Getting Stoned With Savages - J. Maarten Troost [85]
“I don’t think so,” Sylvia told me. “It’s, what, ninety-five degrees today?”
“It’s a little toasty,” I agreed.
“And I’m eight months pregnant.”
“Indeed you are.”
“Well, I could waddle up and down sand dunes in the blistering sun. Or I could turn the air conditioning on and have a nap. Not much of a choice for me. So I’ll see you later. Have fun.”
I drove our little Toyota a few miles down toward the dunes, nearly colliding with an errant cow. It made driving the Queen’s Road particularly exciting, knowing that around every curve there might lurk an eight-hundred-pound ruminant. I parked the car in the shade near the ranger’s station and began marching up the wooded incline. The air reeked of burning rubbish from the nearby town dump. What was it about dumps in Fiji? I wondered. Why would anyone place a burning town dump beside one of the most important archeological sites in the Pacific? As I crested the hillside and emerged from the woods my nostrils burned and my eyes watered from the smoke. Really, I thought, they should just appoint me emperor of Fiji and we’d have a swift end to such things. Despite the burning air, I paused to read the information plaques in front of various trees. One in particular I found notable. It was for a small tree called a vau, which among its uses included: “An infusion of the leaves is also given as a tonic to mothers after childbirth to prevent a relapse.”
A relapse? Like a relapse of shingles? Then it occurred to me that this was a very sensitive way of saying that the ancient Fijians used contraceptives.
I moseyed on and finally encountered the dunes. Rising more than a hundred feet, sand dunes of these dimensions are not typical of the South Pacific. In this case, however, the Sigatoka River lay a few miles distant, and over an eon or two, it had carried sediment toward the ocean. The freshwater prevented coral from forming, and the waves pushed the sediment back toward the beach, where the wind had carved it into the massive dunes found today.
I stepped onto the sand, and soon I was madly hopping about—hot, hot, hot. Though I was wearing sandals, the sand was scalding. Clearly, marching up sand dunes on a hot, sunny afternoon in Fiji was not the wisest thing to do. Hurts, hurts, hurts. I sprinted up the face of the dune. It was agonizing. At the top, where wind swept in over the ocean, the sand was tolerable to stand on, and I spent a moment fanning my feet. Looking down, I saw something. Could it be? It was about a foot long, alabaster white, broad and tapered at the ends. As I stumbled down the dune I noticed that the object was sharp with serrated edges. Was this an artifact? Had I stumbled across some ancient relic? I picked it up. Should I just leave it there, I wondered, and inform an expert of my find? They’d probably want to arrange a dig in this spot. But if I just left it there, the wind would soon cover it with sand, and this, this…find might be lost forever.
After much deliberation, I carried it back with me toward the beach. Who had been the last person to use this implement? I wondered. A chief? A cannibal? Was this perhaps used to carve human flesh? I followed the path along the beach. A stiff breeze whipped up whitecaps on the ocean. An arrow pointed me toward a trail leading back to the road. I noticed a man studiously reading a plaque in front of what appeared to be a very unremarkable tree.
“Look what I found,” I said with giddy enthusiasm. “What do you think it might be?”
He took it in his hands and pondered it for a moment. “It’s a cuttlefish,” he said in a thick Scottish brogue.
Great, I thought. Just when I needed one, I had run into a Scottish naturalist.