When I was young, I remember spending time hanging around my father’s grave whenever I was free to roam the family estate. This was in the 1980s.
The cemented structure was where I’d read and wonder into space, and for some queer reasons, the place gave me peace of mind.
It was interesting, in a sacred sort of way. I remember being told by elders to say ‘tulou’ or ‘excuse me’ every time I stepped on a grave. I was taught this showed respect for walking among the dead and made me think twice about their status.
Some questions I often asked was “Do the dead really sleep?”, “Are they really dead?” and “Are they alive somewhere else?” As I grew older, graves gave me a feeling that it was a place of complete serenity.
Lately, I’ve been thinking again. It was on a recent and quiet Sunday afternoon that photographer, Sophie Ralulu and I, decided to make use of the intermittent sunshine in the old capital and visit the Levuka Cemetery in Draiba, a place scarred by time and nature, and where hundreds of strange sleepers await the moment ‘the roll is called up yonder’.
If you stand somewhere at the bottom end of the graveyard at dusk and allow your eyes to wander uphill you’d easily sense a feeling of being spotted by strange eyes that stare down at you from above.
“I was here a few years ago,” Sophie quipped, as we began our slow ascent. I wanted to find the site’s longest sleepers and the cemetery did not disappoint. But I was puzzled about why people chose lofty heights to bury their dead.
“That is where you will find really old ones,” Sophie continued.
What I was truly interested in was seeing a few graves of people who had lived in the 1800s. I wondered where among the hundreds of grey faces that stared coldly at me I might find the grave of Kezia Celia Chapman Thomas.
I had discovered through prior research that she was born in Hobart, Tasmania in February 1832. She lived a short life (in her 40s) and died in Levuka in 1876, two years after the Deed of Cession.
On the way up, I stumbled upon the grave of Nicholas Samuel Hedstrom, who was born in Sweden in September 1821 and died in Levuka in 1899, just at the turn of the 20th century.
Nicholas was Levuka’s harbour master and the father of the famous John Maynard Hedstrom, a Fijian businessman and politician who served as a member of the Legislative Council for over 30 years.
Alongside Robert Crompton, Henry Marks and Henry Milne Scott, John Maynard was one of the ‘big four’ who heavily influenced the Fijian economy and political sphere in the first half of the 20th century.
With Percy Morris, John Maynard founded Morris Hedstrom, the forerunner of MH’s and today’s Max-Value supermarket chain.
Nicholas’ grave also acted as a memoriam of his two daughters, Annie Ethel and Alice Brita, who died as toddlers.
Midway through my climb, I found the eerie looking grave of F.W.Hennings one of Fiji’s early settlers who died in Levuka from ‘exhaustion, resulting from a large and painful tumour in his head and neck’, according to the Melbourne newspaper, The Argus, on March 20, 1891. Mr Hennings was a trader, planter, and merchant, and had been a resident of the colony since 1858.
“In Ratu Seru Cakobau’s Government, Mr Hennings held office as Minister for Finance, but when the scheme was found unworkable he lent the valuable assistance of his influence with the Fijian chiefs to promote the Deed of Cession to Great Britain,” the newspaper noted.
A native of Bremen, Germany, Mr Hennings was the first appointed German consul in Fiji, holding office until 1870 when he resigned in favour of his brother.
After almost reaching the top of the hill, I stopped beside a grave belonging to Mary Thomson who died in February 1877 at the age of 30 years.
Research revealed that she was the wife of Dr William MacGregor, who was named after MacGregor Road in Suva and popular for coordinating the search and rescue efforts for the ill-fated ship Syria which ran aground Nasilai Reef in 1884.
Mary was the daughter of Levuka (Fiji) harbourmaster Captain Robert and Annie co*cks. The couple met when Dr MacGregor was the Administrator of British New Guinea.
She was reported to have been the first Caucasian female to be born in Fiji.
According to Wikipedia, Lady MacGregor had nearly lost her life to fever on her first visit to her husband when he was the Governor of the Lagos Colony.
