Kea-Eka

Kea-Eka (Zean: Snake Snack) is a Nata-Kea tradition and a dish served to new miners during their first days of work. It is often seen as part of hazing rituals and discouraged by the tribe Councils as potentially dangerous.
The base of a Snake Snack is always one of the mushroom trees growing in the underground forests. Whether it's cut down for the occasion, or just leftovers from Kea-Atara feeding, part of the cap is harvested and a meal is prepared. The dish itself will vary, but something easy to share is usually made, like a stew or a soup. To show solidarity, the whole crew eats the Snake Snack together with their unsuspecting new member before informing them of its contents. Then, the new miner is encouraged and expected to ask for a second serving with little to no hesitation.
This is where the Snake Snack becomes dangerous. While a single serving is usually harmless, additional ones can only increase the probability of sickness. Over the years, the underground mushrooms proved to provide very little nutrition to humans, despite being the basis of Kea-Atara diet. Instead, ingestion of the mushrooms usually cause severe digestive tract issues. Rarely, due to the sharing of the meal, the whole crew becomes incapacitated for a day or two after the meal. Fortunately, only few of the mushrooms are known to be outright poisonous. Unfortunately, not everyone can identify them, and new species are still being found. For this reason several Councils tried to discourage consuming the mushrooms as a dare or the Snake Snacks. The attempts were met with polite nods and the tradition continued.
While seen by most as just a fun ritual to greet the newbie, some of the older miners can't help but remember the weeks they spent in the caves after a tunnel collapsed, forced to survive on those very mushrooms. They see it as a moment of preparation for things that will hopefully never come.