Coin of the Realm

This is kava.  Some kind of root that you pound into paste, steep in hot water and then filter through an old tee shirt or the equivalent.  It's the national drink of Fiji.  Apparently it is a slight narcotic, invoking a relaxed and lethargic state.  I say 'apparently' because I have not had the opportunity to partake yet.  I don't need kava to be relaxed and lethargic.

However, it is the price you pay to anchor outside any village.  You need to go ashore and present a gift of kava to the chief in a ceremony called 'sevusevu'.  At such time you can also present him with other gifts such as fishing line and hooks, reading glasses, batteries, flip-flops, staples such as rice and sugar.  Cruisers have compiled lists of acceptable gifts over the years.  He will approve of your gifts (or eat you - the last recorded case of cannibalism in Fiji was in the 1970's I've been told) and give you permission to anchor in his waters.

Most of the time you have to share a kava bowl with the chief and the village.  Not really looking forward to that.

However, if Mother Nature doesn't relent I may not have to worry.  A brief window of decent weather and then high winds starting on Thursday.  There is a prediction that a cyclone may form over Fiji this weekend.  The good news is that by the time it ramps up it will be past us.