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A Trip to the Kava Bar and the Village of Tanoliu, Vanuatu
Leitau Harry and Pony in Tanoliu, Efate Island
For those who worry about trying Kava in Vanuatu, my experience is everybody made a much bigger deal out of it than it actually was. The staff at the Havannah Resort warned me not to have more than one cup of Kava and that two cups of Kava might be pushing it. As it turned out, it mostly made me a bit sick to my stomach but I didn’t get the high or euphoric reaction I had been expecting.
We sat on a wooden bench under a makeshift lean-to of sorts with a dirt floor, waiting for Lietau’s son to finish mixing the Kava. Lietau Harry has 4 sons and hails from the island of Tanna. She came to Efate Island to teach secondary school, and met her future husband, Charlie, in the village of Tanoliu. After raising a family, and she is now a grandmother, Lietau went to work at the Havannah Resort in housekeeping.
Elizabeth Weintraub at the Clam Shells, Tanoliu
She walks to work from the village of Tanoliu down a blacktop road along the beach, and then veers off on a dirt path that takes her to the resort. They say it’s a 10-minute walk, but at our pace it was about 30 minutes. Along the way Lietau showed me pummelos, mangoes, coconuts, avocados, oranges and bananas growing on the other side of the road. If I heard her correctly, her husband’s brother is chief of the village.
When her son finished mixing the Kava, I asked him how much I should pay. 55 Vatu. I had only American money, so I handed him a dollar. He turned it around and examined the paper. He was a quiet for a few minutes, then asked: how much is this in Vatu? About 100 Vatu. He was OK with that, I told him to keep the change and he handed me the cup of Kava. He has actual glass cups shaped like the kind that used to come with punch bowl sets, but no handles. Maybe they were dessert bowls. I had been expecting the Kava in a coconut shell but some places don’t serve it that way, I guess.
Leitau’s son on their horse
The water was a muddy brown, nothing at all like the Kava I saw him chopping up earlier. The Kava itself is sort of a light yellow root. Lietau was gracious enough to take me to her family home, which is situated high up a hill and was a bit of a climb. All of her sons and their families live below in handmade huts. The kitchen is typically separate from the house and consists of a tower of stones, a pile of fire-starting material made from dried fronds, a mat they used for dining, and the structure is encased in chicken wire with a tin roof.
Peter Harry Kickboxing
There is not much electricity; no live TV, they gather around an oil lamp at night. Lietau and Charlie’s son, Peter, which they pronounce Petah, built his own kickboxing and workout area. Part of it includes a log planted upright in the dirt with bars made from wood and attached perpendicular. After he twirls around and kicks the bag secured to the log, he then pumps his arms up and down between the bars for strength. He won a bronze medal in Port Vila. Says he is “maybe 21,” when I ask and shoots a help-me-glance at his mom.
They have a horse they keep across the road on the side of the ocean, and a pony is tied up in the yard. Of course, they raise chickens and Charlie showed me their stash of chicken eggs in the nest. Lietau continued to warn me that I should watch where I was walking because if I hurt myself, I still needed to walk all the way back to Havannah Resort. I wondered if she had this problem before where a guest had injured herself and could not leave. I could think of worse places to be laid up, that’s for sure. This place was paradise.
Freshly cut coconut
On the way to the Kava Bar, Lietau asked one of her sons to climb the coconut tree and gather us a few coconuts. He handed his mother his music device and earplugs and darted across the street. I was amazed at how quickly he scooted up the tree. It was as though his arms simply pulled him up and his legs ran around the trunk. He tossed 3 coconuts to the road. Lietau cut them open with a huge butcher knife, slicing the sides at a diagonal until she got down to the skin.
This was young coconut, not the dried brown type. Once we got to the skin, Lietau cut off the top revealing a small hole and handed me the coconut. The water wasn’t as coconut-ty as I expected but it was a refreshing drink in the heat. I drank about half of it and handed the coconut back to Lietau, who finished it off. Then she cut it in half and used a piece of coconut shell to scoop out the flesh, which we also ate. It, too, wasn’t really like a coconut but instead more almond-like.
Lietau’s granddaughter Sarah
Her granddaughter Sarah grabbed a big chunk of it, and soon her face was covered in coconut, with pieces of the flesh stuck to her legs. Sarah has the longest eyelashes I’ve ever seen on a little girl. She’s gonna knock ’em out when she grows up. Lietau thought nothing of handing the toddler her butcher knife to put away. I wanted to jump up from the mat and help her but instead thought otherwise. Not really my place. I was a guest and a very fortunate guest at that.
Family washing clothes in the river, Tanoliu
We walked down to the river to visit Lily washing clothes. Lily also works in housekeeping at Havannah Resort. It was more like a private pond in the middle of the water. Children swam while Lily and her family pounded clothing. They had backed a pickup truck down by the river to load up the clothing after the family finished washing. It was pretty much a weekly ordeal. I met a gorgeous woman there and asked if I could take her photograph. At first she was shy and somewhat reluctant. I explained that she was beautiful and deserved to be captured in a photo for eternity. Her eyes lit up, and I could see the proudness in her soul emerge and begin to shine. It was a moment that almost made me cry.
