God, minerals and mud: thousands flock to Fiji's 'miracle spring' | Fiji
Fiji This article is more than 5 years oldGod, minerals and mud: thousands flock to Fiji's 'miracle spring'
This article is more than 5 years oldThe impoverished town of Natadradave, home to just 27 families, has become a site of global interest thanks to ‘healing properties’ of its natural pool
The crowds begin to gather before dawn, snaking along with dusty backroads of Tailevu district in eastern Fiji, humid jungle pressing at them from every side.
Ambulances and open-topped trucks bearing stretchers are allowed to pass first, then those who can walk, and finally the healthy arrive, loaded up with empty water bottles to carry home to sick relatives and friends.
All have descended upon a remote spring in the western division mountain range, a spring reputed to have extraordinary healing properties: “miracle waters”, it is said.
For Menausi Druguvale the magic began two years ago when he was afflicted with conjunctivitis and he tramped into the mountains seeking a rumoured spring his father told him could cure his eyes.
“When I went to the main source after Cyclone Winston, I showered in the water, and soon my eyes cleared,” Druguvale says.
“So I started to tell people in the village, a lot of people were injured after the cyclone. Then more and more people heard, around Fiji and around the world.”
Within months of Druguvale’s discovery, the obscure, impoverished town of Natadradave, home to just 27 families, became a site of global interest.
Thousands of people flew to Fiji with the sole purpose of visiting the spring, bypassing the beach resorts and kava bars, and making the two-hour road journey from the capital Suva to join lines of the sick and injured stretching for kilometres along the unpaved road leading to the water.
Alongside other village volunteers, Druguvale helps some of the thousands of people that visit every day and night to navigate the slippery path to the stream, where two concrete pipes spurt water into a shallow pool for bathing.
A series of PVC channels have also been installed for people to collect bottles of water, which are now being shipped around the world on the black market in Fiji Water bottles, which draw the least suspicion from customs officials.
Between 2016 and May 2017 New Zealand customs stopped more than 500 people on the border trying to bring in bottles of “miracle” spring water, many destined for relatives and friends who were too ill to make the journey to the spring themselves.
“In one month, maybe 50,000 people visit,” says Druguvale, who wears a fluro vest to help stand out from the hordes of hopeful invalids.
“Some people will come in a wheelchair, some people come by ambulance. I massage the mud into people’s skin after they have showered and drunk the water.”
“It works [the miracle water]. Every single time.”
Visitors to the spring are buoyed by thousands of ardent online testimonies, videos of paraplegics standing up from their wheelchairs, and the unshakeable belief by many that God has blessed this unremarkable looking waterhole in a remote corner of Fiji.
With more than 60% of Fijians following a Christian faith, and Christianity the dominant religion across the Pacific islands, belief in God bestowing a blessing on the Fijian people in the form of the spring makes sense to believers, especially as a kindness after setting Cyclone Winston upon their vulnerable island, which killed 44 people, and cost an estimated US$1.4bnin damage.
Muscle aches and skin conditions are the most common illnesses people present with, though others with cancer, mental disorders, burns, strokes, blindness and paralysis have all attested to being cured by the spring.
The facebook group Natadradave Testimonies has been set up to collate the stories of people who claim to have been cured. The group is just one of many online attesting to the spring’s miraculous properties, and has nearly 60,000 members.
“My own daughter is a living example of the miracle water,” wrote Epeli Lagiloae.
“Aggie suffered a stroke in Sydney last two years where she was confined to bed and her movement is limited. She couldn’t talk. After two days under their holistic assistance and encouraging words [at the spring] the walking stick was thrown away on the last day the first clear sentence was crystal clear from her mouth”
The water for Druguvale’s spring flows down from the western division mountain range, and tastes sweet and nutty, with an ochre tinge after heavy rains.
Locals say the water is only effective as it runs through a series of small streams , and it loses its healing ability when it joins with the tributaries that flow into the Rewa river, the widest in Fiji.
Because of the huge numbers descending on the deprived region, the Fijian government has made a significant financial investment to manage the crowds; building concrete pathways, toilet facilities, a cellphone tower and upgrading roads.
Locals who assist visitors refuse to take money for their help, believing the water will lose its miracle properties if they do, but they do accept donations of food, and say the spring has been a “blessing” as they have been rewarded with better infrastructure, repaired houses, and sustained, improved health.
“All our houses got grants from the government because of the miracle spring, so it blessed our village,” said resident Esili Tukana.
“But being famous has made us more exposed too. Some people who come are not honest. We have heard stories of scammers, people have bottled and tried to sell the water in Suva, Nadi and overseas. And that is against the spirit of the water. It won’t work if it’s sold.”
Professor Steve E. Hrudey, a water expert at the Analytical & Environmental Toxicology Division at the University of Alberta said although he didn’t know of any water that had scientifically proven healing qualities, there was evidence that purified water could help with certain medical conditions, and the placebo effect could also be very strong.
“In the case of the claims from Fiji ... these claims must be based either on something dissolved in the water (what they want to believe) or simply the cleansing action of water itself,” Hrudey said.
“Water is merely as close to a universal solvent as any liquid that we know. Depending on what you dissolve in it, you can have biological effects.”
“That said, by definition, claims of miracles mean just that, they rely on faith rather than scientific evidence, so I will not hold my breath in anticipation that Fiji has discovered a new cure for conjunctivitis or any other illness.”
University of the South Pacific dean of science Dr Anjeela Jokhan told the Fiji Times she would like the opportunity to test the miracle water to see if there was any scientific basis that differentiated it from “normal water”.
“It could be a physical property of the water, it could be a biological property we don’t know yet,” Jokhan told the Fiji Times.
“I am a sceptic. I believe in the power of the mind above everything else.”
For Druguvale, whose entire life has been altered by the miracle spring, the true reasons for the water’s potency are of little interest to him; he is just thankful that his village has been healed after the devastation wrought by Cyclone Winston, and that he now spends his days healing, rather than harvesting.
“It is God, and maybe it is minerals too, and maybe the mud,” said Druguvale, as the miracle water splashes against his thighs.
“Me and my father don’t know why. But we know for a long time, it has been special. Would you like a drink?”
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