ABSTRACT
Many times during the eighteen months of my fieldwork in the village of Sawaieke on the island of Gau, Central Fiji, I listened to one or other of my hosts champion na i vakarau ni bula vakaViti, ‘the Fijian way of life’ which he or she contrasted with na i vakarau ni bula vakailavo se vakavavalagi, ‘a way of life in the manner of money or in the European way’. Virtually all Fijian villagers remark on this contrast to visiting Europeans and they do so in an entirely predictable way. The speech below is that of the elderly man who, in the early months of my fieldwork, gave me lessons in Fijian:
The Fijian way of life is good eh? Nothing is paid for. If you want to eat there are many kinds of food available-taro, cassava, chestnuts, yams, green vegetables, pawpaw, pineapples. The food’s not paid for, it is just given. You are hungry? Yes. Fine. Come and eat, come and eat here. Come here and eat fish. You want to drink? Fine, come and drink yaqona here. Should a guest come here we look after him. If he wants something it is given to him at once. It is not paid for. No, not at all. This is the Fijian way, the chiefly way, the way according to kinship. Kinship and life in the manner of kinship are good things-there are never any problems. No, not at all. But it is different with you Europeans. Everything is paid for. You all live alone, each family by itself. Not one of your kin is nearby. They are perhaps far away. With us kinship is the most important thing of all, for you it is not.
