Sela is an agriculture man twice over. He already held a Bachelor of Agriculture and taught the subject for more than ten years before moving into an NGO role in environmental and natural resource conservation. The master's degree took three years, fitted around full-time work and a household with three children in it. He credits his family plainly: without their support, it would not have been finished.
His reason for the tickets was not sentiment. "The exact purpose of my children coming here today is for them to see this level of education," he said, "and to guide them on what path to follow, especially during these difficult times we are facing." A lesson delivered in a single afternoon, in a building, to three people who will remember the room.
The distance matters here, and not only as geography. Bua sits on the western side of Vanua Levu, a province of taro, kava and pineapple, its main port at Nabouwalu handling the daily ferry across to Viti Levu. Reaching Suva from there means the sea crossing to Natovi and then roughly two hours by bus. The arena where Sela's name was read out is a long way from the ground he studies.
There is a further oddity in his qualification. The university teaches agriculture from its Alafua campus in Samoa, some 1,150 kilometres from Suva, so Fiji-based agriculture students belong to a discipline run out of another country. The campus began in the early 1960s as the South Pacific Regional College of Tropical Agriculture; Samoa leased it to the university in 1977.
None of which would have registered with the three children in the seats. What they saw was their father in a gown, walking.