A woman in

a man’s world

IN Vanuatu’s battle for equality of the sexes, Meriana Kaniana Obed is a one-woman commando brigade.

“I’m really strong headed,” she confesses without a trace of shame. “Ever since I was young, whenever I see the boys

doing something I immediately want to

do it.” If the boys went horse riding, she rode horses just to “show them how to do it”. The latest is scuba diving.

Later this year, Meriana will be seen on movie screens around the world. She has a supporting role in a big budget Hollywood film, Til There Was You, made in Vanuatu and starring Mark Harmon once voted America’s sexiest man by one of those women’s magazine polls. She’s been a teacher and is now an assistant manager of Port Vila’s Hotel Rossi.

But for the 23-year-old from Tanna, these are mere skirmishes. The real assault is on the ramparts of a normally male ni-Vanuatu tradition: drinking kava. In Tanna, women aren’t allowed to see men drinking kava. “The men go to the nakamal to make decisions and drink kava," Meriana explains. “So by keeping women from the kava, they can’t take part in making decisions.”

Her first brush with kava came as a teacher, when a local official needed someone to chew the kava in preparation for a ceremony. Meriana accidentally swallowed some of the juice. “The feel ing was so nice I decided the next day I would start drinking.”

Kava is also a medicine. “When I’m really exhausted I have a shell of kava and next day I’m okay.” Meriana’s mother got rid of her asthma with kava.

“Also in my custom, kava brings bles sings.” So when the hotel’s got an impor tant function looming, Meriana takes a shell “for good luck”, although her boss doesn’t know it.

“Some men said I shouldn’t do it be cause it’s against custom,” says Meriana.

But she also suspects they don’t like it because “I drink more shells than most men.” Perhaps it’s the benefits of being “strong headed”, but Meriana can drink the kava bucket dry. More than once she’s helped carry home male drinking companions.

“I like strong kava ,” he admits. “I like to have the feeling rather than just waste time drinking it.” She enjoys the private nature of kava drinking, the quietness and whispering so as not to “disturb the

kava spirits”.

Meriana is one of a small but growing group of women, especially younger women, beginning to frequent some of Port Vila’s 140-odd kava nakamals. □