We are very early. It is only 7am. Rooms are not ready yet. We will change and check out the property.

A bit emboldened by my interactions with Aseri, I ventured to try out a few more of my Fiji words. Struck up a conversation with the young lady who had ushered us into the Marriott lobby in the airport.

“Na yacaqu o Rajib”, I said.

She kept looking at me.

I knew my pronunciation was wrong. The “c” is tricky in Fiji. It is not pronounced as “s” or “k”. Instead, it is pronounced “th”. I have no idea why.

I tried once again slowly – “Na ya-tha-ng-oo o Rajib”.

Finally, she asked – “What language are you speaking?”

“I am trying Fiji”

“Oh! I cannot speak Fiji!”

“Huh?”

“I can speak Hindi or Tamil”.

That was no problem. I told her that my name is Rajib in both those two languages. But that took out all the fun of exploring a new country.

40% of Fijians are of Indian descent. Some 600,000 of them had migrated from mostly the Tamil Nadu area to work in sugarcane plantation during the period of English colonization in the prior two centuries.

Ah! Well, I will have to look further to find hapless victims of my Fiji knowledge then.

The immigration and customs was a breeze. And we did not have checked in luggage. So, we were out of the secured area within four minutes of getting out of the airplane. I was looking for somebody waiting for me with my name on a placard. Instead, saw somebody with a Marriott board. I went to her and introduced myself.

She immediately took me to a very nice Marriott club ten yards away. I have never seen such reception from Marriott. They had a nice area with comfortable sofa to relax in with good coffee, snacks and some drinks. This is where we waited till our driver showed up. I told him – “Give me two minutes to finish my coffee”. He immediately responded – “We are in Fiji time now. No hurry. No worries.”

“Oh! yeah! I learnt how to say that when I was trying to pick up some Fijian words – Sega Na Leqa – right?”

That impressed Aseri (our driver) a bit. “Have you been to Fiji before?”

“Nope. Our first time. I learnt 25 words while doing my research. So, I am going to run out of words quickly.”

“No problem. But your pronunciation was perfect”.

I would not have learnt how to pronounce “g” correctly in Fiji if I had relied in English only. There is no exact letter/letters in English. In Bengali, the exact letter is “ঙ”. It is like “ng” in “sing” but a shorter one.

The “q” in Leqa is even more unintuitive – it is like “ng” but a lot more stress on “g”. It actually translates to Hindi “lenga” and pronounced that way too! In fact the whole thing is pretty close to Hindi “panga na lenga” !!

One of the two larger islands of Fiji (which has 332 islands). Interestingly, we will land not in its capital city Suva but on the other end of the island where most of the activities are – Nadi. (pronounced Nandi). While the islands are part of Ring of Fire, the last volcanic eruption happened over 400 years back.

Looked gorgeous from the plane.

Flying over some islands as flight FJ 811 gets ready to land in Fiji.

She is going off to Australia. And we will head out to Fiji.

Nikita is headed to Australia for a semester. She would not let us join her. Apparently, it is not “independent study” if parents come in along with her!!

So, after she takes her flight to Sydney from Los Angeles, we will jump on to a different flight to check out the Polynesian islands. I have been to islands in the Caribbean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. But never been to the Polynesian islands. In fact, I just found out that we are actually going to be in Melanesia first (Fiji) and then Polynesia (Samoa). Will miss Micronesia this time to round out the Oceania region.

Then again, she will be studying a full semester there!