Sigatoka

The land around the mouth of the Sigatoka River holds some of the oldest traces of settlement in Fiji. Excavations in the dunes have recovered Lapita and later pottery more than 2,600 years old, along with one of the largest ancient burial grounds in the Pacific, layered between sand deposits laid down by floods and storms. The valley behind was farmed and fortified for centuries: hilltop settlements guarded the river route inland, and Tavuni Hill Fort above the water a few kilometres upstream is an ancient Tongan fortified settlement.

The upper Sigatoka was among the last parts of Fiji to come under outside control. After Fiji was ceded to Britain in 1874, the inland Kai Colo communities of the upper valley and the hills resisted the new administration and its demands, and in 1876 colonial forces and their Fijian allies defeated them in the campaign known as the Little War. Missionary work, Christian conversion and colonial taxation followed, and the province of Nadroga-Navosa took its modern shape.

The town itself grew as a crossing point and a trading post. The Colonial Sugar Refining Company's cane lines and the coast road met here, the river was bridged, and Indo-Fijian shopkeepers and farmers, descendants of indentured labourers brought from India between 1879 and 1916, built the commercial centre. Sigatoka was incorporated as a town in 1959. From the 1960s the Coral Coast's hotels opened along the shore on either side, and in July 1989 the dunes at the river mouth were declared Fiji's first national park. Vegetable farming in the valley expanded until it supplied markets across the country, and Sigatoka became what it remains: a working town serving farms on one side and resorts on the other.

Sigatoka is a two-community town, and the mixture is plain on the main street: Indo-Fijian shops, bakeries and curry houses, Hindu temples and a mosque within walking distance of Methodist and Catholic churches, and iTaukei villages a short way along the coast and up the river. Diwali lights the town in October or November, Holi brings coloured powder in the wet season, Eid is marked in the Muslim community, and Sunday morning belongs to church, when the streets empty and singing carries from the village halls.

Rugby is close to a civic religion. Nadroga, the province of which Sigatoka is the main town, has long been one of the strongest sides in Fiji, and match days at the town ground fill the stands and the surrounding streets, to the point that Sigatoka is commonly called Rugby Town; sevens tournaments and village competitions run through the year. Kava is the other constant: yaqona root is sold in bundles at the market and pounded for evening sessions in which news, disputes and plans are worked through over a shared bowl.

Village protocol governs the valley. Visitors are received with a sevusevu, the formal presentation of yaqona, and behave as guests on land that belongs to the landowning kin group: modest dress, no hats in the village, shoes off indoors, and the chief's spokesman speaking for the community. Tourism and farming sit side by side without much friction, and many families have members working in both, one in a resort along the coast and another on a vegetable plot upriver.

The town had 17,622 residents at the 2017 census, with many more in the villages and farming settlements of the valley and along the coast, and it is the principal urban centre of Nadroga-Navosa province. Indo-Fijian families make up much of the town's population and iTaukei communities most of the surrounding villages, and the district as a whole is one of the more densely settled parts of western Viti Levu.

Work divides between farming and tourism. The valley's market gardens are worked intensively, sugar cane covers the flatter land, and lorries and buses carry produce to Nadi, Lautoka and Suva; the Coral Coast hotels employ housekeepers, cooks, drivers, gardeners and guides, many of them commuting from villages nearby. Shops, transport, schools, a hospital and government offices serve both, and remittances from relatives working overseas or on cruise ships support many households.

The day begins early, with the market trading soon after dawn and buses full by seven; the heat slows the middle of the day, and evenings are for kava, rugby training and church groups. Recurring problems are flooding of the Sigatoka River and its effect on crops and low-lying streets, the long decline of the sugar industry, coastal erosion along parts of the Coral Coast, water supply in dry years, and the dependence of so many jobs on the arrival of aircraft at Nadi.

Sigatoka eats from its own valley. The farms upriver supply tomatoes, cabbages, eggplant, cucumbers, beans and chillies to the market, and the town's kitchens turn them into Indo-Fijian curries eaten with roti or rice — chicken, goat, fish or vegetable, with dhal, chutney and pickles alongside. Roti parcels wrapped around curry are the standard quick meal, sold at the market and from small shopfronts, and Indo-Fijian bakeries sell buns, sweets such as burfi and gulab jamun, and strong, sweet tea.

iTaukei cooking is the other half of the local diet. Cassava and dalo take the place of bread; lovo, an earth oven of hot stones, steams fish, chicken, pork and root crops under banana leaves for feasts; and palusami, taro leaves folded around coconut cream and onion, goes in with them. Kokoda, raw fish cured in lime juice with coconut cream, chilli and onion, is made with reef fish landed on the coast, and fresh coconuts are drunk straight from the nut.

The market is the centre of it all: pyramids of produce, dried and fresh fish, spices sold by the scoop, bundles of yaqona root, and seasonal mangoes, papaya, pineapple and watermelon. Duruka, the young flower head of a wild cane sometimes called Fiji asparagus, appears in the wetter months. Drinks are juices and coconuts, Fiji-brewed lager and rum in the town's bars, and kava wherever people gather.