Livai is the son of an ex-minister of parliament from the neighboring village of Natalau, and as such has inherited a large tract of land that is primarily leased out to Indo-Fijians for sugar cane farming the main source of income for the Sabeto area.
Livai has taken this and turned it into a dynamic business, including a nursery focusing exclusively on native trees, vegetable farm, and a whopping 8 acres of papayas for export. He is planning the construction of four additional bures for tourists to stay in — they will also offer grounds for tents.
I went to home with four to five different things to discuss they piled up over the month , and he was very helpful on all points. First of all, I am interested in bringing the Sabeto Environmental Club back to the farm to do more hands-on work, which he is fully supportive of. Next, I mentioned my idea of encouraging sugar cane farmers in the area to plant trees around their farmland, as a means to both prevent soil erosion and supplement their income, and while he liked the idea, he cautioned me to work with farmers who are similarly motivated.
He could point out which trees on the Tuawa Sleeping Giant mountain were non-native to the region and the previous lines they have been advancing by after each fire. Livai then noted that though Denarau employs a lot of kaiSabeto, they are all the low-wage jobs: the owners and managers, the real money-makers, are almost all Kaivalagis.
This is the kind of criticism that awakens people and societies. You can find Aviva Farms Facebook page here. This is to follow on my last post, Mate! Sabetoan can be understood as a branch of TatavaNadi, which in turn is part of the Western group of Fijian dialects. Sabeto dialect is surprisingly similar to the Wayan dialect, spoken on the southernmost island in the Yasawas chain. And then radically different from Nadroga dialect, halfway between here and Suva.
