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As I pen these lines, a charming German
journalist who took the trouble to spend four hours interviewing
me a few days ago should be scouring the pharmacies and health
food shops of Vila (Ibiza town) to see if it is still at all
possible to purchase any kava-based medicines in the former
or any kava tablets in the latter. This interview, about Vanuatu
and kava, came out of the last of the three lectures that
I gave here at the end of February in the branch of the University
of the Balearic Islands and organized by the Society of Friends
of the Archaeological Museum of Eivissa (Ibiza) and Formentera.
By the time you read this the resulting article in German
will have already appeared in the press. The last lecture
was particularly well attended, not just because the Museum
always prepares a free wine and food buffet at the end of
any series of lectures it organizes, but also because the
topic, dealing with a medicinal plant with possible slightly
mind-altering properties, is one that interests many people
on the island. Eivissa has always been a slightly rebellious
island, with its own mind, throughout its long history and
continues to be so to the present day. A major difference
today, though, and one that is not really spoken about in
public too much, is that now the real inhabitants of the island,
the Eivissencs, are in a minority in their own island. There
are only approximately 31,000 Ibicencos in an island whose
population is now thought to be about 100,000. This rather
sad situation has only taken approximately two generations
to come about and may unfortunately, sometime in the future,
result in the extinction of Eivissenc language and culture
unless the younger generation struggles to retain their special
identity.
Back to Kava. As explained last week, Kava
is the name given to a plant, and a drink made from the roots
of that plant, that grows only in the Pacific. Well, that's
where it should only be growing, but it has just been discovered
very recently that large plantations of three-year old kava
bushes now exist in Brazil and Guatemala. Why all the interest?
Well, there's lots of money to be made from the kava plant.
It would be rather interesting to find out which subspecies
of the kava plant these plantations are growing. It is quite
possible they originate from illegally 'exported' plantable
material as the drinkable form of the plant traditionally
grows only in the Pacific. This form of the plant cannot reproduce
itself naturally. It has no flowers or seeds. It's whole distribution
throughout the Pacific, covering nearly a third of the earth's
surface, is purely man made and remember that this distribution
was done centuries before the invention of modern transport.
A rather formidable task, which obviously took centuries.
The only way to replant the kava bush is to cut its branches
from near the root base and then cut again that branch further
up, giving you a 'branch twig' maybe 40cms in length. This
you then stick into the fertile earth. You can also use a
branch from different sub-species of the plant and stick this
into the ground very close to the first. The roots that grow
from these branches will join as one and the resulting root
will combine the chemical and medicinal properties of both
plants, thus creating a combined effect when the root is used
for drinking. A new sub/sub species is born, and people in
northern Vanuatu have been experimenting in this way for hundreds
of years. To take such branches by canoe to plant on another
island, the still moist branches are tightly wrapped in special
leaves to keep the humidity in. In this way they can be transported
for approximately 10 days before they lose their potential
to be re-planted.
No Pacific nation in its right mind would
knowingly sell plantable kava stems to outside interests in
these days when, up until just a month or so ago, the export
of dried, chopped, or powdered kava root is just about the
only viable export (besides coprah, the dried and smoked meat
of the coconut, used as a base for creams, shampoos and certain
oils in Europe) that certain Pacific island states have. Over
the last 15 years or so, as the kava export market has grown,
Pacific island governments have periodically warned their
inhabitants to be keep an eye open for ingratiating outsiders
trying to sneak out of the islands with kava branches hidden
in their suitcases. I remember one incident at the airport
in Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu, about 1988 when a visiting
Indian Fijian was caught by government quarantine officers
trying to smuggle wrapped plantable kava branches out in his
hand luggage. He was politely roughed up a little bit at the
airport, I think, and it serves him right (I believe in diplomatic
terms one would say he was 'given a polite dressing down')!
The search for indigenous plants with medicinal
or other useful properties has become a major modern business
and a rather serious threat to indigenous medicinal practitioners
around the world. Only a very small percentage of the real
traditional owners and users of these plants will ever see
any return once a foreign company finds out about the plant
and its uses. What is worse is that certain European, but
mainly US companies are now in a mad rush to patent the genes
of many of these plants. This would then, at least according
to modern patent laws, make it illegal for traditional users
of the plant to use it in its normal way without paying a
fee to the patent-owning company! Sounds completely ludicrous,
but it is actually true and this is happening now! Bioprospectors
(and their illegal compatriots, 'biopirates') from the massive
biotechnology and pharmacological industries (mostly US companies)
are now combing the hidden corners of the earth's surface
looking for unknown (to them), useful, plants. By early 2001,
5000 of the estimated 250,000 known plant species in the world
had been screened for their medical potential. These companies
are not only looking for new medicinal material, but also
for new ingredients for luxury goods such as soaps, shampoos
and perfumes (Radox in the UK have recently produced a bath
gel with a kava base). Just a couple of years ago the French
cosmetics company L'Oreal supposedly patented the use of kava
in a hair treatment!
Well, I suppose that in modern legality
maybe L'Oreal could theoretically patent the idea of them
using a particular kava extract in their particular hair treatment,
but such formalities will not carry much weight in, say, Vanuatu.
The idea of 'white people' copyrighting elements of a plant
that some of their ancestors developed would sound like some
kind of ridiculously sick joke to certain clans in Vanuatu.
