1972

(Written on Monday). Yesterday we saw one of the strangest things we have ever seen anywhere. It apparently was a real authentic religious event, not something put on as a professional act. This was a Hindu firewalking, an annual event. It was by the rarest good luck that we happened to know about it, and that we were here at this time. We saw just a small notice in the FIJI TIMES on Saturday. Sheila had also seen it, and came over to see if we were going. (Sheila was the other passenger on the ship to American Samoa, besides Mrs. Kraus. She was a young Canadian practical nurse, whom we met off and on from American Samoa to Fiji to New Zealand.)

We made arrangements to have a cab pick us up at 2:00. When we got there a large crowd of mostly Indians were seated along the north-east side of a rectangular pit. Burt says it was about thirty feet by ten feet wide, and ten or twelve inches deep. At the east end was a small covered shelter with chairs; at the west end, a small temple--not more than ten by ten feet. This was on a cement platform, a permanent structure. There was also a shallow pit filled with water between the temple and the firewalking rectangle .

On the south side of the pit, benches were set up--the people on the other side sat on mats or right on the ground. The benches were rough planks set on two or three cement blocks. Mostly westerners--or Europeans as we're called in this area--sat here. We had to pay 25 cents to sit on the boards. The covered area was reserved for special guests, but so far as we could see or know, only the High Commissioner of India from Suva was there.

In the center of the long pit was a big pile of chunks of wood, still burning, but these seemed to be on top of a pile of ashes. How long the fire had been burning, we don't know. We had to wait for some time and watched the people. Many children in the crowd were well behaved, but some teenagers were climbing in the trees...and the announcer requested them to get out of the trees innumerable times, but they always climbed up again.

While we were waiting, people would walk around the pit, stop at the end, face toward the temple, bow, make a complete turn, then continue around the pit to the temple where they deposited a gift. They seemed to walk around two times for this ritual. These people were mostly women, and some were carrying babies. Their gifts were wrapped in plain paper. Also from time to time, men and women would sprinkle the flames and ashes with a small leafy branch from a bucket of water. At about 3:30, it was announced that the firewalkers were on their way and would arrive about 4:00...

As soon as it was announced the firewalkers were coming, several men with ordinary garden rakes attached to long branches started to pull down the remaining chunks of wood in the center of the pile, pulled them to the sides of the pit and spread the remaining ashes evenly over the entire pit. The ashes didn't look like the red hot coals we had expected. A rope fence was stretched around the pit enclosure with possibly a five foot wide space of grass inside the fence. We were seated about five feet outside the ropes, but other people sat on the grass, and didn't seem to suffer from the heat of the ashes. So we weren't too impressed by the firewalking itself. But the whole affair was very emotional, and I was completely worn out when we got back to our apartment.

It was the complete effect of the ritual that was so strange. Long before we could see any of the walkers, we heard the dum, dum, dum of drums, a steady beating all the while. When we finally saw the walkers, they were dancing to the beat of the drums. They were all fairly young men, some even teenagers, all dressed in yellow cotton shirts and sarongs, but most striking of all was the fact that all or most of them had big spikes--like turkey skewers--through their cheeks. Sheila said one of them even had one through his tongue. But there was no sign of blood, and later they were gone, and we could see no signs of injuries to their faces. Sheila also said she saw one of them remove the spike. Their faces were also painted with yellow daubs of paint--such as we saw so often in India on "holy men".

As they approached the far end--temple end--water was poured over some of them. They continued dancing along the other side of the pit, down to our end and around the corner on the grass strip, then to the center of the pit, where they leaped into the ash strewn pit and dashed to the other end where they stepped into the depression which had the water. The strangeness beside the horror of seeing their faces bedecked with skewers, was the hypnotic expressions on their faces. The dum, dum, dum of the drums continued as the drummers led the way and continued along the outside of the pit...One man who may have been a priest wore a high flower bedecked hat and carried what looked like an apple in his mouth. After running through the hot ashes, and stepping into the pool of water, some of them were again splashed with water. They then repeated the run through the ashes. I can't say how often they did this, or when they removed the skewers. I was so busy taking pictures,

Meanwhile, most of the audience (Indians) looked on with interest, but with no display of emotion, until one woman, dressed in a green saree, was forcibly being held by friends. She was writhing and twisting, and some people behind me, said her friends were keeping her from jumping into the ashes. After most of the walkers had stopped their dancing, but while the drums continued their monotonous dum, dum, dum, one man continued dancing, and he seemed to be completely out of his mind, that is in a trance. His expression was completely blank, he was in another world. Then suddenly he picked up a live coal out of some pans of coals other people had been carrying, held it in his hand a while, then put it into his mouth. We saw it burning there, and then he collapsed on the pavement.

After that, people, mostly women, some carrying babies, walked around the pit again. When they got to the end opposite the temple, they would kneel down, touch their foreheads to the ground and continue around the pit. And that was it.

As we were leaving, we walked fairly close to some of the men dressed in the yellow sarongs, and we just couldn't see any signs of their faces being pierced. Burt had paid special attention to their feet to see if they were heavily calloused, as people who walk barefooted a lot often are but he couldn't see that they were.

According to a brochure, this is a ritual of the SOUTH Indian people. They are very dark, very much the color of the American negroes, but, of course, they are very slight, fine boned, slender, and mostly quite thin. Their hair is black and straight. One sees Indian girls wearing the mini-skirt, but I doubt a married Indian woman ever wears anything but a saree. The Fijan women wear a long skirt under a blouse, but a fair number of these occasionally wear just a street length dress. Often their overblouses are long enough to wear as a knee length dress. Otherwise their blouses are about hip length. But there is almost never any crossover, an Indian woman never wears the Fijan dress, and the Fijan never wears the saree. However, Sheila said she saw an obviously Fijan girl wear a saree and had her hair done in a bun at the top of her head. She learned this woman was married to an Indian which happens rarely. There is no mistaking either group, since they are very different. The Fijans hair is very fuzzy and cut short, the Indians is always straight, very black, and rarely cut short.

( At the time of our visit, (1972), the population of Fiji was over 50 % Indian and the two ethnic groups seemed to get along very well together, but a few years later there were some disturbances.)

We hadn't asked our cab driver to wait for us, but were able to share a ride with two New Zealand women. Sheila came in, and I quickly fixed egg salad sandwiches for a supper, and we continued to exchange views and marvel at what we had seen.