VISIT TO SUVA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22568, 11 May 1935, Page 22

VISIT TO SUVA

MIXTURE OF PACIFIC AND THE EAST A COSMOPOLITAN STREET From a Special Correspondent. XXVII. The line the Matai took through the Fiji group was one commonly used by ships. But though we no longer had the excitement of feeling that no tourists had cazed at the islands all around, which had been half the attraction of the smaller islands in the Cook group, the iourney from Wailagilala light through to Makogai and then .across to Suva was a pleasant one. The gaze of thousands ot travellers rushing by in mail-boats had done the scenery no harm. Fiji gave us a new conception of Pacific islands. We had been used to steaming for a day, sometimes for days, between one sight of land and the next, but here there were islands all round, half a dozen in sight at a time, and instead of being little strips of coral only a few feet above the sea they were great chunky things like small countries, and high as hills. , ' i , From Makogai we cut across to Ovalau and gkirted the coast. Only two or three miles out we passed Levuka, the old capital, now looking moribund. There was a schooner at the wharf, and a huge shed with the name Burns, Philp in high white letters suggested that there was still business there, but the general impression was one of deadness. Then, as we neared Viti Levu itself, a Suva man who had come aboard at Makogai pointed out a place where one of the new gold strikes has been made, and showed us Naselai beach, where Sir Charles Kingsford Smith took off for two of the most remarkable flights ever made. And then it grew dark, so that our first sight of Suva was street lights. We had been told by radio to go to the outer quarantine anchorage and stay there the night. This caution, which we supposed was due to fear of us as possible bearers of leprosy, rather amused us, but when we anchored we found it was the Department of Agriculture that was worried, for we had called at Samoa, where rhinoceros beetles attack the coconuts, and Fiji has problems enough without that one. FIJI HOSPITALITY. The evening ashore was given to a demonstration, most convincing, of Suva's hospitality. Two men on whom we had no claim of any sort were waiting for us on the wharf, and we learned about Suva from them. I hope that some day they, may call at one of those West Coast townships that pride themselves on hospitality, and get as good as they gave.

The first thing to be seen next day was, of course, the part of Suva that all tourists remember —All Nations street. It is no wonder the tourists remember it, for no stranger cross between the Pacific and the East could be imagined. In stalls opening on to the street Indians are selling tobacco, made up in rope about half an inch thick, and coiled up like a ball of binder-twine. Next door is a fish market, then an open-fronted shed where oranges, bananas, taro, yams and a dozen other kinds of fruit and vegetables are for sale. A young Indian mnn and an old Indian woman are selling to customers, and apparently buying the pioduce they sell from the Fijians, who bring it in canoes, poling them along the tidal creek that runs at the back of the street.

A Chinese shop is opposite, and close by the headquarters of the Kuo Min Tang. A notice in a nearby window tells of the approach of the All-Fiji Sanatanist Conference. This street is something new in cosmopolitanism. Ramadar Singh has his jewellery shop next door to the premises of Yong Lin Tan, where ginger and silk a.re sold. These are not real names; they sound well, and I lost the paper on which I copied out some of the actual ones. Tall, muscular, mop-headed Fijians swagger along, meeting weedy Hindus. A white man is buying crabs in an open section, probably for an hotel. CONTRASTS AMONG INDIANS. Among the Indians themselves there are strange contrasts. There are thin, furtive-looking men, like the poorest type of Indians seen in New Zealand, and there are stalwart, bearded fellows, like the police who, with their khaki and turbans, look as if they had come straight out of Kipling. We were watching one tall, handsome woman, straight as an athlete, who wore a long white frock. "Looks as if she might be a lady rajah," someone remarked. Indeed, the half-inch disk that pierced one of her nostrils might as easily have been gold aa brass. But at that moment a countryman went up to her and made a remark that was resented. She turned on him, forgot her dignity, and told him several things. She spoke in some Indian language, but it waa evident to us that though a rajah might talk an she did, no lady would. HourH could be spent in this street, watching the Indian jewellers doing the most delicate work in their windows, or the tailors making white clothes in lesa time than it takes to get them laundered, or juat watching the passers-by, making an attempt, perhaps, to count the number of races represented. But, much as we wanted to do these things and to go to the Indian kinema, which was advertised by great posters of Indian Garbos and Gables, we had to hurry on. HOSPITAL VISITING. The next part of our day had a distinctly medical bias, for Dr A. H. B. Pearce, the chief medical officer of the group, took us to see the magnificent War Memorial Hospital and the Central Medical School. Here it was that Captain Burgess discovered a huge box covered with mosquito netting, in which a dozen little brown babies crawled about. They were orphans in the care of the hospital and the whole party, each carrying two babies, lined up to be photographed. In the hospital we saw young native medical practitioners, in their final year, acting as house Burgeons —Samoans, Fijians, Solomon Islanders. Then we went to the Medical School where 40 of them are at present being trained. New buildings for the school are about to be commenced, and Dr S. M. Lambert, head of the Rochefeller Foundation in the Pacific, told us that Dr M. H. Watt, Director of Health in New Zealand, had given great assistance in planning these. It is from this school that young natives 50 back to their people all over the Pacific to fight disease and, just as important, the traditional native methods of treating sufferers. The course has recently been lengthened from three years to four. Dr Lambert looks forward to the time when it wtll be live or six years, and when a native medical practitioner will be ns well trained as a European doctor. It is useless to attempt to give in one article an idea of even the small part of Suva that we saw. There are views from the high parts of the town —which is almost as hilly as Wellington—that seem, in memory from New Zealand—to have been too good to be true. Almost in the town there ia unspoiled bush, with natives living in their own types o"? houses, as if Europeans had never bothered them. Suva itself, kept prosperous by sugar while the rest of the Pacific drops further and further.,into poverty with copra, is a model town. Places like Rarotonga, Samoa and Fiji' are only a week or so from any part of New Zealand, yet New Zealandei's with plenty of money stay in this country during the winter. It is probably very good for New Zealand, but why they do it ia inexplicable to me.