On Taveuni Time
Strange Loops in Paradise
Rising as a soft ridge out of the Somosomo Strait, the island of Taveuni (TAH-VE-OO-NI) occupies a gentle rift in the fabric of space-time. Fiji’s ‘Garden Island’ straddles the 180th meridian, an imaginary longitudinal line that cuts through the Greenwich Royal Observatory at 0 degrees on one side of the planet - and Taveuni at 180 degrees on the other.
Though a figment of collective consensus, the establishment in 1884 of the 0 degree meridian at Greenwich and its 180 degree ‘anti-meridian’ as our standard planetary event horizon exerts a strange force on the world which I never quiet understood until I reached Taveuni. Up until 1997 the 180th meridian was synonymous with the International Date Line or the human-made point between ‘today’ and ‘yesterday’. In 1997 (the year of my birth) the dateline was separated from the 180 meridian and shifted further east into the Pacific Ocean to avoid the confounding reality of driving along a bumpy Fijian road into the past.
However, there is still a lingering peculiarity to the way time is experienced on Taveuni that stands apart from the normalized fluidity of ‘Fiji Time’. In vosa vakaviti (Fijian language) the smallest increment of time used is generally quarters of an hour, no one uses exact minutes. As I’ve often experienced waiting along coconut fringed tarmac, if a bus arrives 15 minutes late it’s considered punctual and more than 30 minutes only slightly delayed.
But in Taveuni, catching the bus felt much more like a mystical scene from My Neighbor Totoro than it did routine transportation.
Emerging from the thunderous spectacle of the Bouma Waterfalls onto a quiet gravel road beside the visitor’s center - my brother, his girlfriend and I asked the friendly receptionist if the 2pm bus had already passed. With a smile she said ‘not sure, you will need to go down the road to village stop’. Hmm, i seemed to remember that this was the singular road around the Island and it was only 1:35pm, surely she would have seen it pass?
A quick hop, skip and jump later we laid down our bags in the concrete shelter just in time for a villager to direct us further along the road to wait under a large rain tree beside the ocean. Perched there on gnarly roots we twiddled our thumbs in the sea breeze watching a father and daughter amble across the rahrah (village green) in our direction.
‘Bula vinaka, are you gang waiting for the bus to town?’
‘Io (yes), do know when it will arrive?’
‘Isaa, it left 5 minutes ago, maybe best to call for a taxi’
Huh?
Were we in the right village? We’d been here for 10 minutes, had this bus only appeared to the villagers? Wait… is it today or yesterday?
We did end up calling a taxi.
Similar ripples in time occurred on at least three other occasions during our four day’s in Taveuni - all of them connected to intermittent bus service. It seemed that everyone on the island had a slightly different internal clock, with the only point of calibration being the unpredictable roar of a diesel engine and its accompanying Afrobeats.
Despite the perplexity of arrival, all was quickly forgotten when we did eventually clamber board the bus and settle into its rhymthic flow along Taveuni’s stunning coast. From the main town of Nangara, men, women, and Mormon’s all bounced along to island reggae as we wove through quiet villages waving back to gleeful children from open doorways. Glassless windows framed endless shimmering vistas of sea and steep green slopes that progressed at exactly right pace, regardless of who was waiting at the next stop.
*See the Notes below for a poem I wrote on the bus*
30 years prior, in 1995, my newly-wed parents had waited at these same bus stops ringing the Garden Island. After quitting their jobs and buying a one way ticket around the world, rainy Taveuni was their first point of call. Countless times throughout my childhood we leafed through photo albums of these adventures, my brother and I awed by stories of scuba adventures on Rainbow Reef and coconut palms as far as the eye could see.
Reflecting on these memories, the Taveuni time ripples begin to get more bizarre.
While staying in rustic accommodation at Susie’s Plantation (now the 4-star Paradise Resort), Susie’s enthusiastic Australian partner Bryan introduced my parents to kava for the first time.
My mother’s journal entry from 20 April 1995 reads:
‘Last nite we were invited to our first kava session on the island… the kava session is really a gathering to drink kava, swap stories, joke, sing and get together friends and families…the kava is non alcoholic although it is slightly narcotic & leaves your tongue & teeth with sort of a fuzzy numbing feeling. It is slightly bitter, chalky and of musky, musty taste - although that didn’t stop Peter from 6 cups of it - I stopped at 3! … the best part was just hanging with the group of people, talking and listening to their songs & the language of the Fijians. They asked us about America, we asked about Fiji. It seems most of them (80-90%) stay put on the island they grew up on. “There is always food here - bananas, papayas, what ever, even if you don’t work, you’ll never go hungry on Taveuni”’
Though written two years before my birth, I realize now that this little anecdote planted roots in the fabric of space-time that have rippled into a whole universe of meaningful connections for me.
In early 2022, I too was introduced to kava for the first time by a different but no less enthusiastic man named Bryan who, over the next two years, kindled an enduring passion for the joyful talanoa my mother so accurately described which eventually led me all the way to Fiji.
30 years to the date - on April 20, 2025 - I found myself in the bucolic village of Loa on Vanua Levu (just 27km from Taveuni) sitting with wise and joyful kava farmers about to drink the strongest mix of my life - Na Yagona Saga or cooked kava.
Earlier that afternoon I had finally decided to shave my head, taking the opportunity to mark an important transition between the spheres of ‘work’ and ‘life’ - unconsciously reenacting the same process my parents had gone through three decades earlier. After shedding more than 12 inches of hair, I waded out into the twilight waters of Buca Bay and plunged into a new sense of time.
It was Easter Sunday and I felt reborn.
Three weeks later in mid-May my parents came to Fiji and our family visited Loa. We snorkelled on Rainbow Reef and had such heartfelt talanoa with the kava farmers in the village that it was hard to believe we weren’t dreaming. Exchanging stories from across the planet had never felt so easy and grounded. Things seemed to come full circle during this visit, long loops closed and bright new ones opened.
Though my parents didn’t return to Taveuni this time, my brother, his girlfriend and I did and right before catching the overnight ferry back to Suva we stopped off at Susie’s Platation (Paradise Resort) - where it all began. Still crowded with coconut palms and a cornucopia of aquatic life just off the jetty, it was a mysterious joy to walk in their footsteps and swim in their slipstreams.
Perhaps it is because of the 180th Meridian, the Vanua’s (land’s) memory of my parents, or the generally loopy nature of Fiji time - anyway I slice it, my trip to Taveuni was an inter-dimensional island experience that has both puzzled and inspired me.
As the ripples of Taveuni continue to flow through my mind, I realize that such strange loops exist on many levels, both profound and mundane. Space-time is a weird embodied wonder and I am grateful for its perplexity.
Notes:
Taveuni Princess
Rising as a gentle ripple
Through tropical space time
Straddling the meridian
Humid vague hours roll on
Around green bending rhythms
Reggae roots wrapping the island
In approximate bus schedules
Every villager their own pocket of presence
Now the only moment we agree on
Thundering water
Beautiful smiles
A Taveuni Princess flys through Nangara
Looping along Rainbow undercarriages
Soursop sorbet bouncing in the belly
Mystic Latter Day sunset
Kisses the verdant Vanua
with that yoga pose, and shinning head you’ve officially unlocked Level 99 Monk mode. Just don’t float away chanting ommm, thanks for sharing & refreshing my memory
Great writing. Enjoyed the thoughts and descriptions