Sam & Ramen
Kava is very much a part of Fijian life and each evening, the Kava ceremony is hosted by one of the departments, so that the guests can try it (and the staff carry on for the next 3 hours anyway!) Bill & Anthony from the F&B dept. hosted our ceremony and they were very kind to us, pouring ‘low tide’ servings for us rather than ‘high tide’ and tsunami’ bowls – all of which have to be drained in one gulp! Considering it is the powdered root of a pepper plant, dissolved in water, it unsurprisingly tastes watery, earthy and with a bitter, peppery aftertaste. It’s meant to be an anti-depressant and does make your lips and tongue numb but we didn’t feel any other side effects. The evening includes music & stories and people from rival villages are allowed to challenge each other to drink huge bowlfuls – rather like rugby drinking games!
Turtle Island operates in a different time zone, a carry-over from the Blue Lagoon filming days, so at 7am (6am real time) we were sat in the first of 3 morning meetings while it was still dark outside. There was a lot going on that we didn’t agree with, but it was the meetings that finally did it for us. They served no other purpose than to provide a venue to interrogate, berate and belittle the staff – even students from the school were subjected to it. We dreaded every morning and felt demoralized – and we didn’t even work for him yet!
The Bush cut-out in the meeting room was even more worrying!So, agreeing that our management philosophies were poles apart, we said our goodbyes on Thursday and hi-tailed it out of there!
