It is only in modern times that women have become yankona drinkers. All the old natives agree that it used to be considered a shocking thing for women to drink yankona. Some of them assert that the emancipation of women from the old restriction was introduced from Tonga, while others think that Nkoliwasawasa, the sister of Thakombau, was the first to drink it in Mbau, and that she was allowed to do so to comfort her for the loss of her husband. Others were not allowed to imitate her, for that would have been disrespectful, but as soon as the status of women was raised through the influence of the missionaries they began to drink yankona as the men had done before.
FORMERLY FORBIDDEN TO WOMEN
Other changes have crept in. In the old days, it was not drunk in every house nor on every night, but only in chiefs' houses by the chief and his retainers, and on the occasion of
special feasts and ceremonies. Now, however, it is drunk in the houses of the common people whenever they can obtain a supply of the root. Far more yankona is now planted than before, and one chief at least is in the habit of growing it for trade. European traders import it in large quantities from Samoa and other Polynesian islands and retail it to natives at the usual rate of from 1/6 to 2/- a lb.
Boys begin to drink it as soon as they leave school, say at the age of eighteen; girls do not begin till later, though they are often required to chew the root for others to drink. Women seem to drink it as a beverage, as a stimulant, as a laxative, and also as a diuretic. They drink it during pregnancy in the hope that it will give an easy labour and produce a fine child; and also during the suckling period under the excuse that it increases the flow of milk when all other expedients fail. There is among some natives a fixed belief that frequent draughts of yankona are a specific in the early stages of diarrhœa.
There can be no doubt that moderate drinkers find it quite innocuous, but it is otherwise with confirmed yankona topers, who are easily recognized. Their bodies become emaciated, and their skin, especially the palms of the hands, the soles of the feet and the forearms and shins, become dry and covered with scales. They lose their appetite, their sleep is disordered, their eyes bloodshot, they complain of pains in the pit of the stomach and sink into unwholesome lethargy. Any more prolonged debauch than usual leaves its marks upon the drinker for two or three days.
Natives describe the symptoms of habitual yankona-drinking as follows:—
Kaui (peeling of the skin), at first about the hypogastrium only, but eventually over all those parts of the body where it usually occurs; offensive perspiration; smarting of the conjunctivæ; darkening in hue of the nose and cheeks; lakatha, i.e. cracking of the palms and soles, weariness and lethargy, pins and needles in the hands and feet. If an habitual toper goes without yankona for one day he feels restlessness and sleeplessness, a parched feeling in the mouth and viscidity in
the saliva. If the abstinence is continued for two or three days he has borborygmi, occasionally tenesmus.
The following are the effects of a single debauch on a person unaccustomed to drink yankona: restlessness, headache and sleeplessness, singing in the ears, salivation, hyperuresis, languor, temporary loss of control of the legs, tremor of the hand when grasping, and disinclination for food.