Certain pharmacological companies have actually tried to patent
or copyright kava (or its ingredients) itself as a medicinal
supplement, but have so far not succeeded. What the European
and U.S. companies do not realize is that the northern part
of Vanuatu is home to one of the world's oldest and most complex
forms of traditional copyright, a lot older and more complex
than anything that exists in Europe. The only difference is
that in Vanuatu these laws are not written down, but are passed
down by word of mouth from generation to generation. Regarding
recent modern attempts to patent or 'copyright' kava and its
ingredients, I remember writing recently to a colleague and
friend in UNESCO on this topic. I basically said that from
the point of view of Vanuatu, it wouldn't matter if 'the white
man' came up with a ton of legal documents showing they had
copyrighted kava, or if they sent 100 high-powered lawyers
(that term, through an accidental but accurate mis-hearing
of the word during a trial in Vanuatu in the 1980s, is sometimes
pronounced 'liars' by certain indigenous inhabitants) to hammer
this point through. These documents and lawyers would be irrelevant
for the traditional system there. The lawyers could find themselves
in a situation where, theoretically, they could be fined by
the chiefs for representing companies that had been attempting
to 'steal traditional copyright' of kava from its traditional
owners. It basically boils down to the fact that, with kava,
the 'white man' has arrived too late, it was already 'copyrighted'
and given by the Spirits possibly originally well over 2000
years ago. And who in the Pacific had heard of 'the white
man' then? Nobody.
Some of the more isolated areas of the Pacific
had not even heard of 'the white man' until very recently:
what about the 250,000 inhabitants of the Waghi valley in
the Highlands of Papua New Guinea who only heard about 'us'
for the first time in the 1930s when an adventurous group
of young Australian gold prospectors stumbled on to them?
What about the tens of thousands of Dugum Dani peoples of
the Balim valley high in the interior of neighbouring West
Papua/Irian Jaya? 'We' did not even know of their existence
until their vast valley was discovered from the air in the
1940s.They continued to have very little contact with the
outside world until the late 1960s. Since the Indonesian take-over
of that part of the island in the late 1960s, they have certainly
had a lot more ‘contact', as at least up until very recently
the Indonesians seemed to be intent on eradicating them. In
1973 in a very remote area of Vanuatu even I came upon certain
clans and groups many of whom had never seen white people
before, and they were as nervous as I was. They scratched
my skin to see what colour I really was underneath. What about
the Nukak-Maku forest nomads only 'discovered' in south-eastern
Colombia in the early 1990s? What about the Jarawa negrito
pygmies just recently 'contacted' in the Andaman Islands in
the Indian Ocean whom the Indian government is now trying
to remove from lands they have possibly been on for 40,000
years? 'We' have to realize that, in the world scheme of things,
'we' are relative latecomers and rather irrelevant for many
corners of the world. All of these ancient societies have
their own traditional medicinal plants and a detailed knowledge
of them. 'Medicine' did not arrive with 'the white man'; it
has been around for a long time in all corners of the world.
What about the recent scandalous attempts by a US pharmacological
company to patent the entire genetic material of the Neem
tree used medicinally for centuries in India? Have 'we' no
respect? Don't these insensitive companies realize that, in
a morally correct world, it would be illegal to try and steal
the rights of someone else's medicine without making some
form of compensation? And if 'we' can't patent it, do we then
have the right to seemingly engineer a situation where possibly
other people are denied use to it? This is one aspect of the
situation that seems to be pending in Europe with regard to
kava.
The theme of this column at the moment may
seem rather irrelevant to Eivissa/Ibiza, but it is not. I
am dealing with themes here that affect, or will affect, us
all; from rural peasant to disco clubber and those of you
reading this in England or the US. It is basically to do with
the ethics of who has the right to decide on and control certain
aspects of life. Like all ancient, rurally-based, societies,
Ibicenco peasants had/have a detailed knowledge of local plant
and herbal medicines useful for most minor illnesses (but
thanks also for the relatively recent introduction of modern
techniques here to help take care of the more serious illnesses).
Anyone, with the required knowledge, visiting one of the old
peasant houses here in the hills will note the variety of
plants around the houses. Most are not for decoration. There
is sa pitra cactus, the combed fibres from inside its leaves
used for the material for sandal soles; there is estepa, used
for toilet paper and also, when rubbed with water producing
a soapy liquid useful for washing dishes, tables, and so on
and so on. Then there are the numerous medicinal plants for
all sorts of minor aches and pains.
And some not so minor, too. I can speak
from experience. In September last year I badly twisted my
right ankle and spent two months on crutches. The ankle was
badly swollen, red and painful, with difficult circulation,
for nearly the whole of that period. Modern treatment, with
prescribed painkillers did little to alleviate the problem.
I was just about to give up when a close Ibicenco friend suggested
I try a traditional local remedy. I did, and the swelling,
pain and discomfort were gone in three days. One of the doctors
at the hospital said later that if they could patent that
remedy, they could make a fortune. But new legislation originating
in Brussels and being funnelled to Madrid which eventually
funnels it down here means that the island's oldest surviving
'herbolaria' (herbal medicine shop) in Vila (Ibiza town) will
eventually have to close down. It looks like 'the big guns'
are out to close down access to kava in Europe, too.
More in detail next week.
Kirk W Huffman
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