Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [20]
“You're so remote out here in the jungle. Do you not find yourself,” I ask him as we go, “wanting things from the outside world?” Would he not like a television, for example?
Sensible question. I mean, he can see how much fun we're having making the show. Who wouldn't want to set their TiVo to watch this debacle every week?
After a moment's thought he shakes his head. “No.”
“So you've never seen television?”
“No. We have no TV, no radio either.”
“That's unbelievable. So what do you sit and stare at each evening?”
“Stare?” he asks, not even amused. “We don't stare. We don't like TV. We like the life.” And without offering specifics, he walks on.
To the naked eye, the Yakel garden is a lush and shambolic but quite unspoiled wilderness on the banks of a chuckling stream. Sadly, I'm not a botanist (And I'd be grateful if you'd stop telling people I am. Tank yu.), so quite honestly I have no idea what the trees here might be: Mulberry? Banana? A pandanus or two? Not a clue. It's certainly beautiful, though. Serene, sunny, extremely green, and … a mess.
Every day, the men of the tribe come down here, take out their machetes, and harvest fruits, vegetables and … something else. Something very special. A root I've never heard of before today, called Piper methysticum. Popularly known as kava.
Kava is Polynesian chloroform, part of the black pepper family, a distant cousin of the coca plant, and the angry ex-wife of marijuana. Apparently, it's either chewed or mixed with water, then drunk to combat stress and anxiety, treat cramps, or chase away migraines. Or you can just get stoned on it—your choice.
Captain Cook himself was high on kava during his visit to these islands in Historical Times.1 Even Pope John Paul II, who built a reputation on issuing broad statements of Christian policy so retrogressive in nature that they made sense only if you were totally wasted, was given kava when he came to the South Pacific years ago. Also, anyone who's ever stopped by Fiji on vacation has probably tried the commercial variety that's sold in bottles. But that's Fiji. Here in Yakel they don't have a commercial variety, it seems. Theirs is hard core, the real thing, no decaf. Pulped up into a liquid and drunk, it allegedly opens up a mystical bridge to the supernatural, putting you in touch with the spirits. According to tradition, kava is consumed only by the men of the tribe. It's their way of relaxing after … well, after a long day of relaxing.
“Here,” Tom announces, diving into the undergrowth and pouncing on a clump of heart-shaped leaves, which he quickly tears aside. “This is kava.”
After another little search, he picks up a tree branch off the ground, whittles it to a point, and hands to me.
“What do I do with this?”
Do?
For a few moments, the words just kind of hang in the air like damp washing.
Then the penny drops.
Oh no! No, no, no. Are you crazy? I don't dig, I'm sorry.
But this is TV. And I'm afraid on TV there's a rule: The host must participate in all activities whether he wants to or not. So, egged on by Eric and both Marks, I crouch and with great reluctance start hacking away at the soil.
Kava—same as most Stephen Sondheim musicals—doesn't yield its fruits without a struggle. First you must find it—and, as I said, in a garden as haphazard as this it could be anywhere—then you must disinter it, but carefully, because the roots, where the narcotic compounds lie, are fragile and snap easily.
“Dig down!” Tom urges after watching me get nowhere for a while.
“I am digging down,” I snap back, scratching feverishly at the ground with my stick. “Look at me! There's nothing here.”
It's no use. Whatever soil I manage to extract from the hole just rolls right back in again. It's like having an expensive mortgage. I'm spending all my time paying off the interest, making no inroads into the principal. This is my Sunday in the Park with George.
“Use the stick.