Kava

Kava is a staple drink in Tonga. Typically, anything and everything that has Tongan men in attendance will include the drinking of kava. Being a man in Tonga, I partake by default, and have had it dozens and dozens of times in the past year and eight months. The effects are similar to alcohol, which is why, in the Pacific, beer is sometimes called "European kava." However, while it slows physical coordination, it leaves the mind clear to think. You're physically sleepy, but mentally alert. There's also an increased sense of sense of calm, sociability, and camaraderie, which helps to explain why men here break out the kava bowl at every social event.

Despite all this, I didn't feel that kava deserved more then a mention here (until now). That's because Tongan make it weak. Want to try some yourself? Mix one part dirt to twenty parts water, dissolve in a couple of those cough drops that numb your tongue, and drink a cup every ten minutes for four hours. I've had as many as fifteen shells full (that's right, actual coconut shells, cause I'm cool) yet felt only a mild effect.

Kava has always been a part of Pacific culture, but the use of kava has changed in recent times. In a large way, it's become nationalizing. I don't want to get into a whole thing here about colonization and decolonization and the reason there are so many coups in the South Pacific. The main point of all that is that people and culture vary widely island to island within the borders set by a bunch of European map makers. So many islanders today are trying to look to the things that unite them rather then divide them, and the consumption of kava is one such unifier. In Micronesia, the kava shell even appears on the state’s flag!

So in Vanuatu, kava drinking has become part of the national identity, and kava bars (called nakamal) there are more popular then alcohol bars. And in Vanuatu, kava is different. I'm not clear on if its the age of the roots, or the way it's prepared, but kava in Vanuatu is potent. Troost, one of the authors I mentioned last post, was knocked near-unconscious in Vanuatu by two shells of kava. A friend of a Japanese teacher at my college was temporarily paralyzed by the same amount. So you can appreciate it when I tell you that I had six shells.

In hindsight, five would have been enough. But despite it's weakness, Tongan kava seems to have built up my tolerance. So, after two shells and a wait of twenty minutes with no apparent effect, I was ready for more (with no risk to my wallet, since each drink cost about 50 cents Canadian). And twenty minutes was also more then enough time to make some new Ni-Vanuatu friends who were happy to learn that I was not (as I appeared) Australian. Those darn Australians! My Ni-Vanuatu friends had a much higher tolerance then I, and they had a truck, with which we went bar hopping Vanuatu-style.

Neighbourhood to neighbourhood, sometimes across the street from each other or even four to a corner like gas stations in Canada, were nakamal in Vanuatu's capital Port Vila. Each evening, when it begins to get dark, the owners light red lamps to show patrons that they're open for business. Some that we visited were actual bar-like structures with tables, tin roofs, and food for sale. Others were little more then a woman sitting in her yard mixing a plastic bucket full of kava. But somehow my new friends knew which nakamal in each neighbourhood was the best (measured by the kava's strength, I think), and when it was time to move on to another.

To prove your manhood, you're supposed to drink the entire shell in one go, not sip it like an expensive beer in a dance club. That was never a problem for me, much to the delight of the serving girls. Oh yeah, in Tonga, it's still taboo (oooo) for women to drink kava, but its slowly becoming accepted for women in Vanuatu (though I never saw any who were drinking instead of serving). I downed a third and a fourth in quick succession. but held off on my fifth until late in the evening. Finally I downed it, and was surprised to find that I was still conscious and not paralyzed. So much so that, after being dropped off at my room at the end of the night, I decided to take one more "for the road" at the nakamal across from my hostel. Big. Mistake.

Somehow, I made it back to my room, and even took a bite of some Chinese takeaway I got. I turned on the TV, and lay down for a wide-eyed hour of French television. I vaguely remember a fear-factor type show that included two "little people" as helpers, a master samurai jail keeper, and Merlin (the sorcerer of King Arthur's court). I spent six more nights in Vanuatu, but never had more then five shells of kava again!

And if you're looking to try some kava, these days it's available from Amazon.com.  This one, from Tonga, is quite potent kava of the "vanuatu" variety.  Gather some friends, a pair of pantyhose, a bucket, and you're good to go!

Vanuatu

Fiji was alright, but I went to Fiji mostly because, before coming to Tonga, everyone I had to talked to in Canada said (once we had established where Tonga was) "the Pacific? My [any family member] went to Fiji!" That and then in Tonga, most Tongans told me something to the effect of, "yeah our country is OK...but you should really go see Fiji!" So I felt like I had no choice but to check it out. But the country I was REALLY looking forward to visiting was Vanuatu. Where!? I've met British here in Tonga who had never heard of Vanuatu, and it was in THEIR empire! Some background:

Two of my favourite travel writers, Paul Theroux and J. Maaten Troost, visited Vanuatu during their time in the South Pacific. And a new favourite explorer of mine, Captain Cook, had also visited and written extensively about what were then called the "New Hebrides." After reading the accounts of these three men, I was determined to see the islands with my own eyes.

