The tikina makawa of Bureiwai in the tikina vou of Nakorotubu, strung like a jewel along Fiji’s sunshine coast in Ra, is to me one of the most beautiful places in the world.
Of course, I say this with some bias as my late maternal grandmother, Amelia Tawake, hailed from Malake Island, just off the coast from the bustling little town of Rakiraki.
All it takes is a bus ride along the King’s Rd, and a stop at one of the high ridges of Nakorotubu, Bureiwai, or Burevanua, to understand why.
From there, the vast Pacific stretches out under a blazing sun, and for a moment, the world feels at peace.
It’s no wonder this coast was once beloved by the tribal chief and daring seafarer, Ratu Mara Kapaiwai, whose grave rests in Nabukadra.
Even today, Bureiwai remains a rural farming district, its remoteness underscored by the patchy mobile coverage. I often imagine it in the 1800s as a fortress of isolation, untouched by the illnesses that plagued other places.
How then, I wonder, did measles so swift, deadly, and foreign, manage to find its way here, not only to Bureiwai, but across Ra, and eventually, the nation?
From those who call this district home, we can still glimpse this dark chapter of Fiji’s past.
A memory handed down
One such voice is Meli Rareba, 64, steward of the Methodist circuit for the vanua o Bureiwai.
He is from Matainananu village, where he still lives.
Sitting with The Sunday Times team during our visit to Ra last month, he shared an account passed down from his elders.
“From what I heard,” he began, “there was a village not far from Matainananu called Bureibau, home to our kin from the Yavusa i Dama.
It was said that the measles outbreak in Ra began there, and the village was eventually quarantined. There was a mass grave nearby for those who died.
Bureibau no longer exists as it is now a gravesite.”
Rareba recalled that his father once kept a book detailing the number of deaths, but the records were lost when Cyclone Winston battered the Ra coast.
“It was definitely a huge number of people,” he said quietly.
He also remembered how a doctor from Lovoni, believed to be the son of the Tui Wailevu, had once led a group to restore the tombstones at the site.
Power, loss and survival
In their study Epidemics in Fiji’s History: Stories of Power, Resistance and Contradiction, Dr Nicholas Halter, Dr Robert Nicole, and Dr Anurag Subramani of the University of the South Pacific explored how disease outbreaks in Fiji, from European contact to the present, were deeply shaped by colonial power structures, racial attitudes, and cultural misunderstandings.
From the arrival of early European ships, illnesses such as lila balavu (wasting sickness), dysentery, and influenza spread through communities, often without visible symptoms in those who introduced them.
Indigenous accounts sometimes interpreted these diseases through spiritual frameworks.
In Ra Province, for example, one story tells of the Daunavatu tribe angering Degei, Fiji’s paramount deity, who punished them by sending lila balavu.
The Daunavatu fled their homeland and dispersed across Fiji to Navatusila in Viti Levu’s interior, Nakorotubu, Dawasamu in Tailevu, Bua, the Yasawas, Nadroga, Vatulele, and Kadavu.
While colonial medical narratives often portrayed Fijians as passive sufferers and blamed “native customs” for high mortality, local responses demonstrated significant agency.
Villages sometimes relocated to avoid contagion, traditional herbal remedies, such as the Vueti Naitasiri plant were used, and cooperation with certain Europeans occurred where trust existed.
Yet, distrust of official colonial medicine meant some avoided government care altogether.
The 1875 measles epidemic
One of the most devastating outbreaks in Fiji’s history began in January 1875, shortly after Fiji’s cession to Britain.
Following inter-tribal conflicts and political negotiations, Ratu Cakobau, Fiji’s most senior chief, travelled to Sydney with his sons and entourage.
Measles was circulating in Sydney at the time, and during the 19-day voyage home aboard HMS Dido, one of Cakobau’s sons became ill.
The incubation period for measles is typically 14 days, so by the time the ship arrived in Levuka, the virus was already spreading.
There was no quarantine, despite British laws requiring it elsewhere.
Fijians warmly welcomed the chief’s party, boarding the ship and escorting them ashore.
Soon after, an unprecedented gathering of high chiefs was held to discuss the cession to Britain.
Hundreds attended, unknowingly facilitating the spread of measles to every corner of the archipelago as they returned home.
From February to June 1875, the disease swept through Fiji, killing an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 people which was roughly a quarter of the population.
Almost all of Fiji’s 69 high chiefs died, creating a leadership vacuum at a pivotal moment in the nation’s history.
The scale of population loss contributed to the colonial government’s later decision to import indentured labourers from India, laying the groundwork for enduring political and ethnic tensions.
Social and medical dynamics of mortality
Historical records suggest that while no Fijian had prior exposure to measles, mortality among chiefs was disproportionately high.
Professor Dennis Shanks, in his paper Pacific Island Societies Destabilised by Infectious Diseases, argues that this was less about medical care, rudimentary in the pre-antibiotic era, and more about social patterns.
Chiefs were constantly surrounded by attendants and followers, especially those with ambitions for leadership.
This created crowded sickrooms where high viral exposure was likely, a factor known to increase mortality risk, as seen in African measles outbreaks and among US soldiers in World War I.
Secondary bacterial pneumonia, a frequent complication of measles due to immune suppression, would have spread easily in these conditions.
While obesity and diabetes are modern risk factors for severe illness, historical photographs suggest these were not prevalent among Fijian leaders of the time.
Instead, it was socially driven epidemiology, close, prolonged exposure in enclosed spaces, that likely explains the extreme mortality among Fiji’s chiefly class in 1875.
Colonial narratives and indigenous resilience
Colonial accounts sought to downplay government negligence, shifting blame to Fijian customs and mobility.
Although The Fiji Times criticised official inaction, it too in some way reinforced racial stereotypes.
Yet the historical record shows that indigenous communities were neither helpless nor ignorant.
They employed relocation, traditional medicine, and selective cooperation with trusted outsiders as tools of survival.
Repeated failures in quarantine and medical response meant that avoidable devastation occurred again in later outbreaks, such as the 1918 influenza pandemic.
These episodes reveal a persistent pattern, the collision of imported disease with colonial governance often amplified tragedy, but Fijian communities also found ways, both spiritual and practical, to resist and survive.