The Food Fijians Grow For Themselves

Seen walking through Fijian Plantations

This narrow path is the only route across the island of Yaqeta. It meanders through family plantations. Every Fijian man is given a plot of land on which to grow food for his family. There are no fences or borders as one plot just merges into the next. Here are some of the things you might expect to find a Fijian family growing for food:
Some bananas are for coking and some are for eating. These are the cooking variety.
This is a coconut dryer. It is used to dry coconuts which are then sold to the mainland where it is manufactured to make soap and oils. The remaining shells are then used as firewood. If it is sunny it takes 6 days to dry the coconut in the drier.
Above is a bed where yams have recently been planted.
Soon the foliage will grow to create a canopy over the yam bed.
This is a bread fruit. It is a staple food for the locals.
This is a taro plant. When cooked, the leaves are something like spinach. Also referred to as palusami or rourou, when cooked with coconut milk it becomes one of my favorite Fijian dishes.
This is cassawa.
In the picture above you can see the cassawa at two different stages in its growth cycle.
It is the root of a cassawa that is eaten. Once the root has been dug up, the branches are cut off and stuck back in the ground where they re-root because the soil is so fertile. Now that's what I call recycling!
It's not all vegetables on a Fijian plantation. On occasion you might stumble across cattle. They might not be as common as some of the plants, but they are still destined for the dinner table.

Other things you might see on a trip through a Fijian plantation include oranges, lemons, mango, pineapples and goats.




?Have you ever visited a tropical plantation? How did it compare to a Fijian one?

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© 2008 Sam Breach

The Food Fijians Grow For Themselves