Cruise Ship Day

Cruise ship day is a phenomenon that really has to be scene to believed. At around 7am, a floating hotel docks at the main wharf and for the day, and over 1500 mainly white Australian tourists invade the streets of Luganville, returning to the ship to sail away to another destination…

On cruise ship day, the streets to the main wharf are lined with stalls selling souvenirs to the tourists… island dresses, grass skirts, shells etc. With a few coconut crab shirts to move before the new stock came in, we decided to hold a stall.

Despite being the expats least likely to drink kava in Luganville, Jess and I were somehow talked into selling a friend’s range of powdered instant kava (including raspberry and ginger flavoured kavas) to the fatfat Aussie tourists. So we became kava mamas for the day; kind of like island Smirnoff girls, but… not.

We assumed that kava’s reputation preceded it and it would sell itself, but we actually met with a lot more resistance than we were anticipating. Apparently P&O had issued a warning to all the passengers that kava was dangerous. Foul, yes; dangerous, no. So, as occasional drinkers we suddenly became staunch advocates determined to sing its praises.

We decided that our best bet was to target groups of young men (most of whom looked like they’d been drinking since the boat left Sydney). But even these guys were not interested to begin with, which just sent us into a ranty dialogue about the youth of today. Honestly, these were guys who would pride themselves on their recreational drug use and reckless disregard for drink driving laws, but were put off by a little warning about amoebic dysentery and liver damage (kava is actually far less damaging than alcohol).

Eventually we gave up any pretense of charm or flirtation – we simply mixed up sachets of the brew (we’d originally avoided this as the look and smell of kava is not its greatest selling feature!) and we hussled and berated people if they didn’t try it. The sales definitely picked up after that. People even came back for more! Greg also did his best to steer tourists our way, and a helpful Kiwi DJ from the cruise ship did his bit to give kava street cred with the ship’s wannabe R&B crowd.

Though I don’t really have any qualms about selling kava, the way that we had to push it made the whole thing feel like peddling smack to kiddies (which I assume is against the VSA Code of Conduct). Ugh. But we made quite a bit of money in the end, and John made a sizeable donation to the Coconut Crab project. And dealing for a good cause is OK, right? As long as you don’t get high on your own supply ; )