148 years after Christianity arrived in Bureloa
the stronghold of the Tokaimalo people in Ra
the torch pilgrimage last month that signified the return of light to a dark part of the province’s history sheds light on an ancient conspiracy that led to an attempt to annihilate the rulers of the once impenetrable domain. In Part 6 of this series
ILAITIA TURAGABECI tells their story.
RATU Marika Matawalu revered the fallen warrior Isikeli Niuvou.
They had never met. Three generations apart and still fighting to keep their identity as people of Tokaimalo from Bureloa, that dream was what bound them together.
Niuvou had refused to leave the bush when the colonial administration, through Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna, directed the people of Tokaimalo to pack and leave their villages — Bureloa, Draunaleka and Laba — and move closer to the fast-approaching Kings Rd and civilisation.
Reluctantly, he too followed his people to Dama and left the traditional centre of Nakorotubu deserted.
The vanua of Tokaimalo became ghost villages.
While the people began their new life under duress on another man’s land with limited privileges, the homes they left behind were soon covered by the jungle that had from ancient times deterred Bau and the Wesleyan missionaries from extending their rule into that territory.
Bureloa, the traditional post office where messages from the coast going inland and vice versa went through, became hidden from sight under the forest canopy that enveloped it.
It seemed to reflect the fate of the people who once lived there.
Tokaimalo and Bureloa historian Ilaitia Galu Bale said while the people had accepted Christianity in Bureloa in 1865, other forces accompanied it with the aim of removing them and their identity.
“That so-called exile to Dama caused a lot of sadness. Our people could not farm land as they wished, as they’d do in their villages they left behind. They were told to move closer to the path of the highway and boost population numbers to justify the development,” he said.
“In the process, these people became lost. Fijians are connected to the land, to the different landmarks that have a story, that also dictate how that vanua and the three different villages perform their duties. They had been severed from what they identified with, their identity.”
They all left, all but Josese Nakakau, who swore to perform his duties as the qase ni vale and watch over the Tokaimalo domain in this difficult part of Ra.
The Draunaleka man had watched his family follow the tide of people out of the bush.
After Bureloa, Laba, about two kilometres from Bureloa and where the yavusa Tokaimalo stayed awhile on the way out, emptied. So did Nacokovaki Village, closely linked to Bureloa and which was moved to the coast and called Naocobau, its people told they were to be part of the vanua of Namarai.
While the nine-span Rewa bridge connected the road on either side of banks in 1937 and sped up the Kings Rd, Nakakau lived on his own and fed off the bush that became abundant with wild pigs and river life.
His family eventually returned to join him when they realised their traditional calling as guardians of the vanua of Tokaimalo.
Niuvou, the son of Luke Waqabuli, the hunchback chief who was converted through the work of Reverend William Calvert, had died a sad man and was buried close to the yavu of his village.
His gripe with Ratu Sukuna had started in 1918 during the veitarogi vanua, where the Native Lands Council met for the first time. When he died, he was still a stubborn man who refused to accept the changes taking place.
His long, stoned-lined grave now sits in the middle of a bamboo grove.
His son, named after his father, grew old at Dama. He watched his Tokaimalo people establish new family ties by the road but they struggled and were often pushed aside, mostly over the use of land for their sustenance.
Waqabuli No.2, seeing the plight of his people, turned to his nephew Ratu Marika to return them to Tokaimalo land.
When he did, it was a long hard choice to leave the civilisation that came with the road.
The compromise was moving to the edge of the Tokaimalo domain, a few kilometres from where Laba once sat nestled in the hills rising all the way to Bureloa.
This new home was aptly called Toki, in memory of their relocation out of Dama.
Ratu Marika did not rest.
He was under instruction from the weakened Waqabuli No.2 to go in search of the kin of Radroni, the warrior chief who left Bureloa in 1846 with the Nakorotubu army to fight Tui Cakau’s war against a rebellion in Natewa.
All the Toki elder knew was Radroni was left behind at Somosomo when the army returned in 1853 from quelling another rebellion, this one against the Tui Lakeba, who was at battle with a rebellion at Kedekede.
When he arrived at Somosomo in 1978, and stepped foot on land that was now qusi ni loaloa for Radroni’s bloodline, Ratu Marika knew it’d be difficult asking them to return to Bureloa.
The man he met was Akuila Turagabeci, Radroni’s grandson who was raised on Yacata Island and now resided at Dreketi, close to the boto ni yala where Bau’s war canoes had arrived in 1853 with the Ra warriors.
As soon as they disembarked to meet the Tui Cakau, Tuikilakila, in a thank you ceremony for their hand in the Natewa war, the war canoes sailed off without the warrior leader.
The man Ratu Marika embraced on the green at Dreketi was a long lost brother who spoke another dialect and whose doorway into Cakaudrove was through Valelevu, the Tui Cakau’s clan.
They were worlds apart but shared the same blood.
To get them back to Bureloa, he had to seek permission from the Tui Cakau.
To his disappointment, the Tui Cakau said he could not change the understanding the Ra people at Dreketi had with Tuikilakila in 1853.
He offered Ratu Marika a solution — the people could come and go but could not relocate for good.
Ratu Marika did not give up. He kept persuading Turagabeci to search for his roots and restore their home in the bush on Viti Levu.
Two years later, another attempt was made to make the already displaced people without land to call their own in Taveuni.
As is the norm for the Tokaimalo people, no one complained when the mataqali Valelevu, under the direction of former president and Tui Cakau, Ratu Penaia Ganilau, decided to take more land that had been given to the Ra people as their qusi ni loaloa for the Natewa victory.
Ratu Epeli Ganilau and Ratu Lewenilovo, in the first butu ni vanua of 1924, reclaimed part of their gift to the Ra settlers.
Now Ratu Epeli’s son was completing what his father was ordered to stop by the then Tui Cakau, Ratu Atonio Rabici, who intervened after returning from a London trip with Ratu Sir Lala.
Koroqele, an area above Somosomo, was signed off to the government for the construction of a school in 1980.
By then Turagabeci, inspired by his meeting with Ratu Marika, had decided he would be the one to return to Bureloa and reunite with those who had been taken out of the bush.
In 1980, with very little on his back, he sailed to Viti Levu and walked up to Bureloa.
He cleared his way up there, met the descendants of Nakakau at Draunaleka and on a hill overlooking the old village site of Bureloa, he built a bure.
He named the site Vunibua and it was here that he would die.
It was also where he wanted his 10 children to follow him.
When the last child, Jofiliti Tiko — named after Turagabeci’s maternal uncle who he had handed the Tui Yacata title to before travelling to Taveuni — stepped into his bure one evening the following year, he turned towards the doorway where he stood.
Tears filled his eyes before he breathed his last breath.
Radroni’s dream had been accomplished.
Meanwhile, at Koroqele, it seemed as if the land had eyes and refused to co-operate with the new ambition it had been marked out for by members of the mataqali Valelevu.
Tuakilakila had given up the land for these people who had willingly come and fought his war on the request of Bau, via Verata, which Nakorotubu had ties with.
The sloppy area of Koroqele slid further. A student also died at Koroqele and there were questions raised.
It was not until 2011 when the mataqali Valelevu realised its mistake.
Led by the Tui Cakau, Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu, Radroni’s bloodline on Viti Levu were sought and asked to travel to Somosomo.
What transpired there gave the people of the yavusa Tokaimalo some semblence of who they were.
The mistakes of the past would be corrected to some extent.
* NEXT WEEK: Forgiveness and return to the bush.
* The author has maternal links to the yavusa Tokaimalo from Bureloa
