It’s been rainy and windy the past two days, so we’ve pretty much been sitting it out on Charisma. But…today the villagers decided to have the yachties in for a kava party. Even though there’s a fair amount of kava consumption on a household basis, they only do this as a large group a few times a year so it’s a real event here. Everyone gets together in one of the larger huts. You sit cross-legged on a large woven mat on the floor and over the first half hour or so the room fills up with people. It starts with maybe 10 or so and by the end of the first hour there’re easily 40 or more, plus us yachties. There’s music, singing, dancing and of course the kava. It’s a relaxing way to spend the afternoon and a lot of fun.

Kava parties start small but before long the room is packed.

Making the brew.

The ceremony of kava drinking is always interesting to be part of. There’s a mixer who sits by the bowl – in this case, it’s one of the large ones, about two feet across – where he mixes the kava and pours it into the coconut bowls. There’s a separate person who is in charge of passing the kava around the room. He or sometimes she takes the drinking bowl from the mixer, passes it around the room one at a time, always in the same order. Each time someone receives the bowl he or she says “Bula”, claps once, receives the bowl and then returns it whereupon he claps three times and says “Vinaka” or one of several other approved words of thanks. The words vary depending on the formality of the occasion or place, but it’s essentially the same and there’s a serenity in the knowledge that you are part of a ceremony that is hundreds of years old.

Aside from the ceremony as I mentioned there’s the music. Six or seven of the villagers sat in a circle and played ukuleles, guitars and a loli or type of drum. It is beautiful Polynesian -type music and their singing voices are lovely. It’s also pretty funny when we “trade” songs. First they sing one they we yachties sing one. First there’s the lovely Polynesian melody and then we sing something like “Sloop John B” since that’s one of the few songs we all sort of know. Then they sing another song and we sing “Home on the Range”. Very funny and mildly embarrassing comparing our lame attempts with their lovely music. But they are as much entertained by our attempts as we are enthralled by their rhapsodies.

Much music, dancing and silliness. You can tell Ann by her tattoo.

Toward the end of the afternoon we were all presented with lovely necklaces that they made for us. We each had one put around our necks and tied in the back. I’ve never seen ones like these before and will put a picture of them up when we’re back, but they are basically bouquet of flowers about three inches across tied at the neck with a piece of tapa cloth that goes around back of the neck. Very unique in our travels to date.

Our necklaces.

And the finale of the afternoon which was unexpected was a feast that they somehow prepared during the party. We were not going to stay since it was getting near dark and we needed 45 minutes to get back to the boat as we are anchored in another bay away from the usual village anchorage. We told Tai – the host – that we needed to get going and thanking him, etc and he responded in the usual Fijian way,”OK, but first, you stay for dinner”. In other words, we had no say in the matter and were staying. OK. Fortunately he was sensitive to the fact we would have to dinghy back a couple miles through motus, reefs and whatnot and let the three boatloads of us who had to go back to the sandspit anchorage eat first and leave while it was light. The other six or so boats stayed until later and got back to their boats after dark, but they only had to make it 100 yards out from the beach.

We had prepared for darkness and had a flashlight and brought a portable VHF radio in case of problems, but we really quite lucky we were adamant about the need to depart the party and timed it just right. We got back at last light and within 10 minutes it was so dark we could not have seen. With no moon, even the flashlight would have only lit the way for 50 meters or so. Phew!

So…the weather looks to be lifting tomorrow so hopefully we’ll be able to get back to our water sports and general exploring and not be boat bound. Saturday I’m going fishing with the village men to catch (hopefully) fish for the Sunday feast. We’ll see how that goes.