Taveuni

Taveuni belongs to the chiefdom of Cakaudrove, whose paramount chief, the Tui Cakau, has his seat at Somosomo on the island's west coast, facing Vanua Levu across the strait; Vuna in the south was the paramount village earlier, until warfare established Somosomo's supremacy. In the late 1860s a Tongan force under Wainiqolo, a lieutenant of the warlord Enele Maʻafu, attacked the island while Maʻafu was in Tonga and was defeated by the Tui Cakau's army, Wainiqolo shot dead on the beach at Wairiki.

The Methodist missionary John Hunt established a mission at Somosomo on 29 July 1839, was received cordially and housed by the Tui Cakau, made very few converts, and after three years left for Viwa. From the 1860s and 1870s European settlers, many from Australia and New Zealand, bought or leased land for cotton and then coconuts, and Taveuni was planted with palms on a scale that shaped its western half; copra shipped from its jetties supported the island for a century.

Two things spared Taveuni's forests and wildlife. The mongoose introduced elsewhere in Fiji never reached the island — it is the second largest in the Pacific to be free of it — so land crabs, bats and birds survived in unusual numbers, with about a hundred bird species recorded, twenty-two of them regional endemics; and in 1990 the landowning clans of the Bouma villages chose to protect their rainforest as a park rather than sell logging rights. Copra gave way to taro, kava, vanilla, fruit and coffee, and diving on the Rainbow Reef brought a tourism industry of small resorts and lodges. Cyclones remain the great disruption: Ami crossed the island in 2003, Gene caused widespread damage in 2008, Tomas struck in 2010, and Winston in 2016 was severe across northern Fiji.

This is a strongly traditional part of Fiji, and the chiefly order of Cakaudrove still organises much of island life. Somosomo is a ceremonial centre where installations, funerals and formal presentations draw people from across the north, and the village-based control of land is felt daily by visitors, since the walks, waterfalls and viewpoints are on clan land and are entered by permission. The sevusevu, in which a bundle of kava root is presented and accepted, remains the correct way to arrive anywhere.

Religion is central. Methodist and Catholic congregations dominate, Sunday is quiet, and choral singing in harmony is part of the sound of the villages. Meke, the combination of dance, chant and story, is performed at weddings, church events and for guests, and the lovo earth oven marks every celebration. Rugby is the main sport, played on village grounds cut out of the coconut plantations.

Taveuni also has a small resident foreign community on the hillside estates and in the tourism business, and returning islanders bring back money and habits from Suva, New Zealand and Australia. Local pride attaches to the island's produce, above all its dalo, to the tagimaucia flower — Fiji's floral emblem, found wild only in Taveuni's highland forest above about six hundred metres, flowering between October and December — and to the accident of geography that puts the 180th meridian across the island.

The 2017 census counted 13,774 people on Taveuni, though estimates run between twelve and twenty thousand; more than eight in ten are indigenous Fijians, and they live in villages and settlements along the coast road rather than in any town. Naqara, an Indo-Fijian settlement, is the commercial centre, Waiyevo the administrative one with the island's main hospital, and Somosomo the chiefly village. Farming is the backbone: dalo and kava for sale to Viti Levu and for export, coconuts, vanilla, fruit and vegetables, with fishing on the reefs and a tourism sector of resorts, dive shops and guides.

The day starts before dawn in the gardens and on the boats, the buses and carriers run to the market and the school in the morning, and the afternoon is for household work and sport. Shops close early, mobile phones have replaced much of the island's radio traffic, and evenings are given to kava circles and church groups. Electricity and water supplies are improving but interruptions are routine, and many households still cook over wood or gas.

The island's difficulties are distance and weather. Freight and fuel are expensive, the unsealed roads and the state of the jetties limit what farmers can move, serious illness means a flight to Suva, and young people leave for the capital or overseas, sending money home. Cyclone damage to houses, crops and reefs has been severe in recent years, and rebuilding is a recurring part of life.

Taveuni's dalo, the taro grown on its volcanic soils, is the food the island is known for across Fiji, sold in Suva markets and exported to Fijian communities abroad. It is boiled or baked and eaten with almost everything, alongside cassava, breadfruit and yams. Rourou, taro leaves simmered in coconut cream, and palusami, leaf parcels baked with coconut cream, are the standard accompaniments, and a lovo — food cooked on hot stones in an earth oven — is the centrepiece of any feast.

Fish and shellfish come off the reefs daily: reef fish grilled or fried, octopus, crab, prawns from the streams and lobster when the weather has allowed diving for it. Kokoda, raw fish cured in lime juice and coconut cream, appears on every visitor menu and many family tables. Coconut runs through the cooking as cream, oil and drinking nuts, a legacy of the plantations.

The island also grows kava, vanilla and tropical fruit, so pineapple, papaya, mango, bananas and citrus are cheap in season, and vanilla turns up in resort kitchens. Indo-Fijian curries with roti and dhal are the everyday alternative in the shops around Naqara, along with Chinese-influenced dishes such as chop suey. Yaqona, drunk from a tanoa bowl in the evening, is the island's social ritual as much as its cash crop.