from w
In the South Pacific graves are often decorated with barkcloth, pebbles, coloured cloth, and of course flowers. Several weeks after Suliana's passing, one of our Australian friends kindly visited the Vatuadova village to pay respects and she took colourful cloth and flowers and decorated Suliana's grave in the Fijian way. She gave us this photograph taken during her visit.
Usually after 40 days there is a ceremony to mark the intense period of mourning, then another ceremony and feast after 100 days for the lifting of the mourning period, then one year. The 100 days will be around Christmas time this year.
Memo to NZM. This is the photo that had the problem of moire, but I used professional mode on the Epson scanner and clicked on one of the filters so rainbow stripes across the photo didn't eventuate this time.
2 comments:
i guess it diff frm a village to another village...frm us we do celebrate every 10 th night..vaka bogi 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100..
It is very complicated for Fijian people but Australian people do it all very quickly. Today we were at a funeral in Melbourne - in the chapel for 30 minutes, a 10 minute drive to a crematorium and 15 minutes ceremony then afternoon tea of sandwiches and cakes for the relatives and friends. We were on our way home 20 minutes later! This was for an elderly Australian lady, mother-in-law of a Fijian woman from Nayau.
w.
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