EACH ONE OF US HAVE OUR OWN ITHACA... MINE HAS BEEN BARACOA, CUBA BUT IT STARTED IN LEVUKA, FIJI

We are always grateful for friends from yore who introduced us to books or poems or countries or ways of thinking. We are the collective expressions of so many of those experiences.

Who told me about Kavafy and his poem ITHACA ? Certainly I was exposed to it as a student either in Australia or Sweden.

Constantine P. Cavafy, English in full Constantine Petrou Cavafy, pseudonym of Konstantínos Pétrou Kaváfis, (born April 29, 1863, Alexandria, Egypt—died April 29, 1933, Alexandria), Greek poet who developed his own consciously individual style and thus became one of the most important figures not only in Greek poetry but in Western poetry as well. He lived most of his life in Alexandria, Egypt, loved English and French literature, and generally spoke English; even his Greek had a British accent.

part of the poem:

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you’re destined for.

But don’t hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you’re old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you wouldn't have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean. 

what stood out in my mind at that time was that ITHAKA like life itself or a spiritual quest, is not a destination but the journey.

Arriving at the new port for the first time,  looking around and feeling with a sense of joy that you are supposed to be there is such a fantastic sensation.

On my journey to Ithaka, I have had that sensation more than once

Baracoa, Cuba

Paraty, RJ, Brésil

and one town relevant to this blog, 

Levuka in the island of Oavalu in Fiji.

If I remember correctly, having done that trip more than once, you take a bus from Suva to Natovi Landing  and then catch a ferry for the ride to the Levuka Port. and I remember taking a propeller plane to the airstrip in Oavalu and catching a ride on a lorry to the town over dirt roads and dense jungle. Whatever your mode of transport, you would never be too far away from lush jungle.

Levuka is famous for many of Fiji's "firsts." It was the site of Fiji's first bank, post office, school, private members club, hospital, town hall, and municipal government. Fiji's first newspaper, the Fiji Times, which is still in operation today, was founded in Levuka in 1869. Levuka's Royal Hotel is the oldest hotel in the South Pacific still operating. Historians have not ascertained its exact age, but records show that it was in existence by the early 1860s. Levuka Public School, opened in 1879, was the first public school in Fiji and many of Fiji's leaders in the years leading up to and following independence in 1970 were educated there. The oldest Masonic lodge in the South Pacific, Lodge Polynesia 562 SC, is also to be found in Levuka. It was established in 1875. Levuka was also the site of Fiji's first public electricity system, which began in 1927, three days before the capital Suva was electrified. from WIKI

Walking along the main street with shop fronts unchanged for decades, an old man approached me and introduced himself to me.

I am 90 years old, I remember his face very clearly to this day, but alas do not remember his name and he was one of the last indentured labourers from India to arrive in Fiji which had begun 100 years earlier. I would look for him on my subsequent visits and once was told that he had passed away. I remember his toothless smile and thick glasses and eagerness to be photographed.

Sitting at the patio of the Royal Hotel, looking at the town of Levuka, sipping something agreeable, and thinking of Somerset Maugham .. a nice afternoon in Levuka 

That is the day LEO AFRICANUS entered my life.

Two other travellers shared the Royal Hotel with me. Royal Hotel by then was the grand lady, having survived the turbulent history of the past century, not as elegant as her sister hotel in Suva, the Grand Pacific Hotel.

Memory plays tricks on us, I clearly remember the name of one but not the face and the face of the other but not the name. Merce from Catalunya was reading a book Leo Africanus .. Thus entered into my Amin Malouf, the Lebanese writer who now lives in Paris. 

As soon as I returned to my cosmopolitan lodgings in Australia, I looked for and found a copy of Leo Africanus. I dont think I spoke Spanish at that time, but many years later I acquired a copy of the book in Spanish as welll, all lost to a broken fawcet in a house in the isolated Indian reservation. 

But the interest and the influence is not forgotten.

Leo Africanus

Amin Maalouf, Leo Africanus, 1998 I, Hasan the son of Muhammad the weigh-master, I, Jean-Leon de Medici, circumcised at the hand of a barber and baptized at the hand of a pope, I am now called the African, but I am not from Africa, nor from Europe, nor from Arabia. I am also called the Granadan, the Fassi, the Zayyati, but I come from no country, from no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road, my country is the caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages." Thus wrote Leo Africanus, in his fortieth year, in this imaginary autobiography of the famous geographer, adventurer, and scholar Hasan al-Wazzan, who was born in Granada in 1488. His family fled the Inquisition and took him to the city of Fez, in North Africa. Hasan became an itinerant merchant, and made many journeys to the East, journeys rich in adventure and observation. He was captured by a Sicilian pirate and taken back to Rome as a gift to Pope Leo X, who baptized him Johannes Leo. While in Rome, he wrote the first trilingual dictionary (Latin, Arabic and Hebrew), as well as his celebrated Description of Africa, for which he is still remembered as Leo Africanus.  Image: Yahyá al-Wasiti, Scholars at an Abbasid library, 1237. Bibliotheque Nationale de France. I am forever grateful for that introduction to Leo Africanus at the Royal Hotel in Levuka in the island of Oavalu in Fiji Islands. Suva was one of the towns I had thought of living for a while but now the images of the streets of Suva recede into oblivion. But what I would not do, do spend an evening at the Grand Pacific Hotel in Suva !! Whether I am headed to Suva or Baracoa or Paraty (this is more likely) I will keep these lines from Leo Africanus  I come from no country, from no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road, my country is the caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages. I will travel endlessly, untiringly, excitedly, patiently, passionately until I too become Yehuda Australis...I wait for you in Paraty. Poem by Pablo Neruda.  Pido Silencio Ahora me dejen tranquilo. Ahora se acostumbren sin mí. Yo voy a cerrar los ojos Y sólo quiero cinco cosas, cinco raices preferidas. Una es el amor sin fin. Lo segundo es ver el otoño. No puedo ser sin que las hojas vuelen y vuelvan a la tierra. Lo tercero es el grave invierno, la lluvia que amé, la caricia del fuego en el frío silvestre. En cuarto lugar el verano redondo como una sandía. La quinta cosa son tus ojos, Matilde mía, bienamada, no quiero dormir sin tus ojos, no quiero ser sin que me mires: yo cambio la primavera por que tú me sigas mirando.