My disability continues to make this vacation interesting but sometimes it is an ABILITY of someone in our party which makes for an interesting and challenging day.
Today we signed up for and rode on one of Kauai’s oldest traditional activity – riding a large boat up the Wailua River to the Fern Grotto to the accompaniment of ukelele’s and oral traditions. At the Grotto itself, married couples and lovers hold hands through a verse of “The Hawaiian Wedding Song”. At the end of the song, the couples romantically embrace and kiss. At least that is the theory.
But time and erosion has worn at the tradition. Those manning the boats and performing the songs, hulas, and narration display all the enthusiasm of a 12 year old race horse. They once had it, by golly, and they’d show you if they just weren’t so tired right now. Even the Fern Grotto is no longer romantic, having been fenced off and replaced by a wooden stage some 500 feet away – nowhere close to the ferns or the misty water falling from the walls of the grotto. “The Hawaiian Wedding Song” is now sung in Hawaiian with no translation making it less interesting to the couples who rarely understand the island language.
I will have to admit that the crew were very attentive to my needs and helped me in and out of the boat as well as providing me extra time to board.
But our very different adventure began when my sister Revabeth decided to taste the local flora. Revabeth is a science teacher, specifically a high school biology teacher. As such she is always looking for new ways to add more interest and appeal to her classroom teaching. Along the path to the Fern Grotto were various native plants which our guide pointed out. One is called taro. It is a staple as its roots, cooked mashed, are used to make poi. Seeing a broken taro root, Revabeth scraped off a minute sample of the moist inside meat and placed it on her tongue to taste it. She reasoned that it couldn’t be harmful if it was food.
Almost immediately her tongue then her lips and back of her mouth then her throat began to burn as if she had been trying to wash her mouth out with tiny, white hot knives. She grabbed my bottle of Pepsi and tried to rinse out and spit out as much as she could but it was too late. During the boat ride back to the dock, the pain intensified and her ability to talk or swallow decreased. She asked one of the staff what to do about it and he simply shook his head and said she shouldn’t eat raw taro – it acts like poison. Well, duh!
Back in our condo, Carolyn called Poison Control. Turns out that Revabeth had given herself a good dose of calcium oxalate which was transforming into oxalic acid (or vice versa) and literally chewing up the soft tissue in her mouth. They recommended cool liquids like water or milk and avoidance of acidic food and drink. Revabeth had already figured that out. They said they’d call back in an hour and that we should call 911 if the symptoms got any worse. Fortunately, the symptoms did not get worse. However, they only slowly decreased. Cooking the taro root or soaking overnight in water are two methods of reducing or eliminating the poison and making the taro room edible.
What a day!!!!
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