Fiji's first village furphy?

The village of  Viseisei, just north of Nadi, is said to be near the place where the first people landed a few thousand years ago.

It's all a bit muddled actually. We were told by our guide that it was people from Tanzania in Africa that came. Before that there were 'only a few cannibals'.

This was all a bit new to me. Reading up on it later, it's looking like the majority view is that it was Melanesians that arrived, from islands far closer than Africa, and they largely took over from the Polynesians who were there before. It was probably only 500 years ago rather than thousands. While the current inhabitants are genetically now more Melanesian than Polynesian, it's accepted that culturally they're more Polynesian.

I haven't forgotten that 40% of the population are actually of Indian descent. That's a whole different story though.

Anyway, Viseisei is a rather lovely little place. Very neat and clean and orderly. There's a Methodist church, and a memorial ground where important Fiji Day commemorations happen each year. What's not disputed is that Christian missionaries of all flavours arrived in force in the 1850s, and the Methodists had the most success.