Written piece
The Lagalaga Cord: Resilience on the Northern Shore
Shaniya Ram
Fiji
About this piece
From my hometown of Macuata, I’m a writer weaving Fiji’s diverse cultural threads—from masi art to cane field history—into poetry. My work honors our resilient community while tackling the urgent environmental challenges facing our northern shores. 🇫🇯✍️ #Fiji #Macuata #Poetry
The Roots and the Weave
Our history is braided from different spirits. One is the sacred masi of our ancestors, stenciled with the ancient patterns of the North. The other is the resilient silk of the Girmit, carried across the Kala Pani and rooted deep in the sun-drenched cane fields. Separately, we are just individual strands, but here in Lagalaga, we are the heavy magimagi rope that keeps our identity anchored to this earth.
The Rising Seam
But a new wind is rising across the Great Sea Reef, unyielding and cold. The ocean, which once fed our families, now begins to unpick the hem of our coastline. It reaches for the banks of the Lagalaga Creek, turning the vibrant gardens of the reef into brittle ghosts and loosening the grip of the mangroves that have guarded our shores for generations. We see our world thinning at the seams as the salt water climbs higher into the soil.
The Unshakable Knot
Yet, a community is a fabric that does not easily tear. Around the tanoa, our voices become the needle that mends the damage. From the hills of the interior to the edge of the sea, we speak in different tongues but share one heartbeat for this land. Though the climate tries to unravel our future, we pull our cultures closer together. We are the protectors of this tapestry—many faces, one Lagalaga, knotted forever against the rising storm.