Your Fijian Tavale

Suva City, Fiji. View of the clock tower at the Parliment Building.

Welcome to 2020. Things are going terribly. The news is dismal, Facebook is filled with aunties reposting every kind of remedy that pops up on their feed, and my cousins are still asking me for money even though I’ve told them that I don’t have a job. 

Ok we’ll start like this. Honestly, the only reason I started thinking about this is because I remembered one time when I was 17, my sister told me that our mother thinks that I’m whitewashed. I was highly confused. How can I be whitewashed? I speak, read, and write in Fijian. I know the names of my family up to my second cousins and how we’re all related, and I’ve not only been to my father’s village but love to stay there whenever I get the chance. Ok, just because I go to a high school that is 98% Caucasian, 2% Hispanic, and includes only me and one other black guy doesn’t make me whitewashed. Just because I go to high school football games with my friends every Friday night and eat at a diner that used to have segregated seating back in the day doesn’t mean I’m whitewashed. Or does it??  At the time, I was a little hurt. Even though I was young, I valued my family’s culture and the meaningfulness of everything tied to it. But then literally 10 minutes later, I was over it. 

Flash forward, I’m 20 years old and majoring in Anthropology. Not only has my love for my culture increased but it’s inspired me to learn about how humans came up with culture in the first place. How did humans learn to be the way we are now? For me, learning about cultural anthropology is easy because I take everything I’m taught and apply it to my family. The rites and rituals of marriage? Fijians have the tevutevu, the lakovi, the bridewealth, all of that. The structures of families? I think about my tavales, my relationship with my Tata Lailai, my Naus. I have everyday examples that make the structure of culture so easy for me.  One main concern for anthropologists today is the preservation of cultures, of traditions that have been untouched by the modern world. And I share that concern about Fiji. When my Tais and Bus are all gone, when my own parents pass away, how will I carry on the traditions they know? How can I continue to grow as my own person having been exposed to modern culture but also hang on to some of the most beautiful and unique traditions of my small island? How will my children ever know? 

I know as an anthropologist that sometimes it’s not enough to just know a culture. It may not be enough to just know the language, the people and the relationships between them. We also have to have an understanding of the way it all fits together. Why we are the way we are and not just how we came to be. Until we have an understanding, there is no depth, no real connection. 

I love my culture and the whole culture of the Pasifika. Even though I was born an American and enjoy the benefits of being one, my love for my island always has a special place in my heart. I know there is so much more to learn and I look forward to meeting people along the way who’ll be able to guide me.