While at the resort, we met a Kiwi, Allen Neilson, who has been living in the village adjacent to the resort for a couple of months. Allen is working with the village to build an eco-park, which he intends to be a model for his sustainable-living design concept (similar to the “living roof” at the SF Academy of Sciences), and also a source of tourist income for the villagers. He is a horticulturist by training, and his ideas for the eco-park includes structures made of living and growing flora planted and trained in the footprint of the building. He showed us the location where he and the villagers had planted the initial rubber-tree “posts” which he hopes will sprout and create walls of vegetation. Other ideas of his include a café run by solar stoves, collecting methane from the sanitary systems, and more. We suggested he also include water filtration concepts, such as point-of-use filtration systems.
Allen had befriended a local named Simon, who invited us to his home, where he offered us our first taste of Kava. Kava is a traditional social Fijian drink made from the Waka root. It’s supposedly a mild depressant that tastes earthy and leaves a slight numbing sensation on your tongue and throat. The traditional Sevusevu ceremony includes sitting in a circle around the Kava bowl (tanoa), and when handed a bowl (bilo) of Kava you must clap once, say “bula”, drink up, and then clap three times. We enjoyed our numb tongues while Simon recounted a moderately incoherent story about his village chief’s forefather who apparently was a ruthless cannibal who refused to stop practicing cannibalism, and was consequently banished from his tribe. The locals laughed as Deborah’s eyes grew wide at the embellished tale. Meanwhile, Justin comfortably chatted away with the family, enjoying getting to know our new friends.
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