Ghosts and the everyday politics of race in Fiji

One early morning during a fieldwork trip to Fiji's old capital, Levuka, in 2009, I was dragged from a deep, kava-induced sleep by loud banging on the door of the rented cabin I shared with one of my friends and respondents, Ajay.1 "Hello, hello," someone shouted, and as our visitor did not relent, Ajay reluctantly got up to answer the door while I turned around to go back to sleep. After a brief discussion with the visitor at the door, Ajay called me to come and sort the matter out. The visitor turned out to be a young, pretty, Fijian girl. Judging by her sleepy eyes and slurred speech, I figured that she must have spent the previous night much like I had"” chatting and drinking yaqona2 (kava) followed by a complimentary "washdown," that is the two or three long-necks of cold Fiji Bitter beer that many young Fijians consider the natural way to finish off a "grog session." When I somewhat brusquely asked her what she wanted at that time of the night, she introduced herself as Judy and repeatedly explained that she was looking for her cousin who lived in the cabin. It took me several explanations and, in the end, a rather stern telling off before she eventually, quite meekly, accepted that she had mistaken our commercially rented cabin with her cousin's house, and left. While I initially did not think much of the situation and was eager to get back to bed, I was surprised to find my friend, who was Fijian-born of Indo-Fijian heritage, visibly upset. Breathing a sigh of relief, he turned to me and exclaimed, "Thank God you made her go away . . . I've been told many times that it is so important not to be friendly or inviting when a ghost visits you, because then you will never get rid of them." It appeared that I had just experienced a Fijian ghost first-hand.