Community Spirit

On a Wednesday all government run services including the hospital staff, police, firemen, waterboard & prison officers meet to play volleyball and rugby against eachother. There is a great atmosphere and they are very willing to involve us in their short competitive matches. There are always plenty of laughs.

 It tends to end however with Rach befriending and playing games with all the staff members children instead! They find us both intriguing, love showing off their handstands and gym moves to impress us and it seems greatly enjoy touching Rach! 

Teaching/attempting to teach Rach Fijian pat a cake games

They made Rach a meke skirt & tried to get
 her to dance like a Fijian... Cue hip wiggling.

On our first time there after a longgggg game of duck duck goose with the kids, we were invited in for a drinking session in the police station ! ( which doesn’t seem right) This was our first taste of kava or “grog” as they like to call it. This is basically bowls of muddy water which has sedative properties, made from the root of a Kava plant. It is a traditional Fijian drink which is the centre of all of their social events. Everyone sits in a circle cross legged around a large wooden bowl and in turn are passed a coconut shell of muddy water to down in turn. As we were Kava virgins we had to request “low tide” or “teaspoon” portions instead of the Fijian “high tide”, although our bowls were getting increasingly more full over the 3 hours we were there.

 There is lots of clapping and conversation, whilst a number of underlying rules are in play such as who drinks after guests, (and most importantly who drinks after a women has drank! ) who sits at the bowl, the number of claps etc. After a few sessions we are still a little confused by it all! But it was all good fun with them even turning it into a Fijian drinking game, and we left a little tired and with very numb tongues.