Mo kila na nomui tikotiko | To know home

by Caroleena Bingham

Before we commence, I would like to pay tribute and acknowledge that I come from an indigenous people of oral tradition. We share our values, history, teachings through talanoa (discussion, storytelling, sharing orally). Seeing that this is a written piece, I would like to invite you, the reader, to visualize this oration. I will be bouncing around, switching back and forth. At times, choppy, fluid, and organic. An echo of conversation.

Listen to my words as I take you on a short autoethnographic talanoa of what home means to me.

Throughout my lifetime, I have been living and moving around the globe like a nomad. Relocating and adapting to new dwellings, places, experiences, and energies. Despite the constant changes, home - as a physical space and metaphysical entity - has always been my one constant, my place of birth, Fiji. Funnily enough, writing this piece has become a full circle moment for me because I began writing it at home in Fiji.

In my eyes, the existence of Fiji is a mixture of sentiments: it has a grounding nature that is contrasted with a feeling that something is hanging in the balance. It is a country built on quick reactiveness, juxtaposed against a slowness of time. Peace and tranquility exist parallel to the uneasiness of everyday life and uncertainty. A place of both logic and of irrational judgements. Contradictions.

This is home.

Na Yavu ni Matavuvuale | The foundation of home as metaphor

Growing up in a place of nurture and care came in the form of my maternal grandparents. They were an anchoring source of emotional stability.

It was the motherly sound of my grandmother’s voice calling my name.
It was the car rides by my grandfather to kindergarten, where we’d detour to the bakery to buy me a lamington, so I could stop my screaming and protesting.
It was the smell of freshly baked rubber, me being caked in black tyre soot from head to toe, wearing no shoes, running amuck, climbing stacks of tyres and harassing customers while they waited for their cars to be fitted.
Falo Tyres - my grandparents' tyre factory - was home. I spent days on end back then getting lost, exploring through what others might describe as a death trap. But I always felt safe. My grandmother provided an environment of sensitivity, a safe sanctuary for my inner child to flourish. My grandfather countered that by affording me the luxury to be mischievous with leniency. It was divine balance. Without realizing, they nurtured my freedom, play, and character development. Their carefree guidance endowed me with a feeling of home, a security blanket.

Through their love, I became an extension of home. Wherever I went, it followed. I found home within myself. A safe haven.

Na Matavuvale kei na ka sat u mai lui | Home and beyond

As an adult, Fiji still holds the same feelings and memories of home from when I was a child. These feelings have only deepened in adulthood. What I love most is how my perception has developed and evolved over time, allowing me to see the various aspects of how ‘home’ can exist in the real and in the divine. While I have experienced several occurrences, let me share a connection that illustrates the feeling of home I have within me.

In my mid thirties, I took a day trip to the Naitasiri highlands. As soon as I arrived, I walked with warmth in my heart. I couldn’t understand it. A sensation of familiarity came over me. I felt as though I knew this place before, but I had never set foot in it prior. I spent the whole day trekking, swimming, and eating freshly caught fish with friends.

I returned home that evening, and my Samoan grandfather asked where I had been all day. I replied, “Naitasiri.” Unbeknownst to me prior, he said, “that’s where your ancestors come from, not from Lau, but from Naitasiri.” With that validation, I understood what that feeling was! It was me returning home to my ancestral origins. My body knew what my mind didn’t.

Home has also accompanied me into my career pathways: as an artist, designer, and researcher. To shed light on my background as a Fijian researcher, my work critically examines the possibilities of building new systems of infrastructures in making, incorporating indigenous Fijian knowledge and methodologies with contemporary technologies in fashion. In understanding what this might look like, instinctively, I revert to the ‘source.’ It is essential that I understand what and where the source is and comes from…it is home. The act of tracing back to the root provides me with clarity and understanding. Always returning ‘home’.

This helps me move forward the best I can without jeopardizing the integrity of my work, while keeping in mind not to be exploitative nor extractive to my culture. Looking back in time to the present day, home has become the self. An underpinning of steadiness, inspiration, inward knowledge, comfort, and refuge. A feeling of belonging. A sanctity.

Me sat on my grandfather's lap. My grandmother is on the left, and my mother's youngest sister is on the right. Falo Tyres, Walu Bay, Suva, Fiji. (The tyre factory where I grew up). Early 1980s.