Creative Task: The day I learnt the importance of the 'Box'...

19th May, 2000. It was 11.00 am, just after morning break and I was not really looking forward to Math class. Ironically how was I to know that let alone Math I would not be having any classes that day and also for the rest of the week. The first inkling we had of things out of the ordinary was when teachers started leaving their respective homerooms and congregating in the main reception that was just opposite my homeroom to watch the television. Even more unsettling was witnessing the otherwise dead-at-this-time-of-the-day King Edward Barracks suddenly springing into action: soldiers in uniform, gunnery opening, military trucks idling at the pavements and at the entrance to the school, the normally friendly and easy-going soldiers all serious and charged-up. It was a scary sight. Something was definitely up, something bad. Despite the 35-degree Island humidity, I felt chilled. I knew those soldiers were good, friendly people, but somehow I had the premonition that the boundaries of good and bad were about to go for a toss as was the life that I knew, for sometime at least.

The 2000 coup spwaned a host of conspiracy theories and literature Credit: Amazon

After a while, we were called into assembly where a very somber Principal told us that the current Prime Minister had been deposed and that there was no Government of the day. He termed what we were experiencing as a “coup”. For those of us born after 1987 i.e. the first military coup, this was a relatively new concept to be grappled with. All we knew was that it was bad for the country. It was a part of our nation's history which we were being forced to confront once again and to a twelve-year old me, excitement and nervousness aside, it all seemed a tad unfair as people would be expected to be cooped up in their houses all day, watching live television broadcasts and listening to radio coverage. “Boring!” I remember thinking to myself. I could not have been more wrong, for if I have to point out any particular instance in my life that made me value the power of mass media and crave its affordances, this was it.

My main sources of memory:

 

News Station providing 24-hour live coverage of events, Credit: Radio Fiji Website

Live reports from the Parliament Complex in Suva, Credit: Fiji Village.net

Although I was not physically present in Suva when the coup took place and watched the whole destruction and looting via live television coverage, when I think about it today, I count it as something that I 'experienced' on a personal level. The 'liveness' of the television broadcasts left a deep impact on me. This is primarily because Suva is my city of birth and my mothers hometown, and I had walked on those streets that were now the scene of terror just a few months back, I had shopped in those very stores that were now being looted by its own customers.

Supermarket in Suva being looted by citizens in the wake of George Speights take-over of Parliament Credit: AFP Photo, Fiji Times, 2000

And it did seem strange to a pre-teen me then, but I felt as though I was transported there through what I was seeing and hearing. I started to have new respect for news broadcasts. 'Boring' had suddenly become very interesting, if not downright enthralling. That whole day everyone in my family sat glued to the television set, alternating between radio broadcasts for the latest breaking news from the parliament complex. And the next day, since of the curfews there were no newspapers out and I remember being severely disappointed that I was being cheated of yet another avenue of experience. Suffice to say, from that day on, I no longer viewed the soldiers at the Army barracks with the same casualness. In my mind, their friendliness had been replaced by the reports I saw of them as menacing, engaged in tussles with irate citizens and toting guns. I gave them respect saturated with a generous dose of fear and now I am quite convinced that the media was behind my re-representation of them, even in my own mind.
 

This is how I will forever remember them.... Credit The East Asia Forum

.....as opposed to this, Credit: Carolyn, Apartment Therapy 2007

  

Fiji Military men engaged in a tussle with looting citizens in Suva Credit: BBC News AP



George Speight: the 'frontman' behind the 2000 coup Credit: Bio Control 



Mahendra Chaudhry, the deposed Prime Minister after he was released from captivity Credit: Sydney Morning Herald, 2010

Ten years onwards, when I look back at the events of the day, I forget that I was not physically there, that I was safe at home, glued to the television, making my memory-bank. As far as personal experiences go, I was right there in the thick of things, as a silent, somewhat bewildered and helpless spectator watching my beloved Island paradise getting irrevocably damaged to such an extent that its still unable to function normally even today.