The road trip up to Wainimakutu Village was long and tiring as the bus slowly wound its way into the mountainous interior of Namosi.
The 40-odd passengers inside huddled for warmth as our bus plunged on into the darkness of the winding gravel road.
Wainimakutu is the second last village in Namosi province and is nestled in a mountainous valley.
As the bus arrived at our destination I was greeted by my host family who awaited me at the entrance of the village.
The arrival of the bus from Suva is an eagerly anticipated event, particularly for children who clamoured around looking forward to treats brought by relatives.
I didn’t really get to appreciate the beauty of the place until the next morning when I walked around the village as the dew and mist settled on this quiet and scenic locale in the wilds of Namosi.
The gentle murmur of the nearby waterways flowing from surrounding mountains added to the ambience of this visually stunning setting.
The beauty of the place belied the harsh reality of life for many in the province, who have to contend with an arduous four-hour trip by bus or four wheel drive vehicles, to get to the nearest urban centres of Suva or Navua.
“Our land was always very fertile. The dalo and, yaqona and other crops that we farmed grew well.
“But now some are using weed killers and now we are experiencing things we never had to before, like relying on fertiliser,” said village elder Ratu Marika Noitubarua.
The village has traditionally relied on yaqona and dalo farming as a revenue source but over the past six years, papermaking has provided a crucial financial injection for villagers, particularly the womenfolk.
“Some of us have decided to farm crops like hybrid melons and cucumbers which has been quite successful in the past few years,” said Ratu Marika.
The story of how Wainimakutu Village was first settled was related by 85-year-old village historian Esala Bale of the mataqali Naleya.
He said Wainimakutu was established when two brothers, Ratu Timoci Qalunacakau and Ratu Seveci Turagalevu, made their way down from Nakauvadra in Ra, which, according to iTaukei legend, was where the very first iTaukei settled.
They first came through from Nakauvadra through to Nadrau and eventually settled at Nakorokokula (on the Naitasiri side),” said Bale.
This was where a feud emerged between the two brothers with the elder sibling Ratu Timoci eventually splitting up with Ratu Seveci, who was told to occupy an area of land some distance away.
It was around this time that Ratu Timoci was installed as the paramount chief in a veibuli ceremony at a sacred site near the current village location called Nasaunokonoko.
According to village legend, the ancestral god or kalou vu, bestowed all land on one side of a certain waterway traversing the area to Ratu Timoci and below it, to his younger sibling.
Villagers claim that a cave, now sealed off by soil erosion, once spewed out mangrove leaves and tidaloko or mud skippers from the coast.
Village elder Bale said from the moment of Ratu Timoci’s installation, no other type of species can be found in the waters of Wainimakutu except for the beli (small black fish) eels and prawns.
“They have tried introducing maleya (tilapia) and other varieties here but somehow they can’t survive in these waters. The waters just come and take them away,” said Ratu Marika.
The story of how Wainimakutu derived its name also stems from Ratu Timoci Qalunacakau who sampled water from a certain stream on arriving at the place.
“After tasting the water, he named it Wainimakutu because he said it made one vigorous and eager to work,” said Ratu Marika.
I was taken to the small stream where the name Wainimakutu was taken from, which ran through pebble banks settled on either side by a variety of vegetation, most notably impressive bamboo groves.
Bamboo is a constant feature of the scenery in this area as well as nearby villages of Naqarawai and Naraiyawa, which interestingly, once came under the fold of Natasiri but have since been regarded as Namosi territories.
Ratu Marika shows me the site of the old village or koro makawa, where the mounds of old homes still stand which lies on a vacant plot of land.
“The village was moved in 1964 because of the need to stay closer to where the school was and grew from just 10 houses to about 100 houses now.
“This is where the firstborn of each family was placed straight after birth,” he said, pointing to smooth shaped flat stones that resembled some sort of seat and engulfed by weeds.
