Blake and Deb in Fiji: Our Neighborhood

We have a very private spot up here on the ridge. Our nearest neighbor is Semoko who is actually the caretaker for a Dubai-based airline pilot and his wife who seldom make it over to Fiji. We can just barely see the roof of his house below us through the trees. Steve and Iretta are still further down the hill but we can’t see their place at all. There are other neighbors across a small valley toward town from us, but the thick vegetation prevents us from seeing them. We do hear them though. They are a mix of Indigenous-Fijian, Indo-Fijian, and Chinese-Fijian families and they all seem to have barking dogs, clucking chickens, crowing roosters, bleating goats, mooing cows, and squealing children (sometimes it’s very hard to distinguish the sounds of children from that of the goats). We also occasionally hear short bursts of Bollywood music from someone’s stereo, but not for very long.

The noise bothered us at first but now we hardly notice it. We’re not sure if we are just used to the roosters now or if they were slaughtered for Christmas dinner. Even the dogs, who love to chase each of the infrequent cars, serve a function as anyone coming to visit us must pass the barking gauntlet to reach our house so we have a good two-minutes warning when a visitor approaches. As the road continues past our house and up away from town, there are only vacant lots, many with killer views.

The road back down the hill to town is spotted with simple houses on gorgeous, green, palm-filled acreage. The fancier expat dwellings tend to be out of view up side roads and steep driveways leading to the best view property. When we walk to town we are inevitably greeted with “Bula” (hello) from almost everyone we see. Deborah takes her hiking sticks, which help her tremendously on the steep sections, but the locals, who have never seen such a thing, think there is something wrong with her legs. She imagines they refer to her as the crazy, red-faced blonde woman who walks with sticks.
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