Everyone who has been on Mana tells of paradise in glowing colours. Nobody I met was on Mana for as long as I was. My colours change with the length of my stay. If you’re there for a short time, everything shines brightly and beautifully. If you’re there for a long time, the colours fade.
What always remains beautiful is the colour of the sky, the water and the palm trees. They never change. What fades is the colour of the travellers here. Although they become more red every day, they become less colourful every day. It’s like mixing many colours in a pot. What comes out of the diversity is a boring grey.
Throughout Fiji, the locals are quite reserved when it comes to alcohol. Here on Mana, they sometimes drink heavily, with all the internationally recognised negative consequences. They emulate the travellers who come to paradise to drown in alcohol.
No, I am not a teetotaller. I celebrate vigorously. I just don’t know what and why so often. The difference: I can still speak clearly at the end. I don’t get lost, I don’t throw myself away, I try to say goodbye with dignity every night.
Around half past seven this morning, a still drunk British woman stumbles into our dorm and scribbles a “brilliant” story to the still sleeping crowd. She proudly reports that she was killed with the line “I only have one condom left, but you’d be worth it to me”. I whisper “27”. The guy then threw up on her on the beach and later pissed in her bed. She thinks it’s funny. Not an unusual story here. Everyday life in Sodom and gonorrhoea.
The drunk barman who tells a tourist at least once a day that he would like to shag her. The diving instructor who has a new, never-ending love affair every day. The beds that slip at night, including loud double occupancy. I’m almost grateful to the copulating alcoholic corpses that I stumble across on the beach in the dark.
Canada is the only country I’ve heard no from in three weeks. Sweden slips over England while France gropes its arse. Italy are sulking in the corner over Greece as Japan sink the last-ditch liberating shot. Fiji score one own goal after another as they rejoice in a supposed points boost. America can’t make up their minds and so, for once, remain on the sidelines. Ireland faces a more than historic double unification with England and Scotland. Germany sits, watches and wonders.
It is such a waste of honour, brain cells and emotion that I wonder where the hell the difference between life and survival lies.
Frank Woelky, born in 1973. Kitesurfer since 1998. Since 2006, I have been combining kitesurfing and web design on trips lasting several months off the beaten track.