Blake and Deb in Fiji: Labassa, Part 4

Every culture seems to have its favorite substance to eat, drink, chew, or smoke for mood altering purposes, whether it is beer or wine or marijuana or coca leaves or betel nuts. In Fiji it is kava, also known as yaqona or grog. We were invited to drink kava with several men (and a couple of women) from the village. It’s an important part of Fijian culture and a way of welcoming visitors so we of course accepted.

Kava is a mildly narcotic drink made from grinding up or “pounding” the root of a particular type of pepper plant and mixing the resulting powder with water to whatever concentration satisfies your mood-altering needs. The mixing is done by wrapping the powder into a cloth, pouring water on it, and squeezing it into a large wooden bowl called a tanoa. Three men sit around the bowl doing the mixing and handing out the bilos (half coconut shells) full of grog to the participants who all sit cross-legged on the floor facing the bowl. If one of the men manning the bowl leaves the room, another will slide up to take his place, maintaining the required threesome. And there are rules as to who can sit where; for instance, Caroline couldn’t sit next to Deborah for awhile because it would have also put her right next to the eldest son of a village chief, which is not allowed.

The protocol is to drink the bilo offered to you in one go, but you also have the option to pass. There is also a bit of clapping before and after each drink, as well as frequent declarations of “Bula” or “Vinaka”, but I couldn’t discern any precise pattern in the ritual. I suspect it gets even more imprecise as the evening wears on. We were told that these grog sessions can last well into the wee hours of the morning, with who knows how many dozens if not hundreds of bilos consumed before the drinkers crawl home.

We each had two drinks to be polite, then just sat back and watched the rest of them slowly get stoned. Kava looks like muddy water and tastes a bit like it as well, although Deborah finds the flavor reminiscent of dental anesthetic. Our two drinks were enough to give us fuzzy tongues, but not much more. The other men just kept drinking and drinking until the tanoa was nearly empty and we thought the session was coming to an end, only to have them mix up some more and promptly continue drinking.

After awhile they broke out the guitars and ukulele and started singing (between drinks). The songs were reminiscent of Hawaiian music and frankly all sounded similar, but the singers were surprisingly talented. Apparently this particular group of musicians is often asked to perform at other villages. They talked Deborah into contributing a couple of songs, but they didn’t know the music to “Crazy” or “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” so she had to basically sing acapella and, unprepared for such a command performance, struggled to remember the lyrics. She sounded pretty good though and they were all very appreciative of her efforts. We exited the room after our butts starting going numb from the unfamiliar position of sitting on the floor, and left our grog drinking buddies to carry on into the night.