Taking noni juice with the faith healers of the Cook Islands

The older white-stone churches of Aitutaki with their tear-drop windows sit well with the blue skies and swaying palms. The canvas is spoilt by the Mormons who insist on trying to make their churches look like modern libraries or polytechs. But then faith has all the properties of air. It can fill any space and elevate any hope or wish. Bouncing along a back road in Aitutaki, I heard about a woman called Appi Poi who, some years ago, declared that she was Jesus. Like Jesus, she was now dead. And like Jesus, sitting on a railway platform somewhere waiting for all to be forgiven before coming back home. I've got that all wrong, but take it from me, my version is just as barmy as the official version of Master One and Master Two, and an elderly woman playing.earthly host to Joseph, Mary, Jesus and the Great Creator. You get the picture.

Back on the main island of Rarotonga, I thought I would look up some of Appi Poi's camp followers. I was told, "Just ask for the 'blessed', that's how they're known, or as faith healers. You'll see them in shacks and tents out by the airport in Raro."

A kilometre towards town from the Cook Islands Parliament I parked my motor scooter on the lagoon side of an island-styled chapel. Towels on a makeshift clothesline. A gas oven. A church with a barbecue - I liked that. A tall female disciple in a windbreaker had just arrived, her travel bag next to her feet. She introduced herself as a follower of the "universal healer". I repeated what I'd heard, that Appi Poi's followers believed in faith healing. "Yes, we believe with faith you can cure anything." I removed my cap. "How about this?" She viewed my glistening scalp with a kind of shopper's gaze. "Yes. we can cure that," she said finally. "But you have to believe." "Yes," I said. "I believe. I believe." Wariness pegged out the ends of her smile. She nodded to the house across the road. ,"The woman across the road has oil for that. Mrs Webb. Come back at 10.00am and we'll go and speak to her."

Faith was just one option; and not the preferred. if there's a pill available, then I'd rather take that. It's so much easier to gobble something down with your food. Faith has always struck me as time-consuming. you have to apply yourself and for large amounts of time. You can't play mini-golf or go swimming or drinking because you have to be kneeling, practising faith. So, I'm basically a pill and potion man.

Which brings me to noni juice. I first heard about its miraculous healing properties in New Zealand when a friend rang up and by way of extolling the virtues of noni juice began: "You know how I can be a cruel, ruthless *******..." well, he continued, he'd been taking noni juice for a month now. He ****** like a fire hydrant, he felt boundless energy, his blood pressure count had dropped; he dropped his voice as he came to the relevant part, the bit he thought would interest me. "And my hair's grown back." I thought, "You cruel, ******** *******."

So, on my way back from the faith healer I parked my scooter outside the Paradise Salon, thinking that a hair restorative came under the aegis of a hair salon. A small, dapper Rarotongan guy was sitting in the chair. A superbly manicured moustache, an almost glamorous head of hair, massed curls, just a tinge of grey to support the notion of dignity. His name was Ronnie. He didn't tell me that. Later, in town, I was to see his curls and moustache silhouetted onto a shingle advertising "Ronnie's Bar". Soon as I mentioned noni juice, he looked up from the chair. He said, "Six months ago my liver was shot. I had arthritis in my hand. I've just got my tests back from New Zealand and my blood is clear. My arthritis is gone. Look at this." He raised his hand and gave a kind of bar-room wave. "See that? The arthritis is gone."

The Pakeha (white person) barber hovered uselessly with his scissors. He moved in to work on Ronnie's hair, but Ronnie wasn't finished. "I had stomach complaints. I couldn't sleep properly. I had a bar, a motel and was running a franchise. You can imagine what it was like. Then I started to take noni juice. And mate..." The barber whose scissor hand had dropped to his side gave me an impatient look. "How about hair?" I asked. "Hair, sure. Kidneys. Liver. Heart. Honestly, mate." The hairdresser had begun to pout. He said, "I'll just stand here until the ad break is over, shall I?"

I thanked Ronnie; as I turned to leave, he called me back. He said, "Just take it in the morning. Don't take it in the evening. You'll never get to sleep. You'll have too much energy." "Right." "Oh, one last thing." Ronnie held out his formerly arthritic hand towards me. The pale hairdresser winced. "It tastes like horse ****. Just to warn you." At the supermarket, one of those large, hip-swaying Rarotongan women guided me to the bottles on the shelves. As Ronnie said, it tasted like horse ****.

