To make kava, you dig it out, cut off the dirty bits with a knife, chop it up small, and then somehow get it all mashed up. At the kava bars in Vila, you use a grinder to make it into a thick paste. Afterwards, you mix in water, and then strain the mixture through cloth (or as here, panty hose) to get all of the solids out. The resultant mixture is brown-green, smells disgusting, tastes worse, and gets the job done. I think kava bars have to be one of, if not the, leading small businesses in Vila. They're usually run on a family or small community basis. Just about any nakamal you go to will be associated with some village or some outer island. The kava roots come from family members on that island, the kava and the 20 vatu food sale are done by people from that island, and a lot of the people drinking there will also come from that part of the country.
Tongariki has nakamals in Seaside, Platinia, Black Sands, Tebakor, over by the airport ... Basically every place that people from Tongariki live, there's a Tongariki kava bar. It's a social club as well as a money making operation.
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