32. Every step until this point had taken us further away

Our island was situated four hours off the main island, which in turn is in the middle of the Pacific, which in turn is a four-hour flight from Australia, which is on the other side of the planet from Sweden. We felt that we had come as far away from Sweden as we possible could. Every step until this point had increased our distance from home, and every step from now on would slowly bring us back.

Reduced hearing

Today was day 32 of our “Around the world in 50 days” adventure. Dilek woke up with some reduced hearing. Vedran was a bit worried that she had an infection, and wanted to get her to a doctor. Of course that was not possible as we were on an island four hours from any sign of civilization, with the next transport being due in a few days. Besides, Dilek was not really experiencing any discomfort. We suspected that it might be a case of earwax build-up, but did not get our theory confirmed until a few weeks later when we returned to Sweden. By then, Dilek’s hearing was almost completely gone. In retrospect, it was quite a relaxing time in her life.

Off to Soso Village


Cutie
We wanted to visit a local village, Soso, to learn more about local life. We only had a small motorized dingy at our disposal, which meant that we got very wet. But it was super fun. On the way we saw several dolphins and Mantas, but none close enough to get pictures. Back then, we had not yet acquired our zoom objectives, which incidentally also explains why the quality of our visual documentation is not the same as it is today (although some of the older pictures have won awards - not bragging or anything).
The local children were waiting for us as we came ashore. They were all super cute, jumping about, waiving at us, and very eager to have their pictures taken. Not because they wanted money (as mentioned earlier, the Fijians are not really money-oriented), but because they wanted to see themselves in the digital displays. The kids walked with us all day, and we had a great time with them.

Soso Village School

The village was quite small, but there was more electricity than we had on our island. As it was a Saturday, the kids were off school. The locals told us that they were self sufficient: Living off the sea, and a few small banana farms. The only thing they would buy was flour, rice and sugar, which technically meant that they were not 100% self sufficient, but who are we to split hairs. FIJI-TIME!.

What does the word “Work” entail?


Banana Plantation

When we asked the villagers how they spent their days, they could not grasp the question. A natural answer was that they spend each day just “living”. But when we kept on pressing them for examples they finally gave us this answer:
“Dear brother and sister. If I am hungry, I get myself something to eat. If there is no food, I go fishing or go to the field. If I am tired, I sleep. When my kids get home, I play with them. Otherwise, it is FIJI-TIME!”

We also had some difficulty explaining our concept of “work”. Why DO we go to the same building day after day, and perform the same tasks over and over? ... Un an unrelated note: If YOU keep subscribing to our stories, dear friend, you will soon find out why we have been Entrepreneurs for most of our adult lives. :-)

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Read Next Adventure: The Best Gift is a Good Story
The villagers told us that they treasure hearing stories from other parts of the world, because that makes them feel rich. For example, some of the boys had not heard of Sweden and wanted us to give an example of an export. Vedran mentioned Volvo cars...
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