Fijian Hospitality
Vega
Hugh and Annie
Mon 9 Jul 2018 19:17
Totoya was a one night stopover where, on the afternoon of our arrival, we met a family harvesting copra. The land adjoining the bay is owned by the family and so we were able to do our sevusevu ceremony with them. Sevusevu is the traditional ceremony that must be gone through on arrival at a village at which you present a gift of Kava root and following which you are honorary members of their village and have free access to their land. It may be necessary to do sevusevu at more than one village on each island. The nearest village on Totoya was a long dinghy ride away and in the windy conditions we were glad to spend an enjoyable afternoon with the family.
We are now in Matuku in the most wonderful harbour which is surrounded by hills and not directly open to the sea. Vega is maintaining a steady position on the anchor and I have actually had two nights of pretty much uninterrupted sleep! Totoya was the worst where in our bay Vega not only drifted in circles around the anchor but spun around the anchor chain at the same time. We had a chain length of knots to unravel before we could get the anchor up. The only plus point was that we used a float on the chain and it successfully prevented the chain from wrapping around coral as we circled.
Here in Matuku we did our sevusevu with Chico, the Chief, who managed to stay awake long enough to say his piece. He had been drinking Kava the night before and had been up since the early hours meeting a supply ship. Not a good combination for sevusevu and Chico slept soundly after the ceremony as we chatted with Jese who became our host. You will often be “adopted” by a family or individual who will guide you to local places, dive sites and so-on and maybe give you a meal or produce from their allotment. Jese took us to the next village where we sat and drank Fijian tea with the men and then on the way back he cut coconuts for us to drink from. A fresh coconut holds half a litre of water or more and the flesh is so soft you can scoop it out with a spoon made from a thin slice of the husk. Back in the village he gave us a handwoven banana leaf basket filled with vegetables - tomatoes, pak choy, aubergines and cucumbers.
Fijians are keen to say hello (Bula) and we have had a warm welcome wherever we have been. After church it is the custom for village families to each prepare a dish, usually fish, as part of lunch for the minister and his guests. We are guests and during the service receive a welcome and respond with a short reply. I became the spokesperson for our Swedish/Swiss/English group and again said a few words on behalf of Annie and me here in Matuku. The singing here is the best yet with amazing harmony. We are told they pick it up as children but it seems to us that a lot of regular practice must be involved.
Life here is relatively simple compared to the complexity at home. It is largely a subsistence living where you can easily grow, rear, harvest and fish all you need to eat. Earning a living is harder (producing Kava root, weaving mats, selling copra or coconut oil) and many island families have relatives working on the main island or abroad to support them. However, it would be wrong to underestimate the self awareness of the people. Many have worked and lived abroad and contact is maintained throughout the islands by a daily radio net (much like the yachties!). Each village has a satellite telephone even if not mobile phone or wifi. We have met a number of islanders who have lived and worked abroad but choose to return to see out their retirement back in their home village. There is a love for island life, family (clan) traditions are strong, and sharing is the social norm. Conversation is full of laughter and the children seem to have a wonderful time growing up in their extended village family with little restraint on their ability to roam, play and explore.
By our material standards these people have almost nothing. As a result island life is under pressure. Children have to go away to boarding school for secondary education and may well wish to stay away in order to earn a living or pursue a career. You only see young children in the villages. Villages have empty houses, partially as a result of tropical storm damage but mainly because families have moved away. We are asked how much a yacht (or outboard motor and so-on) would cost to buy and then the wealth gap comes into focus. We are candid and give a Fijian equivalent price which causes gasping and laughter but then we can talk about our differing lifestyles.
We try and reciprocate the islanders generosity with small gifts, money in return for services over and above customary hospitality and are exploring ways we can help by, for example, undertaking to source a new propellor for an outboard that needs one and fibreglass resin for badly needed repairs to boats. We bought a printer in NZ and will offer this to the local school if they can make use of it.
There is never going to be an industrial economy on these small islands to generate the wealth we take for granted. Furthermore, with a few exceptions, there is little business acumen and even less access to start up funding. Jese would like to encourage more yachts to the island but doesn’t have wifi, never mind the computing skills to set up a web site. The islanders know this and those that stay know the value of a non-material life and cherish it. We in industrial societies are locked into economic pressures to the extent that most of us (me included) fear poverty and therefore cannot see the value in less materialism or indeed a life focussed more upon community and sharing. Annie and I are lucky to be getting a glimpse of what it can be like here in Fiji.
We have been to places where the poverty is grinding and particularly where it is cheek by jowl with enormous wealth. Here you can only use the word “poverty” in the western economic sense. These are indigenous people with a long cultural tradition mixed with more western aspects. They are well fed, educated, have strong social structures and lives that most seem very happy with. Indeed, lives that we in the west could learn from. There is, as in so many places we have visited, a colonial dimension and the Fijian flag includes the Union Jack and Fiji is a member of the Commonwealth. We seem to have blanked this out of our historical teaching and awareness and rarely acknowledge our undoubted ties and responsibilities towards these former colonies. New Zealand does and we have visited a new school and staff accommodation on Vanua Balavu funded by NZ after the original was destroyed by Storm Winston. It would be nice to come to these countries and see tangible evidence that being part of the Commonwealth has obvious benefits. Maybe there could be a Commonwealth development fund into which the richer countries contribute to support the poorer ones - a bit like the EU. Oh well, just a thought.