Total recoil

“Eat me!” was the appropriate salutation of a Fijian subject to his chief, back in the day. But anthropophagy was stamped out in the ‘Cannibal Isles’ after the murder and consumption of a missionary, the Reverend Thomas Baker, in 1867. On some Melanesian islands, according to Paul Theroux, corned beef now serves as a culinary substitute for (and close approximation) human flesh. I stuck to the vegetarian options of Fijian cuisine but I did acquire this tasteful memento: a ‘cannibal fork’ apparently a replica of the ceremonial cutlery used by chiefs to spear the choicest morsels.