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By Root 873 0

in Fiji, was paid for by a disaster-training project. While we didn’t think it likely that we’d ever end up as ethically challenged as Bill—though who can say for sure?—we nevertheless regarded him as a cautionary tale about the perils of the expatriate life. His kids were lost souls, born on the islands but not of the islands. As the children of expatriates, they didn’t fit into the complex social milieu of Fiji. Nor, having grown up on the islands, did they move comfortably in America. The oldest had returned to Fiji after attending a community college in Hawaii for three months. It was “too stressful,” he said. The only reason Bill subscribed to the International Herald Tribune was so that he could check the box scores for his favorite baseball team, the Cleveland Indians, which I found a little sad.

We didn’t want Lukas to be unduly stressed should fate lead him toward a community college in Hawaii. Indeed, if he didn’t realize that he was very, very lucky to have parents who would send him to community college in Hawaii, then we would have failed in our parental obligations. Our first priority, clearly, was to provide him with a home, and while most of our friends couldn’t quite comprehend our decision to leave Fiji for a country that had evidently lost its mind, geopolitically speaking, the parents among them did.

As we began packing we discovered that we now had stuff. There was a crib, a changing table, and a rocking chair, the beginnings of a household. The rest of our belongings were scooped up by friends in Suva. After much discussion, we decided that we would return to Washington, where we had a concentration of friends and family. It would be different this time, we thought. We weren’t so foolish, however, as to make such a move without first stopping over in Hawaii, where we hoped to ease our transition back to the United States, and possibly check out the community colleges, just in case.

Before we left, Anna invited us to her village for a traditional lovo, a feast cooked in a freshly dug earth oven. Though close to Suva, the village of Wailoko was another world. Inside this hamlet, surrounded by steep, verdant hills, the bustle of Suva seemed distant. Upon our arrival, we were garlanded with flowers. Even Lukas found himself bedecked in a floral necklace. Soon he was being passed from villager to villager, hailed as Ratu Lukas.

“I wonder if he’ll get this kind of attention in the U.S.,” Sylvia mused. “Look, even the ten-year-old boys want to play with him.”

Inside the pit, Anna’s sons had lit a fire, and as the wood burned they added stones to the blaze. A pig had been slaughtered, and when the stones were sufficiently hot, the pork, as well as taro and pumpkin, were wrapped in banana leaves and placed on the rocks. Then dirt was shoveled onto the meal, and as dinner cooked we sat on mats inside Anna’s modest two-room home. On her walls, there were pictures, many of them faded, of all the children she had helped raise over the years.

“You know that money you gave me for Christmas?” Anna said. “I used it to start a business.”

“Really,” I said, feeling very pleased.

“Yes. I bought a sty, and now I make the grog and sell it.”

Anna had entered the moonshine business. We were so proud.

Her extended family was gathered around the kava bowl. I didn’t know when next I’d find myself sitting around a kava bowl, so I savored every bitter shell.

“You don’t have kava in America?” asked Peter, Anna’s oldest son.

“Sadly, no.”

“But I thought you could find everything in America.”

“Not kava, alas.”

We pondered this tragic state of affairs for a moment. I hadn’t left the Pacific yet and already I was beginning to miss it enormously. To spend a few hours clustered around a kava bowl, even one containing Fijian kava, in the company of friends and family had come to exemplify the civilized life for me. Lukas too apparently agreed. He had spent the afternoon in the arms of the village, and now as he descended back to earth, he launched himself like a rocket in diapers, crawling straight for the kava bowl.

Anna