* Continued from last week…
I had no idea my initial plans of visiting the internationally recognised waterfall, world renowned Tagimoucia flower and chilling out with a nice cool coconut bu drink at the beach would simply be overpowered when I met the tavale.
For those who don’t fully understand what it means to be one man with many tavale, let me explain. Tavale are known to play pranks and jokes on one another — some pranks have no limits. I don’t know who started such a relationship but I guessed it passed down the generations — a relationship unique in Fiji and with Fijians around the world.
I was headed for a grog battle, village style, in tavale territory.
When we finally reached Taveuni around 5pm on what seemed like a two-day boat ride, exhausted, it was hard to hold back the excitement.
Taveuni is truly the Garden Island of Fiji rich with green vegetation covering landscaped hills. Coconut trees by the hundreds, side by side, stretched all over the island. Age-old volcanic rocks visible everywhere — some as huge as a car.
Amazing sea view assured me I was not in the city anymore. We travelled about an hour along the coast from the jetty past the tarsealed on to graveled road at Naselsele Village. There were hardly any vehicles on the road. Destination was a settlement called Villa Maria, Catholic community in Bouma.
Villa Maria was filled with children, women by the fireplace cooking up a storm and men grouped under a tree rolling suki by the dozens.
These men were my tavale, the funny thing was I knew they were but it didn’t fully register. You see Taveuni has its own dialect. I’m quite versed with speaking the Bau dialect but know very little about the Taveuni dialect.
However I did learn back in Suva that the Taveuni dialect is spoken without the pronunciation of “Kah!” in iTaukei words that began with “K”. So when young men called me vale with a smile, I thought nothing about it and smiled back. Nobody told me they didn’t pronounce the “Tah!” in tavale too
Here I was, eagerly ready to meet my tavale but no one introduced themselves or called me tavale, just vale — which was a sign of relief for me.
My mood changed when the kava started, the grog session with the vale felt more like a gunu sede — where people challenged each other to grog drinking. In this challenging scenario I was the fool.
You see, my “loudmouth vale Simi” and Pa filled the kava bowl to the brim on every taki, one after the other despite my objection. I knew something was wrong. It wasn’t until my karua Kusitino, who is also married into the family, told me, “vale meant tavale”, that I realised I chose the wrong spot to sit.
I was surrounded by tavale. Every time I visited the toilet my tavale Suli would call out loudly “vale! …vale! …..totolo mai (make it quick tavale). As soon as I stepped out the toilet door he made a loud announcement qori sa ..la’o mai o ea! ( here he comes).
The many heads in the shed including women turned toward me. I’m sure you can imagine the red-face reception I had every time I returned from the toilet.
So I had to man-up. Every spoil that came my way I threw one back. My karua Sam, Suliano, Pio and Vuli joined me. I had a team but the number of tavale present was overwhelming. The big bowl never stopped and I was near “spewing stage”.
I did successfully finish the grog session and like to state for the record that “loudmouth tavale Simi” ran away. However I was far from sober and almost never made to the front door to sleep.
The next day tavale Suli invited me to a hunt, to kill a young bull with the rest of the men and prepare for a feast. First they had to catch the bull and boy! did this bull go wild. That’s next week!
