The Saqamoli and the potters of the Rewa Delta
THE fishing village of Nasilai sits on the banks of one of the great Rewa River’s bustling tributaries. Here, artisanal women belonging to the Vulagi tribe have been endowed with the knowledge of ancient Fijian pottery passed down orally for generations.
It is not surprising then that the women of Vulagi have been the artistic force behind the manufacture and trade of native Fijian water and cooking pots, long before the arrival of the first European.
These glazed clay artefacts remain an integral part of Nasilai’s rich history today, as much as it had been in times long gone.
Among Nasilai’s celebrated ceramic potters was a woman named Taraivini Wati Godrovai Rokotuiwai.
In clay craft, Wati was superbly brilliant, as much as she was as an intriguing storyteller.
While her tales spanned generations, her dextrous hands and fingers shaped many earthen vessels that have travelled the world and graced both homes and gallery display glasses.
But perhaps her most famous gift to Fiji was “recreating” the saqamoli to influence the design on the reverse side of our one-dollar coin.
Wati designed the saqamoli using her knowledge and skills of the Vulagi tribe’s unique pottery pieces.
In the olden days, saqamoli, which take up the shape of three conjoined globules, was a special drinking water jar. Another type of jar, the mua i ra was specially designed by the women potters of Nasilai for the Roko Tui Dreketi, the paramount chief of Rewa.
To call the late Wati (the name many knew her by) “gifted” would be a gross understatement. To brand her as “diligent” would be too plain either. Simply put, she was an amazing artist.
Doctor Paul Geraghty, the Adjunct Associate Professor in Linguistics at the University of the South Pacific noted in his essay – “The Stone and The Paddle” that Wati was destined to be a great potter right from birth.
Dr Geraghty wrote that on the day she was born, “a rounded stone was placed in one of her tiny hands and a wooden paddle in the other”.
The stone and the paddle, called itata, were tools of the trade.
Their placement in baby Wati’s petite hands were to signify that she would inevitably “grow up to be a potter”.
Newborns in those days were given the same clay ritual of passing the tribe’s pottery knowledge and skills from one generation to the next.
“She did indeed become a potter – the most famous potter in all of Fiji,” Dr Geraghty noted.
Wati was a member of the yavusa Vulagi, a tribe of fishermen and sailors whose great ancestors led their people from Kiuva to Nasilai in Nakelo (Ucui Nasilai) than to their current place on the Rewa River banks.
It is believed the Vulagi tribe left their former home when its members fled from the deadly disease “matelila,” believed to have ravaged Fiji long before the measles epidemic of the 1870s.
The women were reputable potters. The men ruled the oceans with exceptional navigational skills and were also adept at fishing turtles.
While Wati’s women folks were engaged in modern clay artefacts and decorative pieces, she chose to remain a traditionalist - maintaining her cultural designs and resisting change.
She remained committed to the elaborately fashioned saqa (water vessels) and kuro (cooking pots) that were - and remain – the mainstay of the oeuvre of her people.
In the early 1990s, Wati caught the eye of the director of Fiji Museum, Kate Hindle Vusoniwailala.
“With her great fount of legends, along with her charming personality and consummate skills as a potter, she soon became a semi-permanent feature of the museum…,” Vusoniwailala was quoted as saying in Geraghty’s “The Stone and the Paddle”.
She gave live demonstrations a few sessions a week alongside Daiana Tuqea, another gifted potter from Nadroga.
Vusoniwailala described Wati as an “amazing storyteller”.
Each of the designs on the surface of her pot narrated the journey of her seafaring ancestors.
“These narratives were drawn from the myths and legends of Nasilai and Rewa. They were always told to visitors with great relish and sparkle in her eye,” Vusoniwailala said.
During the course of her work, the talented Wati befriended another potter from another culture, Pauline Walker, from the United States.
According to Geraghty, they first met at the Fiji Museum, where Wati plied her skills and became instant friends. In no time they started calling each other “karua”, a word a female refers to her male cross cousin’s wife.
