Village Visit

Wanting to get a closer look at village life in Fiji and an idea of what life was like prior to European contact, I made the necessary preparations for a trip out to the island of Nacula, one of the furthest in the island chain of the Yasawas group. I stopped off at several islands along the way and made friends with a German traveler name Henrick, who agreed to make the journey all the way to Nacula with me. For the last leg of the trip we had a local fisherman drop us off at a tiny cove on the southern edge of Nacula, and he pointed us to a trail that would presumably lead us towards the village itself.


The path took us over the spine of the island where only a tall grass grew, above which we could see the sweeping panoramas of this and other islands. After some distance the path dipped down into a valley and we began to see signs of farming, planted rows of sweet potato, banana and bread-fruit trees.


Then, through some foliage and into a sunny clearing we could make out a number of thatch-roofed homes and wonderfully colorful laundry hung out to dry. It was deftly quiet, and though we had been anticipating it, Hendrick and I found ourselves at a a loss as to how to make first contact with the village and its inhabitants.

For some time we just stood there and I had just begun to suspect that no one was around, when from out of one of the huts came a joyous voice which proclaimed - Bula! There was no mistaking its meaning of welcome, and we replied with the same. A woman emerged with a flower print dress and instructed us in awkward English that before we are allowed to visit the village we must first meet its chief. We soon found ourselves following her lead down the narrow footpaths that meandered between the fifty or so identical homes. By each dwelling we were met with the same greeting and families gathered at their open doors and windows and smiled out at us as we passed.

The Meeting House

At the other end of the village there was a slightly larger structure built of the same materials as the others, which we were invited to enter and then asked to sit on the many reed mats that were spread across the floor. This we were told was the village meeting house. The woman who we had followed asked us to wait here for the chief and instructed us that when he came we should make a sevusevu, a small customary gift. Fortunately we were prepared and I had with me a small amount of kava which I understood was the traditional gift on such occasions.

Kava bundle at market

After a while the chief entered and sat cross-legged before us on the floor. He was a robust middle-aged man in a t-shirt, but he still maintained some degree regalregality. He graciously accepted our gift of Kava, which I presented by putting on the floor in front of him. Henrick and I introduced ourselves, and he invited us to look around at the many pictures of him and his family that adorned the walls of the meeting house. In one was his brother who we learned was a captain of a large ship and could be seen posing in his uniform. In another there was a few of his nephews proudly displaying a rugby trophy. Our meeting with the chief was brief. At its end he said that he would appoint his niece as our guide for as long as we chose to stay in the village and he introduced the young girl that had been waiting at the entrance, then he left.

I looked up at what appeared to be a large bone or tusk hanging from one of the rafters of the meeting house. When I asked our new guide about it, she explained that this was the Tabua, or the tooth of a sperm whale. In Fiji they are presented to important guests and exchanged at weddings, births, and funerals she explained. The particular tabua hanging in this meeting house was very old and showed that it had been worn by the many times it had changed hands.

We soon found out that our new guide, though shy, spoke a fair amount of English. She attended a boarding school on one of the "closer islands", Mondays through Fridays, at which half of her instruction was in English.


We followed her out and began our stroll through the rest of the village. On the way we passed what we were told was the home of the "oldest man" in the village. He was half way up a tree nailing something down when we met him. He was pretty limber for an old-timer. I shook his outstretched hand and he gave me a broad toothless smile, and said Bula of course. I told him that I was a history teacher, here to study Fiji's history. I asked if a lot had changed since he was a child in the village. He got what I had asked, and through our guide who translated he said
"When I was little we would cut the bananas before they were ripe. It would take us over a week to sail our small boats to the mainland. The bananas would ripen along the way and be ready by the time we made it to the market. Now we wait until they are ripe before we cut them and we use an outboard motor."

So, that pretty much sums that up.

Our next stop was the "store" which was really just a couple of shelves in a corner of one of the village huts. To see how little was actually available for purchase in the village drove home just how self sufficient it really was. Only a few staples such as tea, sugar, and flour were imported from the mainland. The rest of life's necessities were either fished from the sea, plucked from a tree, or were harvested in their village's gardens. This village apparently planted only three crops - sweet potato, pineapple, and bananas, and none of these required much looking after.

The church was by far the biggest structure in the village, but was still quite small. It was made of concrete, with windows along its side which opened to let in the sea breeze. Outside sitting under the shade of some marvelous trees, the likes of which I have never seen before, there was a group of women who, hearing of our arrival, had laid out their wares on blankets for us to survey. Our guide explained that these women make jewelery and such out of shells, which they sell to the boatmen who bring the goods to their village store, who in turn sell it to the shops on the mainland. They seemed eager to skip the middle man in this case, but it was still a remarkably low pressure sale. I purchased a large nautilus shell.


Near the coast at one end of the village there was a group of young men busy around a bunch of materials sprawled out on the ground. To my excitement I found out that they were constructing one of the village homes which I learned was called a bure. They were a fun bunch and were happy to let us investigate their progress. I brought out my video camera and one of the more gregarious guys gave me a full narration of the methods and materials involved in creating one of these traditional structures. It was pretty amazing to see it all come together. In what seemed like no time the framework was completed and they were explaining to me how the reeds were woven together and tied up to create the walls and ceiling.

