When Pope John Paul II visited in 1986, he called Fiji “the way the world should be”. The following year, a moustachioed Lieutenant Colonel led a group of armed men into Parliament and deposed the newly elected government in what would become the first of four coups over two decades. Three centuries earlier, we exerted the ultimate dominance over our conquered foes by consuming their flesh. Fiji got it good. Visiting us right in that sweet spot, post-cannibalism and pre-coups, His Holiness declared us “the way the world should be”. The phrase has stuck, weighed down by layers of irony.
After participating in the first Commonwealth Writers Pacific Prose Workshop at The University of the South Pacific in February 2015, I wrote ‘The Happiest Place on Earth’ for the Commonwealth Writers Blog.
