Tribewanted: Vorovoro

Unfortunately for me I wasn’t to know how just one week on Vorovoro would be painfully and frustratingly to short. There’s no travel agent to tell you of the addictive nature of the island, and even if there was I doubt articulating the feeling i have now would be an easy, if at all possible task. There is also precious few people to tell you and inevitably convince you to go. Not because they would be unwilling to extol the virtues of the place, but because the number of these priviliged people is so beautifully low that you would struggle to find somebody who has been…but once you did, im sure you could see it in there general approach to life and the look in their eye that they had.

Never before has a place, people, feelings and events lodged themselves so deep within me. Somebody who wouldn’t usually do anything on a whim, who found himself booking a week on an island he had not heard about after just one conversation (thank you vanessa!), had not even known had been on tv and knew very little about anything, has found himself so transfixed with the place that the journey back to England was spent frantically plotting the possibilities of a hasty return.

Just tonight, the first time i have seen my dad since I left for my travels I sit down and tell him all my stories, and then tell him I think I am going back to Fiji. Having assumed I had returned to start a career, he was not too keen for me to jump straight back on a plane, but to my amazement even he seemed to be willing me to go after just a few minutes of my stories of the place and the benefit it has upon all who are involved. This for me was a very strange thing for my dad to do.

Unfortunately for me, after I left Vorovoro, I was due for a couple of days in Beachcomber Island – ‘the place for everybody to finish of their trip’ according to my travel agent. This place further reinforced the beauty of Vorovoro. People go there to get drunk and sleep with people like they are in any part of the world. Words such as Vinaka, Moce, and Andra (thank you, goodbye, morning) are barely used, ‘cheers mate’ seems to be the best effort. Vaka levu (very much, as in Vinaka vaka levu) is not understood in the slightest and Bula, is used as a chant to commence whatever drunken event is about to commence. The amazing singing of the men and women of Vorovoro, something that becomes the background soundtrack to your day is replaced by some cheap rendition of the macarena called the Bula dance. For me it caused a bitter taste in my mouth for the end of my trip, but I suppose it was accentuated by the fact that Vorovoro is without doubt the most perfect place on earth for me, many other people I met on the island, and if you havnt been, than probably for you too. If you have read this with a view to deciding to go to Vorovoro or not then I can only say that as somebody who generally sticks close to the norm and hardly ever strays of the beaten track, (although wishes he could) was lucky enough to follow through with doing it and has found a place on this earth that makes him feel at total ease with himslef. Although not life changing (yet) the most life affirming trip i have ever taken. If you think you might want to go to Vorovoro then you must, just stay well away from Beachcomber!