The thing that I found really fascinating was what the villagers did with these homes when a hurricane struck. They told me that their traditional bures could be untied, disassembled and covered, keeping the materials protected. When it was over they would simply reassemble their bures. However, the newer construction that included boards, nails, and concrete would be torn apart and have to be completely rebuilt.

Like the rest of my experiences in this village, this got me to thinking about the merits of simplicity. Wandering around the village was an interesting look at life in a comparatively isolated corner of the world. There were of course signs of change everywhere. Several homes had electricity which was supplied from a generator. Some of the boats appeared to be made out of fiberglass. People had radios and other things bought from the mainland. But not much!

Trouble in Paradise

Gazing out the window on the short ride from the airport to my guest house in Nadi, I could see
the tropical beauty for which Fiji is so famous. In the distance were the great green peaks of the rugged interior and along the road were brightly colored homes on small plots with palm trees, and hibiscus and frangipani flowers blooming in their tiny yards. It was the spitting image of a holiday in paradise brochure. On the radio however, it was a different story. As my taxi driver and I careened around one beautiful vista after another, we listened in silence as a newscaster launched into a scathing rant about the inefficiency and negligence of the current interim government. For from without bias, it was absolutely merciless. It seemed that mud-slides during the recent rain had destroyed a number of villages on the north side of the main island, one of which had not received aid in three days. The newscaster made it abundantly clear that the blame was squarely on the incompetency of the current regime. After a good deal of this I turned to the driver and said something of the effect of "wow, that guy really has it in for the government" to which he replied, "yes, but of course here in Fiji we have a radio station for every persuasion."

He turned the dial, and after a few commercials, but right on cue, another newscast was releasing a statement that made it clear that the stranded village was a result of the previous regime's failure to modernize agriculture in the sector, and that the situation was further evidence of the type of mismanagement that made its removal necessary. It went on to describe the improvements that the current regime had already begun to implement in order to rectify the failures of their predecessors.

Not the kind of politicizing you would expect such a beautiful place to produce, but there was no chance that these mud-slides and the havoc that they the reeked could be left to blame on the rain alone.

In fact Fiji is no stranger to political instability - four coups in just 15 years have left their mark. The first took place at 10am on Thursday, May 14th, 1987, when Lt. Col. Sitiveni Rabuka (number three in the Fijian army), and 10 heavily armed soldiers dressed in fatigues, their faces covered in gas masks, entered the House of Parliament in Suva and forced the legislators inside to board army trucks at gunpoint. The resulting chaos has been a severe blow to the islands' economy and strained race relations in an ethnically divided society. Like most current events these coups have their origins in much more distant historical happenings.

Much of the political instability in Fiji has its routes in the ethnic tensions that exist there, and the foundations of a multiracial Fiji were laid in the late 19th century, when Fiji was a British colony. The first colonial governor of Fiji, Sir Arthur Gordon, introduced Indian indentured laborers to work on sugar cane plantations. Indians began arriving in 1879, and by 1916, when Indian immigration ended, there were already 63,000.


To come to Fiji, the Indians had to sign a labor contract or girmit, in which they agreed to cut sugarcane for their masters for five years. During the next five years they were to continue to work on the plantation, but they were allowed to lease small plots from the Fijians and plant their own cane or raise livestock. More than half of the Indians decided to remain after their contracts expired, and today their descendants make up the Indo-Fijian segment of Fiji's population.

In a rare example of good natured concern for its native subjects, the British decided to safeguard Fijian culture by prohibiting indigenous Fijians from commercial employment and protecting their land by law. The result was that Fijian land cold not be sold, only leased. To this day 83% of the land in Fiji is inalienable native Fijian land which can not be sold. Instead it is leased out in small plots, mostly to Indians. The effect has been that the Fijian chiefdom system has been largely maintained and the traditional Fijian way of life can still be seen throughout most of Fiji.

But this system, with its European capital, Fijian land, and Indian labor, has had its consequences. Fijian's have had little motivation to modernize, accumulate capitol, or invest in business. Instead they have been content to sit back and collect off of leased land. Indo-Fijians however, unable to purchase native protected land, have invested in their own businesses. Today it is estimated that less than 100 of the 5,000 businesses operating in Fiji are native Fijian owned. By 1946 the census held that Indians had already outnumbered native Fijians 120,000 to 17,000. Add to this the fact that Indo-Fijians pay nearly 80% of all taxes collected in Fiji, and their cries for equivalent political representation becomes obvious. Yet, the constitution has explicitly reserved the post of president, prime minister, and army chief for ethnic Fijians.

Prominent Fijian nationalists insist that Indo-Fijians must content themselves to be second-class citizens, or at least let indigenous Fijians run the country. They claim political leadership as a birthright by virtue of their status as the indigenous people of the country. They claim that any government in Fiji must legally safeguard native Fijian's position as the "taukei ne gele" or "owners of the soil." Even prior to the first coup in Fiji, at a rally protesting increased Indian participation in government, Apisai Tora, a prominent Fijian Nationalists, stated that Fijians must "act now" to avoid ending up as "deprived as Australia's aborigines."

It is an interesting historical and moral dilemma in Fiji. On the one hand you have an indigenous peoples' struggle to maintain sovereignty over their land. On the other hand you have victims of a racially discriminatory system, who, if left to legitimate representative democracy, could only expect to play a significant political role in the society.