120
S. Sahai et al.
women play key roles in disaster situations and post-disaster rebuilding of everyday
life‚ yet only rarely is this built into DRR strategies and implementations.
It is essential to develop holistic conceptual frameworks (Luetz and Nunn 2020)
that integrate women’s roles and the hugely empowering efficacy of people’s faith
and spirituality, the “lived practice of everyday religiosity” (Haluza-DeLay 2014,
p. 14), if more effective and sustainable strategies for climate-change adaptation and
the development of disaster resilience are to be developed. Such holistic frameworks
need to be carefully attuned to each specific sociocultural context as neither women’s
roles nor faith and spirituality can be fitted into one specific mould.
Faith, Prayer and Spiritual Agency
Prayer, writes Bandak (2017, p. 93) “expresses the collective concerns of the people
praying” and is “a way of acting in the world but it is also a way of believing and
of formulating this belief”. Prayer, he emphasizes “needs to be repeated” but such
repetition is not a repetition of sameness but a movement in time that can uphold or
change specific contexts (Bandak 2017, p. 94–95). As Catholics, the Tokou women
direct their prayers not only to Christ but also to the Virgin Mary, praying for her
protection in their hour of need, as is part of the repeated words of the Rosary. The
vignette at the start of this chapter shows how, in the midst of chaos, destruction,
shock and fear, Reijeli re-created a familiar, ritualised devotional order through her
prayers. Overriding her husband’s point that now was not the time to sit down and
pray, she continued. As host to the displaced families sheltering in her home, she
felt she should provide comfort and nurture. Reijeli was acting out loloma (love,
compassion and care for others), relational, core values of indigenous Fijian culture
and of her beliefs as a Catholic.
But Reijeli’s actions are more than comforting; her prayers change and empower.
She draws the traumatized woman into a familiar ritual that simultaneously extends
horizontally through the sociality of praying together in close bodily proximity,
and vertically to the sacred power of God. The rhythmic sound of the repetitive,
familiar words and phrases of the Rosary, prayed in the familiar order, create a
regular, “pulsating heartbeat” (Bandak 2017, p. 93). Such faith language is, Bandak
emphasises, “a form of action … Prayer as a ritualised form of action … rather than
merely stabilising already existing patterns … is a matter of acting upon the social
world” (2017, p. 94). Reijeli was “acting upon her social world”. Her faith led her to
pray, and the words she prayed and her act of praying effected change within herself
and in those around her. When Reijeli had finished praying, she was no longer afraid.
Through her prayer and the act of praying, a situation of trauma, shock and fear was
converted into one that was manageable.
This is one of several examples of women’s central role in Tokou during Cyclone
Winston and after—all enacted through faith that God was present in everything that
was happening to them and in their own responses to this. Women were tapping into
an experienced spiritual order within and beyond the chaos. Through their faith, the
S. Sahai et al.
women play key roles in disaster situations and post-disaster rebuilding of everyday
life‚ yet only rarely is this built into DRR strategies and implementations.
It is essential to develop holistic conceptual frameworks (Luetz and Nunn 2020)
that integrate women’s roles and the hugely empowering efficacy of people’s faith
and spirituality, the “lived practice of everyday religiosity” (Haluza-DeLay 2014,
p. 14), if more effective and sustainable strategies for climate-change adaptation and
the development of disaster resilience are to be developed. Such holistic frameworks
need to be carefully attuned to each specific sociocultural context as neither women’s
roles nor faith and spirituality can be fitted into one specific mould.
Faith, Prayer and Spiritual Agency
Prayer, writes Bandak (2017, p. 93) “expresses the collective concerns of the people
praying” and is “a way of acting in the world but it is also a way of believing and
of formulating this belief”. Prayer, he emphasizes “needs to be repeated” but such
repetition is not a repetition of sameness but a movement in time that can uphold or
change specific contexts (Bandak 2017, p. 94–95). As Catholics, the Tokou women
direct their prayers not only to Christ but also to the Virgin Mary, praying for her
protection in their hour of need, as is part of the repeated words of the Rosary. The
vignette at the start of this chapter shows how, in the midst of chaos, destruction,
shock and fear, Reijeli re-created a familiar, ritualised devotional order through her
prayers. Overriding her husband’s point that now was not the time to sit down and
pray, she continued. As host to the displaced families sheltering in her home, she
felt she should provide comfort and nurture. Reijeli was acting out loloma (love,
compassion and care for others), relational, core values of indigenous Fijian culture
and of her beliefs as a Catholic.
But Reijeli’s actions are more than comforting; her prayers change and empower.
She draws the traumatized woman into a familiar ritual that simultaneously extends
horizontally through the sociality of praying together in close bodily proximity,
and vertically to the sacred power of God. The rhythmic sound of the repetitive,
familiar words and phrases of the Rosary, prayed in the familiar order, create a
regular, “pulsating heartbeat” (Bandak 2017, p. 93). Such faith language is, Bandak
emphasises, “a form of action … Prayer as a ritualised form of action … rather than
merely stabilising already existing patterns … is a matter of acting upon the social
world” (2017, p. 94). Reijeli was “acting upon her social world”. Her faith led her to
pray, and the words she prayed and her act of praying effected change within herself
and in those around her. When Reijeli had finished praying, she was no longer afraid.
Through her prayer and the act of praying, a situation of trauma, shock and fear was
converted into one that was manageable.
This is one of several examples of women’s central role in Tokou during Cyclone
Winston and after—all enacted through faith that God was present in everything that
was happening to them and in their own responses to this. Women were tapping into
an experienced spiritual order within and beyond the chaos. Through their faith, the