Blake and Deb in Fiji: Tobi's House

Much to our amazement, when we drove to the Savusavu airport today, our luggage was waiting for us. We weren’t certain it would even go to this airport (rather than Labassa) let alone arrive the next day. We are very happy. I didn’t really care about the clothes and toilet articles, which are easily replaced. But my art supplies are another story. There are absolutely no art supply stores here and five months without painting would leave me one crabby bastard.

Instead, we have all of our “stuff” and are quickly settling into Tobi’s house. Tobi is a German who lives in New Zealand but also has this house in Fiji where he spends time during the New Zealand winter. He’s an underwater photographer and has a boat with which he explores the waters of the South Pacific. During the months he is away from the Fiji house he likes to have house sitters come and look after the place: keeping the house aired out, cleaning the downspouts, hacking back the encroaching jungle, and putting plywood up over the windows when cyclones threaten. Needless to say, his insurance company likes the idea of house sitters also.

This is easy for us since there are no pets to care for. We have no rent to pay, just the electric and internet bills, each about US$15 per month, and we have to replace any gas canisters we use up. The gas is used for the cooktop and the instant hot water heater. Rainwater is collected from the roof and stored in three huge tanks under the house. An electric pump draws on the water tanks to supply the house through a filter.

The dwelling is a Japanese pole house which, reassuringly, is supposed to be hurricane-proof. The interior is about 8mx8m (26’x26’), with covered decks running continuously around all four sides, yielding a platform of about 12mx12m (40’x40’). So with the lush jungle surrounding the house and dropping steeply down below, it feels like you’re in a tree house – one with a water view. There are numerous windows on all sides and three sets of double doors that open out onto the decks.

The interior is very open with just a few walls, none of which rise all the way to the vaulted ceiling, thus allowing air to flow freely. What walls exist are just enough to define a bedroom area, bathroom, kitchen and living area. There is also a kind of built-in desk/table along one wall. The kitchen is decent sized with a sink, a small undercounter refrigerator, the afore-mentioned cooktop, but no oven (it’s the tropics; too hot to bake). The queen size bed is quite comfy and comes complete with an obligatory but nevertheless evocatively exotic mosquito net. The lack of interior doors or full height walls challenges one’s modesty when using the toilet, however a quick tweak of the stereo volume control can mask all sorts of dreaded “bathroom noises.”

We even have a car here for our use – a well used but functional Toyota diesel 4x4. The house sits on a ridge above town and the road is steep and unpaved, so the 4x4 comes in handy. It’s a little hard starting in the morning, but aren’t we all.