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The Ramayana in Fiji

February 28, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I have been wondering if we are born with set preferences or if we carry memories when we are born? Do we as evolve with instinct encoded in our DNA? Do we tell stories because we want to immortalize ourselves and have future generations remember us? If there was no evidence that we had ever lived in a place would anyone know we had been there? If the answer is no; is that why we leave marks of our time spent?

I have been reading up on Fiji and looking at how the country is made up of different cultures – everyone calls themselves Fijian but within that is another identity of religion, ethnicity etc that has survived and never morphed into the nationalistic identity of Fijian. The cool thing is that all these other identities comes a whole history of storytelling and other traditions.

One of the most popular storytelling traditions in Fiji is the Ramayana, a Sanskrit poem (known as kavya) that has 24,000 couplets and is said to have been written in 3 BC (believed to first been recited in 1,500 BC). In Western culture this would be considered an epic, in much the same way that that Homer’s Iliad is an epic. Anyway, the Ramayana tells the story of the seventh incarnation of Vishnu, who was born on earth to liberate mankind from the demon king Ravana of Lanka, and to re-establish righteousness in the world.

Although the Ramayana originated in India, it has somehow managed to migrate with Indian people as they moved from place to place and serves as a link for Hindus all over the world. It was carried to Fiji by South Indian labourers from Chennai who had no possessions at all except for this story. These labourers would recite the story as a form of entertainment (it focuses on performance); telling it to groups of people in the family and the village in order to preserve a sense of self and culture in a foreign land.

To this day the Ramayana is still recited in Fiji in Hindu homes and temples because of its timelessness – it is not only a religious story but also a story that deals with the power of speech, truth, morality, human behavior and other topics concerning the ideal state of being. The country even has comic book telling this story. How interesting!

Below is a video of a boy retelling the Ramayana at a Fiji storytelling contest:

It has been interesting for me to learn about the history of the Ramayana (even though I already knew a little about it) and how one story or poem or epic (whatever you call it) can connect an entire people. It has been particularly intriguing to see how this story has been kept alive through generations and is still used to educate people on all aspects of life. How is it that stories and poems, which are just words can keep cultures alive?

Filed Under: -Australasia Traditions Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Speak 2 break down stereotypes or commonly held views

February 27, 2009 By Leave a Comment

It is possible to speak for hours and still say little. The challenge is to speak the truth and bring about change and still be true and loyal to ourselves, our values, our past, our country etc… There is also the challenge of speaking and having your words be tied to you as an individual and not be representative of a people or a cause. In today’s world this is a challenge.

I would like to leave everyone with a video by Suheir Hammad:

Filed Under: Art of Spoken Word Tagged With: , , , , ,

Fiji: still telling stories around the kava bowl

February 26, 2009 By Leave a Comment


My uncle once told me that our inability to explain some things is due to the limitation of our language and imagination. He explained that in the 1970s there was no way anyone could have explained the internet or the laptop because there were no words to explain it and if anyone had imagined it, it would have been invented.



I completely agree with my uncle on this point. But what happens when objects start to disappear and the language that explained them starts to disappear along with them? This may seem weird but this is a problem that Fiji is facing – Fijian language is changing because the older words are being lost with the artifacts that they represent. This is almost like evolution – it is the extinction of words because the things they used to describe are gone. Think about it – we only have words in order to define things/ events/ people etc in our space but when those things seize to be there is no longer a need to define them, which means that words disappear. Also as more and more innovations come on the market new words are used and often these are in English and are somehow anglicized into the language. The best way to explain this is to think of Spanglish – you integrate English terms into the language and lose the purity of the Spanish language.



Fiji saw that this as a problem and started the Institute of Fijian Language and Culture in 1986 to slow down the loss of words in the language. The Institute works closely with local broadcasters and publishers to coin new words that are needed to be able to function in today’s world. To preserve the language the Institute tries to ensure that all written or oral communication is in the Fijian language.



As Speak 2B Free, has been arguing – the easiest way to preserve language is through storytelling which is something that Fiji is aware of. Today, the Fijian traditions of storytelling around the kava bowl (drink made from the kava plant) and the recitations of Ramayana in Hindu homes and temples are still kept alive. Story telling can be an elaborate affair such as a Meke which involves stories being told through music, dance, speech, an orchestra (vakatara) and dancers (matana) who are accompanied by instruments such as gongs, bamboo tubes, and drums. The dance symbolizes the ancient warriors of the village and the lyrics of the song explain the meaning of the dance and are written by a Fijian composer. A meke is usually performed at celebrations such as weddings (I suspect it is because it has such a huge cast).



