Yalobi, Waya Island, Fiji - with pictures
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Wed 2 Jul 2008 04:56
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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
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