Old posts from my very first travel website and my first backpacking trip (a year in 2000-2001)!

John, who works here, then made for us a kava ceremony. He put the kava into a silk sock, ran water through it and squeezed many times. The water was a milky grey color. He placed the tincture into a large ceremonial kava bowl. On the bowl, there is a triangle shaped point which is always directed toward the chief. If anyone crossed the imaginary line in the olden days, they became "soup of the day". Kava is a great plant. It has medicinal effects, relaxes all your muscles, and the husk left in the silk sock, when sprinkled on the ground, keeps dogs from pooping in the spot. Though we saw many dogs in Fiji, we never saw any dog sh*t!

The ceremony begins with the cup bearer saying some words and motioning around the bowl. First the chief drinks, then it goes around the circle. When it's someone's time to drink, everyone claps three times, they sip it down, then clap 3 times again when their finished and say maca (MA tha), which means finished. Everyone (except the chief) drinks from the same cup to symbolize equality.

It looks and tastes like dirty dish water. Pretty gross actually but it was cool to experience the culture. The kava root takes 8 years to mature. There are no seeds. You simply plant the stem and the root will grow again. The kava cups are made from half a coconut; cut, soaked in mud for a week, brushed, oiled, and polished. Fijians use all parts of the coconut tree for something: medicines, brooms, food, posts of the house.

I slept very well that night. There seems to be much wisdom here on Fiji. When I asked John about some of the Fijian customs that are unfamiliar to us, he says with a knowing, almost sarcastic smile, "we are backwards here".