Tribewanted: Vorovoro

It’s been over 3 months since I left the island home on my way back to normality from a long travelling career break. After only two weeks it was a wrench to leave new friends who I know deserved a much bigger portion of my life than that. There hasn’t been a day since that I’ve not thought of them – team Fiji, the wonderful kitchen ladies, my fellow tribemembers, Jessica the cat…

As soon as I stepped back into the office I found myself in the same place both physically and spiritually that I’d left 3 and a half months previously (only now with a big overdraft to clear!): the pressures and frustrations of managing projects and people, the daily commute and the walk from the railway station to the office through what now seemed even duller surroundings. I knew there would be a reckoning when I came “home” but I didn’t expect this: that everything was just as when I left – no worse, no better – and I didn’t seem to have changed at all.

Sorting through my thousands of photos I’ve tried to hang on to the essence of the journey – as we all do after travelling. And in some ways that works, as does telling everyone about the experiences. To avoid boring people into a stupor, however, I’ve looked for just one or two things I can say about each place I’ve been to which might leave them asking to know more. So what am I saying about Vorovoro? It’s not difficult – at least, not complex – though it may be hard for people to grasp who haven’t been. It’s the welcome: the wholehearted acceptance our friends on Vorovoro and Mali give to visitors not only to the place, but into their lives. The formalities of “ho, ya!” and “bongi!”; of kava and sevusevu are in reality open doors compared to the unspoken, reserved approach to strangers we take in the “developed” west, where openness is often interpreted as naivity.

Incidentally, last week, two men completed a walk across the north of England with a donkey, hoping to decide an argument between them as to whether people were basically friendly or hostile. They made no plans and took no money, relying on the good will of strangers to house and feed them. Surprisingly, perhaps for this culture, they made the whole trip without resorting to buying bed and breakfast or any meals anywhere. That made me smile.

Something else which makes me smile every time I’m there is a shelter for destitute asylum seekers here in Coventry, known as the Peace House. I’ve volunteered occasionally and for some years at the night shelter – the easiest work imaginable. Why? You might think that it would be a sad, desperate place; a place of last resort, where people with little hope and terrible stories keep themselves to themselves. But whilst many of the people there have been through the worst kinds of trauma, I’m stunned how approachable they are, how easily they smile, and how giving in conversation – how welcoming of others into their lives in fact. Having been offered little welcome by this country, they show us who are trying in a small way to rectify that omission just what welcome is about. So it’s a strangely happy community, and a place where I hear the echo of Vorovoro resonating. I’ll be moving to the Peace House next month, into the housing co-operative out of which the shelter was born. And in a way, it’s going to feel like coming home. And every time I pull up a carrot from the vegetable garden I’ll think of Leavi and Puasa, and when I pick herbs for the pot, I’ll remember Pupu. And when I cook for the house, I’ll wonder what Wati will be making that day. And when chatting with the others in the evening, I might just break into song…