by David Yeadon
“Bit steep now,” called out Mitieli, way ahead of me in the sticky gloom. I didn’t bother to respond. I needed all my energy just to breathe.
On and on we climbed for what seemed hours through the forest…until we came to the mist.
The terrain had leveled out a little, but now it became difficult to see anything. We entered a warm, white miasma in which the trees were blurred and boot-snagging roots hard to spot.
“Well,” said Mitieli, “we’re here. Normally you get a good view of the lake. You can usually see tagimaucia flowers.”
He explained that we had reached a ridge overlooking the lake, couched in its ancient volcanic crater, about three thousand feet above the doubtless sun-baked beaches far below.
“So now I should be photographing the lake and taking a few close-ups of the flowers.”
“Yes.” Mitieli smiled his disarming Fijian smile.
“Only I can’t see a bloody thing.” I was grumpy. Surely we hadn’t climbed all this way just to stand in a clammy mist.
“Well—maybe we should have some lunch.”
We had lunch. I’ve forgotten what we ate. I was too impatient for the mist to clear.
If anything, it got thicker. An hour passed and I could hardly see Mitieli even though he was sitting, actually dozing, only a few feet away.
“Okay!” I half shouted, and was delighted to see him jarred out of his doubtlessly blissful catnap. My grumpiness had not been alleviated by lunch. “We might as well go down.”
“Maybe in another hour.”
“Mitieli—it’s getting worse, not better. I can hardly see you.”
“On Taveuni the weather changes very fast.” He was doing his Fiji smile thing again.
“Forget it. I’m going down.”
“Okay.”
We started to slip and skid back down the long quagmire path.
“Maybe we come tomorrow. It’s a lovely lake.”
I didn’t bother to answer.
A couple of days later I hitchhiked to the Wairiki Mission with another bunch of fishermen (no one seems to take fishing too seriously here—it seems more like a relaxing pastime between long bouts of kava drinking and impromptu meke sessions of clapping songs and storytelling). Most of the churches on the island are modest structures, gaily painted with the same mauve, green, blue, and apricot-yellow abandon as the homes, but at Wairiki I found an imposing stone edifice of Catholic prominence set way back from the road on a bluff overlooking a rugby field (another national pastime, this one taken more seriously). Behind the tall towers the forest climbed, thick and viny, up the misty slopes of Des Voeux Peak.
The mists had never left the ridges since my climb with Mitieli, so I’d spent many hours on the beach since then learning more about Fiji’s long and gory history. Now it was the turn of the fishermen to add their tales. Sometimes I wondered if Taveunians would be happy to return to their warlike ways. Their ancient battle exploits seem to be one of the most popular topics of conversation.
“This is where we beat them Tongans,” one of the men told me. Apparently in the mid-1800s the fierce Tongan warriors in their enormous drua boats held pretty well reduced the Fijian islands to vassal states. Only little Taveuni remained as a stronghold of proud but ill-equipped natives determined to preserve their independence.
“The missionaries told us what to do. They were real clever and when the Tongans got to the beaches just down there we got ’em so bad there weren’t a man left—we got all of ’em. Clubbed ’em, speared ’em, chopped ’em up, and cooked ’em.” His eyes shone as he told of the exploits of the brave Taveuni warriors, vastly outnumbered but trained by the missionaries in devious guerrilla tactics.
“Wouldn’t be a Fiji if we hadn’t chopped ’em up like we did.” He was licking his lips in a most peculiar way. “They must have tasted real good.”
This battle was a breakthrough for proponents of the Christian God. After years of benign—and amused—tolerance the missionaries now became revered members of Fijian society. Chiefs were converted by the dozen and their subjects were required to adopt the strange and stringent Christian codes of modest dress and a discontinuance of their penchant for boiled and barbecued human flesh.
“We built them this mission,” the fisherman pointed proudly to the enormous church. “We’re clever people here on Taveuni!”
