Smiley kid ca saraga

Remember when you were a kid?

The good ol’ days when you didn’t give two cents about what other people thought of the hole in your shirt, when cartoons in the afternoon were the most looked forward to hours aside from school lunch hour and visits to the shop with 10 whole cents, when you were convinced that your current group of friends were going to be with you forever, when you absolutely knew your class teacher was either the bestest best teacher ever, or was most certainly the cruelest demon ever to walk the earth unchallenged by demon hunting heroes that you gleaned off from the comics that you swiped off your neighbour?

I recently had a run-in with nostalgia a few days ago, when, during a lunch session with a few of my workmates, I happen to come across a popular, I’m not quite sure how to describe this, but for the moment I’ll settle for ‘silly kids poem’.

The chance conversation centred around who was going where, when someone said, “Where you gang all going?”

“Suva,” was the reply.

At that moment, most probably without thinking, my fijian workmate, his eyes lit with that familiar glow of Deja Vu, launched into a tirade of sentences that started one after the other, each sentence continuing on the previous statement with a question, and weaved its way through a jumble of nonsense that culminated in the arrival to the very word that set off the whole verbal fiasco. Suva.

For the sake of keeping nostalgia alive, and for future reference, here is the poem in its entirety. This poem works as a back and forth between two people, and almost always starts off with the conversation having had the word “Suva” mentioned. Note that while this is the version that I heard and am familiar with, you may have a slightly different version in your head, or maybe not.

To start off, someone has to start with the opener:

Fire vei? (Where are you going?)

Suva

Suva cava? (cava – what?)

Suva City

City cava?

Sitiveni (english name for steven)

Veni cava?

Venikau (pencil? Not too sure on this word)

Kau cava?

Kau Ba

Ba cava?

Barewa (uro)

Rewa cava?

Rewa Daily

Daily cava?

Daily Post

Post cava?

Post Fiji

Fiji cava?

Fiji Times

Times cava?

Times 2

2 cava?

2  SUVA!

If you were a child of the 70s, 80s or even 90s, tell me you didn’t just read that and not feel a pang of nostalgia creep up to the corner of your eyes. If not, it’s never too late to start learning it