Mbengga!

Now we arrive at Mbengga only 10 miles off of Pacific harbor. Mbengga was a very beautiful and peaceful island with only a few sleepy villages hidden within the
dense forested valleys. We made the mistake of accidently stumbling upon one of these sleepy villages without our Sevusevu offering, which we found was NOT
a very good idea. The Sevusevu is a traditional custom of bringing a kava offering to the cheif of a village where ever you are staying. The offering
is basically a request to stay in an anchorage, use the water, hike the land, ect...We would have happily complied with this custom had we not given
away all of our kava to the dive boat guys but now we had nothing to give when the village
children basically drug us into the higher elders kava session that was taking place right when we walked through. Of course the men invited us to take a seat
with them indian style around their Taloa(wooden kava bowl), but when they found out we did not have the sevusevu, their eyes went to the floor and they
shook their heads at us in disgust. Awkward minutes of silence passed before we asked if there was something else we could offer them and "cigarettes" was
the answer. We were directed to about four of the different village homes before we were sold a few packs to bring back to the chief. Upon presenting them
the scowls at us had loosened up a bit and after a few coconut shells full of kava, we were told we could stay as long as we liked. We learned a very valuable
lesson about the importance of the Sevusevu!