Crisis brings out the best
Decades of knowledge comes handy for Keresia
THE COVID-19 pandemic has crippled many Fijian families financially. This, however, is not the case for Keresia Pece of Nadele, Nadarivatu.
She believes the health crisis has given her potential to use the knowledge inherited from her late parents when she was just a little girl nurtured in the highlands.
For the past four decades, Keresia has travelled extensively to the Lautoka Market on the weekends to sell their farm harvest and returned home with about $300 sales.
Last year, everything changed for her when the pandemic hit and she was forced to change her family’s diet when lockdowns were initiated and she could not find a way to sell her earnings at the market.
“When I was a small girl, I learnt from my parents that it was always important to consume healthy food especially those from our farm which were always available in abundance,” Keresia, 58, said.
“Pineapples, bananas, cucumber, lettuce, tomatoes, fresh sugar cane and many leafy vegetables are what we always plant in our farm.
“But this is something I have tended to ignore over the years because I have concentrated a lot on selling them at the market.”
Her last stock of sugar, rice and other basic necessities had run out when she could not travel to Lautoka because of travel restrictions last year and this was when she decided to start giving her children and grandchildren these fresh farm produce to consume to boost their livelihood daily.
Keresia said she regretted all those years of ignoring the teachings her parents instilled in her from those young days and the importance of consuming fresh food.
“But I am also thankful that when we ran out of sugar and other basic food items, we did not have to worry at all because there were abundant supply of fresh fruits and vegetables on the farm.
“This was what my family depended on last year when I could not travel to the market and again this year when the second wave hit.
“I realised that we do not have to rely on food stuff we buy from the shops all the time as fresh food is always available around us.”
Keresia says the COVID-19 pandemic has changed her family’s eating habit drastically.
She says she is also happy to have taught her younger family members the importance of depending on fresh food readily available from their family farm nestled on the highlands.