Sakau

In every culture there is a drink, a potion, a leaf or herb, a powder, a substance that provides an intoxicating high. Some are associated with witchcraft and used as magic potions in secret ceremonies; others are used by shamans or healers to cure afflictions both mental and physical; and still others are used in celebrations from births to deaths and other rites of passage in between. Many of these potions, with origins that go back thousands of years, are still used today throughout the world. In Pohnpei, one of the four states in the Federated States of Micronesia, sakau is the most powerful and important plant from which a brew is made.

When I arrived in Pohnpei last August for my Peace Corps orientation, I noticed beer bottles displayed outside the open-air shops lining the road. The liquid that each contained was a muddy grey brown in color. The bottles sold for a few dollars each. I soon learned that they were bottles of homemade sakau.

One evening, a few of the men in my Peace Corps cohort were at the lagoon-side bar where we congregated after the daylong workshops for dinner and wine or beer. They sat around one of the round tables, a bottle of sakau open between them. Passing it around, each poured some into a glass and took a swig. They offered me a glass but I refused at first. They said the effect was mild; tingling lips and then, as they sipped more of the slimy, viscous liquid, they felt a sense of relaxation. It tasted like dirty radishes, they said, but I have also heard the taste compared to mud pies. Every evening they had a bottle of sakau that they passed around creating their own ritual. A few days later, I decided to take a taste. “When in Rome” after all. Pouring a very small amount of the thick, slippery liquid into my glass, I put my lips to the rim and turned it up. It slid over my tongue and into my throat, a mass the consistency of phlegm. My lips tingled. Indeed it did taste like dirty radishes. I returned to my glass of wine deciding that sakau is an acquired taste. But I could now say that I had tried it.

According to Dr. Michael J. Balick, Director and Philecology Curator of The Institute of Economic Botany at The New York Botanical Garden who did ten years of botanical research on Pohnpei, sakau, often known as “kava” on other islands throughout the Pacific Ocean, “is a shrub distantly related to the vine that produces black pepper, but its qualities are far more complex and profound. Bite on the root and it tastes somewhat peppery, with a numbing quality; people place the leaves of the plant on an area stung by a stingray to dull the pain.” “Traditionally,” Dr. Balick continues, “the roots are pounded, releasing a kavalactone-containing liquid, which is mixed with other substances, and consumed.” (Kavalactones are chemical compounds that have “powerful physiological properties.”) “Drinking the bitter root extract is an acquired taste, but the effects are quite pleasant—mild euphoria, amicability and greatly reduced anxiety. It is also a muscle relaxant, with larger quantities resulting in a lack of motor coordination—so moving around is not suggested, but the mind remains crystal clear.”

I had not seen sakau being made until two weeks ago. Marianne, the manager in Micronesia for the Australian Volunteers International Program, lives in Pohnpei and is half American and half Pohnpeian. She was in Yap to get a new volunteer settled and touch base with the other volunteers who are working here. AVI is similar to Peace Corps Response Volunteers with older volunteers being sent to countries around the world to provide their expertise to government and nonprofit organizations. Marianne made arrangements to host a sakau ceremony for the AVI volunteers and few locals. I was invited to join them by Cindy, the AVI volunteer with whom I was living temporarily.

We arrived at the open-air Pine Bar & Grill on the lagoon around 5:30 to find a circle of people watching two men pounding the roots of the sakau roots on a slab of stone set atop a tire. As the assembled group chatted and drank beer, the men sat opposite each other, striking the roots with heavy wedges of stone shaped to crush the vegetation. The cadence of stone-against-stone set up a call-and-response between them as they hammered the roots into a dry pulp.

Young children begin learning how to pound the roots at a very early age. Both men and women can do the preparation but often teenage boys will insist they take over when they see their mothers or aunts doing the pounding. After some time, two other men took the place of the first team to give them a rest.

Another man brought a stand of hibiscus trunks to an adjacent outdoor sink. No one knows why they add hibiscus to the sakau; it seems to simply be an added taste that is preferred by some. The trunks were about three inches across and perhaps five or six feet long. He scraped a piece of the bark away from the inner trunk at the top, then stripped the bark in one motion from the softer interior, wrapping the bark around his fist as he pulled. Holding the strip, he separated the outer, hard bark from the slimy, soft, connected fibers that clung to it. The hard bark is then discarded or used for grass skirts by the women. The soft, slimy inner strip was washed several times in a bowl of water set in the sink under a tree, the juice accumulating in the bowl to add to the pounded roots in the next step of the process. The soft fibers were spread into a flat strip as the man and his partner ran their fingers down each one, releasing the juice.

After the roots were deemed the right consistency – “they won’t become a paste; it’s more like a dampness that holds together a certain way,” explained Marianne – an older gentleman replaced the pounders at the stone slab. A master of sakau-making who knows the old technique that has been lost on some of the younger generation who prefer shortcuts, he continued to knead the pile of roots. One of the helpers now sat next to him with the bowl of liquid and a small pitcher. The old man made a well in the pile of roots and his helper poured in some of the liquid. The older man continued working the wet root mixture. He then laid out a splayed length of the hibiscus fibers on the stone slab and mounded the wet root mixture onto it. Beginning at the top, the old man began twisting the fiber strip tightly around the roots, finishing by wrapping it around his arm and squeezing hard to release the liquid. This process went on for some time as the roots were released from the bark, mounded up on the slab again, kneaded with more liquid from the bowl, and twisted tightly in the hibiscus fiber strip. Finally, the gelatinous liquid was squeezed into a strainer over a bowl. This is the final potion. The sakau. Coconut shells had been turned into cups with hollow slices of bamboo serving as separate bases to steady them. The owner of the Pine Bar was given the first taste. He gave his approval and the drinking began.

Cindy and I excused ourselves at that point. I said that I had tasted it in Pohnpei and appreciated the fact that it is an acquired taste. The next day, one of the local women present at the event admitted that her legs were wobbly by the time she left the party.