Fiji: Drop me in the water

Drop me in the water. Photo by David Lansing.

It is 5,536 miles, more or less, from Los Angeles to Nadi on the western side of Fiji’s main island, Viti Levu. I leave L.A. on a cool, brisk January evening and arrive in Fiji before dawn two days later in February—talk about leaving the old year behind—where the first thing I notice getting off the plane after my ten-and-a-half hour flight is the smell of moist, slightly floral, earth.

From the airport it’s a 20-minute taxi ride in the darkness to the Westin Denarau Island Resort (which my driver insists on calling the Sheraton, its old name). By 6:15am I’m in my air-conditioned room. Ready to go to bed just as the sun begins to make a pink-and-orange appearance over the water. Having pulled an all-nighter, unable to sleep, I’m as buzzy as a Vegas gambler after an evening at the craps table, but what the hell. I might as well go for a swim in Denarau Bay. What better way to start the New Year than gliding on my back in warm tropical water as the sun slowly rises behind me?

So now I’m standing up to my knees in water warmer than baby’s formula watching the sun as it sneaks through the palm trees lining the beach. I am the only one in the water. In fact, the only other person out and about this early is a tall, handsome Fijian man in green khakis singing softly to himself as he rakes up small piles of sea grass along the beach. His singing is beautiful. A falsetto voice singing what sounds like church music. Not gospel, mind you, but church-y somehow. Music, sung in Fijian, that makes me think of sinners and absolution. Like a Fijian version of the old Talking Heads classic, Take Me To the River.

And as I walk out deeper into the water, I start humming the song to myself. Not the Fijian song. The Talking Heads song.

I don’t know why I love her like I do. All the trouble that you put me through. Take my money, my cigarettes. I haven’t seen the worst of it yet.

How to explain this without sounding dramatic….It is my first morning in Fiji. My first hour really. And I’m belly-high in warm water, the rising sun illuminating my face, listening to a voice—on the shore? in my head?—that seems to be beckoning me to do something. But I have no idea what.

I cross my arms over my pasty chest and slowly, like in a movie, fall backwards into the warm water, my head slipping below the surface.

Take me to the river (Take me to the river). Drop me in the water (Drop me in the water).

When I come up to the surface, perhaps a minute later, the tall man in green khakis is standing silently on the shore, his rake in hand like a staff, looking at me in a satisfied way. He smiles and nods without saying anything. Then he turns around and walks up the beach, disappearing into the grove of palm trees.

It is perfectly silent. Not a rustle in the palm fronds, not a chirp from a feeding shorebird, not the lap of a wave. Perfect silence. Except for the noise in my head.

I don’t know why you treat me so bad. Think of all the things that we could have had. Love is an ocean, I can’t forget. Take me to the river. Drop me in the water.