Column 10 -- Prophet Mohammed’s Birthday (Part 2)

This is the tenth column in a serialization of PACIFIC FLASH: A Year in FIJI by Gerry Takano. Copies will be available April 1, 2010. Stay tuned for more information.

Cakobau still waged war in the traditional manner, and he had other important business on his hands at the same time. He saw in these miserable hill people the means to buy the title which he had coveted for so long…On 5th June, Cakobau was proclaimed King of Fiji, and his associates became his ministers. Finding that the unfinished war at Lovoni hampered their activities, the sponsors of the new Government supported the efforts of the missionaries to induce the rebels to give up the struggle. The Lovoni people surrendered on 29th June, and were made to crawl on hands and knees before their conquerors, bearing baskets of earth.

This much, indeed was Fijian custom, and excusable; the sequel was neither. The whole tribe, including women and children, old and young – all of them wasted and haggard from lack of food were marched into the native town of Levuka, bullied and hustled by the young men of Bau. They were sentenced to transportation to the plantations of the European settlers. Cakobau confiscated their lands, and later mortgaged them to Europeans who advanced money to his Government…in plain English, he sold them into servitude to any person willing to buy them.

The past hovered over the isolated Lovoni village; this was the last outpost on Ovalau Island to resist colonization. After returning later that day to Nasova house, and after several months in Levuka, the house's personality from its creaking floor planks and banging hurricane shutters that saved the home from treacherous cyclones were less distracting. The view of the ocean and wayward isles was always appreciated. Across the roadway, when the noise of diesel trucks and buses subsided, the wooden wharf became a special place on Sunday when the town vanished from public in religious procurement. Garden yellow and orange marigolds, cosmos, green beans, radishes and coleuses were growing freely in front of the house. Fragrant plumeria was slowly opening as the lower hemisphere spring jumped into summer.

Gerry Takano was reared in Honolulu, Hawaii and received his architectural education and early training in upstate New York and Boston. Gerry served as Hawaii’s National Trust Advisor and State of Hawaii Commissioner of the Historic Sites Review Board.

He currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can be reached at gertkno@aol.com