Fijian stories tend to focus on traditional legends and modern social analysis. This is traditionally how legends have been passed down from generation to generation. In the past Fiji had professional storytellers who traveled from village to village telling stories and entertaining people. I think all cultures around the world had storytellers that traveled, from the looks of things. Today, stories and storytelling form part of Fijian village life and still remain a social norm. People still gather around in the evenings in small groups at someone’s house or at the village hot spot (vale ni sogo) and tell stories which are half true/ half made up but very entertaining.



I really love the fact that the tradition of storytelling is still very much alive in Fiji today. It is amazing to see the contrast in cultures – there people work all day together and still go out afterward to chill together and tell stories as they drink. Here we all rush home to beat the traffic after work and barely even know our neighbors. Yet as I read this I see the irony – many people go home to watch TV which is filled with stories (dramas and movies are stories) that have been written by storytellers (what are writers if not storytellers). Has TV replaced the storytellers of old?

Filed Under: -Australasia Traditions Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

POP by President Obama

February 25, 2009 By Leave a Comment

POP by President Obama

Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken
In, sprinkled with ashes
Pop switches channels, takes another
Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks
What to do with me, a green young man
Who fails to consider the
Flim and flam of the world, since
Things have been easy for me;
I stare hard at his face, a stare
That deflects off his brow;
I’m sure he’s unaware of his
Dark, watery eyes, that
Glance in different directions,
And his slow, unwelcome twitches,
Fail to pass.
I listen, nod,
Listen, open, till I cling to his pale,
Beige T-shirt, yelling,
Yelling in his ears, that hang
With heavy lobes, but he’s still telling
His joke, so I ask why
He’s so unhappy, to which he replies…
But I don’t care anymore, cause
He took too damn long, and from
Under my seat, I pull out the
Mirror I’ve been saving; I’m laughing,
Laughing loud, the blood rushing from his face
To mine, as he grows small,
A spot in my brain, something
That may be squeezed out, like a
Watermelon seed between
Two fingers.
Pop takes another shot, neat,
Points out the same amber
Stain on his shorts that I’ve got on mine, and
Makes me smell his smell, coming
From me; he switches channels, recites an old poem
He wrote before his mother died,
Stands, shouts, and asks
For a hug, as I shrink, my
Arms barely reaching around
His thick, oily neck, and his broad back; ’cause
I see my face, framed within
Pop’s black-framed glasses
And know he’s laughing too.

Below are some poetry videos I thought I should include about President Obama:

Filed Under: Poems and Poets Tagged With: , , , ,

Preserving Fijian oral traditions

February 24, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I have a friend who keeps telling me she wants to retire to Fiji because then no one could bug her. At the time I just laughed but now I am wondering if she had a point – Fiji is one of those islands many people see as paradise but what do we (my friend and I) know about it? Is this not true hibernation – to be present but not present on the globe? This is why I guess I want to read up on it in the next 2 weeks.

The Republic of Fiji Islands occupies an archipelago of 322 islands, yet 87% of the population lives on 2 islands (Viti Levu and Vanau Levu). According toWikipedia the island’s name has an interesting history: the Fijians called the island Viti and the Tongans called it Fisi and pronounced it Fiji, when western traders came they pronounced it Fiji and spelled it as such which is how Fiji became Fiji. Fijian people are of Melanesian and Polynesian descent. European traders arrived in the country in the 19 Th century; resulting in Fiji’s colonization by the British in 1874.

The way that Fijians preserved their history and culture was through oral traditions, which were passed on from the older generation to the younger generation. This was an important aspect of Fijian family traditions because it educated people about the culture, the traditions, the land, myths and folklore. Today Fiji has various organizations dedicated to the capturing of oral histories. Some of these organizations include the Fiji museum, the Native Lands Commission of Fiji, the Institute for Fijian Culture, the Methodist Church and Fiji Military Forces. It was intriguing to learn, however, that all these various institutions do not work hand in hand to exchange information and share the knowledge that they have because there is no platform to do so.

I can certainly understand the lack of platforms to exchange such data – Speak 2B Free aims to build such platforms. I know that the Fiji Museum is actually going out and recording people tell the oral history in order to ensure its survival. I wonder if the other organizations are doing the same and are recording the voices of the people and their stories and transcribing the interviews word for word or if they are just documenting what they hear. The difference between live recordings and just generally writing what you hear is that history will be more accurate if the voice of the people is heard and correctly recorded than if it were written from some one’s point of view. This is because we always tell stories and write history from our point of inference because that is how we interpret information from our past experience. I am compelled to believe that the more observers we have tell their story the closer we get to the truth and an accurate record of history.

Filed Under: -Australasia Traditions Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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