As we mentioned, different myths and ideas about the origin of Kava were prevalent in different regions of the Pacific. On the island of Tanna (Vanuatu), for example, there was the following myth: two sisters were working by the water when suddenly one of them felt a pleasant touch between her legs. As it turned out, she was being touched by a Kava vine growing from between the stones. The sisters took the plant back to their garden to mature, and then shared their discovery with the others.
In another myth – from the island of Pentecost, also Vanuatu – Kava was also ‘offered’ by a woman. It is the story of an orphaned sibling. One day the sister was attacked by a foreign suitor who wanted to marry her. A fight ensued and the girl was fatally shot with an arrow. The distraught brother dug her grave and buried her. After a week, he noticed that an unfamiliar plant had grown on the grave. However, he did not pick it. A year passed and the brother, still in deep mourning, visited his sister’s grave again. To his surprise, he noticed that there was a rodent lying under the unfamiliar plant, which had probably nibbled on the plant and died. Seeing this as an opportunity to end his own life, full of pain and longing, his brother began to chew the roots of the plant himself. He did not die. On the contrary: he momentarily forgot his misery and pain.
An anthropological interpretation reads the above myth as follows: suitor wounds girl with arrow (sexual act, fertilisation), girl dies (passes on life), new life (child) grows from her grave. The plant can be poisonous or purifying. It marks the circle of life and death, burial and birth, fertility and mortal danger.
How do these two exemplary myths relate to women’s limited access to Kava?
Firstly, there is the strong belief that proximity, contact between a fertile woman and Kava could mean danger for a man – slipping down the circle of fertility all the way into the darkness of death. Secondly, it was assumed that the feminine origin of Kava (the notion that it grew from a woman’s womb) precluded women from benefiting from drinking Kava.