And fun people too. The fishermen were heading for the southern tip of the island to visit friends in Navakawau (End of the Road) village and invited me to continue on with them.
Jolting and crashing down a potholed road in the rear of an ancient Toyota truck would not have been my first choice of transportation, but the company of this jolly band was something I couldn’t resist. So, forgetting cramped legs and a numb and bruised backside, I joined in their singing, drank their beer, and handed around cigars as we rattled and thrashed along the unpaved track, passing lovely coves with untouched beaches, avoiding broken tree limbs (there had been a fierce storm the previous night), and watching strands of sunlight snaking through the tall forest trees at the roadside, dancing and flashing in our dust cloud.
We drove on the edge of rugged cliffs and past an enormous blowhole where the surf rushed through caves and exploded out of the earth in a huge geyser. Then we crossed plateaus of exposed lava flows in which there are deep tunnels where the Taveunians once buried their fiercest warriors.
“When they died it was a secret. They didn’t want their enemies to know. So they put them in these lava tunnels,” one of the fishermen told me.
“Are they still there?” I asked.
“No—they took most of the bones out about thirty years ago. Only they missed a few places.”
The other fishermen smiled and nodded.
“Taveuni seems to have a lot of secret places.”
“Well,” said the oldest fisherman, a thin, wiry man with an enormous mop of frizzly gray hair, “We been here a long time….”
After a couple of hours of constant bone-jarring driving we finally arrived in Navakawau to find a colorful collection of brightly painted cottages and a few more traditional bures scattered around the village rara. I expected the men to go off fishing with their friends, but it turned out they had other far more important things in mind.
And so it was that I finally came to participate in my first real kava-drinking ceremony, something I’d been hoping for since my arrival.
Many of the details were lost on me, particularly after the fifth cup of mint-smelling “muddy water” scooped from a three-foot-wide six-legged kava bowl. But I remember bits…vaguely.
And one thing in particular. Hardly had we arrived in the village and said our hellos to the people gathered around us when a large, potbellied gentleman with a huge halo of black hair stepped forward and hugged me.
I was touched but unused to such profuse greetings.
“We have been expecting you,” he said, smiling widely.
“Me?”
“My son in Nandi said you would be coming to see us.”
The penny—as they say—dropped. This was the father of the young man at the tourist office. The family I’d promised to visit.
“Oh, I’m so glad to meet you,” I gasped. “I had no idea.”
“Taveuni is a very small place,” he said, and hugged me again. “We knew you would come.”
I was embarrassed. I’d brought no sevusevu—no gift. My pathetic little bag of yanggona was back in the hotel…this whole trip had been unexpected and spontaneous. I tried to apologize.
“You need no sevusevu with us. You are here and we are pleased you come.”
I felt very happy.
The “ceremony” (actually it was more like a boisterous bacchanal) took place around one of the thatch-roofed bures. Like most island houses it was sparsely furnished—a couple of chairs, a low table, a small wood-fired cooking stove, and broad expanses of pandanus mats for sleeping. A few household utensils, a frying pan, a large caldron, an ancient and cracked kava bowl
hung on the wooden walls near the stove. A rather gray and mottled print of King Thakobau dangled next to a more colorful photograph of Queen Elizabeth II looking (as she always does in Fiji) young and happy.
Although the bure was simple, there were strict etiquettes about its use. Usually the rear of the space was private and, unless specifically invited, strangers did not stray beyond an invisible line roughly demarked by the ridge pole of the home. All the real activity takes place up front by the open windows and doors. This is where one enjoys the occasional meke feast, and where visitors sit, if it’s raining outside, to imbibe endless coconut-shell cups of kava.
It wasn’t raining, so we sat outside on mats rolled across the red earth.
The kava had already been mixed at the back of the bure (I hoped it was powdered yanggona, not the saliva-drenched and pounded root variety) and was carried in the great tanoa bowl to the center of our circle of reclining bodies.
