Fiji is quite a large archipelago with 380 islands and over 100 islets in the South Pacific Ocean. The landscape is lush and beautiful and the people most welcoming.

Makogai island is not very touristy but offers a nice anchorage and has quite an interesting history. We made the most of our short stay  in Dalice Bay where weanchored late in the day after a windy 60 NM motorsail from Paradise Cove on Taveunei. We decided to wait until morning to go ashore to present our sevusevu. In Fijian culture, sevusevu refers to the traditional practice of offering a gift, typically kava root, to a village chief or community leader as a sign of respect and to gain permission to enter their territory. It's a way to acknowledge their authority and establish a positive relationship with the community. In addition, we have been bringing additional gifts like school supplies and reading glasses.

We took the dinghy to shore after a couple hours of work and homeschooling and walked around until we found someone to help us. The main village is 5 km away but there is a small settlement maintained by the department of fisheries where we were able to do sevusevu. As is traditional we chatted with our host and shared some of our stories. He is from this island and has been chosen to represent the chief and accept our sevusevu offering because his grandfather came during the time the island was a lepers colony. His grandfather sailed between the main island of Viti Levu to Makogai to bring lepers. After the ceremony, he took us on a tour of the ruins and the cemetery and answered many of our questions about the island then and now. 

The Makogai Leprosy Hospital was opened in 1911 when the first twenty patients arrived at the island onboard the Government ketch ‘Ramadi’. Soon patients were arriving from all over the Pacific; countries such as the Solomons, Cook Islands, Samoa, and Tonga. Separate villages for ethnic groups were constructed to ‘promote peace and order’ and women were kept separate from the men. In total, over 4000 patients landed on the island. Initially, the only treatment offered was Chaulmoogra Oil, which was used to dress wounds and given as an intra-dermal injection.  The island was divided in two to prevent the spread of the disease between patients and workers. Finally, in 1948 – almost 40 years after the first patients were admitted, Dapsone, a sulpha drug and a cure against the bacterial cause of leprosy was discovered. During its 58 years as a leprosarium, approximately 2,500 patients were effectively treated and sent back home to their friends and families. Around 500 were repatriated back to their homeland and the remaining 1,241 died due to the direct effects and complications of leprosy. In 1969, the last patients with Leprosy left Makogai for Fiji’s purpose built Hospital in Suva. 

One of the graves in the cemetery from a French nun. Some of the nuns were both patie and workers in the hospital.

Today, Makogai is home to about 60 inhabitants who live of the land and sea, the primary school has 21 students (Fijian tend to have large families, our host has 7 children). On Dalice bay where the old hospital was located, is a IMariculture Centre Opened in 2011. One of the main projects that the team of fisheries officers based here work on, is culturing giant clams (Tridacna). Once in abundance on Fiji’s reefs, many species have been overharvested and current levels are low. The important role that the vasua (clams) play on the coral reef is often overlooked. A single giant clam can filter hundreds of litres of water in a day. As filter feeders, this keystone species offers a great line of defence against an outbreak of pesky crown of thorns starfish by filtering out thousands of their microscopic spawn.

 The sign and facilities are a little tired but we caught a glimpse at a little baby clam in the nursery (fancy term for a few old concrete structures fed with sea water by pipes running into the water on the beach. The baby clams are embedded into concrete.

The island has also been used as a quarantine area to introduce new species to Fiji. A herd of sheep from New Zealand spent ten years on the island before being introduced to other more populated islands and there is currently an area with Queensland queen bees in quarantine. Newly imported bees are quarantined on Makogai Island for 90 days to assess their performance and mitigate the risk of introducing diseases.

After our short visit ashore we went snorkeling in the bay, we only spotted one giant clam but also marveled our some amazing colorful soft coral. 

Seth at the bottom to give a sense of scale 

Giant clam (as seen above with Seth)

Soft coral on the reef, when you approach, it retracts!