logo Harmonie
Date: 02 Jul 2008 05:56:00
Title: Yalobi, Waya Island, Fiji - with pictures
[<< Prev Post] | [Next Post >>]
[Back to Index/Map]

17:18.740S  177:07.131E
 
Pictures are attached to this version.
 
On Friday (6/27) we sailed with Branec and Lady Kay the thirty-odd miles northwest of the big island of Viti Levu to one of the more remote island groups.  We arrived in a bay on the southern side of Waya Island near the small village of Yalobi late in the day.  The little bit of information we have on Fiji tells us that we should go to see the chief of the village as soon as possible after anchoring in 'his' bay, present him with a gift of kava, and ask permission to anchor in the bay and visit the village.  According to the books, this little ceremony is usually followed by a big welcome and an invitation to spend as much time in and around the village as anyone could want.  That's what all the books say anyway, but we had yet to experience a village with a chief, the need to ask permission and a big welcome, so we were a bit dubious.  Even in the Marquesas, the more remote villages with their satellite dishes, couple of cars and cell phones didn't fit completely with that vision we had of 'remote villages full of welcoming people' we had read about. 
 
Never-the-less, we did come to the Waya Island  prepared.  Or at least Lady Kay came prepared.  We realized the day before after we had already left Lautoka that we had forgotten to buy kava at the market.  Lady Kay left the Saweni Bay anchorage early and went back to Lautoka.  On the way, they called Ravine, the trusty taxi man on his cell phone and asked him if he would pick up five kilos of kava at the market and meet them on the wharf in Lautoka.  Ravine did exactly that and was waiting with the kava when Michael arrived at the wharf in his dinghy.  Job done.  Ravine came through once again.  Kava in hand, Lady Kay then proceeded to Waya Island where we met them in the anchorage with Branec and a few other non-rally boats that happened to be there.
 
What exactly is kava?  We don't really know, but it's some kind of plant, ground up and mixed with water to make a somewhat vile (or so Sabine says since she tasted it in New Caledonia with her son) drink that is very popular among the South Pacific natives, particularly those in Fiji.  Kava is a drink usually shared by men and the drinking of kava is usually done on special occasions, but can also be shared after church on a Sunday or at the end of a long day.  The drinking of kava is sometimes accompanied with an elaborate ceremony.  Kava is non-alcoholic, but does have narcotic-like properties.  We've read that it makes your mouth and face numb when you drink it.  Some places, like New Caledonia, ban kava as a drug, but don't really enforce the ban.  According to the information we have, when boaters 'park' their boats in a village's bay, they should visit the village chief and present him with a half-kilogram of kava as a sign of respect.
 
When we all arrived in the bay near Yalobi, we decided it was too late in the day to present the kava to the chief, and instead planned to visit the big man the next morning.  So on Saturday morning Jackie and I donned our skirts, and we all ditched our hats and sunglasses grabbed the kilo of kava (1/2 for Lady Kay and 1/2 for Harmonie), loaded in the dinghy and motored to shore.  The village of Yalobi has no dock or wharf, so we beached the dinghy and asked the nearest villager to take us to their chief.  Seriously, 'Take us to the chief' is what we said.  The whole episode was surreal at that point, and it was just beginning...
 
Picture 1 is the village of Yalobi as seen from the water as we approached in the dinghy.
 
We were taken to the chief, introduced and asked to enter his house, which was a bit like a concrete hut.  The hut consisted of one room with a mosquito net covered bed in one corner, a few cooking things in another corner, a small well-worn, flowered fabric covered settee along one wall and a wide open space in the middle with no furniture and a worn rug.  The chief motioned for us to sit on the rug.  He sat gracefully cross-legged while the four of us struggled to sit in the same position (hard to do gracefully in a skirt, and the guys just couldn't get their legs to bend quite that way).  It was clear that the chief was most comfortable talking to the men so Jackie and I did our best to fade into the background while the men folk talked.  The chief asked where we were all from, talked a little about the village - which is the capital of Waya Island.  The village of Yalobi has a population of 280 people and the island of Waya has 700 people living on it in a total of four villages.  No supply ships visit the village, but the village does own one motor boat which is used to go back and forth to the mainland (meaning the big island of Viti Levu) on Fridays.  The chief inherited his position after his brother died, and his family comes from a long line of chiefs.  He showed us a picture of his grandfather, who was also a chief, and he looked very fierce, bare-chested and wearing some kind of bone necklace.  Our chief wasn't bare-chested and wasn't wearing a bone necklace, but he was wearing what looked like the kind of jumpsuit a garage mechanic might wear.  He asked both Don and Michael how old they were and indicated that he was 67.  Aside from a lack of teeth, he looked pretty good for 67.  At one point, the chief stated, 'We like tourists.  They bring us money.'  Ok!  Good - he likes us.  We were a little nervous about meeting our first chief, but after this statement, we felt more relaxed.  Picture 2 shows the chief flanked by Don and Michael doing their best to sit cross-legged.
 
