Let the heiva commence.....

 Friday was the opening ceremony of our annual cultural festivities the 'Heiva i Rurutu', for the first time I was involved in the opening parade, as a member of the Tourist Committee. It was a fun little moment of island pride, with an odd jumble of participants - the local associations were out in force, the kid's football associations, the Pandanus weavers and the very noisy Moto-cross and quad bikers, the mayor's office workers (all in matching attire, above) and a drive-by of the new communal heavy machinery!

Then there were the three village's dance troupes with their decorated chariots.

 

There was the raising of the flags headed by the chief of police and an original version of the Marseillaise played on Tahitian drums, by Moerai's dance troupe, all kitted out in ti-leaf costumes. My girls, who'd never miss a party, came along,  dressed up to the nines in their new fairy and ballerina costumes - Matotea was nonplussed when she was not allowed to join me in the parade.

Tama, our friend and the local dentist from Tubuai, took some great photos of the girls as well as the opening of the craft tent, here my mother-in-law shows off her wares.

 In the evening there was the annual fireworks display,  Heimana slept through the whole thing last year, but this year she was completely enchanted.......

Xmas Day

Christmas here is always hectic in a laid back sort of way. As always the kids do the tour of the family, with multiple gift giving sessions, which started on the 24th and went on until New Year.

It was also Heimana's christening (all kids here get christened on the 25th)...

...she was very well behaved, mainly thanks to her godmother's fancy hat/hairdo, which had her mesmerized for the whole of the ceremony. After church we had a family feed here at home, Viriamu roasted a lamb on a spit that he put together himself.

I must admit I was a bit stressed about his homemade contraption, but in the end it all worked out nicely, I was impressed.

Of course there were the obligatory kids everywhere, climbing up the furniture and getting the whole house in a good old mess....Matotea was in her element, this year she's really into the whole Christmas scene and keeping her grubby little fingers off the presents was no easy task!

Here she is on Christmas Eve, quietly hidden away in the grandparents room
reading Barbar's Christmas

Father Christmas brought her a Hello Kitty bouncer (even better the grandparents got her a fairy outfit but more of that later).......and a singing book for Heimana.

At the moment Matotea's 'de-camped' to Meme's house to hang out with her cousins, poor old grandmere and grandpere have been abandoned!

Our big fat Polynesian wedding (part III)

The wedding day
As if three simultaneous weddings were not enough, each of us brides and grooms had six attendants, so including our chaperons and flower-girls we were 54 people in the wedding party!

The grooms side of the wedding party processed to meet the brides and their attendants, then we all set off to Avera (Viriamu's village) for the civil and religious ceremonies.



The ceremonies were pretty short and sweet. (Viriamu and I didn't get married at the mayors office, because earlier, upon inquiring what documents I needed to get married there being a non-French citizen, they told me that they would not be able to marry a non-French citizen and that maybe I should first seek French citizenship!!!! Fortunately the mayor in Moorea was able to help us out....)



The absolute highlight of the day for me was our arrival at the reception on horseback, complete with conch-blowing horsemen and drummers. Traditionally all the couples would have arrived on horseback followed by each pair of groomsmen and maids of honor (each on horseback, so for us that would have been >21 horses), which must have been quite a sight to behold! Now I understand why it's just once in a generation....

At the reception we had our own private Tahitian(or Rurutu) dance show and lots of food (check out the cakes), which was good because there were LOTs of guests!

Our big fat Polynesian wedding (part II)

The first part of the wedding, the 'umuai', involves all the children and is a gift giving ceremony - at the end the gifts are divided up between the children. This made up the first three days of our wedding. Every family in Rurutu had to present gifts to our family, each in their turn, it goes by order of relatedness, so the closest family come in right at the end, and the generosity of gifts is also related to family ties. The gifts include absolutely everything: from pigs, taro, sugar, sacks of flour, frozen chicken-pieces, plastic-wares, fridge-freezers, beds, linens and Pandanus mats......

each of the couples getting married also gets a new outfit of clothing each time a family visits (here are just a few of them).

Basically we all got to dress up 25 times over three days. Let me tell you I got some pretty magnificent outfits, Matotea has dress-up for the rest of her life! Because everyone was told that I had just had a baby most of the clothes that were made for me were somewhat on the ample side, so I also have Polynesian maternity clothes for the next time.....

Then, once we, the couples, are suitably dolled up, we are paraded outside to sit in front of our mountain of gifts in our new finery, an 'orero' (orator) for each family recites the family ties between our family and their own and thanks everybody (and believe me there are a lot of people involved), then our 'orero' gets up and thanks them and we all get to dance around a bit, whilst being sprinkled with perfume and talc (not sure where the talc idea came from, but the general idea is to make us smell nice, though three days of this can get a bit much, not to mention causing respiratory problems!!!).

Afterwards the whole of the visiting family has to be fed by us...so in fact a lot of the food that we received as gifts when straight into the Tahitian oven and back out to all our visitors.........

Words can't really adequately describe how crazy this whole thing was, so I hope the pictures give you a taster. Here my family and friends watch dumbstruck!