Conversation ceased. Maybe in my honor the man of the family recited a short verse which translates something like this:
Wake up!
We have slept well and now
The sun is high above us
So—go pull the yaqona from the earth,
prepare the root and sing!
Our praise rises to the sky
—may it reach the whole earth.
Everything was very quiet. I could hear the gentle surf prattling on the beach below the village. The palm fronds and leaves of scattered forest trees gave a pleasant rattling sound, like distant hand clapping.
Then there was a sudden clap of hands right in front of me. My host smiled at me and said loudly, “E dua na bilo?”
Fortunately, one of my fisherman colleagues was sitting to my right. “He says he would like you to try a cup—a bilo—of kava. You say yes.”
“Yes. I would love to. Thank you.”
The man smiled again, filled the bilo with the muddy earth-colored mixture, rose up, and carried the cup around the circle to where I sat.
I was about to rise when the fisherman (Eroni was his name) whispered, “Don’t get up. Before he gives you the cup say Bula! and clap, then take it and drink it—in one drink. Don’t sip!”
I did as I was instructed.
“Bula!” I shouted, then clapped, then accepted the bowl in both hands and downed the contents in a couple of gulps without worrying about the taste.
Everyone seemed delighted, clapped three times and shouted “Macca!” signifying that the cup was emptied.
The host returned with the empty bilo, seemingly pleased by my performance, and the identical ritual was repeated with each member of the circled group.
The taste? Well, it was an odd mix of minty-flavored cold tea—and diluted mud. Nothing overwhelming or mind-blowing. A tingle on the lips—on the tongue. A slight relaxing of muscles. And a smile that gets wider with each cup.
And there were many cups. I lost count after five but noticed that we all seemed to be drawing closer to the bowl as if some magnetic force were merging our bodies.
There were so many smiles. Smiles that grew wider and wider as the ceremony progressed. Smiles full of gold teeth, missing teeth, no teeth—but smiles that seemed to ease through my eyes and touch something way, way inside.
Odd things were happening to me here in Taveuni. I don’t think I’ve ever smiled so much in my life. I felt buoyed by a spirit of utter happiness. Time eased by so gently. I felt welcome everywhere I went, especially in this little village at “the end of the road.” I was learning so much….
I learned to look deeper by looking into those open eyes that look so deeply into mine. I learned to listen to the quiet voices of villagers and hear shards of old wisdom as the ta lanoa (the conversation) drifted on. I learned more of Taveuni’s long, long history in which today’s events and crises are mere sprinklings of raindrops on a vast ocean of time. I sensed a knowledge—no, not knowledge, deep empathy—with nature, so rich and entrancing—so alive—it makes the laborious researches of our scientists and students of nature seem like babies playing in a sandbox.
Someone told me the story of the yanggona plant as we sat in the evening glow of an amber sun. Something about the Fijian god Degei (“he who is from heaven to the soil and through the earth”) who gave the gift of yanggona and other more powerful hallucinogenics as “angel’s cap” and “Yaqoyaqona” to the earth-bound to lift their minds and calm their spirits.
I sensed both. Soon I was reclining on the pandanus mats with the others, watching the evening rays of sun move slowly across the compound, gilding the earth, and stroking our faces with sheens of trembling light. I wasn’t drunk; I wasn’t on a narcotic high. But I was somewhere different. Somewhere I’d never been before. Exploring unfamiliar sensations in a benevolent miasma of ease and familial well-being.
Food came later. A modest lovo in the form of large platters of mashed taro, fat slices of yams, chunks of fried fish, and other dishes I couldn’t readily identify. But it didn’t really matter. The food was warm, soft, and juicy and, as I remember, delicious. Someone played a guitar. We sang (I hummed, mostly). It was not the big Fijian meke but something smaller. Family-styled. There was a lali drum in the distance, a strange, sad, echoing sound above the skitter of surf and the rasp of slowly moving sand. Songs and conversation eased on. I joined in when I could understand the gist; otherwise I just sort of half lay there, letting my eyes do their own traveling from the kava bowl, to the candelit bures, to the guitarist, and to the purple strands of cirrus clouds above us in the last of the dusk light. Young girls flitted like little moths in the shadows; the older women sat on the edge of the circle, smiling.
