Shopping, packing, leaving Fiji.

Our last morning in Fiji is a slow dance around Jane’s house, cleaning the kitchen, stripping beds, washing our clothes and tidying up. And packing and packing and packing. David refuses to sacrifice any of the paper brochures and leaflets he’s accumulated for the past three months. Cynthia wants to shop in Nadi for another sulu jaba, more shirts and some materials she can sew when she returns to … where do we live? So we’ve accumulated a lot of … stuff.

The pool guy comes and he chats with us a while. He lives in a small village up in the mountains near Suva, but he rents a single room here in Nadi, a seven-hour bus ride away from his wife and four children, two of whom go to good and expensive schools. (All Fijians must pay for their children to attend public schools … and often more to attend private ones.) He returns to Suva once every three weeks, leaving his Nadi job of cleaning pools for all the homeowners in the Denarau resort where we’re staying. He’s getting ready to pay $500 to take driving lessons but he’s daunted by the money and under-confident of his skills. He and Cynthia talk about his elder son’s school’s lack of books and ways that Cynthia, through the Friends of Fiji group in D.C., might supply some.

Cynthia hops a bus to Nadi and the minute she walks into an Indian-owned clothing store is surrounded by three saleswomen who have no other customers. They grab all manner of sulu jabas and other clothing off the shelves, tear them out of their sealed packets and hold them in front of her. “No worries. You want sleeves? We can put on sleeves in three minutes. You wait.”

She returns with bags of oily peanuts and several items of clothing and we sweep though the house for a final clean and put our packed bags on the driveway, waiting for Finau’s husband, Carl, to take us to the airport. We do not realize that we have to inform the gate guard for the community, so Carl is kept cooling his heels in his car while we think he’s merely late. One text leads to another and we finally load our bags into his trunk and he and Fiona take us to the airport where Cynthia allows the Agriculture authorities to use every form at their command to certify that she can bring the kava she’s bought into the U.S. of A.

We check our bags and Carl drives us out of the airport to Buccicino, a restaurant owned by Eileen, a friend of Jane’s and a relative of Susan Chute’s (the woman who came to the Nadi airport to give us the keys to Jane’s house). Dinner is ok and Finau, Carl and their son, Elijah, gather us and drive us back to the airport where David finds Penfolds St. Henri Shiraz (2009) on sale duty free for Fiji $179. With the 10-percent discount the sales lady throws in, the two-to-one exchange ratio, and memories flooding his mouth with saliva, David buys two.

We board the plane, which is new and clean and full of passengers and has the chattiest Chief Steward in the history of airlines. “Hello, ladies and gentlemen and boys and girls, we are privileged to be flying today with Captain William Nautiolau Frederick who is retiring after 35 years and has hung his hat on a coconut tree at the Nadi airport because he is returning for good to his home in the United States.” That was the opening sentence.

The movie selection was abysmal but we are tired enough that it doesn’t matter and Cynthia keeps her reading light on for the entire flight while she sews a scarf of many colors. And we have 10 hours to go for L.A., a five-hour layover, and a flight to Dulles airport that will get us home the day before we left Fiji.

Another day mostly above Paradise.