Fijian coat of arms. My strange fascination with cannibalism began while I was studying history in graduate school. For instance, the Korowai tribe in Papua New Guinea supposedly still practices cannibalism today, which prompted a 60 Minutes crew to investigate.
After the show aired in , however, people claimed that it was all a hoax in an effort to drum up tourism. Yet what kind of a weirdo would go somewhere specifically because there might be cannibalism? As it turns out, I would. When I recently found myself on a romance-themed press trip to Fiji, cannibalism was the first thing that came to mind. And instead of covering the well-trodden literary landscape of San Francisco, I paid a visit to the Antique Vibrator Museum.
So during my time in Fiji, while my colleagues were researching romantic getaways, destination weddings, and honeymoons, I was interviewing a Bouma tribesman and elder storyteller about his cannibal ancestors.
After all, to most people, Fiji is still very much an unknown part of the world, and I wanted to write about something equally unfamiliar. If anywhere, this would be the place where someone could tell me for certain if and when cannibalism actually ceased in Fiji. Immediately after our group arrived in Taveuni, I told our driver Babu that I wanted to talk to people about cannibalism.
Back at the picturesque Taveuni Palms resort where my group was staying, Rapuga and I sat down to discuss how cannibalism first became a ritualized practice in Fiji when European settlers arrived in the 19th century. When hunting down and eating their enemies, locals used a stone axe matau vatu and a spear moto , along with an eye-gauger totokia and a sea pronounced say-ah , which was like a brain-smasher. Next, a village priest would perform a ritual to one of the gods and the tribe would gather for a big celebration under the moonlight, dancing with their spears around a bonfire while the feast was cooking.
