I'm Not Alone

A quick search around the Fiji Times, and I came across a small group of articles from the past few months about people tracing their ancestry. It looks like I'm not the only one taking an interest in family history and Fiji.

http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=251825

http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=245807

http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=246425

http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=251618

Happy Diwali !

and wishing you a wonderful holiday season and joyous year to come

Or So The Story Goes

In my inquiries to my husband and his family for more information, I have gotten a few interesting stories, and even fewer hard facts. One of the stories is about his Grandfather.
The story goes like this...
He is born in India (around 1900), gets married and has kids. All that normal stuff. Then somewhere along the way in the (late?) 1940's he gets accused of killing someone. We don't know if he really did or not, we think not. Instead of going directly to jail, he leaves his wife and kids and goes to Fiji to work on the sugar plantations. He keeps in touch with them a little over the next few years, but contact stops after a while.
In Fiji he meets a nice young girl, gets married and has another child (1950s). Polygamist? Yup. A few years later the young mom goes crazy (certifiably) and he takes care of the child with help from friends. Then when the child is a young teen he (the dad) dies (late 1960s?). She gets raised by aunties and uncles (family friends, not blood relations).
And what of the first wife and those kids in India? It is told they immigrated to England.
So, there is a chance that we have (half) aunts, uncles and/or cousins (of various degrees of separation) living in the UK.
Or so the story goes...

Girmit Infographic

I was playing around on infogr.am and made this quick infographic about Girmitiyas in Fiji (Indian immigrant laborers)

Fiji Oral History Map

Fiji Time is a new film about the colonial times in the Fiji Islands. It follows the story of  Jean Bish, who was born in Fiji, as she tells of her history, and then returns to Fiji after many years away. It also tells conflicting stories about the British colonization of Fiji (from the points of view of the colonizers and those colonized), and the disastrous aftermath once Fiji gained independence.
Officially launching today, August 29th, is an Oral History Map. The map will be a user generated map with audio, visual and written histories from Fijians worldwide (anyone who has lived in Fiji, regardless of race).
With the Oral History Map now active, you can even submit your own story.

Find Fiji Time on Facebook or check out their blog.

Old photos of Fiji

Ok, so they aren't all that old. Maybe 15 years, but trust me, things haven't changed much in the past 50 or so years.

Microfilm

In July I ordered some microfilm for the first time, through Family Search. A week and a half later I got one, the other three were backordered. I'm not entirely sure why they don't have that kind of status on the website. I mean, a library can tell you if a book is on the shelf or checked out, why can't they do that with the film. I totally would have ordered something else in the meantime. But, I digress.
The film that came in was the Indian birth records index (from Fiji) from 1895-1929. Great! I have several names in that time period that I am looking for. Then comes the frustrating part.

#1 frustration- The first 25 years of this index is all jumbled together, not separated by year. The last 10 years is, so that was nice.

Frustration #2- Indians in Fiji in these years didn't usually have last names. So, searching for families is difficult.

Frustration #3- Because they don't have last names, the index is alphabetized by fathers first name, then mothers name, then childrens names. This may be good if I knew the fathers name, but in most cases, I didn't.

So, I went through all 263 pages of years 1895-1919 one by one, looking in the childrens column hoping to spot a name I was looking for (note, there are 86 rows on each page). Then I had to look at the year, and hope it also matched. Then I could write down all the info in a list of possible matches. I have 7 for one of the names on my list. And 3 with no matches. Argh!

On the plus side, I do have 7 possible matches, and I found some siblings for one of the known ancestors. So, hopefully soon I will get the other rolls of film and be able to find more names, and then I can order the specific rolls needed to find the actual records and not just the record numbers on the index. At least now I know what to be prepared for next time.

I also couldn't help but think how easy it would be to index these records. They were all in neat typed rows. Given the time, I could easily do it. And I would too, if the LDS church would ever digitize them and offer them up to be indexed. Maybe they will someday.