Tribewanted: Vorovoro

The rains over the last two days seem to have washed my mind off the island paradise of Vorovoro, and today the retreating tide finally took me with it. Our intrepid boat captain Johnny just dropped me off at Labasa after a trip navigating the low-tide mangrove channels back to the mainland. With the rain beating on our faces the boat made quick nudges mowing through the brown water to avoid the driftwood visible only within meters of the boat, unloading us in the Saturday noon hustle and bustle of the Fijian port town.

From The Trip: Vor...

The last two weeks, to summarize, have been blissful. Vorovoro is the paradise island it promises to be, with pleasant surprises and simple living to keep one content for the couple of weeks most people choose to spare. A wave of publicity about the island and the Tribewanted project has rolled on in the last two weeks, primarily thanks to BBC's airing of the Paradise or Bust documentary series. We watched the first episode on the island and tried to imagine how we would have felt had we seen it back in the UK or US or wherever before coming to Vorovoro. But the island would still prove to be better than any idea you could get over the TV, the website and people's recommendations. The nicely BBC-ized one hour bit we watched felt, at least to me, like the grinding sound of a distant world too busy with its own turning.



On paper, Tribewanted looks like a holiday timeshare for backpackers. There's an element of ownership involved, projects you can vote on online, plan, propose and discuss. Then, on the island, you can play chief and get your hands dirty with all kinds of more or less measningful activities. Or just lay in the hammock like I did. Well, I did write dozens of pages of poetry (or "poetry", rather) in a mad gush of inspiration that lasted for days. The rains must have helped. And as I digress, the point here is that you can make pretty much whatever you want of your time on the island, and it can be just another eco-retreat or no-frills resort (or would that be a new travel niche?) if you wish it to be so.



But the best part of the arrangement is not what Tribewanted does on Vorovoro. It's what Tui Mali's local tribe brings into the equation. They are an integral part of the experience, not only because of the work they do, but because of the local culture and lifestyle that they embody, effortlessly and seamlessly and all the time. Too often when a cross-pollination of cultures is planned, the result is too clinical: tourists watching a Maori haka, carving jade on the coast of the Yellow Sea, sipping cups of Kava outside a Denarau resort. On Vorovoro, we're all friends, we have time, nothing is forced and all interactions quickly become very natural, very balanced. The locals were genuinely happy to host us, and I'll miss them the most (if you've any idea of how cynical I am, you'll know this is big thing for me). There were only from seven to a dozen of us "vulangi", or visitors, at any one time on the island and this felt like a good number as it kept things natural and laid-back. Surely Ben and the Tribewanted management would like to see more people in the Tribe and on the island, but the current infrastructure can only take that much. One night I had a chat with Teavita - another living legend, almost a myth, this man - about how he feels about the project finally getting more exposure: Tribewanted should be about five times bigger than it is now. "Yes, I'm very much looking forwards to it," he said, after a pause adding "I'm ready." And there is space to build more.



The daily life on Vorovoro is splendidly effortless. There are things to do if you wish to do something, or you can just as well opt for not doing anything. I did nothing for the first week, then started feeling a bit guilty about it and in the end maybe put in a total of 8-10 hours of work during my whole stay. Not much at all. Not like our chief Carol, who had picked rubbish and driftwood off half of the island by breakfast, or like Julia and Lottie who were cementing the hurricane shelter in the village with Pupu for days. But I didn't feel exactly energetic for most of the time, either. I try to be a vegetarian (pescatarian to be exact), and the diet on the island just didn't feel like it sustained me. For whatever reason, my lethargic mood and energy levels were slowly accompanied by painful mouth ulcers, sides of the mouth cracking and skin peeling off around the fingernails by the end of the two weeks. I'm guessing vitamins are needed in the diet: the two basic meals per day don't really provide this (yes, the kitchen bell is rang five times per day, but breakfast, morning tea and afternoon tea are mostly just coffee and cake, with porridge on some mornings). I'd ran out of vitamin supplements a couple of weeks ago, which would intensify the effect. For a tropical country there's not much fruit, and this seems to go for all of Fiji: we had banana, pineapple and watermelon exclusively, and only in small quantities. Va and Francis do a stellar job in the kitchen, though, I just wish the raw material situation would be better. With the current state of farming and gardening on Vorovoro, the island has little hope of self-sustainability. More needs to be done, and a part of my apathy was due to a bit of a disappointment upon seeing the gardens for the first time. But apathy is not the way forward, of course, and any example I'm setting is surely not a good one.



So during my two weeks, I read five books, finally succumbing to Dan Brown's garbage (nicely researched, terribly written, simplistic plot: millions and millions of copies sold?) and recovered with poetry and great travel writing from "Worst Journeys: The Picador Book of Travel". I wrote so much I scared myself out of it upon counting the pages one morning. I took 570 photos (about 70 photos are in this album). I went snorkelling five times, climbed the Four Peaks, pounded Kava, mixed the drink and served it, showered under a waterfall every day, played chief for one night on my birthday (thanks for that, it was amazing). On the work front, I weaved coconut palm leaves for roofing, partly replaced the roof of the Sustainability Hut (can't imagine what the hut is used for, though), helped move a pile of rubbish five meters to make way for a path (this felt particularly pointless as it could only be a temporary fix), inventoried, cleaned and fixed the toolshed area with Marau, and braced the buildings for the coming and going cyclones. I wanted to build an lo-fi observatory on one of the cliffs, but the weather stopped this. I'll have the plans ready when I come back.



The last day came exactly when it was meant to come. I did feel like I wanted to extend my stay (not quite like Jim, who decided to apply for the 4-month gapper position on his fifth day or so), but the road still calls me and the world grinds away closer and closer. I gave Ratu, chief Tui Mali's grandson and a regular bane around the camp, my Tribewanted dog tag that I'd been wearing since it arrived in the mail in my London flat a lifetime ago. That small piece can be but symbolic of the huge chunk of me that's left on Vorovoro.



There. Next, North Island NZ for five days, then Easter Island. Over nine months on the road now. Or seven years soon, depending on whether home is still home...