“She taught me how to make Fijian pots by hand, and when we found an electric wheel that I could use I showed her to throw a pot,” Geraghty quoted Pauline as saying.
“We dug clay from a riverbank and hauled dry bamboo for firing. She took me to Qelekuro Dawasamu in Tailevu), a village where she was teaching people how to use their excellent clay, and we danced half the night and drank more kava…”
Wati sadly passed away on June 25, 2004, almost 10 years after her saqamoli pots influenced the one-dollar coin and 10 years before the Charles Darwin University held an exhibition to honour her. All her 40 pottery pieces were finally exhibited.
Today, the art of pottery making continues in Nasilai, taken up by many of Wati’s own students and close family members.
One of them is her own son, Apenisa Bainivalu, who with his wife, have created designs for many international art galleries and museums.
The couple recently sold 10 pots to a gallery in Queensland, Australia. The biggest of those pots fetched up to $1000 a piece.
“My wife and I both learned from mum. We are continuing our tradition and now we are also earning a small income to support our family,” Bainivalu said.
As a standard practice, Wati, as did women potters from all over Fiji, fired clay pots in the open fire called tunua.
This meant that they could only do this activity during fine weather. Any slight sign of rain was a big no no.
But things are slowly changing.
The women potters from the villages of Nayawa, Lawai, Nakabuta in Nadroga and Nasilai in Rewa now have special art workshops thanks to Phase II of the ACP-EU Development Minerals Programme, implemented by the United Nations Development Programme with the partnership of the Fiji Arts Council.
These houses double as firing places as well as drying and storage spots.
The women of Lomawai, in Nadroga have a cooking house where salt can now be cooked, prepared, packaged and stored during wet weather.
In Fiji, the project aims to strengthen the capacity of artisanal small-scale mining enterprises (ASMEs) to enhance their productivity, create jobs, increase their income and put in place environmental and social safeguards in and around mining areas.
The buildings are constructed with monster cyclones and climate change in mind.
Now men and women can work in a safe and hygienic work environment, and use proper technology and equipment. They don’t have to worry about creating their crafts in the rainy season.
In addition, the artisanal groups are now given the chance to refine their products and have their own unique branding using their traditional motifs and trademarked, together with the Made in Fiji logo as quality assurance.
Local potter, Salote Rokoca said the construction of a modern potters’ house in Nasilai with drying and storage spaces, as well as a firing furnace would ensure that traditional potters are now able to take their craft to another level.
“I keep thinking of my own mother who was a potter in her days and wished she was around to witness the developments that have taken place in village pottery,” she said.
“Now there are talks of branding and finding markets for our craft. That shows that we will need to teach the younger women and girls the art and see that they get interested and earn a living by selling ceramic earthenware.”
Maraia Paulina, Wati’s younger sister who is now Nasilai’s eldest potter said without her late sister’s inspiration, she wouldn’t have remained in the art.
Now aged 70, she hopes to tutor pottery lessons for young village girls at the potters’ house from early next year.
“To make this art sustainable and to withstand the challenges of the future, we need to teach the younger generation the knowledge and skills we have. Otherwise, we would lose it to time and the changes it brings,” she told The Sunday Times in an earlier interview.
Similar to their counterparts from Nadroga, the women of Nasilai hold a special place in history.
They are not only traditional potters that have survived the influences of modernity.
Geraghty said they have also helped “introduce this traditional art into the consciousness of contemporary Fiji”.
This article was primarily written using information from Dr Paul Geraghty’s Essay: “The Paddle and the Stone: Taraivini Wati and the Stranger Potters of Nasilai.”
Next Week: Part 2
History being the subject it is, a group’s version of events may not be the same as that held by another group. When publishing one account, it is not our intention to cause division or to disrespect other oral traditions. Those with a different version can contact us so we can publish your account of history too — Editor.