| Totems/ Lush tropical forest/ Men walk through jungle | Jungle sounds/birds/Music | 00:00 |
| Men kneel on mats in forest clearing in “ceremony house” preparing kava | CORCORAN: In Vanuatu, they call it the root of happiness. These humble plant roots are the key ingredient for the Pacific Region’s great traditional drink – kava. | 00:24 |
| Corcoran with Pria and Neray. Men prepare kava | And Vanuatu’s kava is the most potent of them all. My new best friends, Pria and Neray, are about to reveal how kava has been prepared – according to tribal custom – for thousands of years. Of course, those were the days before electric blenders found their way to the islands. | 00:36 |
| Men chew and spit kava | CORCORAN: What do I do? PRIA: Put in your mouth – chew. CORCORAN: Even I can do that. | 00:28 |
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| CORCORAN: My mouth is going numb – I won’t be able to talk in about 5 minutes – which some people would say is not a bad thing. | 01:06 |
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| CORCORAN: Different colour! PRIA: Because you white – you got white skin! (laughter) CORCORAN: White kava! (laughter) | 01:14 |
| Kava on banana leaf | PRIA: Now we are going to mix the Kava like this. CORCORAN: Pria says kava drinking first originated here in Vanuatu before spreading across the Pacific, in a more diluted form. | 01:28 |
| Water poured through pre-masticated kava mulch | PRIA: Vanuatu kava is very strong – more than Fiji – because the Fiji kava they use more powder. | 01:41 |
| Reporter and Pria kneeling on jungle mat with coconut shells of kava – toasting | OK let’s go – when you go -- just go! Drink it down and finish it! CORCORAN: That’s too much for me – too much! PRIA: No! It’s not too small – you’ve got big body (laughter). CORCORAN: Oh mate, I’ll be senseless after drinking this. | 01:48 |
| Corcoran drinks | CORCORAN: And yes, it tastes just how it looks – with the flavour and consistency of muddy river water. | 02:00 |
| Pria drinks | In traditional society, kava drinking was regulated by the chiefs. | 02:09 |
| Corcoran and Pria on mats | PRIA: When you get two or three shells of kava and you go to bed, early in the morning you wake up and you feel fresh. CORCORAN: No hangover? PRIA: No hangover. | 02:15 |
| 4WD along dirt roads – through scenic jungle | Music | 02:22 |
| In 4WD with Lebot driving | CORCORAN: Thankfully, Pria was right about the lack of a hangover. The next morning we’re crashing along with the world’s leading kava expert, French scientist Dr. Vincent Lebot. He’s spent thirty years studying and drinking kava. It’s an important export crop -- growing it is a profitable business. | 02:26 |
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| CORCORAN: So the kava tends to be either very well hidden or well guarded? LEBOT: Yes, theft is a major problem on this island – it takes about three to five years to cultivate Kava – and therefore it’s a highly valuable product. | 02:49 |
| Corcoran and Lebot look for kava plants | About 15 thousand hectares of kava is cultivated on the more inaccessible outer islands. But here on the main island of Efate the plants are concealed in forests and vegetable gardens. | 03:11 |
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| LEBOT: Careful. CORCORAN: These are plants? LEBOT: Yes, these are plants. Here they are. This is a very young one. This is called piper methysticium – comes from the Greek | 03:24 |
| Lebot with plants. Super: | Mystiscos, which means intoxicating – so it’s the intoxicating pepper. It’s the same family as the black pepper that we are all using, but it’s well known for its inebriating properties. | 03:35 |
| Lebot shows roots of plant | These roots are the roots that we are using. CORCORAN: Dr. Lebot says kava isn’t addictive. It’s used in traditional medicine both as an effective antiseptic and anaesthetic. | 03:50 |
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| LEBOT: If you chew that you will feel the local anaesthetic effect. CORCORAN: I’ve experienced that. In fact it felt like a trip to the dentist! | 04:04 |
