Tribewanted: Vorovoro

I have Fijian friends on the main island and most of them are unwilling to get into the politics of the situation and don’t really like to talk about it or at least not to me.

I have never been sure if they don’t care (a kind of Fiji Time situation), are unaware of the actual ramifications to themselves (nothing printed in newspaper will have that effect)or as they have told me are happy enough with Frank. But is that because they really have no idea how much he is actually hurting them and their livelyhoods.

Unfortunately until the fijian people tell Frank to nick off nothing much is going to get better; but may of course get much worse. The only people who benefit from this situation are the interim government and the few tourist who are still coming get a great exchange rate.

We may consider ourselves part of a Fijian tribe but be careful putting things forward as part of tribewanted as Bainimarama will consider us meddling foreigners (he already has a thing about Aussies and Kiwis – likes to chuck us out).

All my ex pat Fijian friends are incensed by Bainimarama and all he has done to their beloved homeland. The biggest problem is that it is the ordinary Fijian who is hardest hit, especially by the down turn in tourism which is not helped by our media using footage of the very first coup in 2000 (which was actually very violent and scary) instead of how it actually is on the streets of Fiji. As we who have been there know it may be a military dictatorship but it was never violent and the streets are perfectly safe. Where else would the coup be put back so the Army and Police could play a footy match.

If the world tightens up all exchanges and aid to Fiji it will have an immediate and possibly devastating effect on the Fijian people but perhaps that will need to happen so the ordinary fijian starts to see what a problem Bainimarama actually is to them or will he convince the people that the world is picking on them.

We can only talk to as many people as we can, make people aware of the REAL situation in Fiji and hope & pray for the best.

moce
Fiona

thanks for sharing Hannah. The Fijian village approach is not to react. You don’t often hear local chiefs writing to government. If Tui Mali or any of the community we work with bring up the issue and ask for help then we will listen, otherwise on Vorovoro we’ll stay out of the politics.

Our job is to push positive community tourism in this country as hard as possible! If we do that to our best ability then local people benefit and reward those who visit ten times over :-)

Good comments Ben and Fina – just to be clear I was not proposing anyone actually in Fiji or part of Tribewanted should join the Amnesty campaign and write to Bainimarama – my blog was more aimed at people outside Fiji as an education piece.

The number of people here in New Zealand who gave me crap for going to Fiji last year was unbelievable and I imagine it would only be worse now. Sadly this does affect the people of Fiji who rely on tourism for their livelihoods. As Fiona says: talk, make people aware, and hope and pray. And let’s face it, there are thousands of destinations we shouldn’t visit in this world if we are worried about human rights abuses, Australia being one of them!