Last Saturday, I took my nephew, JR, and my nieces, Ana and Bella, to the Bula Festival. After they’d gone on the rides, we went to the nearby children’s park to eat while we waited for the float procession.
The park was already crowded. Parents sat on the grass, watching their children race between the slides and swings.
A few paces ahead of us, a boy of about six picked up a piece of yellow paper and showed it to his father, who was seated on the concrete seat encircling the park’s only large tree.
As we drew closer, I realised that the paper was a hundred-dollar note. A young woman hurried over and said she had dropped it. The father handed it to her, and they fell into conversation.
We found a place to sit and began eating. A little later, the young woman joined a young man sitting on a sulu a few metres away. She looked as though she was trying not to cry.
Fragments of their conversation drifted toward us. It became clear that the money really was hers. The boy had found one hundred dollars, but another hundred was still missing. The two hundred dollars had been part of the young man’s fare to Savusavu the following day.
When the park closed, we stopped by Bargain Box, where I hoped to find some new books. At the entrance, I met the baggage checker, who had told me the previous Saturday that she had been on sick leave because of problems with her leg. When I asked how she was, she said it was still swollen, but she had returned to work because she was renting and needed the money.
I still wonder about those two women.
Whether the missing hundred dollars ever turned up. Whether the young man made it to Savusavu. Whether the baggage checker found enough rest for her swollen leg.
I will probably never know.
What I do know is that, days later, I am still thinking about them.