| Kava plants | CORCORAN: But in Europe there have been deaths attributed to kava-based health tablets. As a result, kava is now banned or a controlled substance in Germany, France, the UK, and Canada. Dr. Lebot says kava isn’t the problem – it’s the chemicals used to produce the pills. | 04:13 |
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| CORCORAN: So what they were selling in Europe – was it Kava? LEBOT: Not at all. It was something else. | 04:32 |
| Lebot | Unfortunately they had a huge media coverage – and consumers throughout the world now are scared. They suspect kava to be toxic, to produce some toxic effect on the liver. | 04:36 |
| Men mix kava | I cannot understand how it could be toxic, because here in the South Pacific half the population drinks and we cannot find any side effects. | 04:49 |
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| Music | 04:59 |
| Men drink kava | CORCORAN: Few outsiders drink Vanuatu’s potent traditional kava, most preferring the gentler brand found in supermarkets. | 05:10 |
| Kava in supermarket | It’s powdered – and much weaker. | 05:20 |
| Men mix kava | Music | 05:22 |
| Corcoran and Lebot walk to kava bar | LEBOT: Well this is a typical kava bar – we call them Nakamals. There are about 300 in town. CORCORAN: This is the rush hour is it? LEBOT: It is, exactly, so we better not miss the rush hour. | 05:33 |
| Men at kava bar | Music | 05:45 |
| Banyan tree at bar | CORCORAN: This tree its extraordinary! LEBOT: This is a typical banyan tree. We call them bangan in Vanuatu, and in the islands, the Nakamals are always set up underneath the banyan tree . CORCORAN: Why is that? LEBOT: Well, that’s for custom purposes – ceremonial purposes, and they believe the spirits are have their house somewhere into the roots of this huge tree. | 05:50 |
| Corcoran and Lebot at bar across from Parliament building | CORCORAN: But this is no ordinary Nakamal is it – I mean where are we here? LEBOT: This one is a little bit special, because we are just across the road from the Parliament. CORCORAN: Oh OK. So we might be knocking shells with… | 06:13 |
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| LEBOT: The Prime Minister or the leader of the Opposition. Or the two of them together. | 06:25 |
| Carcasses at bar | CORCORAN: And sure enough, we find Opposition Leader Moanna Carcasses, working the crowd. | 06:30 |
| Carcasses and Corcoran drink kava | A migrant from Tahiti, he’s taken to kava with a passion. And of course there’s the obligatory round of shells before any talk. | 06:36 |
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| CORCORAN: Got some bite in it. | 06:50 |
| Carcasses. Super: | CORCORAN: What impact does the Kava have on the standard of political debate – it’s right next door!. CARCASSES: Since we have lots of kava drinking, we have less problem – before drunkenness was a problem – people drink alcohol they fight. With kava we don’t have any more of these problems. | 06:54 |
| Inside kava bar | CORCORAN: Kava bars didn’t exist before Vanuatu’s independence in 1980. All this is the product of social engineering, designed to lower the crime rate. A prohibitive duty was slapped on alcohol, making kava the affordable brew of choice. | 07:11 |
| Men around bar | LEBOT: If alcohol was cheaper, readily available, I think that we would have more crimes in Port Vila than we have today, because we have quite a lot of unemployed youth which have left the islands and are hanging around town doing nothing. | 07:30 |
| Lebot | But because of kava I think it is maintaining the society in a harmonious manner. CORCORAN: Cheers. | 07:45 |
| Lebot and Corcoran drink kava | LEBOT: Cheers. CORCORAN: Well, I’ll drink to that. After a few shells, it’s easy to slide into Vanuatu’s Kava culture – though it remains an acquired taste. | 07:50 |
| Sunset | Music | 08:04 |
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| CORCORAN: A recent international survey declared Vanuatu’s people to be the happiest on earth. In good company, on a perfect tropical evening – you begin to understand why. | 08:09 |
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| Music | 08:24 |
| Credits | Reporter: Mark Corcoran Producer : Ben Bohane Camera : Laisenia Qaranivalu Sound : John Gunn Editor : Simon Brynjolffssen | 08:34 |