- Final part of a 3-part series
“It took me a while to realise what I was doing was stupid.
“I was causing a lot of pain to my family.”
Former Naboro inmate Emori Toloi remembers the moments that changed his life while serving nine years in jail for his involvement in Fiji’s first bank robbery in 1975.
“In my first few years, I was still filled with so much anger and hatred.
“I bashed up the guy who talked to the police, and I even escaped from maximum twice.”
He said his tumultuous time on his fourth and last stay in prison came to a halt when he was visited by someone from his past.
“It was my dad. He bought a plane ticket to Suva just to see me in Naboro.
“That time I was in the dark cell because they had just caught me after I tried to escape again.
“When one of the prison officers came to call me and said his name, I got really angry because at that time I was still blaming him.
“I told him never to come back. After that, I stopped people from coming to see me.”
After the cold reception towards his father – a former schoolteacher – Mr Toloi got the attention of the then supervisor of the Naboro Maximum Prison Isoa Koroivuki.
“He saw what happened to my dad, and it just so happened that he was a former student of my dad.
“When he realised that they had taken my dad, who was crying before he left, he called me from my dark cell.
“That day he broke protocol by telling my escorting officer to leave us alone. Once we were alone, he reminded me of the role my father played in his life.
“He said, ‘I am here because of the kind of training I got from your dad and is this how you want to repay him?’”
Mr Toloi says his encounter with the former supervisor of prisons led to a series of life-changing moments.
“Mr Koroivuki is one gentleman I feel that I owe a lot to because most other prison officers back then would have given up on me.
“After that, there were a few other instances that started to plant seeds of change in my mind.
“When you’re locked a lot, you also read a lot. I came across an article about lepers who were at a tournament for people with that disease.
“I saw the pictures and I saw how happy they were despite the illness that they have.
“That was another point where I thought I couldn’t live like this anymore.”
He said his deep faith in God was also born within the dark cells of Naboro.
“I was still in the dark cell when the guy next to me who was my tauvu slid a small Bible through the partition that divided my cell from his cell.
“He told me ‘here, read this, you need it more than me’.
“Back then, my faith in God was second to none. I was angry at Him, and I would discourage inmates from getting closer to God.
“So when I started reading the Bible, I had only planned to look for verses that contradicted each other.
“So when someone quoted a verse to me about love or something like that, I would quote another verse that contradicted it.
“I had a very bad outlook of my faith back then, but it didn’t take long for the things I was reading to really sink in.
“Here was a God willing to forgive me, and it really broke me down.
“Once I moved out of the dark cells, I started to really follow this path I was on and accepted Christ.”
While an inward change was occurring in Mr Toloi’s life, he was also taking on the role of student, eagerly learning from the workshops that the prison facility organised for inmates.
“I learned joinery, sewing and farming. Almost all of the skills I have now I learned in prison.
“The change after that was evident. Everything was coming together and after a while, I realised this was it for me.
“I wasn’t going to come back.”
He said with less than two or three years in his term to go, Mr Toloi was handpicked by the Corrections Services to pilot a program that allowed an early release.
“One month before I was supposed to go home, I told my mum I want to come home but for me to come home someone in my family had to come and sign my release.
“None of them wanted to do it.
“It was a really painful moment for me because here I was, a changed man, but no one was willing to come.”
He said in 1980 after struggling to get an early release, Mr Toloi found himself living with one of his siblings.
“My sister did not want to talk to me, but I did my best to try and convince her that I wasn’t the same guy that went into prison.
“I made myself a promise that although I would come across people who would shun me and try to hurt me with their words, I wouldn’t do anything that would get me back into a jail cell.
“That was not an option.”
Recalling the tumultuous and painful months in 1980, Mr Toloi said his resilience kept him moving forward until he landed a job as a dock boy at a shipping yard in Suva.
“I’ll never forget the people who gave me a chance to prove myself.
“That is what it took, because once they gave me a chance I gave them my loyalty. I showed it with the work that I did and through my commitment.”
After more than 20 years at the Shipping Yard Services and becoming a leader in the trade union movement in his own right, Mr Toloi looks back at a life he does not regret.
Now a 69-year-old father of six, the man from Vanua Levu is now the country manager of Amex Resources Ltd based in Ba.
He says he hopes that his story inspires young men in the cusp of trouble to change.
“Hopefully many will change. I know for a fact that someone who is receptive to the help being offered to them will ultimately become a totally different person.”
