Getting Stoned With Savages - J. Maarten Troost [27]
“Never,” Dirk replied. “There is no kava in Holland. And there is no kava in the U.S., so I won’t go there either.”
Patricia rolled her eyes and sighed. Possibly an issue here, I thought. It was a curious reason for not going to Holland, of course. Never before had I heard anyone decry the lack of good narcotics as a reason for avoiding the Netherlands.
Dirk parked the car on the side of a dirt road, and we followed a narrow path to a clearing on a ridge overlooking the harbor. There was a breathtaking view of Iririki Island, surrounded by sailboats and the resort’s catamarans. Farther on lay Ifira Island, home of the landowners who owned most of Port Vila, and even from a distance, the island exuded a prosperity not typically found on offshore islands in Vanuatu.
“What a stunning view,” I said.
“It’s even better after a few shells of kava,” Dirk added.
In traditional Ni-Vanuatu culture, the nakamal is sacred ground. It is where inspiration is found for elaborate dances and rituals. It is where a man goes to speak with an ancestor or two. It is not a place for women. Until fairly recently, on many islands, if a woman stumbled into a nakamal, she would be punished by death. This is because women are impure. On this point, most cultures agree. From Eve onward, women have always been designated the impure ones. I’ve always found this curious. Compared to what? Nero? Attila the Hun? Dick Cheney? Me? They must be very impure indeed. Even more tragically, from a traditional Ni-Vanuatu point of view, the kava too would have to be discarded, and the men would have to wait a long time, upwards of twenty minutes, for the boys to chew and masticate another batch of kava roots. Things have changed, of course. Women are no longer killed for sullying the nakamal with their presence, though very often the kava would still be tossed.
In Port Vila, however, which is not at all like the rest of Vanuatu, no one even pretends that the nakamal is somehow holy ground. They are simply kava bars, and many will happily serve women, particularly foreign women, who are not bound by island tradition. The nakamal that Dirk had selected consisted of a corrugated tin shed and a couple of dusty wooden benches standing on a ridge overlooking the harbor. A half-dozen Ni-Vanuatu men sat there contentedly, now and then emitting a murmur or a great hork of phlegm.
“So what will it be?” Dirk asked. “Low tide or high tide?”
“Whatever you’re having,” I said confidently. I like to think that, when it comes to intoxicants, I can hold my own with just about anyone. Now and then, of course, this assumption has proven to be false, and I find myself keeled over, begging for mercy, as men with names like Ivan and Vladimir insist on just one more toast. But this was kava. Everyone in the South Pacific drinks kava, I figured, and based on my experience with it in Tonga, I saw no reason to be wary. Dirk asked the proprietor of the shed for two half-shells for the women and two full shells for us manly men. On the outer islands, a shell would be a coconut shell. But here in sophisticated Port Vila, our kava was served up in a glass cereal bowl. The proprietor dipped the bowls into a plastic bucket brimming with kava, and we brought them back to where Sylvia and Patricia stood.
“It doesn’t look very appetizing,” Sylvia said. “It looks like muddy water.”
“Wait till you taste it,” Patricia added. “You’ll wish it was muddy water.”
Clearly, this was different from drinking wine. With kava, one didn’t admire its lush hue, or revel in its aromatic bouquet, or note the complex interplay of oak and black currant. This was more like heroin. Its consumption was something that was to be endured. The effect was everything. What concerned me, however, was not the taste but the possibility that this bowl of swirling brown liquid may have had as one of its essential ingredients the spit of unseen boys, which, frankly, I found a little off-putting.
“That’s the best way to prepare kava,” Dirk said. “It’s very strong that way.