As you see, the kids love to have their picture taken.

I have so many beautiful photos of the children of Ono, I hope you enjoy them as much as we did!

It was fun to see how much the children had grown in our two year absence. Some of these children are getting ready to go to high school in Suva. Because of expense and logistics, an entire family is known to move to Suva when a child goes to high school.

After Sunday Church we participated in the traditional sevu sevu ceremony. The ritualized drinking of kava is an integral part of village life and a necessary part of any important gathering.

The process starts with the pounding of the kava root. On the left is our friend, Joel, pounding the root under the supervision of Isala - our guide for the time we spent in Nangara (spelled several different ways).

This powder is put in a sack and mixed with water.

The kava bowl has been in the village for many generations - so many that no one knows how old it is. This is something precious to the village and is kept in the meeting house (used by the village for meetings only).

The clapping ritual varies from area to area. Also, one is supposed to drink it ALL down in one gulp - which you see is impossible for me. One can request "high tide" or "low tide."

Most "Europeans" aren't attracted to the taste, but kava is a big deal among the Fijians. The other aspect of this is that the native Fijians do NOT cope well with alcohol and visitors are told NOT to bring alcohol ashore or offer it to local people. They react to it the same as our American native people, and alcohol can (and does) cause huge problems in these populations. In reading Michener's "Alaska," he tells of how the early European fur traders purposefully brought alcohol into villages of Inuits and in one season the entire village was wiped out. The same occurs all across the Pacific Islands.