Fijian Quotes

I don’t hate my relatives or those whose names fill my address book. But I do not want to have lunch with any of them. It is not personal. I am not angry. Nor is this about being afraid. I am not shy. I do not have terrible manners. Do birds hate lips? Do Fijians detest snowplows? Being a loner is not about hate, but need: We need what others dread. We dread what others need.

Even Fijian, spoken on a complex of islands by just seven hundred thousand people, has more than one dialect.

See? There you go again being stupid," said Terrana, drawing herself to her full height. "I'm not a Migos immigrant. I'm a Fijian immigrant — big difference." "Fijian? What's that? Some kind of chocolate?

The worst deformities, the foulest stains, disfiguring and blackening all the rest, are the very parts of Fijian nature which, while the most strongly characteristic, are such that may only be hurriedly mentioned, dimly hinted at, or passed by altogether in silence.

Pacific Islanders. The culture, history, and voices of people of Hawaiian, Guamanian, Tongan, Fijian, Samoan, and Marshallese descent, and more, are largely invisible to greater American society and culture, and the needs of Pacific Islanders are often left out of discussions on the needs of Asian Americans.

Our life together was filled with contrasts. One week we were croc hunting with Dateline in Cape York. Only a short time after that, Steve and I found ourselves out of our element entirely, at the CableACE Award banquet in Los Angeles. Steve was up for an award as host of the documentary Ten Deadliest Snakes in the World. He lost out to the legendary Walter Cronkite. Any time you lose to Walter Cronkite, you can’t complain too much. After the awards ceremony, we got roped into an after-party that was not our cup of tea. Everyone wore tuxedos. Steve wore khaki. Everyone drank, smoked, and made small talk, none of which Steve did at all. We got separated, and I saw him across the room looking quite claustrophobic. I sidled over. “Why don’t we just go back up to our room?” I whispered into his ear. This proved to be a terrific idea. It fit in nicely with our plans for starting a family, and it was quite possibly the best seven minutes of my life! After our stay in Los Angeles, Steve flew directly back to the zoo, while I went home by way of one my favorite places in the world, Fiji. We were very interested in working there with crested iguanas, a species under threat. I did some filming for the local TV station and checked out a population of the brilliantly patterned lizards on the Fijian island of Yadua Taba. When I got back to Queensland, I discovered that I was, in fact, expecting. Steve and I were over the moon. I couldn’t believe how thrilled he was. Then, mid-celebration, he suddenly pulled up short. He eyed me sideways. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You were just in Fiji for two weeks.” “Remember the CableACE Awards? Where you got bored in that room full of tuxedos?” He gave me a sly grin. “Ah, yes,” he said, satisfied with his paternity (as if there was ever any doubt!). We had ourselves an L.A. baby.

Even after Wes’s full recovery and the opportunity to unwind on a Fijian surfing safari, the close call seemed to set Steve back emotionally. The devastation of losing his mother and then nearly losing his best friend weighed heavily on his mind. Steve was not worried about his own mortality and was always very open about it. But the recent events only gave him more cause to think about life and death. “I can’t even think of anything happening to you or Bindi,” Steve told me. “I just wouldn’t cope.” Seeing Wes lying in a hospital bed made Steve so emotional. It never ceased to amaze me how tough Steve was on the outside, but how deeply loving he was on the inside. He showed his feelings more than any man I ever met. Years after he lost his dog Chilli to a shooting accident (a local man accidentally killed her while he was hunting pigs), he still mourned. During our nighttime conversations, we spoke at great length about spirituality and belief. Steve’s faith had been tremendously tested. At times he would lash out and blame God, and sometimes he would proclaim that he did not believe in God at all. I knew he was just lashing out, and I’d try to use humor to get him back on track. “You can’t have it both ways,” I would gently remind him. When bad things happened to good people, or when innocent animals experienced human cruelty, it shook Steve to the core. His strong feelings demanded deep spiritual answers, and he searched for them all his life.

The Fijians, however, complained that the flesh of the whites was too salty and tough, and that a European sailor was hardly fit to eat; a Polynesian tasted better.

If random violence doesn’t get you, cancer will. If cancer doesn’t, global warming will. If global warming doesn’t, bullet ants will. Or botflies. Or lightning. Or tsunamis. Or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Or Fijian headhunters. Or just normal everyday activities like drinking water, eating an orange, breathing the air, or having sex with a goat. Yes,