“We are vegan. In our business, we only eat vegan, we don’t believe in eating meat because meat is too acidic and it causes a lot of sickness,” said Senirosi Bevu in between serving customers and speaking to the Fiji Times at last week’s inaugural Pacific Islands Entrepreneurship Expo in Suva.
“I believe in natural medicine. It is God-made. God speaks to them and they grew so the word of God is in them and it heals you. Because your body is made of clay, it needs manure and the best manure is a plant-based diet.
“In order for your body to be revived and taken back to its natural state without any sickness, you need to put manure, and the best manure is a plant based diet. That’s why we believe in plantbased medicine and plant-based diet.”
Not only does the former teacher believe in the principles of living and eating as close to nature as possible, she has turned it into a business that currently operates as a micro enterprise.
HAVEN ON EARTH Natural Blends was founded in 2019 upon Ms Bevu’s return from Sydney to study naturopathy, a study of natural medicine and alternative nature-based holistic living.
“A lot of it was influenced by my upbringing as a Seventh Day Adventist and I went to an SDA school where health is a big part of the church teachings and school curriculum.
“It stayed with me and in 2012, I left teaching and started doing this at our church as a volunteer. In 2016, I went to Sydney to do naturopath, graduated in 2019 and returned to Fiji to do my own business,” she said.
Now a qualified Naturopathic Doctor (ND), Ms Bevu promotes and provides natural, holistic living and healing services through her company’s four core products, offered through properties in Vuda and Tavua.
“In Tavua, we have our treatment center where you come and stay with us for three or seven days, depending on what sickness you have. And we have our food forest there too. It’s about 10 acres of fruit trees on the Tavua farm which supplies all the food and herbal medicine to the treatment center. We do organic farming there.
“We believe in organic farming because it sustains the soil, especially in the Tavua areas, where there have been a lot of damages from the sugarcane farming with all the chemical manures.
“So that’s why we opt, not only me but with a group of 10 other lady farmers, we all opt to do organic farming. That organic farm supplies organic herbals for our herbal juices that we do in Vuda, where we have three acres of land,” said Ms Bevu.
“So our treatment center and our food forest are in Tavua and in Vuda is where we do our herbal juice and our medicinal garden. We do a medicine garden tour for tourists and educational institutions or for the public if anyone wants to come and know how to do herbal medicine.
“For the public, you can come, stop over, we can show you around but we haven’t done any pricing for local tours. At the moment, it’s only tourist price. You can make your smoothies, you can pick the pawpaw, the banana to make your smoothies and you can have it there,” Ms Bevu added.
Aviators are her regular crowd, who come by for down time after hectic work schedules.
“Sometimes they are grounded and once they go through the program, they are back to the flight. And if they are really sick, they have to go to the treatment center but please don’t come when you are sick. We want you to come when you are healthy and you come and we cleanse you, so keep healthy,” she advised.
At the cost of $400 per person for the three-day treatment, a customer is supplied with “all your herbs, all your juices, all your foods including full body massage, we spa you, we cleanse your outside, we sole rub your body, exercise every morning and on the 4th day we do a food demo for you on how to do vegan and you come out with your 21 days vegan diet.
“During that vegan diet you’ll lose 1kg a day. And we show you how to do your natural conditioner and shampoo.
“After the three-day cleansing, you start on your healing. So it’s a holistic healing process, from the source, from the root.
“Alternative medicine is about the root cause. We cut it off from there. When you give your body the right condition, it will heal itself.”
Early this year, HAVEN ON EARTH Natural Blends began selling its specially concocted bottled herbal juices which Ms Bevu said had become quite popular.
“For half a year now, we’ve done about 4000 bottles of herbal juices. It’s the demand from people that just spread by word of mouth. I haven’t done any advertised,” she said.
“Word of mouth on our juices is really going well because it’s health. Some of our patients are NCD patients.
“They not only come for treatment, they come for health lectures too. So for the first three days during treatment, we have somebody do the lectures and integrate it with the word of God so it can be supporting them that it’s real.
“When they leave, we give them the eight laws of health, which Dr N.E.W.S.T.A.R.T. N- for Nutrition, E-for Exercise, W-for Water, S-for Sunshine, T-for Temperance, A-for Air, R- for Rest and T-for Trust in God. Once you get your Dr NEWS- TART, you’re ok,” said Ms Bevu.
The company employs mostly women widowed by husbands who were breadwinners.
“They don’t have any other support because their husbands were the breadwinners so, that’s one reason, for them to be breadwinners for their families.
“Another reason is no one will bother them if we are working overtime or if we have to go somewhere to treat someone because they are single.”