Meeting of the chiefs "18:45.42S 178:31.41E"
VulcanSpirit
Richard & Alison Brunstrom
Thu 25 Jul 2013 10:01
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Here is Richard, dressed up in a skirt
(sulu) to meet the village chief on Dravuni, a small island within the
Astrolabe Reef in southern Fiji. Our visit happened to coincide with the arrival
of the local chief of police, seen here, who is in mufti because he's just been
half-drowned for several hours in an open boat to get here.
 Visitors to these islands must 'make a sevusevu' to
the local village hereditary chief. This is a highly traditional gift of yaqona
(pronounced yang-gona) root, from which the locals make kava. Kava is a
disgusting drink which tastes of muddy water. It isn't even alcoholic - it just
makes your mouth numb. In the old days the village women used to chew the roots
first and then spit the bits into a bowl. Nowadays it's mechanically ground
up into a powder instead, thank goodness. But kava is absolutely central to
traditional village life in Fiji. You buy the yaqona in a town veg market for
F$10 per third of a kilo, and present it to the chief via a spokesperson while
sitting cross-legged on a pandanus mat in a hall or even in someone's house. In
exchange we become honoured guests in the village, under the chief's protection
and able to move freely about the village lands (all land in Fiji is private),
go snorkelling etc. Often you are requested to share the kava with them in the
evening, a great honour, but our cunning plan was to go ashore early in the
morning so we didn't have to participate in any drinking. Worked like a dream -
the chief was off helping to build a 5 star hotel on another island the village
owns so we had a quick ceremony with the (elected) village headman, and that was
it. Hurrah.
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