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Traditional Fijian houses - vale vakaviti

The nineteenth century missionary ethnographer Thomas Williams summarised the great variety of traditional Fijian houses as follows:
"The form of the houses in Fiji is so varied, that a description of a building in one of the windward islands would give a very imperfect idea of those to leeward, those of the former being much the better. In one district a village looks like an assemblage of square wicker baskets; in another, like so many rustic arbours; a third seems a collection of oblong hayricks with holes in the sides, while in a fourth these ricks are conical."
Indeed, perhaps the only features that are common to traditional Fijian houses are a timber frame and thatch. Most are built on earth mounds, edged with stones or balabala (tree-ferns, Cyathea lunulata), but some are simply built on the ground, while others (vatavata) are built on platforms over the sea. In ground plan they can be oblong, square, oval, or circular, and the materials used for the walls and the thatch vary a great deal, largely according to what is locally available. While gasau (reeds, Miscanthus floridulus) and vadra (pandanus, Pandanus verus) are perhaps the most common, misimisi (sedge, Scirpodendron), sugar cane (Saccharum officinarum ), coconut (Cocos nucifera), and sago palm (Metroxylon vitiense) are also used. Many - but by no means all - traditional houses have sections of a tree-fern trunk protruding as ornaments from the top of each end, known in Fijian as loru or ibosa, and these have become an iconic feature of Fijian houses. Those on chiefs' houses are often decorated with white cowry shells.
It is popularly believed that the Fijian for a traditional house is bure, and the word has long been used with that meaning in local English. More recently, bum has also come to refer to a thatched Fijian-style house in a tourist resort, a meaning it also has in Australia. But in Fijian, the general word for a house is vale, and a traditional house is a vale vakaviti. The word bure refers to a communal house with a particular function, such as a men's house, visitors' house, or temple; nowadays it also includes school dormitories. It seems that English-speaking visitors gained the impression that the Fijian word for a thatched house was bure simply because they were usually put up in the visitors' house.
Traditional houses are excellent examples of Fijian workmanship, at the same time artistic, functional, and sustainable, making use of locally available materials. They are very comfortable, being cool in hot weather and warm when it is cold, and hurricane-resistant, when properly built. Even if they collapse in a hurricane, they remain relatively safe. Building a house is a communal enterprise, and looked on as great fun rather than back-breaking labour, but sadly traditional houses are becoming increasingly rare, and knowledge of how to construct them is rapidly disappearing. The great houses recorded in the nineteenth century - some up to 125 feet (about 38 metres) in length - have long gone. This set of stamps offers only a small sample of the great variety of traditional Fijian house styles.

20cents. Vale - coastal dwelling house

This particular house was situated in Navuso, Naitasiri, on the banks of the Rewa River. It belonged to the chief of Naitasiri, the Qaranivalu, and was occupied at the time by the widow of Ratu Timoci Vakaruru, Yadi Arieta Kuila, the daughter of Ratu Seru Cakobau, the Vunivalu of Bau, the most powerful chief in nineteenth-century Fiji. Being a valelevu (chief's house) it is very well made and has a relatively high house-mound, but otherwise it is typical of the house style of much of eastern Fiji. The main structural features would have been the two bou (mainposts) situated at either end and supporting the doka (ridge-pole).

65 cents. Were - inland dwelling house

This stamp illustrates two types of house that are typical of Western Fiji. The more prominent one on the left is found only in parts of western Vitilevu, particularly in the highlands, and gives the appearance of being round, though it is in fact square inside. It usually has a single central post. The latest archaeological research suggests that this house type may have been introduced to Fiji from New Caledonia around 500 AD. On the right is a typical coastal dwelling house of western Fiji, including the Yasawa islands, with its distinctive pitched ends, as opposed to the more nearly upright roof-ends of eastern Fijian houses. The word for a dwelling-house in most of western Vitilevu is were, but in parts of the northwest and in most of the Yasawa Islands, the word sue is used.

$1.10 Navatanitawake - temple on Bau

Navatanitawake is the name of the great temple on the chiefly island of Bau, dedicated in pre-Christian times to the giant god Cagawalu, whose forehead was said to be eight spans wide, and now used as a meeting house. Apart from its size, its importance is indicated by the double house-mound, and the unusual stones used as facing. It was burnt down, in 1825 or 1826 and entirely re-built, using. as bou (mainposts) two masts from the
Laurice, a brig from Manila which had   "ri'mpU'Cn isivi  j if't been presented to the Vunivalu (high chief) of Bau by its crew, after they had mutinied. The anchor of the Laurice was also - and remains to this day - propped up against the steps leading to Navatanitawake, but is not visible in this view.

$3. Vale kubulolo - Lauan style house

In the Lau islands of eastern Fiji, earlier rectangular houses of eastern Fijian by this Tongan style of house with rounded ends, probably around the
middle of the eighteenth century. The name kubulolo is composed of kubu 'end' plus lolo 'rounded'. The shape has become so much a part of theistinct
Lauan identity that, when corrugated iron roofing was introduced in the early twentieth century, the rounded endswere still retained, despite the difficulty of shaping the sheets of iron to fit.

$1.10	65c
20c	$3

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