Beautiful woman at the river, Tanoliu, Efate Island
Glancing back at the women washing clothes, I saw them eyeing me suspiciously like what in the world was I doing? Back at the Kava hut, Lietau’s son handed me the glass of Kava. Lietau grabbed my camera to take a photo. Her son decided to get in on the action, too, and he raised his cellphone. I stood there in the dirt trying not to dribble any of the brown water down the front of my shirt and downed the drink in one huge gulp. It didn’t taste bad. Not at all like I was prepared for. A little minty, there was a certain tingle, numbness to the Kava, and a bit of an aftertaste that seemed quite suitable. I think I shocked my new friends by my reaction. They clapped.
Downing the Kava in Tanoliu, Efate Island
Did I want water? No, but I’d take another Kava. They suggested I sit for a few minutes to determine how I would ultimately react. I noticed Lietau looking at me strangely. Was my face in some kind of contortion, I wondered, of which I was unaware? Nope, she wanted to know what the front of my shirt read. It read: Do I Look Like a People Person To You? I shared a story about this shirt, which is one of my favorite t-shirts. How I had been walking through a department store in downtown Sacramento and a stranger approached me to say, Why, Yes, you do. I forgot I was wearing the shirt. I do WHAT? I asked. You look like a people person, the woman responded. Well, F-You, I replied, because I’m not. I just said it because I am a smart aleck. But this story with its abrupt ending sent Lietau and her son into fits of laughter. They found it very funny and endeared themselves to me even more.
Even after my second drink of Kava, I still didn’t feel anything weird. It was near the dinner hour, and Lietau walked me back to the resort. I wouldn’t have found the way by myself, so maybe there was something to the Kava after all.
Swimming with a Dugong Beats Finding Nemo in Vanuatu
Dugong, by Big Stock Photo
Just to see a Florida manatee up-close in the wild of the Everglades last year was a treat, but imagine how it feels to be swimming alongside a sea mammal (sometimes confused with the manatee), called the dugong in Vanuatu. You can tell the difference between manatee and dugong, which are related to the elephant, by the shape of the tail. The dugong tail is shaped like a whale’s. But I wasn’t on a hunt for dugong. For a good two hours, I had been snorkeling west of the The Havannah Resort, cruising along clusters of coral admiring the colorful fish, often stopping to float in circles above brain coral. I was on a hunt to find Nemo.
Anemone fish such as clownfish are all over Havannah Harbor by the docks, which is located on the northwestern side of Efate Island. I spotted so many varieties of beautifully hand-painted-by-nature reef fish I lost count. Mostly blue and yellow assortments of butterfly fish but also tons of damselfish and angel fish in almost every color imaginable, except the danged orange with the 3 white stripes, bordered in black.
This is what happens sometimes when I give myself a goal. The goal for yesterday was “find Nemo.” I begin to feel a bit disappointed if I don’t accomplish the goal and feel even more driven to continue the search until I am successful, regardless of how much time it takes or how exhausted I might become. It becomes a mission. I have passions for missions, which is why I make a darned good Sacramento REALTOR. I just don’t give up until my mission is completed.
My husband has another name for this affliction.
If a client tells me he wants me to do the impossible, then that’s what I do. I love challenges and adventures. This was an adventure — trying to find Nemo. Like the late Harry Chapin wisely stated: it’s the going, not the getting there, meaning it’s the journey, not the destination. Along the way to find Nemo, I discovered brilliant blue coral, in addition to a striking deeply blue starfish. He was draped over a small rock as though he had been out drinking all night and had tried to crawl home to a bigger rock but only made it as far as this tiny rock and said to himself, “oh, what the hell, good as place as any to crash,” and collapsed.
I also saw giant cucumbers, studied coral breathing in and out and swam over a 3-foot moray eel that I first mistook for a braided rope, and then freaked out a little. Small yellow fish, large purple fish, tiny black-and-white striped anemones, I finned my way through thousands of irridescent slivers of blue — it felt like an underwater Disneyland-ish acid trip. What was that 10 yards away? A giant F-ing creature. Was I hallucinating? It looked like the back of a small whale, creamy in color with a splattering of darker age spots like that which dots the face of Art Linkletter.
From my underwater view, it seemed to have poked its nose up along the top of the water.
I quickly stuck my head out of the water and tugged off my mask. There was nothing anywhere; I spun in a circle, put my mask back on and swam in the direction I last saw it. Had I been snorkeling for so long that I’m beginning to imagine dolphins or whales? The creature was huge, the size of a sofa, and then I came upon its shimmering body again.
Eureka.
Well, I was assured nothing in the water would hurt me unless I touched a lionfish, and this was not a lionfish, so I followed and swam almost alongside until the dugong swam faster and out to sea.
And this is how I ended up in Japan. Swimming with a dugong. Well, it’s what could have happened if I didn’t have the good sense to pull back. Sometimes you find something else when you’re on a mission that takes you off track and pulls you in a different direction, and that’s typically just as well, and it might even be better. The staff tells me I am fortunate and that most people who come to Havannah Harbor in Vanuatu will never see a dugong.
