Visiting the rural Fijian village of Culanuku is the highlight of the Fiji trip for most students, containing the greatest takeaways and source of reflections. For many, it's an adventure...— from a Pacific Discovery instructor Louisa Gallie
Visiting the rural Fijian village of Culanuku is the highlight of the Fiji trip for most students, containing the greatest takeaways and source of reflections. For many, it's an adventure that deeply challenges them.
The village can be an intense experience, where students experience living in a completely new way, and welcomed into a different way of life by many new, friendly people. Students are sometimes challenged with following a lifestyle of values and norms that may be very different to home, which can bring up many thoughts, feelings and reflections.
Embracing experiential learning, and encouraging students into the challenge or discomfort zones is something this program does at its best. Fiji gave them many beautiful and sometimes challenging moments.
These programs are not designed to be a comfortable holiday. They are designed to help students learn what it means to be a traveler, not a tourist, with all the depth and discomfort that comes along with it. They push students to grow, get out of their comfort zones, and have an adventure. There are moments of tolerating discomfort, times we have to adapt, and people who we have to learn to get along with. These are the moments that help us to learn more about themselves, and the world around them.
When we arrive, we tour the village grounds. Roughly 150 people live here (Dunbar's number, for the psych students among us, is in full effect). A village is best described as one extended family, where everyone knows everyone by name. Women, when they marry, move to their husband's village and build a life there with his family. When they arrive on the community land, people pitch together and help them to build a small house. The concept of property ownership is quite different in villages.
The informal urban design of villages in Fiji is fascinatingly familiar and human-sized. Most contain a central community hall and a church, with many small homes surrounding them, connected by a small simple dirt road. There are no fences or large private spaces, but instead a warren of little pathways, shortcuts and bridges. Doors usually remain unlocked and open, and groups of teenagers, children, parents, grandparents are seen hanging out together or sharing, kids running around in groups from one house to the next. Children are a form of social glue, bringing energy and mixing the groups together constantly. Family members who have passed away are buried on family land, in large white tombs that are carefully tended to and colourfully decorated.
The stark contrast that students first notice is that Fijian villagers don't live the same wealthy lifestyles as our students may be used to. Life is much simpler, quieter, slower here.
For pretty much all students, this is the first time they've lived without running water, a hot shower on demand, easily accessible food delivered to their door, and women are expected to cover up (wearing a t-shirt and long sarong) even though the weather is very hot.
Villagers here have mobile phones and iPads, but of the roughly 150 people in our village, only one house has indoor plumbing.
The other villagers visit the communal taps dotted around the village, linked up to the reservoir up the hill, or collect rainwater in big tanks. We are visiting during the dry season, and the tanks are currently dry. There's no hot shower, no air-conditioning, sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Privacy disappears too. Curtains are used instead of doors to most bedrooms, and village children wander in and say hello with a giggle. For them, this isn't considered an intrusion as visiting other people in the village is respectful, a daily joy and great fun. For some students, this loss of comfort and control is a big part of the adventure, and genuinely challenging.
What they get in exchange is a deep embodied experience — to think about what wealth and success means to different cultures, of what it feels like to have less physical comfort exchanged for more social joy and laughter. Having friendly people around them constantly, always talking and focused on each other. A real sense of belonging. Constant welcome. Family, in the fullest sense of the word.
There's never a boring moment. Someone is always cooking, cleaning, building, fishing, or digging, and because there's so much unstructured time in a day, people cheerfully say yes to helping, knowing the favour will find its way back to them eventually. It's a socially rich economy, built and maintained through quality time, shared rituals and reciprocity rather than transaction. There is an air of trust and warmth in the village, and it's very comforting.
One student was feeling unwell and spent a day in bed resting. He had a near-constant stream of villagers come and check on him through the window each day — a quick hello and a smile, sometimes a longer chat, sometimes dropping off food or bottled water. How many of us living in the suburbs can say our close friends do the same for us when we are sick, let alone a surrogate form of extended family we have just met?
Christianity and the church are a cornerstone of daily life and guiding values. We show respect by saying grace alongside our usual sharing gratitude before eating dinner, and some students said this is a practice they found strange at first but really enjoyed and want to continue after the program.
Our guide tells us Fijian people are some of the happiest in the world, because they have everything they need. After visiting Fiji many times, I'm inclined to agree with his claim. But they have so much less, materially, than us in the modern industrialised west. So what is it about the way they live life that makes them so happy?
For some students, why Fijians are so happy is immediately clear — but it's most strongly felt in the villages. They see how friendly and caring everyone is, and how much they value strong social connections. There's always someone to help you, and someone who needs your help in return. Purpose is easy to find through service to people you know and see every day.
Parents are less stressed. Children grow up surrounded by many adults, elders, peers and youngsters — there's a lot of people to share the responsibility of raising a person. There are no high fences around homes, no quiet pressure to prove yourself through a job title or what you own. There are many shared traditional rituals that strengthen connections between people (both past, present and future) together.
In Western cultures, many of us have lost our daily or weekly shared practices — the ones that bring focused attention to each other, celebration, and a bit of wonder to the ordinary flow of life. Seeing how valuable these rituals are to social bonding was inspirational to students, and led them to reflecting on their own cultures.
Students living in the village really feel this social difference, not just observe it. They have a chance to empathise, to sit and talk with people whose daily life looks nothing like their own, but still find common ground and things to chat and laugh about. They get a genuine sharing of a lifestyle lived by someone working minimum wage ($2.50 USD an hour) — and hearing from them how happy they still are.
Students took a lot away from how strongly socially healthy they felt in the village — the belonging, ritual practices, and being part of an extended and sharing social group fills them with a deep sense of peace, joy and groundedness.
We practiced environmental respect in our small, daily choices. The group agreed, when we discussed what kind of group culture we would like to have, during buffet style meals at the village to take less food than they thought they needed and go back for seconds only if they still wanted it. For some this was a new challenge compared to their cultural norms at home.
The focus on this change was practicing a small but mindful shift to reducing the detrimental effects of our behaviours. We discussed how precious resources are — especially in Fiji, when some food is imported huge distances — and that there is no recycling in Fiji, where garbage is either burned or buried. Reflecting about the entire lifecycle of products, and how our purchasing decisions encourage the production of more items, directly impacts and encourages more energy to make, transport, consume and discard items. This connecting of the dots was a revelation for some students.
The combination of living these respectful values, intentionally leaning into adventure with an open mind, and reflecting on what was a surprise leads to precious memories and valuable learnings. This is what students earn when they step out of their comfort zones to embrace adventure, and embrace the ethos of being a traveler more than a tourist — even with all the challenges that come with it.
It's a privilege to guide their personal growth, and facilitate their development as global citizens. I believe it is a gift and a very worthwhile pursuit to spend time and energy to better understand oneself and the world around you. That is the gift of adventurous travel.
The Fiji village stay is a core part of the Polynesian Journey Gap Semester and the New Zealand and Fiji Summer Program. Both programs are designed to take students beyond the tourist experience into genuine cultural immersion — the kind that stays with them long after they leave.
Polynesian Journey Gap Semester (10 weeks, Hawaii, Fiji and New Zealand):https://www.pacificdiscovery.org/programs/polynesian-journey-gap-semester
New Zealand and Fiji Summer Program (4 weeks):https://www.pacificdiscovery.org/programs/new-zealand-and-fiji-summer
Browse all programs: https://www.pacificdiscovery.org/programs
Book a call with our admissions team: https://www.pacificdiscovery.org/contact-us/get-in-touch/book-call-with-admissions-advisor
Posted by Doreen Mesman on August 20, 2026
