The barcrew help Mo on his way to becoming an honorary Fijian.

But that was not to be. I couldn't find a damn flight there! The flights for the Christmas high season were all booked up. I tried all the internet sites, to no avail. So as a last resort I went to a travel centre and spoke to a woman named Katie, an old girlfriend of a mate in Brisbane. Maybe she could work it a little and get me there? After a half hour of fruitless searching though, thoughts began to creep in that perhaps I wouldn't be going anywhere near Thailand. But I most definitely didn't want to spend X-mas and New Years in sleepy Brisbane, that's for sure. I wanted to party. But where?

I was racking my brains for something cheap. Byron Bay? Noosa? I was even actually thinking of going to Surfer's Paradise (just way too cheesy) to party it up. C'mon, there had to be some fun going on there. But that's when I noticed, on the cluttered wall directly behind Katie, a travel mag. On the cover was a big brown dude exploding out some warm-looking, lime green water. He was built like a freight train, had a big smile on his face, a flower on the right side of his ear. He seemed as if he had just had an orgasm! Where the hell is this? The title was in bright yellow, thick, flowery type: "Fiji."

Hmm. Maybe I should give that a try?

So I asked Katie, catching her slender fingers in mid-step, chatting on her wireless headset to an unnamed individual. "Fee-Jee? You want to try something in Fee-Jee?" She said in that thick Australian strine. "Ah, I think I might be able to stir something up. There's a place called Beachcomber that I've been hearing about, apparently it's quite a party place."

I shrugged my shoulders and told her to check it out. And after less than 25 minutes of searching, I got a trip – cheap! For just around 1000 dollars American I could get a flight from Oz to Fiji and back, have 14 days of accommodation, including 2 nights on the mainland. Included in the price were the meals served to you 3 times a day, your bunk in a huge, open-air dormitory, and some snorkeling gear if you wanted it. Pretty damn good I'd say, especially for their high season of X-mas and New Years. I felt pretty satisfied with a price like that. Especially when I knew that if I would've booked this trip back home in New York I would've been raped!

But there was a little doubt in the back of my mind. I was totally going into this blind, something I don't normally do. I had friends that had gone to Fiji before, but never really heard of anything called Beachcomber Island. Never even heard Fiji was a party place. The people that I knew in New York who went there were on either their honeymoon, or working for the Red Cross doing relief work. It sounded like a place for couples, or for disaster relief. But Katie said it was quite a good joint, even though she had never been there herself. Hmm. Though initially nervous, after purchasing everything I went out and bought a guidebook on the country. And soon found out that Beachcomber was the party island of Fiji!

Right up my alley.

"You know we thought you were Fijian your first night on the island," Duke said.

He was the bass player of the Beachcomber Boys, the band that played on the island. Duke was a big guy, with a large gut. He had a rather happy face that always smiled, wearing a small afro as well. (I found out that was quite a tradition in Fiji.) The Beachcomber Boys had a repertoire of around a dozen songs that they continually played throughout the day, most of them quite slow, and a few very annoying. The one I couldn't stand the most was Lionel Richie's "Hello." My mother bored that one into my head thousands of times while growing up. Hearing that song on a daily basis was the equivalent of dragging your fingernails across a chalkboard!

"What?" I said. I looked around in the darkened open-air mess hall at the five other Fijians that surrounded me. I couldn't see the rest of their faces, since the roof blocked any overhead moonlight from coming through. Only the occasional drag on a cigarette lit up their faces in an orange glow. I could make out their large shapes though, and the Fijians were some huge people. I don't know what they ate, but the size of the population there was unreal.

One of Duke's partners, the guy who played the drums, took another drag on a cigarette. His high cheekbones stood out amongst his facial features, typical of Fijians. "Yeah, we were all wondering why you came here. And why you didn't speak our language to us."

"What?"

"You didn't know this," Duke said, "but a lot of the Fijians here tried to talk to you. But you would just walk by them not saying anything. One of the girls here said, 'Who is this arrogant Fijian who doesn't want to speak our language to us?'" Duke quickly said something in his native tongue to the others, and they burst out laughing, I guess to add punch to the point!

I was shocked. "Arrogant Fijian? Me? The Arrogant Fijian? Holy shit... I never knew!" The urge to laugh was enormous. I cracked up. I was quite tickled by that. I had NO CLUE these people were trying to talk to me. I just figured they were talking to themselves!

"But don't worry about it," Duke said, brushing away whatever fears I had with a wave of his meaty hand. "We'll let everyone know you're American. You're cool now."

"I'm glad for that," I replied. I realize now some Black Americans can pass as Fijian, and I most definitely fit the bill. I remember on the plane coming over to Fiji a woman from Papua New Guinea leaned over and asked me, "So are you going back home to Fiji for the holidays?" Quite a shock. I also remember on my first trip to Australia a woman named Ag originally thought I was from New Guinea when we first met! I think the fact that I LOOKED Fijian yet wasn't, was another factor that they found fascinating. For as soon as I said I was from New York, it left the door open for conversation.

As Duke made the Kava in an old plastic bucket, I sat there with Erik, another backpacker who wanted to drink some. In one hand Duke held what looked like cheesecloth. It was dripping from being dunked in the bucket several times over. He said that inside of it was the Kava, which was in a powder form. In the dark I could make out that the concoction in the bucket didn't look all that appealing. It looked like dirty dishwater. He continually dunked in the cheesecloth, spinning his whole hand around in the bucket to mix it up. Then occasionally he pulled it out, to wring it dry.

"You know in the Old Religion we never used water," he said. "The Kava was chewed and spit out into a large bowl."

My stomach churned. "Great."

"The Kava has another name, a scientific one," one of the Fijians in the darkness said. "But it's from the root of a pepper plant. Think of it that way. It's crushed and dried in the sun. Made into a powder."

"The Kava has no alcohol," The Drummer added. "It's a narcotic. It makes you mellow."

"In the Old Religion," Duke continued, "The Kava Ceremony was very important. If you disrespected your elders in any way, he could have you killed. It was always given to the elders first. Then passed down the line of who was important."

And I believed him. The incredible violence of the whole region was unbelievable, from what research I did before I came over. Their "Old Religion" was built on violence, and an almost draconian sense of order that I as a modern 21st-century human couldn't understand – but respected nonetheless.

Questions?
If you want more information about this area you can email the author or check out our Pacific Insiders page.