Living the life in Fiji

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.