Tribewanted: Vorovoro

Thanks to the help of Save, Katie and Lisa – my special project while on Vorovoro was to film lessons on how to do Mekes one thru six. Here is number five as posted on YouTube:

- I’m not sure why some of this text below is crossed out – if anyone can tell me how to fix it please do!! -

Our mekes one to four are all from the same source and tell one story which fundamentally is the description of a tribe’s migration (hence all the place names). They neither start at the beginning nor finish at the end. Before we begin the tale goes like this: A man in Dawasamu received a message (from the sky rather than in the post) which he had written down. But he couldn’t then translate it. He wrapped it up carefully in a box and set it afloat. It sailed passed the village of Bureiwai but did not stop there. Instead it came ashore in Nabukadra. Here the mekes begins.

Please see the previous meke’s for the stories – I’m including meke four here as four and five sort of have a relationaship.

Meke four is a summary of the last two. The narrator asks the men to listen to his message. He already passed on a great deal of wisdom, but has more. If you work all the time you loose track of day and night – we show this by moving our folded arms quickly and identically left and right – tautauvata; they become the same. It ends with the rhetorical question – why is there so much work? It is a question that is answered later on in this meke, but on Vorovoro we end there. Our five and six are from different sources.
Meke five, with a bit of artistic license, is almost possible to translate word for word:
Come and listen while I explain. I will show you my name. I’m a swordfish, the flying eagle and lion. I’m going to kill you.
But it needs putting in context. This is a meke from Tevita’s district, Ra. I asked him why he chose it. He explained that it is about learning the traditional way and protecting Fiji from losing it. He says that if you are a real Fijian – ie like we all try to be on Vorovoro, why he chose it for us – the land itself will help you. In the sea you will be the strongest fish, in the sky the most powerful bird and on land the king of the beasts. Nothing will harm you. But if you do not respect your traditional way of life, if you attack it in some way, something bad will happen to you. You will feel that you are excluded.

As always thanks to Katie, Save and Lisa for making this possible!!