But then, miracles shouldn't come so easily. Some price has to be exacted. Some measure of faith is involved. The next morning I headed back up the coast for my meeting with Mrs Webb and her hair oil. Our intermediary didn't show up, and there was no one at home at Mrs Webb's, apart from a pair of jandals (flip-flops) parked outside her flyscreen door. So I drove further up the coast to the Mission House of the Church of the Latter Day Saints. I thought an opinion on noni juice from someone officially closer to Heaven and God might be useful. No one was home at the mission. I scootered around to the lagoon side. Here was the backyard with the best white-sand beach on the island. The Pacific tumbled over the reef. I couldn't help thinking how it was wasted on those white-shirted American cyclists from Utah. Planted in the garden was a large rock or, in fact, as I began to see, an idol in the shape of a bald pate and with an inscription that I took heart from: "God made only a certain number of perfect heads. The rest he put hair on." All right, it didn't say that. It said, "Build upon my rock which is my gospel", which is more or less the same thing.

Sunday morning in Avarua. All night the dogs have been on noni juice. It's like trying to sleep in a dog pound. Bowwow Bowwowwow Bowwowwow Then in the eye-ache of dawn - church bells. My third night without sleep. I lie there thinking, can this be right? A brass band is playing that old German hiking song "A knapsack on my back". Outside the Avarua Church, the band marches ahead of a long procession of barefoot brownies, scouts and girl guides, followed by the Cook Islands rugby sevens team. A huge man sweating in the bright sun blows on his tuba. "Hallolee, hallolaaa, halloleee..."

I scooter by the faith healers'. Three or four are sitting around in their white nurse's uniforms. I do one fly by; and decide it would be uncool to burst in on their Sunday prayer for a bottle of hair tonic, so I scooter on to Danny Mataroa's noni plantation off the main road up past Just Burgers. My heart sinks a little at the sight of Danny's thinning hair; though on closer examination it is thick at the back of his head and at the sides. Maybe he isn't taking the noni juice himself, or, alternatively, his hair is actually growing back and is a work-in-progress. For all I know he's made sensational progress.

Anyway, I listen to Danny talk about his trees. "When I was a kid I used to help my grandfather to pull out the noni trees. They were a noxious weed. We had all these government planners coming in and telling us to plant pineapples. Now, we tell the people to bulldoze the pineapples and go back to planting the original rubbish on the land. Try telling that to your growers, he said. We've all had these projects. They have all failed. Now you tell us to go back to the weed and we have to commercially grow it?"

It is quite funny the way that Danny tells it. He has a weekly evangelical spot on local radio where he preaches the merits of noni trees. Wandering beside his trees he reveals another virtue of noni plants. You take the flower and young leaves and rub together to remove wrinkles. It's also good with "muffler burns" or as they are also known "Honda rashes" and "Island tattoos". Put a rotten noni onto a third-degree burn, he says, and it dries the sore and encourages new skin growth and leaves no scar.

When I list all the supposed benefits of noni juice, he is careful to insert the phrase "alleged to have". But Danny, like just about everyone else, has an anecdote about this or that person throwing away their crutches. "A friend of mine had advanced diabetes. He was losing his sight and he was going to have to give up his motorbike. He took up noni juice and now, three months later, he's back on his bike ... "

Tuesday. I've been on the juice for five days. My hair does seem to be making a comeback, so people say, after I badger them to death to check and look harder and give me the news I want to hear. They all seem to agree. It's on the comeback trail. But, to be on the safe side, I scooter up to Mrs Webb's for some of her oil. She's not home, so I cross the road to the faith healer's tent where I meet Terepii Pu. It must be Tuesday because Mr Terepii is wearing a red Hawaiian shirt; and on Tuesday the faith healers wear red. Red for the son Jesus, explains Mr Terepii. On Wednesday, purple for the Holy Mother; on Thursday, green for the father Joseph; on Friday, gold for the four gods; Saturday is mufti; on Sunday, we're back to the white nurse's uniforms; Monday is blue, after the Creator "Here, have a seat," invites Mr Terepii. We talk about faith. What is it exactly? "Well, when I get sick I just call up." He raises his eyes to the five-star lodge in the sky where Appi Poi is holed up.

I mention my hair, and that I've heard that Mrs Webb has a special oil to make hair grow. Mr Terepii nods sagely. "I know that oil." Though, I've just noticed, his own grey hair is disappointingly thin. "Will it work?" I ask. "Like I said, if you have faith, the hair will grow back. It's up to you. The oil is there, but it's up to you." This sounds too good to be true. I'd quite like to be five foot nine. I'm nearly five foot seven but nearly is still short of the mark. This may be a trickier ask, and even Mr Terepii is probably not about to advise me on such a mission. Hair is one thing; height is another. You don't mix your miracles just like you don't mix your drinks.

I turn the conversation back to religious matters. Mr Terepii has some news for me. Apparently, Jesus came down to Earth. He was here! Back on the patch. "No! Let me get this straight, Jesus was here?" "Yes. He came down on December 22, 1986. The trucks rush by on the road. Motorcyclists squint into the clouds of dust. None of them have heard this astounding news. Mr Terepii sits on his canvas chair, one leg folded over the other. And you have to ask yourself, would you buy hair oil off this man? The answer is, you would if the Great Creator hadn't already come up with noni juice.