“The child, irrespective of his/her sex, would be placed on this stone and given his or her first bath. This was always the tradition in the old village,” said Ratu Marika.
Village plantations of dalo, cassava and cash crops like ginger are neatly sealed off with bamboo fencing to keep out horses and cattle.
As the majority of Wainimakutu people belong to the Seventh-day Adventist faith, they do not raise pigs. The pounding of kava for drinking purposes by the few who consume it, is done on the outskirts of the village out of respect. Ratu Marika who grew up in the village recalls the days when life was extremely difficult, particularly transportation.
“Life here was so hard in the past when there were no roads running up here,” recalls the 69-year-old farmer as we walked past some homes in the area.
We also passed the home of Alipate Ratini, the speedster from the village who is now making a name for himself in French rugby circles.
“I remember the days when we used to make improvised stretchers using wood and bamboo to transport the sick or injured across the river and over mountains to get medical help,” Ratu Marika recalled.
“Before our dalo used to just rot in the plantations because we couldn’t get them to the market regularly. We used to either travel by horseback or use the waterways to transport our crops to the marketplace. Nowadays life has been made easier for us because of the road,” he said.
Earlier village elder Esala Bale related when the late statesman Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna visited the village in 1942 while he was recruiting men in the Namosi area to serve during World War II.
“During a meeting he held in the village, one elder asked him whether this place could be developed and we were all shocked by his response,” recalled Mr Bale.
“He said, this place is only good for goat farming.”
The villages may have been less than enthusiastic with that response but it was in fact closer to the truth than they realised.
The coming decades, the large tracts of hilly grass-covered land would be leased out to villagers themselves for cattle farming.
But financial institutions whichlent money to these individuals put pressure on the government to create roads to transport the cattle to the marketplace as this was the only way they could get the loans repaid. The road was eventually built in 1987.
“We didn’t realise it then, but Ratu Sukuna’s words became a reality for us. Eventually the road was built because of the cattle farms,” Ratu Marika said.
Later in the day I was taken to the Wainimakutu Women’s Papermaking Project, where women have learned to transform the bark of a tree called drala, into paper.
“We have been doing this work for six years now and it has been of great benefit to us,” said Adi Tewa Bogidrau, who has taken on a leadership role in the project.
The women showed me how they strip the bark of the drala branches and boil them down to a pulp as part of the papermaking process.
The pulp is then pounded and dried before being separated from strips of cloth which it is attached to, forming the paper which is dried, packed, and taken to be sold at the Pure Fiji factory in Suva.
In fact, the paper-making story has put Wainimakutu on the world map because they provide wrappers for the exclusive Fiji products being exported overseas.
Ms Bogidrau said the paper-making factory in the village initially began in a small shed but has grown to a two-house premises where the women work daily.
The women, who take turns in groups of 10 weekly making paper generates about $1000, after only three days of work.
“We have been so blessed with this project,” said Ms Bogidrau.
“We are now earning enough money to help with a lotu, vanua and assist us with our daily requirement at home,” she added.
After being cooked, the bark is ground to make it fine, before it was mixed with mulberry bark which was used to make masi.
The masi gives it a finer and firm paper but once it was cooked with masi while salt is also added to keep the skins soft.
Ratu Marika said the drala being used for papermaking were previously used when their forefathers tried growing cocoa.
“When the cocoa plantations failed, the drala, which they used to grow beside the cocoa trees remained and now they have come into good use,” he said.
Where we walked, there seemed to be children frolicking in the nearby waterways, riding horses or helping out in the gardens.
The Wainimakutu people have certainly come a long way from the days when they used to walk long distances to get to a medical centre.
As much as I enjoyed my visit to Wainimakutu it was sadly about to come to an end as I boarded the bus back to Suva.
Despite the rattling ride and biting cold, the rustic beauty of this Namosi village left a deep impression and made me appreciate more fully what life in the wilds has to offer.
