In the remote village of Tukuraki in the interior of Ba, change is both inevitable and challenging.

This community was forced to leave their ancestral land in 2012 after a deadly landslide tragedy, and since then, their journey to recovery has been far from easy.

The landslide killed a young family of four.

Clan members were living as ‘vulagi’ or guests in neighboring communities for five years before the commissioning of their new village site on October 21st, 2017.

Village Headman Livai Ro Kidiromo says this segregation is causing challenges for communities six years after they’ve been reunited.

Tukuraki Village is almost always empty, as members of the community have chosen to reside elsewhere for education and employment purposes.

Kidiromo says this means that many of the cultural obligations that the villagers performed for many generations before them have now been put on hold.

“Perspectives have changed. I’m concerned that we’re on the brink of losing the cultural accolades that our village is known for, like traditional practices that were practiced by our elders back at the old village site. That is my concern.”

Ro Kidiromo says he thought that he had lost his clan forever, as many of them have settled in other communities from 2012 to 2017.

He adds that now they are doing what they can to keep their traditional protocols alive and intact; however, he cannot assure whether this will be the case in the next 10 years.

Most of them still need to walk 1.5 hours on foot under the scathing western sun, carrying their children, just to get food from the old village site.

“I’m really concerned for our children, given the tragedy they had experienced from the old site. I’m also worried for my children’s safety and future here in this village given the critical events of 2012 and the challenges we now face. I never imagine that this would happen in my village as I always thought it was just happening in coastal communities.” 

Meanwhile, eighty-year-old Losena Nai says the pain of losing her youngest son and his family in the landslide can never be healed, regardless of whatever location they move to.

Nai not only lost the communal thread that connected her to her indigenous rights, but she also lost the opportunity to watch her son and his daughters, her 18-month-old namesake and 6-month-old Makelesi Matalau, grow old.

“The villagers always laugh at me when I ran to our evacuation center on the hill during a drizzle. They told me to forget about what happened in the past—but I can’t. I will always live in fear because I lost my son, my daughter-in-law, and my granddaughters through a landslide.”

In an unprecedented 48-hour period from January 22–24, 2012, 400 mm of rainfall was recorded in Nadi, which triggered flooding across the west of Viti Levu and caused the landslide in Tukuraki Village.

It wiped away an indigenous community that now struggles to re-establish its roots in its new location.

Tukuraki’s tenacity in the face of hardship is a monument to the human spirit as they work to reconstruct their lives and maintain their cultural heritage. One step at a time, their journey to restore their identity continues.

This story was produced with the support of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.