FIJI HERE WE COME, SECOND LEG OF RETURN JOURNEY HOME

We flew from Aukland, 2 days after our return from Australia, and landed on the Fijian island of Viti Levu in a city on the west coast named Nadi. It was the second largest city in Fiji. Our accommodation for the first few days was about halfway around the southern shore of the island. It was mid way between Nadi and the capitol Suva. We hooked up a rental car and armed with our co-pilot (mom) we headed off into the unknown. On the map, it seemed like it was only a short drive to our resort. But in reality it turned out to be a lot longer.

The highway was narrow, twisting and the traffic travelled at a Fijian pace. Slow! After about two hours, our co-pilot starts to panic and lose her shit. She feels we have missed it, are on the wrong road, the wrong island (perhaps) and looks close to a breakdown. Luckily my always calm and steely nerves prevailed and I managed to deliver us shortly thereafter. We spent our first days in a place called the Fiji Palms. This near a small village called Pacific Harbour on the south coast of the main island. Aaaaaahhhh another vacation, I never get tired of down time.

The sightseeing started immediately. I couldn’t wait to see the famous Fijian fire walkers. I had visions of these huge Pacific Islanders wading thru flame, up to their knees, and coming out the other end, unscathed. We tracked them down, bought our tickets and eagerly anticipated watching these guys make “chicharrones’ out of themselves. I had the girl’s pumped.

Well here they come, resplendent in their grass skirts, weaving and bobbing to the throbbing beat of some big hollow sticks. They started digging around in this 4′ wide by 10′ long pit and after a short time, managed to coax a tendril of smoke out of it. They furiously fanned it into a plume of wispy smoke and then piled some green palm fronds on top. After some more furious beating of drums and chanting of a tome, they had some decent smoke rising from the pit. More palm fronds, more smoke, a short ceremony and off they go chanting and dancing thru the smoke.

“Hold it,” I cry out, “let me get down there and show these guys how to make a fire”. “This is bullshit, I could walk thru that smoke”. Deysi clamps her hand over my mouth and restrains me. Ron is like “ho hum”, Ange is having a nap. I feel cheated. Then to add insult to injury, they come thru the crowd passing around a hat to put money into. “Don’t do it Deysi”, I scream, “we have already paid once”! Ignoring me she plunges her hand deep into the money bag and pulls out my heart and pours it into their hat. Geezus let me out of here. After all those years of learning about the famous “fire walkers” another myth is broken along with my faith in mankind.

Another fragment of memory I want to get down, before it is lost forever, is a bit out of sequence here, but if I don’t do it, by tomorrow it will be vapour. This had to do with a Yaqona (pronounced yangona) or kava drinking ceremony that the resort put on. I convinced the girls that we should see this, as they would, probably, never get the chance again in their lives. Ron said she could live with that. Anyway we went. The ceremony was performed by the chief or head yaqona drinker from the nearby village. He sat under a hut with a wood bowl in his lap.

Then he added some grey powder looking stuff to the bowl and explained that this was the ground up yaqona or kava root. He had pre-ground it to save time. Now he explained, that most times he just grinds it fresh by hand during his leisure time each day, while his wife was off working and he was waiting for her to bring his little din-din. He explained that sometimes he went fishing to help fill in his time. I can already see ol’ Bubbaloo is not impressed by this guy. He adds water to his mix and with a grey color, dirty looking cloth, swirls the water to mix in the root. He wipes his forearms with the cloth, returns it to the mix, swirls it around, wipes his fingers, swirls, dips, squeezes and wrings out the cloth in the bowl. The whole mess has now turned dishwater grey.

All this time he is explaining that the yaqona is made this way each day and the men sit around in their ceremonial circle, mix the Yaqona and recount their former days of glory. Bubbaloo’s eyes are now rolled back into her head and she is giving me the evil eye. I’m like, “I didn’t invent the custom, what has this to do with me”? To her it’s just more proof that all men are evil. Anyway he explains that yaqona gives the partaker a sense of well being, euphoria, happiness and general good health (hmmm sounds strangely familiar). And best of all he says “it is completely non addictive, after all look at me I have been drinking it every day since I was a child, without missing one day, and I’m not addicted”.

Geezus, I think, I have a question, “I wonder what would happen if I locked this guy in a room for a couple of days without his root. I guess then we could determine if it was addictive or not”? It seemed to me that the very definition of addiction was taking the same substance everyday for 40 years to change or control your mood or feelings. Then comes the inevitable, his mix is done. The ceremony is complete and time for everyone to try some. I look up and the girls have vanished into thin air. Vapor! No tasting for them. The two younger ones are running and Bubbaloo is hiding behind a big tree.

I push to the front, to make sure I get my share. It had a flavour of old dishrag, dirty forearms and ground up root. The effects were of a mild narcotic, it numbed the lips and gums, made me slightly light headed, and left me with the thought that whiskey is a lot quicker. The last I seen of the girls they were still running for cover as the ceremony broke up.