Tiny but tough.

Western literature is rife with precocious children. Of course, so is the canon of US sitcoms, which for people of my age reached its zenith with "Whatchyu talkin' 'bout, Willis?"

Though I don't know if it does them any good, the two Fijian boys pictured above are closer to Dickensian than Colemanesque.

They live in Cuvu (pronounced 'doo-voo') Village. I was a frequent visitor to Cuvu on account of Mamta's father's passing, usually at night and with several family members in tow. This photo was taken on a Saturday morning, however, after I'd dropped Ramesh mama off at Cuvu College for soccer practice. The boys were walking along the village's only paved road, a potholed mess that was once part of Queens Road, the main thoroughfare between Lautoka and Suva. Like most of Fiji's non-tourist-driven roads, it's been abandoned to the elements by generations of smiling politicians.

Home to both native Fijians and Indo-Fijians, Cuvu was wide awake on this sunny morning. Children's voices rang from behind lush vegetation and within houses patched together from tin sheets and broken concrete. Men and women in matching skirts and sulus walked to their jobs at a resort a few kilometres away. Untied bullocks and horses munched on grass grown high by recent heavy rains. Battered cars with tortured suspensions wheezed with full loads making the 20 km ride to or from Sigatoka's markets.

The boys had seen me before and so ran to the truck for 'high-fives' (a lone white man is a rare sight in Cuvu). We chatted for a few minutes before I took the photo, which I then showed them on the camera's large LCD screen. They hooted like runaway trains at the sight of themselves. I climbed back into the truck as they poked their heads into the passenger window.

"Call me!" they shouted.

"Huh?" I responded.

"I've got a mobile! Call me!" they shouted.

Mobiles? These kids have mobiles? I reached for pen and paper and soon held their names and numbers.

"You'll call us, right?"

"Absolutely."

Shamefully, those scraps of paper were soon lost. When I return to Cuvu -- and since befriending Mamta and her lovely family, a return is guaranteed -- I will present these two Fijian boys with a framed version of their photo and demand they scribble their names and numbers into my address book.

Images of Cuvu ...
The boys' house.

Cuvu College.

24-hour grog shop.
More Cuvu kids (my truck is parked in front of Mamta's house in the background).
Tracks of a 'cane train', still used to deliver cut sugar cane from fields.