We presented the chief with the kava and he seemed genuinely pleased.  He asked us what religion we were - Don told him Anglican (Church of England) and he frowned a bit saying he and his village were Methodist.  'You pray to one God?' he asked Don.  'Oh yes' agreed Don.  'Ok' the chief said and proceeded to bless the kava in Fijian.  It was a really long blessing full of really long Fijian words.  At one point I could swear I heard the word 'television', but I don't think that word would really find its way into a Fijian kava blessing.
 
That done, we all stood and the chief said he would ask one of the children to guide us to the waterfall and the villager's vegetable garden (we had asked what sights the chief recommended we see and these were the two he came up with).  We strolled through the village with the chief and received greetings of 'Bula!' from all the people sitting near their houses or walking by.  The village consisted of a church, a school and a group of house/huts.  No road, no cars, one satellite dish (for the school?), no solar panels, a generator used for a few lights and not much else as the houses did not appear to have electricity.  The house/huts were all one room - some with a curtained off area for sleeping.  The kitchens were all outside - each consisting of a place for a fire, a few large pots and a couple of utensils.  No indoor plumbing, several outhouses here and there and a couple of water faucets located throughout the village.  We asked one of the kids where the water came from and he said the village had a big tank up on the mountain where rain water was collected.  There was a pipe from the tank down to the village and that was their water supply.
 
Picture 3 shows one of the girls lugging a pail of water.  One of the outdoor kitchens is to the right and the chief is pointing out where the villager's vegetable gardens are to Don in the background.
 
Picture 4 is Michael speaking to one of the village ladies.  She smiled when we pointed out that her croc shoes were very much like those that Michael has on.
 
The chief introduced us to Ana, a thirteen year old girl, and her ten year old brother Mojee, and asked them to guide us to the waterfall.  One of the women nearby heard we were going to the waterfall and said, 'Waterfall?  But there is no water!'.  And she was right.  The kids energetically led us up a path to the river bed, which was empty.  Not a drop of water to be seen.  No bother, the kids simply continued to lead us up the rock filled riverbed toward the mountainside vegetable gardens.  As we tourists struggled over the rocks in our skirts and flip-flops or crocs, the kids scrambled up through the rocks barefoot - Ana in a skirt and her brother in long shorts.  On occasion, small Mojee would turn around and give both Jackie and I a hand up a particularly large rock.  The little guy was half our size, but managed to pull us up.  We felt a bit like we were climbing Mt. Everest in a skirt with the help of a Sherpa. 
 
Don and Ana were at the front of the pack, which gave Don a chance to ask Ana all kinds of questions about her life on Waya.  She gladly answered all of Don's questions and seemed very proud to share information with us about her people and her village.  Ana's English was excellent.  She said there is one school on Waya Island with eight teachers and 230 kids.  The kids attend this school from age 6 to 13.  After that, they have the option to go live on the mainland with relatives and attend a higher level school for older children.  If they do that, they only come home for holidays.  The teachers teach them in both Fijian and English and they learn math, science and English among other subjects.  Ana has five siblings - two older and the rest younger.  One of her older sisters is on the mainland (Viti Levu) at school.  Next year, Ana will also go to the mainland for school and stay with relatives there.  The villagers eat a lot of cassava (like a potato), some fish, coconuts and other fruits and vegetables that grow on the island.  The village has a few cows, goats and pigs and they hunt wild goats and pigs as well.  For the most part, it sounded like the village was self-sufficient and the fact that it was never visited by a supply ship did not seem to be a problem.
 
