Update late March/early April

Hi everyone, finally experiencing the scary weather that island pacific nations face! I'll explain later in the post but the power outages and internet troubles have taken forever to get back up and running, hopefully next time it won't take so long for me to blog :)

So originally I had planned to blog about the Tongan King who just recently passed away. Because USP is the University of the South Pacific, we get several students from other island nations such as Samoa, Cook Islands, Solomon Islands, Papa New Guinea, Vanuatu, and Tonga to name a few. In some of my classes I noticed that several students were dressed all in black. This was tribute to the King of Tonga, as the whole nation is in a 3 month traditional mourning period before the new king is inducted.

The University held a memorial service for the king on campus and my friend Lina from my Pacific literature class was decorated in traditional dress for the ceremony.

Lina and I

Our photographer wasn't stellar, but you can tell that she's is dress in all black with a woven "mat" tied around her midsection. There were several people on campus that day so it was easy to tell who was Tongan!

The next big news was visiting the Fijian National Archives:

Being such a small, less-developed country, they do not have the same system of document preservation and organization that the US uses. We saw some pretty cool first-hand documents that were originals that we were allowed to touch and flip through. We even flipped through the very first Bible translated into Fijian and the first Fijian Times ever printed (it was from around the 1850s).

First printed Fijian Times

While we did have an organized tour, we were free to roam about all the documents stored in the library. Several included cool things like police evidence from court cases, immigration statuses, census information, prison details, etc. 

Access to so many files!

Me lost among the books

We also learned the stages of microfilming and the conservation and preservation of these important founding documents. The process is a very long process and takes meticulous concentration and patience. The sector is already understaffed as it is, but the employees there work hard every day to preserve their nation's history.

Document preservation

They have no computerized processes at all. In fact, the only computer in the whole facility is used to monitor and examine the microfilm reels of the documents.

Example of micro-filming

Microfilming is simply taking the original documents and "filming" them, so that there are copies on negative strips that you'd see from a manual or an old-fashioned camera.

Evan and Emily examining records

 It was very interesting to be able to get a 'behind the scenes' tour on how they operate at the national archives. I was surprised on how much freedom we were given to explore the documents and examine first hand their methods of document preservation.

Next to the map of Viti Levu

 While it did feel a little "field trip-y", I had a great time and learned a lot. The Fijian National Archives are a great resource for college students to use, and the staff there are so friendly and willing to help you uncover any information you're looking for.