When Cook visited the New Hebrides, he wrote, "the people of this country are in general the most ugly and ill-proportioned of any I ever saw." What a jerk! But what really interested Europeans was Cook's description of the people's paganism, barbarism, and cannibalism. John Williams was the first missionary there. He had played a major role in bringing the Wesleyan faith to Polynesia, but as he stepped off his boat in the New Hebrides he was promptly clubbed and eaten. The competition was on - Cannibals 1, Christianity 0. Soon missionaries from both the English Presbyterian Church the French Catholic Church and were flooding in to the islands. They were followed by British and French settlers, who became frustrated by the lawlessness in a country that neither Britain nor France was willing to adopt as a colony. Finally, after a series of attacks and murders in the New Hebrides committed by both natives and Europeans, and an increasing German presence in the South Pacific, Britain and France agreed to jointly rule the colony. In 1906 the New Hebrides became the first and only place where these two worked together in one colony, and the result was about as awkward as you can imagine.

Ni-Vanuatu (citizens of Vanuatu) I talked with, who lived through this condominium government, said it was all extremely confusing. Instead of actually working together, the British and French competed and doubled up on everything. There were two school systems - one British and one French. Two hospitals, two police forces, two sets of laws, two courts, two postal systems! At one time, the height of flag poles was measured, to make sure the French weren't flying their flag higher then the British or vise-versa. Real confusion came when British insisted on driving on the left while the French drove on the right! I made that last one up (or did I...).

Things finally came to a head in the 1970s when the British were determined to unload the last of their colonies while the French were determined to keep all of theirs. In the end, the British convinced France to pull out of the New Hebrides and the country became independent "Vanuatu" in 1980. The British promptly disappeared, as if they had never been there, leaving a lot of Ni-Vanuatu wondering if the fight for independence had really been a good idea. While France gives some aid to the former colony, things appear much better for nearby New Caledonia which remains a part of the French empire.

Now with a history like that, I knew I'd enjoy myself. But just in case, I also planned to go to the rim of an active volcano, visit to a remote island that all but worships Americans, and take plenty of powerful yet legal narcotics (true story). How could Vanuatu be anything but awesome?

Britain and France, united only by their fear of der German Kaiser Wilhelm II!

Fiji

I know you're supposed to take time to form an educated opinion about a new country, but I was only in Fiji for a week. So, here's what I immediately noticed on my first day in its capital, Suva:

• There are lots of Indians! So many, in fact, that I considered the possibility that Suva was in fact a gateway in space and having visited Suva, I could now claim I've been to India. Sari shops, curry stands, Hindi music, and Bollywood films are everywhere. The tension between Indo-Fijians and Ethnic Fijians is palpable (and the cause of four political coups since Fiji's independence).

• There are no dogs. As I write this in Tonga, there's a dog fight going on in my back yard. In Tonga, livestock, in the form of dog, wanders the street. Hungry? Got a rock and a match? Hunger solved. But then Fiji has something Tonga doesn't: McDonald's...coincidence?

• The people aren't that friendly. But then, it's all relative. Tonga has kept true to its nickname "the Friendly Islands" ever since Captain Cook bestowed it on them in the 1770s. You'd be hard pressed to pass any Tongan on the street without exchanging some form of pleasantry. (as a bonus, I also can't pass a Tongan child who doesn't want to practice/show off his/her English). It's so much the norm that I'm in the habit of saying "hello," waving, or at least nodding my head and raising my eyebrows (Tongan custom) to every person I pass. All's well in Tonga, but in Suva that habit got me treated like an escaped mental patient.

I spent half my week in and around Suva, before heading to the opposite side of the main island and Fiji's second-biggest city, Nadi (pronounced Nan-dee). I bought some snacks for the four-hour bus ride to Nadi, wandering through an actual grocery store in a stunned daze. In Tonga, if I wanted strawberry jam, I would go to the shop that sold strawberry jam and buy the brand of jam they carried. In Suva, I was confronted by half an aisle devoted to jams of all kinds. I wasn't buying jam for the bus, but I still stared at five different brands of strawberry jam and wondered if stepping into a Superstore in Canada would put me into a coma.

