Suva

Suva was still a small village in 1868, when the Bauan chief Seru Epenisa Cakobau granted a very large block of land to the Australian-based Polynesia Company in exchange for its promise to pay off debts he owed to the United States. The company meant to grow cotton, and failed: the land and climate proved unsuitable, and the little town its settlers laid out nearly emptied again.

What saved it was Levuka's lack of space. After the Deed of Cession made Fiji a British colony in 1874, the administration looked for a capital with room to expand and a deep, sheltered harbour. The move from Levuka began in 1877 and was completed in 1882, the year the peninsula's original iTaukei inhabitants were moved across the bay to Suvavou, "New Suva", to make room for the capital. Suva grew as the colony's port and government seat, with stone and timber offices along Victoria Parade and Indo-Fijian and Chinese traders opening shops around Cumming Street. It became a municipality in 1910 and in 1952 annexed the Muanikau and Samabula wards.

Suva has since been the stage for national politics. Fiji's new flag was raised for the first time at Albert Park on 9 October 1970. Soldiers seized power twice in 1987, in May and again in September; in 2000 an armed group stormed parliament and held the prime minister and members of the government hostage from May until July, while shops in the centre were looted, and soldiers mutinied at the Queen Elizabeth Barracks that November. A further coup followed in December 2006. Through it all the capital kept growing, spreading inland across Nasinu towards Nausori.

Suva is the most mixed place in Fiji and the meeting point of the wider Pacific. Fijian, Fiji Hindi and English are all heard in the same street; iTaukei, Indo-Fijian, Chinese, Part-European, Rotuman and other Pacific communities live in the city, and the University of the South Pacific, owned by twelve Pacific countries, brings students and staff from Kiribati to Tonga. Regional bodies such as the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat and the Pacific Community give the capital a diplomatic character no other Fijian town has.

Churches, temples and mosques are all prominent, and Sunday is genuinely quiet: choirs in Methodist churches are part of the sound of the city, while Diwali, Holi and the Prophet's Birthday are marked publicly. Kava, drunk in the evening from a communal bowl, is as much a Suva habit as a village one, and the market is where the country's kava trade meets.

Rugby union is followed with intensity, and the national stadium at Laucala Bay fills for internationals and for the schools competitions that supply the game, most of them at the HFC Bank Stadium. The city also carries most of Fiji's arts life: the national museum, the university, art galleries, theatre groups, string bands and a hip hop and reggae scene. Suva people are conscious of being more formal and more political than the resort west, and proud of it.

Some 94,000 people live inside the city boundary, about 187,000 in the built-up area that runs on into Nasinu, and around 268,000 in the wider metropolitan area taking in Lami and Nausori — comfortably the largest in Fiji. The city works on government, the port, trade, banking, education and regional organisations: the ministries are in the Domain, the container and cargo wharves and light industry are at Walu Bay, and thousands of students commute to Laucala Bay.

The day starts early. Produce lorries and island boats reach the market before dawn, buses fill the corridor roads from six, and offices and schools begin early and finish in the middle of the afternoon, leaving the seawall busy with walkers by five. Rain punctuates everything, and umbrellas and covered walkways are part of the city's design.

Housing is the pressure point. Formal suburbs give way on the edges to informal settlements built by families who have moved in from the islands and the cane belt, often on land with poor drainage; flooding in the Rewa and Nasinu areas is a recurring problem, and so are traffic congestion on the single corridor into town and the cost of living. Remittances from relatives in Australia, New Zealand and further afield support many households.

Suva eats across all its communities, and eats cheaply. Indo-Fijian cooking is the everyday default in the centre: goat, chicken, fish and vegetable curries with roti, dhal and rice, roti parcels wrapped for lunch, and snacks such as bhajia and samosa sold from stalls, with barfi and gulab jamun in the sweet shops at festival time. Chinese restaurants are long established in the centre, and chop suey has become so common that it appears at Fijian family meals.

iTaukei food is at the market and at feasts. Dalo (taro) and cassava are the staples, with rourou, taro leaves cooked in coconut cream, and palusami, parcels of leaves baked with coconut cream. Kokoda, raw fish marinated in lime juice and coconut cream, is the dish visitors meet first, the fish "cooked" in lime or lemon juice with coconut milk, tomato and chilli added. Lovo, food wrapped and cooked for hours on hot stones under earth and sacks, marks weddings, church events and Christmas. From the Rewa delta come freshwater shellfish and river prawns; from the reefs, fish, octopus and crab.

Local drinks are kava, drunk in the evening from a tanoa bowl, and Fiji Bitter, brewed in the city. Bakeries sell long loaves and coconut buns, roadside stalls sell cassava chips and fried dough eaten with tea, and the market supplies pineapple, papaya, mango and breadfruit in season.