worldconnection

I traveled with my family to Fiji and refused to stay at a neatly packaged resort. With the tropical, coconut laden surrounds, I could easily substitute Hawaii for Fiji if the friendly ‘Aloha!’ replaced the friendly ‘Bula!’. Instead, we spent three nights at a village homestay in the Namatakula village on the Coral Coast of Viti Levu. Through food, we understood Fijian culture.
Fijian lawns have a metal rod with a tapered tip protruding from the earth, the sole purpose of which is to open coconuts. A friend of the family gave us all a lesson in selecting a ripe coconut from the tree and opening methods. When the metal rod isn’t handy, machetes are, and even young children are adept at using them. Patience and skill are abundant here.
One evening, the children led us down to the ocean for a swim. While enjoying the water, one boy began collecting large clumps of seaweed to be cooked for the next night’s dinner. They take most of what they need from the plantations they've created in the village and the sea, which has an abundance of fish, crabs, seaweed, and octopus. Self-sufficiency is not only a virtue here, but a necessity.
Kava ceremonies bring neighbors together in the evenings; we all partook in the half-coconut cup of slightly alcoholic muddy water, our tongues slightly numbed from its effects. Community abounds, for the betterment of the village as a whole.
Lunches are rice with curried scrambled eggs, onions, peas and carrots, or curried potatoes with rotis handmade by a daughter-in-law (who rarely makes an appearance outside of the kitchen). Fruit—papaya, lady finger bananas, mango—all from the plantation on the property, is plentiful at each meal. Hard work within the extended family unit is a woman’s task that is rewarded with care in her later years.
Live crabs from the sea cooked with fresh coconut milk and chopped onions is a meal that lingers, emblazoned in my taste buds as much as the experience is emblazoned in my memory.