February 2010

So after selling copy machines for 13 years, Ronna Goldstein, a nice Jewish girl from Florida, let her boyfriend at the time, Steve, talk her into cashing out all her savings and moving to Taveuni to start a little restaurant called the Coconut Grove. Unfortunately, after they’d run through Ronna’s money, shortly after opening the restaurant, Steve decided that living in paradise was just too much damn work. So he hoped a plane for home. Leaving Ronna—who didn’t know how to cook—wondering what to do next.

For a few months, she gave it a go. But her heart wasn’t in it anymore. In 1994, she decided to sell the Coconut Grove which, at that point, was a restaurant and two bures that she rented out. She posted flyers around town that said, “Ready To Give Up the Rat Race?” and waited to see if she’d get any takers. Before long, an Australian woman came by and made an offer and Ronna made plans to return to Florida.

Some of the staff at the Coconut Grove. Photo by David Lansing.

Me: Then what happened?

Ronna: (She laughs and shakes her head.) Like that Meryle Streep movie, it’s complicated. I was very conflicted. You have to understand that at the time I was like 44 years old and I felt that if I stayed on Taveuni, I was probably never going to meet Mr. Wonderful. I was never going to get married. And I wanted that. But just before I was to go back home, a friend came over for a visit and I poured my heart out and told him everything and he told me I was a damn fool for selling the place, which really surprised me. “Just what do you think is waiting for you back in Florida?” he asked me. I said, Another shot at love? He said, “Ronna, this is where you belong. You just need to find a different way of giving and receiving love.”

Well, that shook me up.

I thought about it for a couple of days and then just like that, I called up the Australian woman, who’d already given me a big down payment on the place and was getting ready to move here, I told her I wanted to back out of the deal.

Me: How’d she take that?

Ronna: (She laughs.) She was very Zen about it. She said, “Maybe that’s the way it was meant to be all along.” So I stayed. And Bimla stayed and started cooking for me. Her mom, Madhaiai, tended my organic vegetable garden for years until she died a few years ago (I still miss her terribly). But I’ve got the other girls—Serah, Kata, Lily, Vina, Elenoa. They all work here with me. I don’t know if I adopted them or they adopted me, but we all keep the Coconut Grove going.

So I guess staying here after Steve left, I gave up any shot of ever having that one great love in my life. But at the same time, I’ve learned how to give love and receive love in different ways—just like my friend said I would. So I guess this is just the way it was meant to be. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.

I finally got Ronna Goldstein, the owner of the Coconut Grove Beachfront Cottages on Taveuni, to sit down with me for more than five minutes. She was extremely jumpy. At first I thought it was just because she was worried we were going to be interrupted again, but she fessed up that writers make her nervous. She spoke honestly with me about the challenges (and joys) of opening a little hotel on an isolated Fijian island, admitting that it wasn’t nearly as glamorous as most people think. Here’s part of what she had to say.

Ronna Goldstein in front of the Coconut Grove. Photo by David Lansing.

Me: Tell me how you ended up on Taveuni?

Ronna: I walked away from a $70,000 a year job in the mid-80s trying to figure out how to live and travel at the same time. I ended up here because my boyfriend said to me one night, Did you know that in Fiji you can own the land. And that’s rare in the world when you’re talking about an island.

Steve—my boyfriend at the time—and I were thinking of buying a resort in Rarotanga. But Fiji’s freehold was the draw. I think Costa Rica and Fiji were the only tropical places at the time where you could own property without being a citizen.

Steve had owned a restaurant at one time so we originally decided that’s what we’d do on Taveuni—open the Coconut Grove restaurant. I bought some undeveloped land and we basically lived in a lean-to while building two bures. Then I ran out of money. So we had to open the restaurant on a shoestring. Steve cooked and I did everything else.

You know, people think that living on a little Fijian island and running a resort is very glamorous but it doesn’t always feel that way when you’re living it. It’s very challenging living in a third world country unless you have a lot of money. I mean, we spent five years of doing without. We were sleeping in a hut and using kerosene lanterns for light and bathing from a bucket of water carried back from up the road. Doing all this to open a little restaurant and just barely making enough money to get by on.

Me: So what happened with Steve?

Ronna: He liked the idea of living in paradise more than he liked the idea of working in paradise. One morning he just woke up and said he was going home. Just like that. I remember watching him get in the taxi to leave and turning to Bimla, my right hand girl, and saying, “There goes our cook. Now what are we going to do?” And Bimla smiled and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll cook.” And I had to remind her that she didn’t know how to cook and neither did I! But we learned—both of us.

To be continued…

Photo by David Lansing.

It’s difficult to have a conversation of more than five minutes with Ronna, the owner of the Coconut Grove. This morning we sat down at seven, before the guests arrived for breakfast. But before Ronna could even pour us both a cup of coffee, one of the girls who arrives early to cook, Serah, came up to tell her that because rain is coming this afternoon, they are moving up the ash spreading of the woman who used to be a gardener here. So Ronna has to dash off to make some phone calls.

When she returns, she says, “Where were we?” and before I can answer, someone else tells her that a garden banana tree has fallen in the wind and she rushes off to attend to that.

“There’s always ten things going on at the same time around here,” Ronna says when she returns. “It’s amazing I can keep any of it straight.” She takes a deep breath, picks up her coffee, puts it back down on the table without drinking. While I ask her a question, she looks around the dining room and you can tell she’s thinking about what needs to be done: fix a bamboo screen that has come undone from yesterday’s storm; ask Serah to fill the salt and pepper shakers; figure out a menu for tonight’s dinner.

“I’m getting to the age where I probably should write things down,” she says, admitting that it’s difficult to keep track of all the little chores that need to be attended to on a daily basis. Then she leans forward and puts a hand atop my arm. “But the good thing is,” she says in a low voice, “if you ever tell me a secret, I won’t remember it.”

Then she laughs and scurries away towards the kitchen, our interview either postponed or forgotten, it’s hard to tell.

Ronna and Sophie at the Coconut Grove. Photo by David Lansing.

When I arrived yesterday afternoon, the owner of the Coconut Grove, Ronna, met me at the front gate to warn me that her Doberman, Sophie, came from a breeder who probably abused her, so she’s still trying to mute her aggressiveness. For her part, Sophie was curious about me—but polite.

After showing me to my room, she apologized for not being able to join me for dinner. She had a Rotarian meeting to go to. “But maybe you’d like to come?” she asked.

I took a pass.

Dinner was on the screened in deck off the lobby. Everyone was very reserved, whispering the way people do in hospital waiting rooms. Perhaps that’s because there are several lone men here, myself included. A bit different from Likuliku where I was told I was the first guest to stay at the resort alone.

What an accomplishment.

Dinner service was an anachronistic as the American man in the corner wearing a longed sleeved shirt, blue jeans, and Hush Puppies with white socks while reading The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass, a book I’ve never been able to get through.

Do we have CIA spooks in Fiji? And if so, would they hang out at the Coconut Grove on Taveuni? Silently watching this man slowly drink Scotch from his own bottle while staring out at the beach, I’d have to say yes. In any case, he definitely seems out of place here. But then again, perhaps I do as well.