The
Doctor & The Boilermaker
Russell Johnson & Pat Meier-Johnson
He
was a Herr Doktor, a demanding, pompous man shaped like a pork sausage.
By the second night aboard our Fiji Cruise he was the victim of mass-avoidance.
Like Mark Twain's "Old Traveler" he boasted about where
he had been, about his prominence as a surgeon, how he was traveling
the world while his wife, also a surgeon, stayed at home, tending
to the sutures and clamps.
But
Jack was a different type. Everybody took to him immediately.
Jack was a big Samoan, a boilermaker by trade who was taking his wife
on her first vacation without the kids in 20 years. Jack became
our official chief, our Ratu, in Fijian tribal parlance, and he didn't
let go until he broke Herr Doktor.
Jack:
"You ought to come to Samoa. We would make you chief."
Herr
Doktor: "Ja?"
Jack:
"And the women would fall all over you."
Jack's wife nudges him. "Stop it," she whispers.
Herr
Doktor: "But aren't there dogs in Samoa? I don't
like dogs."
Jack:
"Oh yes, there are lots of dogs but they won't touch you. They
don't like white meat."
Herr
Doktor blushed, then smiled, finally realizing the put-on. After that
exchange, he understood. On a cruise like this through islands like
these, taking one's self seriously is worthy of severe punishment...perhaps
some gentle stroking with a wet palm frond. And Herr Doktor wasn't
the only one to lighten up. The climax took place in the famed Saw-i-Lau
Blue Lagoon after we boarded small boats for a leisurely sightsee.
Jack and Herr Doktor were in one boat, with about ten others, and
I was in the other. A beach umbrella got caught by the wind and
blew off their boat. We maneuvered to pick it up, but couldn't
grab hold.
Then
Ratu Jack screamed Bula!, the Fijian greeting, and dived
into the shallow water. I turned on my video camera as everybody
except Herr Doktor followed: diving, belly-flopping, flailing their
arms and legs in the air before before going kerplunk, screaming Bula
and laughing. The panicked look on Herr Doktor's face changed to a
grin. He jumped up into the bow, nodded for me to take a picture,
shouted "Bula" and, fully clothed, performed what must have
a painful belly flop.
In
all of my years of travel I never witnessed such an exuberant
moment. As our boat drifted away, the gleeful bunch had lined up and
were marching through the lagoon like a scene from a Fellini movie...
led by a big red an white umbrella.
I
thought that I would be bored spending seven days on "Fiji Time",
island hopping on a cruise ship. In the past I have become stir-crazy
two days or so into a cruise. Not so on Captain Cook Cruises’
7 day seven-day cruise aboard the Reef Escape or Dro Ki Cakau
as it is called Fijian.
The
ship carries a maximum of 120 passengers allowing for a family-like
atmosphere that is not at all cloying, partially because except for
the Captain, the Hotel Manager/Cruise Director and the Chief Engineer,
the crew is entirely Fijian.
On
my first trip to Fiji I suffered a bit of culture shock at being served
by big, gentle men and women with flowers in their hair who always
looked you straight in the eye. Family and tribe are powerful bonds
in Fiji. Indeed there are power structures within tribes and some
protest (we saw one baggy-pants "gangsta" adolescent on
one of the islands) and some people do brand their "free village"
chickens, but, for the most part, Fiji culture means sharing everything.
That shows in a crew which sings together, serves not with an attitude
of servitude but pride, people whom after a few days you just want
to spontaneously hug.
Each day the ship stopped at
a different island, took us ashore to a village, to a beach or to
a reef for snorkeling. I got a chance to swim on by back in a sea
cave and sing an old aria that I learned when I studied opera. It
sounded much better here than it ever did in the shower.
Yangona,
or kava as it is called on other Pacific islands, is both ritual and
habit in Fiji. It is a pepper root, ceremoniously squeezed in water
to create a drink that looks and tastes like spent dishwater. You
are almost always welcomed to a village with a yangonna ceremony where
you must share the stuff. Villages talk out their problems over the
kava bowl. It is a mild stimulant that makes your lips tingle that
some Fijians use as aperitif for marijuana.
Go
to: Love
Those Kids