Then there was Mabel Florence Engledeer Sale, birth and death dates unknown.
But research showed she was the wife of 1864-born Reverend George August Sale and the mother of Robert Henry Moodkee Sale who was born in 1894 in Toowoomba, Queensland. Reverend G.A. Sale died in 1938 and was also buried in Draiba.
One grave read: “Sacred to the memory of Emily Constance, beloved wife of J.H. Garrick, died 8th August 1878, loving mother of Hector and Constance.”
My research found out that Emily was the wife of Joseph Hector Garrick, an Australian lawyer who served as a judge in Ratu Seru Cakobau’s government.
Garrick arrived in Fiji in 1873 and was linked to events leading up to the ceding of Fiji to Great Britain. After cession, Garrick was appointed chief police magistrate and registrar general in 1875 and Fiji’s Attorney-General from November 25, 1876 to 1882.
His family owned the famous Garrick Building in central Suva (built in 1915), bordered by Thomson St, Pier St and Renwick Rd.
I later found out from a chatroom discussion on Draiba Cemetery in October 2011 that one of its residents is Alexander Gustav HINZ.
He arrived in Fiji around 1883 and may have engaged in tobacco farming in Levuka.
He died in 1890 and is buried at the Levuka Cemetery. One of Alexander’s neighbouring graves belongs to a Philip Stolz (1887- 1948).
Further research showed that one of his six children was Edward Henry Stolz who married my grandfather’s eldest sister Alice Mitchell, my grandfather being Percyville Mitchell.
Other graves include those of Theodosia Scott, beloved wife of Henry C Tucker; Alexander Hinz; Carl August (May 6, 1887), infant son of Charles and Edith Hennings; John George Cruikshank of RNFRCS, Edinburgh (died Sep 24, 1880) and Sylvia, beloved wife of Ronald L.
At the top of Draiba Cemetery I considered the words of motivational speaker, Les Brown who said that:”The graveyard is the richest place on earth, because it is here that you will find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled, the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung…”
I realized that despite the difference between grave size,, headstones, structures that rose above them and engraved messages that loved ones used to show their love for the deceased, the equalizer lay beneath them.
They were essentially all shelters, of soiled remains, remnants of lives that once lived and now gone with the wind. We spend so much time and effort thinking about how to live our lives, attain an education, accumulate wealth, live luxurious lives and raise a family yet when death knocks on the door, we take nothing with us to the somber grave.
All that matters gets buried six-ft under, ready to be reduced to oblivion in a matter of time.
How long do we get to be remembered? How long do we live to deserve an aorta of memory among those we will live behind.
These are very sobering questions that we refuse to ask ourselves Someone suggested 80 to 100 years.
That is, people’s memories of you may span three or four generations of people who know you – your grandparents, your parents, your siblings and cousins, your children, nephews and nieces and your grandchildren and perhaps great-grandchildren.
Beyond that, you’d be forgotten, yes as if you never lived. That is a dreadful reality we will all face one day.
Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. Those who enjoyed fame like Ratu Sukuna and Waisale Serevi or those who achieved some semblance of notoriety during their life like Alifereti Nimacere or George Speight may be written about in history books or discussed in conversations longer.
But for most of us the generations that will follow after would have no idea that we ever existed. In their thinking and memories, we won’t exist and the thought of our names disappearing into nothingness can be quite frightful.
I don’t have any knowledge of my grandgrandparents, except their names – Frederick George Mitchell and Adi Matila Maramanikaiviwa.
Which means I will be a nobody in four generations from now. Just maybe. No wonder some graves at Draiba are choked by grass, cracking up, and some are heavily carpeted by creepers.
Once in a while, town council grasscutters give them a neat grooming. The worst cases are graves with illegible. You just don’t know who they represent, not even a name or number to say where and when they were born and died.
Many sleepers at Draiba came from different parts of the world during an era long gone and may have no living relatives around today to pay them a visit and drop a flower once in a blue moon.
What words will decorate your grave? What flower will be placed on your headstone? Will there be one at all? As of late,those questions have begun to deeply trouble me.
