From military to sugar: Leone lives his best life
Leone Mocelekaleka was probably always going to be a soldier. He had been drilled with uncompromising discipline throughout his childhood in Seaqaqa, Vanua Levu.
And he did become a career army officer.
Mr Mocelekaleka remained a member of the Territorial Forces after putting his older children through school on a modest army salary.
He kept abreast of peacekeeping tours to the Middle East.
He went on to serve at Golan
Heights for two years and then
Syria.
“I was planning my retirement the whole time,” he said, reminiscing his peacekeeping days.
“I was planning on coming back home to farm and I knew that I would need farming equipment,”he said.
Retirement plan
So while the returning peacekeepers bought clothes, homeware, jewellery - the usual spoils from the Middle East - Leone packed farming tools and sprinklers, much to the amusement of his fellow soldiers. “I had two years with the military at Golan Heights and I had to make the most of the opportunity to buy my farming implements for my retirement,” Mr Mocelekaleka said. Mr Mocelekaleka did not waste anytime in making his retirement plan into reality.
He said that the financial environment was a lot more encouraging for sugarcane farming so he took his entire family back to Seaqaqa with some nephews and sons-in-law in tow.
“I always wanted to return to the sugarcane farm where I was raised,” Leone said.
Making the best life
Now three years into retirement, the father of six believes he is living his best life.
Mr Mocelekaleka has three children in white collar jobs, one almost done with university and two others in school.
The 57-year old Nasuva, Cuquma native has big dreams.
Importance of maintaining a disciplined lifestyle
Early to bed and early to rise, Mr Mocelekaleka has a salt of the earth type of personality.
Everything in life is connected to the land.
He asserted that there was great potential to earn from the land and stressed the importance of maintaining a disciplined lifestyle to extract the best from the land.
“This old man, at around five in the morning he is already up and if you’re still sleeping, you better be aware he will throw things inside the house to wake you up,” Mr Mocelekaleka jokes.
“In farming you really need to be disciplined.
My old man taught me all the skills about farming which I have today.
“He was a farmer all his life and I learned from watching him.”
Father’s footsetps
Mr Mocelekaleka remarks that it’s not in the nature of Fijian people to have long term vision.
“We don’t plan things ahead, but we must,” he said. Mr Mocelekaleka networked with others in the Seaqaqa community eager to learn from his Indo-Fijian neighbours those traits and habits he didn’t think came naturally to an i-Taukei farmer.
“As time went on, we looked at what my father was doing and I also looked at my Indo-Fijian friends who live nearby to pick out their good farming habits,”he said.
“My kids and my nephew help me and sometimes I need to hire labourers. “When you live on a farm, there is always something to do, whether it is spraying, ploughing, weeding or whatever.
“The main thing is to understand there is always something to be done on a farm.” Mr
When he first returned to the farm, he produced only 100 tonnes of sugarcane.
This motivated him to draw up a plan to achieve higher tonnage.
Future plans
In his plan Mr Mocelekaleka would plant more, mechanise his operations and join the local cooperative so he could access mechanical harvesters to increase his output.
Within a year, he reached his target of 600 tonnes of sugarcane at the end of the 2019 harvesting season.
“My target is to reach 1000 which I’m looking to accomplish in the next two years,” Mr Mocelekaleka said.
Mr Mocelekaleka said hunger for success drove him and he wants to make sure his children inherit the same drive.
“I taught them to always be hungry to achieve their targets and remain humble,” Mr Mocelekaleka said.
“Get on with the job first, celebrate your successes and importantly, continue to be hungry to achieve your next lot of goals,” he said.