And then, in the milk section, I saw something I never though I would. You see, in Tonga, every shop carries the exact same brand of ultra-heat treated ANCHOR regular milk. Many shops put up the free poster that I assume the receive when they order their millionth case of ANCHOR milk. The poster reads "ANCHOR Milk, Which Would You Choose?" With check boxes next to the flavours Chocolate, Strawberry, and Hokey Pokey (and in a cunning display of advertising genius, an additional and checked box labeled "All of them!"). This poster is made of false hope, and is a cruel tease to every Tongan child. "Regular" is the only flavour of milk sold in Tonga.

Now I already know what chocolate and strawberry taste like. But "Hokey Pokey"? Whenever I saw a poster and tried to imagine it, I imagined some flavourful mix of skipping school and playing Twister. And there, in Suva, sat juicebox sized portions of Hokey Pokey milk. I didn't even wait for the bus; I guzzled it as I left the cash register. I wish I could say it tasted like I imagined it would, but it turned out to just be caramel.

Bula bula

So much for finishing Tasmania, that's on hold now that I've arrived in Fiji! It's my first full day in Suva, coincidentally also my birthday (though none of the airport and customs officials noticed). But all I care about is that it's "town day," woo hoo!

I'm staying with a friend from Papua New Guinea at the Marist College. Ashton and I taught together last year, before he returned to Fiji to finish his training to become a priest. He invited me to stay at the college, which has been fantastic and I haven't even been here a day yet. There are about 30 seminarians here, and they're from all over the Pacific. This morning I ate breakfast and spoke French with two seminarians from Vanuatu, one from Wallis, one from New Caladonia, and a visiting priest from Africa. Thank you colonialism!

I came at just the right time - last night, being Friday, was "social night," and I was adopted by the Tongan seminarians to join them for what Tongans do best - eating, and drinking kava. And then, as I mentioned, today is "town day." The first Saturday of every month the seminarians are given $30 each to go wild in Suva. Wild with a 10:30pm curfew, that is. Now I know what you're thinking - how crazy can it get when everyone is training to be a priest? Well I'll have you know, we're going to see Transformers 2, and there's even talk of ice cream. So Fijian mothers, lock up your Fijian daughters! Fifteen minutes and seventy cents from now, the bus will be dropping us off in Suva!

Tasmania

Everything I knew about Tasmania

I knew little about Tasmania, or "Tassie" as the locals called it, before I arrived. But on arriving, the license plate slogans told me everything I needed to know. "Tasmania, Your Natural State," "Tasmania, Your Holiday Isle," "Tasmania, Discover the Possibilities," and "Tasmania, Taste the Rainbow."

Tasmania had been discovered by a Dutch explorer named, big surprise, Abel Tasman. But Tasman wasn't greedy - he had named the island "Van Diemen's Land" to honour Dutch East Indies Governor Anthony van Diemen . I was already familiar with Tasman - he was the first European to set foot on Tonga, where he traded the locals nails and shiny mirrors for all the yams and hogs his ship could hold. He named Tonga "New Amsterdam," a name that might bring Tonga more tourists today had it stuck.

Tasman thought that Van Diemen's Land was part of mainland Australia instead of a massive island. Cook thought the same thing when he visited Tasmania years later and wrote about the native people who would later be hunted down and wiped out by British colonials. But none of this was known to me when my plane landed in the provincial capital city, Hobart.


Hobart was COLD. It was around +eighteen or twenty degrees Celsius, and I was shivering. It was more conformation that, when I step out of the airport in December 2009 in Ottawa, I'll probably drop dead of hypothermia. The harbour city was small and clean, and reminded me a lot of Victoria BC. By coincidence I had arrived the weekend of a big music festival. I had the chance to see Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in concert, an Australian artist a friend had introduced me to a few months earlier. Nick composed the music for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a film I really enjoyed. But the tickets cost more then I could justify, and I stuck with the free events.

After a few hours of wandering and standing, I went in search of a non-crowded pub for a Guinness and supper. In keeping with my navigation style, I was soon completely clueless as to where I was, and that's when I found Knife. Knife, also lost, was from Saudi Arabia, and probably spelled his name different from how it sounded. Ironically I ended up helping him find the homestay he was about to move in to, and I met his new roommates who assumed Knife and I were old friends. Afterward, we went for pizza, picked out gifts for his new homestay family and roommates, and then grabbed some coffee before I called it a night. All in all, a very satisfying first day down under Down Under.


(I got sidetracked with midyear exams and haven't updated this in awhile. But next week I'm taking off for a couple weeks of midyear break to the island countries of Fiji and Vanuatu. I'll try to catch up on Tasmania, which happened about 5 months ago, so I can get back to what's now).