BEQA ISLAND

I’ve been starting to feel overwhelmingly anxious. The task at school is mounting and I need to think about knitting things to sell at the school bazaar in October. The school bazaar will be held in October to raise money for the Sigatoka games (a national inter-school sporting event/extravaganza). I’m also way behind in organising the Cross Island Walk for the Fiji Day long weekend. On top of all of this, I’ve managed to get into heated discussions with old friends that have stressed me out so much that I’m losing sleep and breaking out into night sweats over it.

Thank heavens for our head teacher who knows how to seize an opportunity. Today was the monthly meeting for all the head teachers of schools in the Suva district. They aim to hold it at different schools each month. This month, the meeting would be held on Beqa Island. Beqa Island is a small Island to the south of a town called Navua which is west of Suva:



To reach Beqa Island, we woke at 5:30am, caught a taxi with our head teacher to the Teacher’s Association where all the head teachers were congregating, took a 40 minute bus ride to Navua, followed by at 40 minute boat ride to a village on the south of Beqa Island. In between all of this, we had our token Fiji-time waiting periods of about 80 minutes in total. We reached Beqa Island by about 10:00am.

The boat trip to Beqa Island provided us with some spectacular views. As the boat exited the mouth of Navua river, we could see the small but mountainous land of Beqa Island. As we drew nearer, Beqa Island’s peaks slowly grew until they towered over our boat. We passed over reefs that were blanketed by sapphire blue waters which Lauren and I couldn’t help but deliberate over which Derwent colour we should use to describe the glistening sea. We mulled over cobolt blue, kingfisher blue, ultramarine, Prussian blue…the list went on. Beqa Island’s coastline is bordered by steep cliffs which are bursting with tropical plant life. There was the occasional assortment of palm trees sticking out like fly-away hairs on a bad hair day amongst rocky outcrops of stone cliff face.



We arrived on the south of Beqa Island where the sleepy Dakuni Village exists – the largest one on the island. The faint sound of women’s voices singing hymns greeted us as we stepped off the boat into the warm waters on the village shore.



Village women cleaning fish:


We were ushered through a tangle of stone houses, dodging the array of animal life scampering around at our feet. Curious dogs sniffing at our sulus (sulu is a Fijian sarong), chickens and roosters scattering themselves away from us as we step through their feeding area. We also saw domesticated cats which had flopped onto the shaded grassy patch next to the village houses. I haven’t seen any domesticated cats in Suva, so of course, I was snap happy:





We changed into our formal sulu and jabas (pronounced “chumba”, a tunic-like top worn on top of a sulu) and proceeded to the community hall where formal proceedings were commencing. We all sauntered into the community hall where kava was being served and the sevusevu commenced (a sevusevu is a village formality where guests are officially greeted, God is acknowledged through prayer and song and gifts are presented to the village leaders). Following this, an enormous spread of cassava-based sweets were provided for morning tea. There was cassava cake with pumpkin, cassava cake with coconut, cassava cake with sweet potato, cassava cake with sugar, cassava cake with even more cassava, and pancakes.



Au sa gunu!


The teachers then met for their official meeting and the other volunteers and I decided to explore the village and take a stroll along the shore. Women were in the water cleaning fresh fish which had recently been caught. We played peek-a-boo with the intensely gorgeous village children and I taught them hand-clapping games that I used to play back in primary school.

We re-entered the community hall and there was a row of ladies performing a seated traditional dance to traditional music. If you’re from a different village, it is custom to “tease” the ladies who are performing a dance by either stuffing money into their clothes (but not like the way Westerners would do at a gentleman’s club), put white paint on their faces or even do a silly dance of their own in front of them.



Lunch had an equally impressive spread of food with fish cooked about five different ways, “roro” which is this amazing Fijian food that has coconut and some other accompaniment wrapped up in leaves (I think I need to google the exact details..either way it tastes amazing), shell fish soaked in more coconut milk, fish soaked in coconut milk and lime juice (almost “kokoda” but not quite) and more boiled cassava.

Following lunch, we witnessed Beqa Island’s most famous pastime: fire walking. Fire walking involves:

Heating a pile of stones…



Spreading the stones out into a flat pile with massive sticks (apparently yelling really loudly at the stones make them move easier)…


And then, walking across the ridiculously hot stones…


The stones are so hot that you can light a cigarette from them.

This concluded the day’s proceedings and it was finally time to go home. I chose to ride on the roof of the boat on the way back home. We waved the villagers goodbye and they sang a goodbye song to us as we departed on our boats back to Navua.



Spontaneous Fijian four-part harmony, I have found, is one extremely quick way to soothe the soul. I was sitting on the top of the boat with saltwater spray flicking across my face and the wind running its harsh fingers through my hair to ruffle it up. One of the other volunteers sitting on top of the boat with me spotted the sleek bodies of dolphins skipping across the water’s surface beside our boat. A brief moment of excitement inspired me to bang on the compartment below to point the dolphins out to everyone else. Finally, once the novelty of the dolphins had passed, I closed my eyes, breathed in the ocean air, licked the saltwater off my lips and exhaled a breath of relief: everything’s not so bad anymore.