A Fijian custom

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.

Vakamamaca - Fijian women in procession

from w
Peceli said, 'Let's go shopping' and I said Okay because we need some food for the weekend. 'You have to buy ten yards of coloured cloth for the vakamamaca tomorrow.'
What? 'For the welcome to the Moderator at the church.' Okay, so we go to Spotlight, which is heaven to many of the women of Geelong, a super, super store for those who love to sew - which is not me at the present. Hundreds and hundreds of rolls of beautiful cloth! Well, I found one bolt of coloured cloth I liked - with a patchwork look about it - and bought six metres - the last of the roll.

Vakamamaca is an old Fijian custom for greeting a visitor which has been adapted and is still maintained today. It's part of the Fijian formal welcoming ceremony. The women in procession carry rolled pandanus mats to present to the main guest and also lengths of cloth. (The same things occurs sometimes in concerts and the dancers are wrapped around with the lengths of cloth.) The reason behind it is based on the arrival of guests by sea and they will probably be wet and need new dry clothing.