SOAP BOX: Let’s not forget Fiji in time of need

THE Fijians are pretty easy-going people and just seem to always be happy.

One house survives, the other taken, in the town of Rakiraki, after Cyclone Winston hit Fiji. . Picture: Brett Phibbs

THE Fijians are pretty easy-going people and just seem to always be happy.

I was lucky enough to live there for many years and I hold the people and their culture fondly in my heart.

My stay was a turbulent time of coups and cyclones and I learnt nothing ever seems to faze the people. Expats were rushed in and out of the country in such a self-important way, looking after ourselves.

At the airport in Australia we would be greeted by a media fuss asking us if we were okay. Of course we were but our worry was always for those we loved who we left behind, the Fijian people.

Now consider a severe tropical cyclone category 5 blowing over your home.

And remember TC Winston has been declared and is officially labelled as the strongest cyclone in the Southern Hemisphere.

The damage and destruction would be unimaginable.

So let's not forget these people in their time of need.

One thing that I learnt while living there is that they have the overwhelming capacity to innately share whatever they have even if it is very little.

An older woman from the village explained it to me in this way. "When the old man comes back to the village with many fish it's not just his family that eats, the whole village eats."

This was her way of saying to me that as a village they work together and everyone is looked after, that when you have plenty you should just share and that is just the way it has always been. As a global village we are connected. We now need to step up. Let's enjoy TC Winston but let's not forget the people in Fiji.