I vaguely remember some discussion about staying the night, but the fishermen decided to drive back to Somosomo. Maybe I should go with them…maybe I should stay….
Apparently I went back with them because I woke in my hotel room very late the following morning and never remembered anything of the journey back along that chronically potholed road. Amazing what good company, good food—and yanggona—does to neutralize the adversities of travel.
The days following my return from the kava bout passed slowly, punctuated by sudden downpours and aftermaths of sticky sluggish air smelling of jungle and rich, wet earth. One morning I drove north past the landing strip to Bouma Falls. Hidden deep in the rain forest, the place was all mine. I sketched the sixty-foot-high cascade and then stripped, dived into the pool at its base, and floated on my back, listening to the roar of the falls and watching two orange-breasted doves do what doves love to do, which seems to consist of making soft reassuring coos and gently nudging one another in an almost constant reaffirmation of their mutual fidelity. A bit sloppy but seductively entrancing. Especially when you’re all alone in a warm, forestbound pool, thinking of home and someone there waiting for you, wondering when your own little reaffirmations would begin again.
I continued on past Bouma into one of the most beautiful corners of this lovely island. No wonder the crew of Return to the Blue Lagoon chose the traditional village of Lavena, with its thatched bures, its blinding white sands and translucent aquamarine bay, as the setting for its ultraromantic, if notoriously short-lived epic of young love in a South Pacific paradise.
My list of places I’d like to retire to (Retire from what? dear friends ask) keeps growing longer as I continue my travels around the world, but Lavena is somewhere up there close to the top. It’s hard to imagine a more idyllic place: dense forest encroaching on small perfect beaches, the Tobu Vei Tui Falls hidden in the foothills of the island’s mountain spine, another cascade that tumbles off a high clifftop near the village directly into the ocean (World War II ships used to pause at the base of the falls here to refill their freshwater tanks), and a sense of ease and grace of living that makes one seriously question the modern materialistic mores back home.
All I’d need here would be a cozy palm-frond bure, a wrap-around sulu for daily dress, a fishing net into which dinner would nonchalantly swim e
ach evening, a basket to collect the fruits that grow abundantly in the wild, a bunch of local friends (kava connoisseurs, of course), a couple of pet doves to make bill ’n’ coo sounds all day long, a shortwave radio so that I could smile (Fijian style, of course) at the frenzied foibles of the world beyond the beach, a lot of sketch pads and writing paper, the occasional barbecued wild pig shared with village friends…and Anne.
So why the hesitation? Why not just move here and stop the fantasizing?
“You could live like a king!” whispered the little seductive enticer inside my head.
I remember something I’d read in the Cyclopedia of Fiji about the life of island kings, and it didn’t sound so bad at all:
The duties of a king allowed him abundant leisure, except when he was much engaged in feasting or fighting. Like potentates of ancient times, he knew how to reconcile manual labour with an elevated position and the affairs of state. With a simplicity quite patriarchal he wielded by turn the sceptre, the spear and the spade and, if unusually industrious, amused himself inside by plaiting sinet. Should he be one of the rare exceptions who saw old age, he existed, during his last days, near a comfortable fire, lying or sitting in drowsy silence.
Invariably his Majesty had two or three attendants about his person, who fed him and performed more than servile offices on his behalf. An attendant priest or two, and a number of wives, completed the accompaniments of Fijian royalty.
I suppose the “number of wives” bit might create a few domestic disharmonies with Anne, but other than that she’s a pretty easygoing person, well experienced in the traveling life, undemanding when it comes to material possessions, and a great lover of fresh-caught fish, fruit, and all the simple frivolities of endless time in the surf and the sun.
