Monsters, place, and murderous winds in Fiji

When I visited my field site in western Fiji in June 2016, it was obvious that many were still dealing with the aftermath of the latest tropical storm. Much of the damage from Cyclone Winston, which had hit a few months earlier, was everywhere visible. Fiji islanders are accustomed to severe tropical weather patterns and have well-developed strategies for survival in such circumstances, but not many had been prepared for the sheer ferocity of this particular visitor. The most powerful tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere, Winston reached peak intensity shortly before it hit land in eastern Fiji on February 20, 2016 and proceeded to cause unprecedented damage across the islands. The total damage throughout the country was estimated at a material cost of almost 3 billion FJD, with more than 40,000 houses destroyed. Forty four people lost their lives and more than 131,000 people, nearly 15 percent of the total population of Fiji, were affected to the extent that they needed emergency relief. The Fijian term for cyclone, cagilaba, literally meaning “murderous wind” or “the wind that kills,” seemed more appropriate than ever and I was struck by the intensity and solemnity with which people evoked this term when discussing their experiences of Winston even months after it occurred. I soon realized that the cyclone had been a significant, traumatic experience for people across Fiji and that the presence of Winston still loomed large in local conversations and imaginations. Besides the extraordinary violence it unleashed there were two other aspects that made this particular cyclone stand out for locals. First, it was a harbinger of new times, tangible evidence for the veracity of what locals to an increasing extent had become accustomed to talk about, understand, and fear in terms of climate change. Fiji had, under the leadership of Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, spent the last few years positioning itself as a leading voice for those most immediately vulnerable to global warming and rising sea levels, and the unprecedented ferociousness of Winston became a timely reminder about the severe consequences these changes might have locally. Second, throughout Fiji people reported a number of spirit or ghost1 manifestations in the aftermath of the cyclone, indicating that a changing climate also unsettled the delicate balance of the local spirit world. In this chapter I focus on two such ghost encounters and analyze the relationship between them and the existential threat Fiji villagers perceive from a changing climate. The first of these took place in the close vicinity of my main field site outside Nadi in the western parts of Fiji’s main island, Viti Levu, and involved the return of a ghostly presence that had its roots in the historical village of Nagaga and a natural disaster that occurred there. The second ghost appeared as a revenant of a young man who lost his life in Cyclone Winston and in the following weeks proceeded to haunt his village, Nayavutoka, in northeastern Viti Levu. Although these ghostly presences appeared in two different parts of Fiji’s main island, they were tied together by the trauma of Cyclone Winston and became narrative focal points for discussions about the lasting damage these murderous winds caused the community. In what follows, I analyze these two encounters in conjunction with each other and in the broader context of cultural understandings about the relationship between people and the environment. I pay particular attention to how ghosts, understood as one type of monsters existing in Fiji, emerge in ways that make them intrinsically linked to place (specifically in terms of the local articulation of the spiritual connection between people and their land) and consequently become effective harbingers of environmental threats and change. My analysis is not concerned with discourse, deconstruction, or metaphors, associated with the “spectral turn” in cultural studies, but rather about the cultural work ghosts do in real-life situations. As I conclude my chapter I use these insights to reflect upon what my case studies from Fiji might teach us about ghosts, and their ability to reflect, augment, and mediate the anxieties of the people they haunt, more generally.