Kava 101

I grabbed a taxi ride in with Jonny, and poorly haggled (I imagine) to $5 for the trip, which seemed worth it as it was a couple of miles and he was jolly nice. Arrived in Nadi, and got ushered into a shop, which I promptly exited from. Wandered around, past a Nandos! and said bula to many people on the way. A random guy greeted me, and we chatted for a while and he invited me in to show me "what he does". Obviously I followed, seeking adventure, intrigue and scam artists.

His name was Mike and I met Moses, so we took off our shoes and sat down on a woven rug/mat. Then I had a traditional Kava welcoming ceremony involving various clapping motions and drinking kava, a drink made from ground up kava pepper root. Guy reckoned it tastes like black coffee, Lonely planet says murky medicine, others say muddy water. I thought it was pretty nice, possibly as the guy said coffee. We chatted for a whle about my life, football and traditional Fijian ways and he showed me some newspaper clippings, including the queen drinking Kava, the crazy girl. They then "let me" browse their cool little store for a while and due to my traditional English guilt (even though they told me I'm Fijian now) I chose a cool little musical wooden percussion device. We chatted some more around the bowl, while they attempted to sell me a Kava set and some other Fijian artifacts. I got my lupa, or something, engraved with Fiji 2008, and then Thomas Baker.

You may be thinking "Wait a minute Tom, although your typing and spelling ability are legendary, it would appear you spelt your name wrong". Oh loyal reader, to the contrary, the Fijian people have an obsession with ignoring that little "r" in my name for a good reason. In July of 1867, Rev Thomas Baker was murdered, cooked and consumed while trying to spread the Christian message in Fiji's highlands. Seven Fijian converts who were helping the 35-year-old missionary penetrate the mountainous interior of Viti Levu island were also clubbed to death, their bodies cut up on flat rocks and roasted all over an incident involving a comb. Anyway, when anyone finds out my name here, they begin apologising frantically, and I have to calm them down.

A cool guy called Joseph, who reminded me exactly of Will Smith, took me to an ATM and I grabbed cash. He was really chatty and his English was extremely good. Once we got back we had ANOTHER bowl of Kava, "one for the road" apparently. In the end I had 6/7 coconut shells of Kava! Good fun. Some more suckers customers appeared and I bid them all farewell. I wandered to a Fiji-Indian restaurant and got a really tasty goat curry with all the trimmings. Carrying on, some guy attempted to entice me into a bar but ran off into a supermarket. After grabbing some cheap supermarket water I returned home via a random taxi man.

Wait, Joseph stole my pen!.