Visit to a Village

We spent the entire week in Beqa Lagoon, the main activity being diving. Picking up the narrative from last week…

Monday and Tuesday, October 17 & 18

From Vatulele we motored over to Yaduca (pronounced Yandutha, go figure), a smaller island that shares the Beqa Lagoon with the larger Beqa Island. In the afternoon we took a snorkel over some pinnacles offshore in the lagoon. Immediately after our snorkel as we were rinsing off aboard Raven, a villager in his boat came by to make sure we planned a sevusevu with his chief. The villages here are very traditional and not touristy and they like to see the proper protocol observed. We assured him that was our plan for the following morning.

As promised, we dinghied ashored Tuesday morning to a spot where the village children were spending the week camping out – some kind of boy scout camp was going on and it appeared they were there to concentrate on learning the ways of traditional Fijian culture. We dragged the dinghy up on the sand beach and one of the adult camp counselors led us along a lengthy track paved with large black rocks to guide us to his village, serving up a natural history lesson as we went, pointing out different plants and their uses.

We met the chief (named Moses) and for the first time performed a sevusevu with kava served – prepared in a big plastic bowl balanced on a toy tire! The powder (made from the roots of the kava plant) was mixed into water in the bowl, and then served to each of us in a half coconut shell. It doesn’t taste quite like mud (as we had heard) but wasn’t far off…and left the tongue feeling somewhat numb and fuzzy. As we accepted each cup of kava, we clapped once and then drank the entire contents in one long gulp, after which everyone clapped several more times. Between servings (three) we chatted and visited with the chief and several men from the village, repeating the same procedure for each round.

I am getting more comfortable with these ceremonies and village visits, primarily because the people are so friendly and relaxed that is is easy to chat with them. The sevusevu ceremony is important to their traditions as the polite way to ask permission to anchor, swim and otherwise hang out in the village’s territorial waters; but also it is a very social occasion giving the residents an opportunity to hear something new and different from the outside world.

Each time we walk into (and out of) a village, everyone who spots us – women, children and men – all call out “Bula!” from wherever they may be, and we all call out “Bula!” in return. The kids follow us around giggling and it is always a very successful ploy to snap their photos with the digital camera and then let them see the resulting snapshot on the camera’s LCD viewscreen. If we stay in one spot long enough, we print out the photos on our little photo printer and give the prints to the village.

When our visit came to an end, our guide led us back to our dinghy on the beach. We did a little grocery shopping on the way. We had asked to buy some coconuts and breadfruit from the village, so he took us on a detour to the gardens, plucked a breadfruit and then scaled straight up a coconut tree to the top from where he threw down four green coconuts. Returning to earth, he husked and cracked open the first coconut and we all drank the juice inside which is clear and very thirst-quenching. Then we cracked open the inner nut and ate the coconut jelly inside – although that had to wait until we reached the beach as we needed shells to serve as our spoons.

Back at our dinghy we noticed quite a lot more sand than usual in the bottom of the boat, and when we came aboard Raven we learned the reason. Mike had stayed behind to keep tabs on Raven and work on some computer project or other – and watching the beach saw that as soon as we had disappeared out of sight the kids had a great time playing in the dinghy – rocking it about and waving the paddles around – apparently on a voyage through heavy seas.

Tuesday afternoon’s activity was a scuba dive on the same pinnacles as the day before. This time, with sunshine beaming down on us and tanks to enable us to stay under and see the sights, the pinnacles with their soft corals were absolutely beautiful. Beqa is apparently the soft coral capital of the world – these are very brightly colored reds, pinks, lavenders, yellows and on and on – I saw a white with brown spots rather like an appaloosa! Combined with lots of gorgonian fans and clouds of orange and lavender anthias fish swirling in the currents, it created quite a fairytale landscape.

And at the end of the day, our coconut expedition paid off with tropical drinks at cocktail hour, a mix of rum, pineapple juice and coconut juice served in chilled coconut husks with straws poking out. A festive conclusion to a full day.