Warm memories on a cold day

I am currently nursing an infected elbow joint and will be swallowing penicillin for the next couple of weeks. Time to wallow in a bit of nostalgia.

Mangoes and most other tropical fruits are now available in a supermarket near to you, but I well remember seeing, and eating, my very first mango. It was 1970 and we had just moved into our house in Suva, in the Fijis. In the garden was a gnarled old tree which was simply hanging with a multitude of mangoes. (Worth a very large King's ransom at the price Tesco charges!) There were also coconut palms, sugar cane, limes and pawpaws. We had truly arrived in Paradise.

So, in celebration of that happy day I present you with a mango sitting on a rather special Fijian wooden dish, known as a daveniyaqona vakaga.

The Wesleyan missionary the Rev. Thomas Williams, was the principal authority upon the state of society among the Fijians when Europeans first came into contact with them. With his wife and a few other dedicated colleagues he conducted his ministry in the considerable hardship and danger of the cannibal islands of Fiji between 1840 and 1852. He described his experiences in Fiji and the Fijians: The Islands and their inhabitants published in 1858. In the book he illustrated a dish of similar style and described it as a priest's inspirational yaqona dish in duck form, in Fijian a daveniyaqona vakaga, used within the Spirit Temple. Yaqona, a mildly narcotic brew made from the plant Piper methysticum was drunk from the dish by the bete, the priest, via a straw. 

Extra, extra! Back in the present there is snow on the ground and families are enjoying a spot of sledging on the village golf course, the first opportunity to do so this winter.