I remember when I spent a summer here, in a very remote village in the Fijian Islands, and I spent the entire summer carving cups out of shafts of bamboo (and drinking cava, and jumping off waterfalls). The Fijians told me that before some pirates brought steal to the islands, they would use pieces of bamboo to cut meat. “Bamboo,” I thought, “is awesome.” Then they told me the story about how one young guy was out cutting bamboo to build a bure, and a piece snapped off and sliced open his abdomen. He piled his intestines back inside his body, held the slice closed and walked back to the village. His stomach was stitched together and he lived, at least for a while. “So,” said the elder telling me the story, “be careful when you make your cups.” No other tree could disembowel a man, much less a grass!

I remember when I spent a summer here, in a very remote village in the Fijian Islands, and I spent the entire summer carving cups out of shafts of bamboo (and drinking cava, and jumping off waterfalls). The Fijians told me that before some pirates brought steal to the islands, they would use pieces of bamboo to cut meat. “Bamboo,” I thought, “is awesome.” Then they told me the story about how one young guy was out cutting bamboo to build a bure, and a piece snapped off and sliced open his abdomen. He piled his intestines back inside his body, held the slice closed and walked back to the village. His stomach was stitched together and he lived, at least for a while. “So,” said the elder telling me the story, “be careful when you make your cups.” No other tree could disembowel a man, much less a grass!