Guess what we got for Christmas

Fruitful

A few weeks ago it was harvest festival time, Thanksgiving in the US. Here, however, the season of plenty has begun. This year the trees are dripping with lychees, and even mangoes are plentiful! The lychee season actually causes chaos, tons of lychees are shipped to Tahiti, by airfreight or boat. Boxes and boxes, hours and hours queueing to send airfreight at the airport!

The upsode, while I don't usually have mangoes to spare, this year I've even been making mango tarte tatin, I usually use pineapple, but mango makes a very passable alternative, especially served with coconut ice-cream! 

Julie's visit

The November holidays were an exciting time for us. We were lucky enough to have Julie Adams visiting us, curator of Oceanian objects at the British Museum. She was invited to Rurutu by our association Te Aru Ora, and sponsored by Air Tahiti. She made the detour whilst in the Pacific, after spending several weeks in New Zealand, as part of the events marking the 250 years of contact between Europeans and Maori. She was specifically involved in preparing an exhibition of taonga (ancient sacred objects), some of which were collected by Cook's expeditions, at the Tairawhiti Museum in Gisborne (take a look at the exhibition). Is seems like a very appropriate way to celebrate the event to me.

We have been in contact for several years, Julie was responsible for organizing the A'a Object in Focus exhibition back in 2016, and since then we've often talked about trying to meet. Finally it happened! She is also working with the Museum de Tahiti et des Iles on various projects. We're hoping that one of them might just bring A'a back to French Polynesia for a while.

Whilst in Rurutu she gave a short talk about some of the Austral Islands objects that can be found in British museums, it was a fascinating opportunity for many Rurutu to see images of the objects and talk about their incredible cultural heritage. Of course A'a was a focus, but there are lots of other amazing objects, including shell necklaces made with cords of finely woven hair...

...and this amazing stool/headrest that is most likely from the Australs.

We even got to see the piece of tapa that the Endeavour's crew obtained while it was anchored off Rurutu in 1769.

November holidays

The school holidays have already been and gone, in a flash! Poor old Amai was picking Tahitian gooseberries and fell off the stepladder the week before the holidays, partially fracturing his wrist. It's the first broken bone that we've had here, I'm amazed to say.

It's just been strapped up, and while he's not really easily able to write and draw, it doesn't seem to be slowing him down too much...

The whales also have moved on, so the season is coming to a close for us. A welcome break, before the end of year festivities.

In Memoriam

It is November 11th, Armistice day, a celebration of the end of World War I and a moment to remember all those who lost their lives in the Great Wars. I sadly never got to meet my grandfather, but one of the few things I know about him is that he fought in WWI and was decorated for bravery, we have this magnificent picture of him on horseback taken in 1915. However, I know little more than this, unsurprisingly he never really talked about the experience to my father. I also think of the other young men who never returned. Their futures brutally taken away from them, like the Welsh poet Hedd Wyn (born Ellis Evans), who was posthumously awarded the bard's chair (highest accolade for Welsh poetry) at the 1917 Eisteddfod, or Wilfred Owen the talented war poet who died in 1918, who wrote about the horrors of war:

             Anthem for Doomed Youth

             What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
             Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
             Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
             Can patter out their hasty orisons.
             No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
             Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -
             The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
             And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

            What candles may be held to speed them all?
            Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
            Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
            The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
            Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
           And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.

                                                                Wilfrid Owen 

The big 5-0

Viriamu and Matotea are celebrating their almost-birthdays today, Viriamu will be entering a new decade and Matotea will officially be a teenager. We have guests on their actual big days, tonight we have a night "off", the first and only one for some time yet! So it's time to celebrate! Chinese take-out for the kids, and a big fat paru nohu (Large-headed Scorpionfish) with salted limes for Viriamu, delicious! Oh, as well as a cake and some Rurutu strawberry tarts for good measure!

Remembering

 

250 years to the day, the HMS Endeavour sailed down the coastline of Rurutu, but finding the anchorage poor, the pass and sea conditions dangerous and the inhabitants fierce, they did not actually go ashore.

They were, however, impressed by the wood carving on the canoes they saw as well as the patterned and dyed tapa. After some brief trading from the boat they continued on New Zealand bound... Like the fleet of voyaging canoes that will be descending on New Zealand, including the Fa'afaite (our Tahitian voyaging canoe), as part of the encounter commemorations there (Tuia 250) starting in October.

Here Cook remains a little known personality and the encounter has not marked the population in

the same way as the arrival of Protestant missionnaries in 1821, for example. However, it has been marked by a small exhibition of first day covers at the post office organized by our friend Alain! We even got some commemorative stamps.

Projects, projects, projects

Hard to believe it's been well over a year now since out Hawaiian friends visited on a taro exchange, and the heiva has already been and gone. Even the summer holidays are coming to a close...Somehow the blog has been left by the wayside...

But that's not to say nothing's happened! 

The end of last year kept us busy with a project for our association, clearing access to a small waterfall above Moerai, along with a small fare pote'e overlooking the coral cliffs, made with the help of local students at the agricultural school, the roof is half pandanus and half niau! The kids LOVED playing on the waterfall's natural slide!

We had a quiet family Christmas, not much going on, just lots of beach time.

2019 dawned and along with it our plans for a sawmill have slowly started to unfurl...
With the usual salon, translating and piles of paperwork, as part of this new project and various other administrative endeavors (I've made the move to apply for French nationality, and maybe also start supply teaching, both require serious amounts of form-filling!), I was snowed under, but not literally. Rained out more like! The wet season in Tahiti made its way down to Rurutu this year. We had mozzies galore! But at least my tumble dryer has turned out to be a good investment.

Viriamu and his trusty sidekick Frenck are busy building and fixing away. There is now an outdoor toilet and a vanilla plantation. Viriamu was taught to plant the vanilla by a Dutchman, with insider info from Tahiti. I'm looking forward to learning how to pollinate and dry it ourselves. Viriamu's grandfather had lots of vanilla growing on the slopes of the mountain behind us, I've always dreamed of dabbling in it, along with milking goats and having our own chooks.... vanilla seems the easiest option right now! And it's just outside the kitchen window, easy for pollinating by hand at the end of the year. Now we just have to hope that the goat, pigs and horses don't get to it first!

We had Cécile Baquey with us, a journalist from FranceO working on an upcoming documentary on our dear ti'i A'a,who is actually becoming somewhat of a superstar! Between the international exhibitions back in Europe (he was recently in Paris), and there were a group of young art students from Tahiti here, working on all kinds of replicas of A'a, wanting to get a look at the plaster cast in the museum and find out more about the history. Poor Cécile had a bit of hard time navigating all the different version of the stories about the statue, as well as the local politics. I'm excited to see what the end result will be though, I never cease to be amazed by the complexity of this story, and I've a feeling that there's a new chapter opening up now...

Matotea is learning to jockey, another of my husband's dreams - taking his champion horse to Tahiti for the July races. A first Rurutu horse made the journey this July, and there's a lot of buzz, but he didn't beat Viriamu's horse in Rurutu, nor the local racehorses in Tahiti...so Viriamu still dreams of taking his horse next year...Who knows maybe Matotea will be the first girl to win the horse races in Avera!


Some delightful guests here for the whales taught the girls gymnastics, and we messed around with drones. It was hard to say goodbye!

But now the new school year is looming on the horizon.

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