty free shop, then down a long hallway which would separate the people who would be transferring to a flight from the people that came to spend time on the islands. The concourse was filled with music as a three piece guitar and ukulele band was playing songs and selling flowers for a $1 for the ladies to put into their hair. While it was fun and unique to see such a thing when arriving at the airport, I think that we were a little too jet lagged to embrace the full awesomeness that was presenting itself.
We had decided that a 4 hour layover wasn’t enough time for us to leave the airport and look around, even if it was a fairly small airport. So we got in the line for international flights and went through another security check point. As we waiting in line, I noticed a strange-looking, white gentleman wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. It’s something that I rarely see in the liberal state of California, unless it’s being worn by a tourist from a red state. Even then it seems strange, because the implied ideology of someone that would walk around with one of those tacky, red, snapback, baseball caps is that they wouldn’t be someone that would leave the conservative bubble of their small town.
Being judgmental to a point myself, I will admit that my broadly painted brush of what type of person would wear that hat as standing for everything that I stand against, is pretty harsh and ignorant. That being said, I was curious to see what was going to happen as he started talking politics and religion to the predominately African-American, Christian mission group that was standing next to him in line. Being in an airport, where tensions are already riding high, I imagined this gentleman crossing a line and saying something racist, but some how he managed to behave appropriately enough. I was lucky enough to not be embarrassed as a white America, by the President and his followers, despite this man’s outspoken conservative lecturing.
After making our way through the x-ray machine, we were directed through a massive duty free shop, which we had to pass through before getting to the gates. The international terminal was nothing to get overwhelmed by. There were eight gates, a few shops including Nike and Billabong, a Burger King, and one or two restaurants that weren’t found in California as far as I know.
We found some seats in front of windows that looked out to large green mountains, beyond an airplane hanger. The sky was cloudy, but you still got the sense that this place was paradise in a second-world country sort of way. We spent the next few hours walking around the terminal and drinking Fiji water, from bottles and drinking fountains. I joked as I filled my hydroflask with water from a water fountain for free, while other people were paying $5 for virtually the same water. It would all come back to haunt me as when I walked through a security check point on the jet way before board the plane, a gentleman told me that I must dump my Fiji water into a trash bin, not over the edge of the railing or on a plant, but into a trash bin. Some feels so dirty and wasteful about taking purely sourced premium water and dumping it into a trash can. If I could go back in time, I would have chugged the bottle, and become immortal, before having to pee light crazy after drinking 36 ounces of water.
I named this short chapter Bula to Fiji, because everyone that you spoke to while in Fiji or on the plane greeted you with the word, “Bula” which means welcome. It wasn’t until the end of our trip that I learned that the appropriate response was “Bula Backa”, so every time someone said it to me, I struggled to decide to say “Bula” back or just nod or say, “Thank you”, but I always thought it felt weird to say “Welcome” back to someone that was welcoming me to their country or airport or resort.
After pouring out my precious Fiji water, we boarded the plane, which would take us on our four hour flight to Sydney, NSW, Australia.