Sisilia Sigatabu, born on August 16, 1942, began life at a settlement at Nadarivatu (the deep interior of Fiji) because her father Valerio was a carpenter there. She was baptized two years later by the French Marist Fathers at Varoka, Ba. She did her primary schooling at Votua Catholic School (the coastal area of Ba parish) for Classes 1-3, and then, when her father was invited by the newly arrived Columbans to be caretaker at Varoka, she completed Classes 4-8 at St. Teresa’s School. In fact, her father and uncles had largely built the St. Peter Chanel Parish Church there, from timber donated by Sr. Hugh Ragg OBE.
Seeing the difficulty that village children had in completing their primary education, the Columbans opened a boarding hostel at Varoka, at which the girls were monitored by the Marist Sisters (mostly Irish) and the boys by the Columban priests. Sisi and her sisters boarded at the hostel. Valerio died in 1958, and although Sisi had passed “Secondary Entrance,” her family could not afford the fees, so Columban Fr. Dermot Hurley stepped in financially and sent her to Loreto High School on the island of Levuka.
Unfortunately, she failed her “Cambridge Senior” (whose results took three months to arrive on the slow boat from England!), so another Columban, Fr. Seamus O’Connor stepped to send Sisi back to Loreto to repeat the exams. However, Sisi refused to go, and Fr. O’Connor got her a job at Morris Hedstrom store in Ba instead as a docket clerk.
It was there that Sisi fell in love with Mr. Asipeli Moce (a Methodist) and in time eloped with him to the Sugar Mill compound quarters in Ba. This was a daring move in those days (and not in line with Church teaching). Despite that, Fr. O’Connor visited them and persuaded them to get married in the Catholic Church, which happened on September 29, 1962. Fr. O’Connor had taken the role of Sisi’s father (who was deceased) as the one to receive the traditional gifts of apology for elopement (nai bulubulu) and promptly helped Sisi’s mother pay for the wedding meal.
After the birth of her first three children, Sisi resigned from her work at the store, staying home. But the new parish priest of Ba, Fr. John Doyle, asked her to volunteer for the position of “licensed teacher,” which then became “Emergency Trained Teacher,” both of which the colonial government had introduced due to the extreme shortage of teachers in the colony.
In 1969 she became a civil servant, with the grand weekly pay of 8 Fijian dollars! She was appointed to St. Teresa’s School, where she remained until 1985, being then sent as Assistant Head Teacher of Votua Catholic School. When the Marist Sisters decided to leave St. Teresa’s in 1995, they invited her back to town to take up their legacy as the first lay Head Teacher. She remained at St. Teresa’s until 1998, when, turning 60, she had to take compulsory retirement.
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