by Sally Hammond

I had happily accepted this invitation to the village for lunch. After all, what an honour, to be invited into someone's home to share lunch - in this case a lovo (an earth-pit cooked feast) and see first-hand how people live outside of 'resort-land', all that many tourists to Fiji get to experience.

And I am doing pretty well, I  think, making small talk with the adults, getting the kids to grin for the camera, that sort of thing. And now, suddenly one of those gap-toothed cherubs is right in front of me, beaming shyly, carefully holding half a coconut shell of dirty dishwater (or that's what it looks like) and expecting me to drink it.

I'd watching one of the menfolk mixing the brew. Two small paper packets of ground yaqona (pronounced yankona) would just about do our fairly reticent group of kava-swilling neophytes, he estimated. Carefully he placed the powder that had been previously ground from the dried roots of a bush belonging to the pepper family, in a nylon bag and  swilled it around to mix it into the water in the kava bowl. A sort of mega-teabag.

The solemn-eyed child is waiting, offering me the first bowl of kava.

Every family has one of the kava bowls too, hollowed from hardwood with small legs. They're basic to village life. Of course our 'bartender' needed to taste the brew a few times to get the ratio right, but finally he was smiling, whether from the quality or effect of the potion, I couldn't tell.

Kava is drunk as a social adjunct - much as the mandatory glass of champers precedes the dinner party. It is offered solemnly and with generosity. It is not cheap by local wages standards (a kilo is worth A$25 and may be ground into many small packets which can easily be swallowed by a group in an evening) but the intrinsic value is much more: it is a sign of acceptance and cameraderie.

The solemn-eyed child was still offering me the first bowl full of kava. It was just a half coconut shell full (it could have been a wash basin full for all I cared ) but I hadn't seen it coming, there had been no time to plead for just a taste, and I had been singled out (my age maybe? my gender?) as the principal guest, the one honoured enough to get the first taste - and I could see my friends were not at all envious. The quantity seem immense and I did it all wrong. I didn't clap once before I gingerly sipped it, or three times after. I didn't say bula. I didn't drink it all at once, as I should have.

I failed miserably in this crash course in Fijian Social Interaction 101. But my new friends, this courteous Fijian village family, forgave my inadequacies. As we sat together on the newly woven mat, eating fish and chicken and local plants with our fingers, there was a sense of closeness, despite my kava-klutz behaviour.

Maybe, just maybe - no promises - next time I might just drain the bowl in one courteous grateful gulp.