Fiji as is

 

Fiji

 

I'm not sure how to explain a country which I already love, but also realize I haven't seen the best of yet.   I love Fiji.  The islands themselves are on a grand scale, lush and green, rising high in ridges and peaks above the multitude of reefs speckling the clear water and fringing the vast lagoon.   The waters are treacherous.  Three friends have hit reefs already (that I know of).   But the waters are worth the risk.   The people, every one, will say Bula, the Fijian hello, when you walk passed.  They are genuine and amicable and trustworthy.

 

But the island I am on, Viti Levu, is the main island is the most modern.   It is also more than half populated by Indians, who came over as British indentured servants working the sugarcane fields.  When they made their time they stayed rather than return home to India.  Lautoka and Suva, the two largest cities in Fiji, have most modern conveniences, and also the crime and surliness that come with them.  Othierwise, Fijians are warm and friendly and outgoing.

 

It is the outlying islands that interest me.  There, things are still slow, and traditional.   They have chiefs and villages.  To gain permission to come ashore, you are required to make sevu-sevu.  This is a ceremony between the guest and the chief of the village.  Essentially, you come ashore and ask for the chief.  When you at last find him, you introduce yourself and offer kava.   Kava is a pacific island narcotic drink, made from kava root.  It isn't alcoholic, but it makes your mouth go tingly and your legs wobbly.   Like everything else in Fiji, it is shared.

The kava is prepared in a great wooden bowl and the partakers sit around it in a circle.    One half-coconut shell is used as a cup.  It is filled and then drank in one long pull.  Then you say, Matha, which means empty.   The bowl is passed around the circle until all have had a cup.

The locals sit like this late into the evening.  Kava drinking is at once a ceremonial drink, as in the sevu-sevu, but it is also a social drink.   I've drank kava with the port security guards as I walked to town.  It is ubiquitous.  And it is drunk throughout the islands, Tonga, Samoa, Kiribati, ect.  But Fiji has some of the best.  I love it.  I like that it is shared.   The Fijians drink beer the same way: one beer poured into one small glass, emptied in one go, then refilled and passed to the next man.  Everything is shared.