The economy of Savusavu revolves around the mundane requirements of the average Fijian.

It’s a mobile society and the hard working buses of Vishnu Holdings Ltd provide the backbone of commercial infrastructure.

The bus station is always packed with travelers and concessionaires serving their needs in a regulated market environment where table sitting and grog drinking is controlled for everyone’s benefit.

 

These buses growl through the countryside with extremely high occupancy and emissions. Their cargo lockers are full of muddy tubers and beautiful produce in palm  baskets. 

Savusavu is an entrepreneurial place and it’s always possible that the subsidiary used beer bottle division could eclipse the parent electronic repair concern and hog all the marketing.

There are a number of examples where Fijian niche markets have been successfully consolidated by specialists.

Other niche markets are widespread locally but completely unknown to most of the outside world.  Who wants to pound kava for grog all day when there are professionals offering a predictable daily special?

 

There was no evidence of anyone buying all these sea cucumbers but a hidden market is clearly here, otherwise they would be happily moving sand through their guts in some pleasant underwater location.

The good folks at Fiji Meats Ltd in our own Watui Maria are catering to the expat community with their frozen un-Hindu beef and the smokiest bacon in the land. It’s sad to think of the deforestation that must be underway to infuse this Fiji Meats Ltd bacon with such unprecedented levels of smoke, but if we’re going to trade our climate for anything, extra smokey bacon should be near the top of the list. 

There is a large sector devoted to tourists and transient foreigners. If you have the budget of the TV show ‘”Bachelorette” you can air freight 20,000 lbs of production gear into town and hire two helicopters to buzz around the anchorage and take aerial footage of Bint Al Khamseen.

 

Savusavu Wok is a favorite gringo spot if you are lucky enough to find it open. They are so busy that they’ve adopted the innovative technique of closing as soon as the tables are full and reopening an hour later when the pressure on the kitchen has subsided. This condition is so common that the open and closed signs are permanently posted.

      

Then there was the place where the waitress told us that we might have to wait while she retrieved the cook from the toilet. Actually, he went home to take a dinner time shower, so instead of fretting over too many choices on the menu we ordered the one thing the backup staff could manage, and chatted with a waiter who’d recently found religion and was leaving the next day to spend 3 months in Athens where he would become ordained as one of the very rare Greek Orthodox priests in the Pacific.  This is why we travel.