Fogg’s Horn

The Miscreant Meanderings Of Our Man Markus

The Living Legends of Fiji

We’d suffered a “puncture” on our way from Suva, the capital, to Deuba on the south coast of Fiji’s principal island, Viti Levu. My driver/guide, Stino Elliot, had tried dealing with the flat tire himself, but decided he needed professional help, so we stuttered into a filling station on the outskirts of the capital, fortunately just a few blocks from our misfortune. Stino had bought a bag of powdered kava root at a farmer’s market in Suva, tossed it into the glove box and told me we’d mix some up with water when we got to our hotel in Deuba. But now we had some time to kill, so he took a chipped porcelain bowl he kept in his van, grabbed the bag of powder and headed for the men’s room to mix us some potion. Everything I’d read about kava was considerably less than revealing. It produces a euphoria but isn’t a drug. It has side effects that affect the brain and/or the liver, or it doesn’t. What the hell, I was in Fiji to write about some of the inexplicable things Fijians do that seem to have no rational explanations, except some preposterous legends that the locals say explain them.

Stino emerged from the bathroom with his chipped bowl sloshing a brownish liquid that looked like runny cement, balanced on the clenched fist of his left hand. It seemed a bit of a chore to balance the bowl that way, but I assumed there was a ceremonial process by which you imbibed, even if the ceremony was performed in the parking lot

of a filling station. Ergo, I clenched my right fist and bumped Stino’s left, figuring he would provide the ceremonial wherewithal for me gain possession of the bowl.

His eyebrows furrowed. “What the hell are you doing, Mr. Markus?” he asked.

“I am attempting to retrieve the bowl of kava in the manner by which it is being presented to me,” I replied, in my most dignified attempt at a ceremonial voice.

“My hands are still dirty from messing with that tire,” he retorted. “Just grab the damn bowl and take a drink.”

Stino was a big man, descendent of a Melanesian race that produced a lot of big men, who could remove your head with one mighty swing of their war clubs. When he offered something that sounded like an order, one would tend to obey. I was already having images of bellying up to bars throughout our journeys together, confident of being able to counter any difficulties which might arise with, “got a problem, take it up with my man here.” He had his quirks, like having me slip off my sandals and walk across his bare back as he lay on the floor each night before he’d slip on his shirt, and we’d head out for the evening. He said it loosened up his muscles and the last thing I’d want for our late night drinking was my man with an unloosened back.

I took the bowl from his hand, took the first of several sips, then swooned the rest of the way to Deuba.

I’d read up on Fijian legends before leaving home and became skeptical of any attachments to reality. The Tagimoucia Blossom on the island of Taveuni, which has never been successfully transplanted anywhere. Ergo, a young woman who had so angered her mother, she was banished from their village. Crying pitifully while running into the forest, she got entangled in a vine and everywhere one of her tears fell, a homesick blossom bloomed, never successfully transplanted anywhere away from Taveuni. The sea turtles of Kandavu who rise to the surface of a bay when women of the local village chant from an adjacent hillside. Ergo, the turtles are descendants of village women who were captured by warriors from an enemy village but turned to sea turtles and slipped from the hold of the boat whence they lay and escaped into the bay.

I was convinced that there was not enough scientific interest in the Tagimoucia flower or the Kandavu sea turtles to discover a logical explanation for each, but it was the firewalkers of Mbengga Island that intrigued me the most. How could the men of the Sawau village walk across white hot river stones and suffer no ill effects? As the legend goes a warrior was walking along a beach, pulled an eel from the wet sand and decided to take it home for a barbecue. But the eel transformed into a spirit god and to save himself offered the warrior power over fire. To prove it, they built a pit, lined it with logs and river stones and let fire burn until the stones were white hot. At that point the spirit god walked across the pit and encouraged the skeptical warrior to follow, whereupon both made it across unscathed. There had to be a realistic medical explanation for that one.

Disembarking at a finger pier in an aquamarine bay on Mbengga, I noted the solitary figure of an elderly man in faded brown Bermuda shorts and a wrinkled Tshirt. “Ah,” Stino said as we hopped down onto the pier, “Ratu Wame.”

“Excuse me?”

“The Sawau chief.”

“Mister Markus,” Stino said to the ratu, who offered his hand. The limp handshake was more in keeping with the elderly man before me than a warrior chief. He ushered us into the communal bure hut for the preceremonial luncheon.

I sat at the ratu’s left as a huge tanoa bowl was prepared with kava and we all indulged, a ceremony that I was more and more considering for Friday night cocktail

hours at my place for a gathering of my closest friends. I was sure I could get even the most skeptical to walk barefoot across heat grates in Manhattan, after a ceremonial round of kava.

A fisherman brought in the day’s catch, offered Ratu Wame the first selection but he, in turn, ceded the selection to me as the guest of honor. Presented with a dripping wet string of fish, none of which I recognized as having seen before, I chose a smallish one, which had what looked like a teardrop slowly working its way toward the gravitational pull that would release it from its – how do you know if an eye is left or right if each is on opposite sides of its flattish body? After roasting the fish over a fire that I could only hope was not the firewalking pit, my fish was doused in what I was told was gravy but turned out to be cold coconut milk and turned what might have provided some pickins’ between fishbones into a dreadful obsession with that oozing eye, while the rest of the firewalkers devoured everything in their plates, bones and all. I was way out of my element here.

When we advanced to the firepit, the walkers had receded to a bure hut opposite to engage in whatever Zenlike preparation was necessary to justify frying your feet in an oversized barbecue pit. Trying my best to examine the pit for any clues as to why what was about to happen was even remotely possible, I could not advance to within ten feet of the pit, without having to fall back from the intense heat. The firewalkers emerged from the bure, walked across some moist mud on their way to the pit, whence there muddied feet bottoms began to sizzle upon the hot stones.

Ah-hah! Mystery solved. Magic mud. I approached the fire for a closer look, confirmation of my discovery that had confounded westerners for centuries. Too hot! Had to back off. Another approach. Same outcome.

I just stood there shaking my head and still trying to get within ten feet of the firepit without having to back off. Ratu Wame, sidled up to me and smiled. “You teach me to do that,” I said, “and I win a million dollars in bets alone back in the States. Send you an agent’s commission.”

He looked at me quizzically, then, “come,” he said, “we walk. Like the ancient warrior, you just got to believe.”

“And if I don’t believe?”

His smile turned, well, I wasn’t quite sure. Eelish?

I chuckled and we both turned from the fire pit and walked back toward the communal bure.

After returning home, I searched the Net for anything I could find that would explain this inexplicable phenomenon. It wasn’t exactly a priority for anyone except devotees of bizarre customs among peoples whom most of the rest of us care little if anything about. The closest to anything scientific I could find were reports of British academics and medical researchers going to Mbengga to write papers about Melanesian customs, gathering info to explain the firewalking, then returning home dragging their thermometers behind them. They just didn’t bother to ask me . . .

There was this warrior walking along the beach in Mbengga, I would have told them, when he pulled this eel out of the sand. Expecting to take the eel home for a barbecue, it transformed into a spirit god. Don’t eat me the spirit god entreated, and I will give you the power over fire . . .

To this day, one of my greatest regrets was not seeing if somehow Ratu Wame could have gotten me to walk across the fire. On the other hand, I did get to walk across Stino’s back, each night for the rest of the trip.

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