Eventually we climbed out of the dry river bed, walked out of the foliage and into the villager's gardens.  The gardens are set on the side of the mountain a fair distance from the village.  When we asked Ana why this was so, she said the soil was much better up on the mountain.  No wonder most of the villagers are thin - their food pantry is up the side of a mountain.  The view of the bay from the garden was incredible.  Picture 5 is Don enjoying the view as seen from across the cassava field.  We rested for a moment and Ana noticed our need for refreshment.  In Fijian she told her brother to run back to the village and get a machete so that she could cut some drinking nuts for us. Drinking the liquid from inside a young, green coconut is the South Pacific version of offering a guest a Coke.
 
Mojee ran all the way to the village and back (took him a matter of minutes vs our slow half hour trek up the river bed) and produced the machete with a smile (and we were always told not to run with scissors!).  The kids led us down to a grove of coconut palms and Ana found one with several green coconuts ready for the picking.  Yes, the picking...with no hesitation, Ana started up the tree.  At first it didn't look too difficult as notches had been cut out of the trunk to assist climbing.  However, after about ten feet their were no more notches.  Never fear, Ana simply shimmied up the remaining fifteen feet - skirt and all (picture 6).  Six coconuts later, she shimmied back down.  'How long have you been doing that?' we asked her.  'Since I was seven.' she said.  If we were in the US, the poor child would have had to wear a harness, a safety line, her parents would have had to sign waiver forms in triplicate and the tree would have been surrounded with mats at least two feet thick.  Makes you yearn for the simple life, doesn't it?
 
Ana then went to work on the coconuts, cutting the tops of each so we could drink the cool liquid within (picture 7).  Excellent.  Somehow they tasted better than those that 'the man' in the Tuamotus served us.
 
After the coconut episode, we went back to the village where the ladies were waiting to show us their handicrafts.  Like Tonga, weaving is big in Fiji.  Not so much for clothing (the people don't wear 'mats' here), but for baskets and flooring and such.  We were invited in to Ana and Mojee's aunt's traditional fale hut (picture 8), where several of the women were seated on the woven mat covered floor with their wares spread out - shell and stone necklaces, woven and tapa cloth bookmarks, cloth sarongs, etc.  Picture 9 is grandma showing off one of her necklace creations, sitting beside her is Mojee.  We picked out some things and paid the ladies (very reasonable prices).  They seemed pleased with our purchases and were happy to pose for a bunch of pictures.  Afterwards, Ana showed us her house, which was right next door to her aunt's.  Ana, Mojee and their two younger brothers posed for us in the doorway of their house (picture 10).  Aren't they adorable?  Mojee later gave the flowers he has in his hand to me and they now sit proudly in a plastic glass vase in the salon on our boat.
 
Ana then took us to her grandmother's house where she showed us a floor mat that was a work in progress - the quality of the weaving was incredible.  The raw material for most of the weaving comes from the pandanu plant.  The long, thin leaves are cut, left to dry, split into thinner strips and woven.  On a wall in her grandmother's house were several certificates of achievement that Ana had earned from school for high grades.  After showing us these, Ana produced a notebook and using the colored pens Jackie and Michael had given her, she wrote out her name and address (the school's address anyway, since the villagers don't really get mail) and gave it to Don.  We'll think about it for a while, but at some point will send Ana and Mojee something small that they will hopefully treasure as a thank you for their kind hospitality.
 
That about sums up our day in a Fijian village.   This was definitely 'the real thing'.  These people have nearly nothing, but want for nothing.  They are proud, happy and extremely welcoming.  Although their huts are small and lacking many of the things we take for granted, we didn't view them as poor.  Their lifestyle is simply different from ours, and in many ways, refreshing. 
 
We hope next year to come back to Fiji and perhaps stop in Yalobi village again for a visit.
Anne 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

JPEG image

JPEG image

JPEG image

JPEG image

JPEG image

JPEG image

JPEG image

JPEG image

JPEG image

JPEG image

[<< Prev Post] | [Next Post >>]
[Back to Index/Map]

Diary Entries