Heiva

It's officially started! The heiva, our annual cultural celebration has begun. It kicked off on friday with the raising of the flags and a parade headed by Miss Rurutu, complete with decorated floats and torch-bearers, followed by a much-anticipated fireworks display. I packed two warmly dressed and impossibly excited little girls off in the car with papa friday evening, as I stayed home to man the kitchen..... Heimana succumbed to sleep before the fireworks display began, but Matotea was enchanted!

Saturday it was the fruit-bearers race and the stone-lifting, and I got to go along too.

Tonight the tarava, traditional song competition......thursday the horse race, counting down!

End of term!

School's out for the 'winter' break. Yesterday a rather young, trim, polynesian sunglasses-toting Father Christmas visited Matotea's school, giving out gifts for the kiddies. Now the trick is to stop her from opening it before the big day! There was a dance show and the obligatory after-show feed, as well......Matotea was super cute in a hessian dancing vahine outfit, but I didn't have my camera to hand :-( 

Instead, here are some photos from a couple of weeks back, of the 'Reo Maohi' week celebrations, we (me and the grandparents) got to take part in some of the traditional tahitian activities that the kiddes had been doing during the week....it was quite fun!

 

weaving coconut leaves, and of course learn the appropriate weaving song. 

 

getting hideously confused trying to learn to make a fish out of pandanus

 

trying out traditional power tools - an old-fashioned drill

 

playing a dancing game

watching a re-enactment of the legend of Hina and the coconut, 

Hina is played by Matotea's cousin Meisi (centre)

the obligatory after show feed

 

Matotea and her cousin Florida, not quite behaving!

Nov 1st

Today is all saints' day, here in Rurutu we celebrate the day by paying our respects to the dead, in much the same way as Dia de las muertas we decorate the tombs of the dead and hold candlelit vigils over the night of the 31st, and believe that the spirits of the dead can come to visit us. Viriamu's brother decorates the tomb of their grandfather with flowers every year. The tomb is in our garden, it's a Tahitian tradition to be buried on your own piece of land, but the practice is actually forbidden these days.

the Tere

Today we took part in the second island tour of the 'Tere' our special Rurutu New Years celebrations, it was Matotea's first 'Tere'. This one was arranged by our principle village Moerai.

It was stinking hot and we spent a lot of the day in the car in self-imposed traffic jams (it's a novelty here!!!) processing around the island with a good part (I'm guessing near half) of the island's population......

with stops at important historical sites to recite the history of the island and a stop at each major village for our traditional stone-lifting sessions and refreshments......

Tonight there's a big shindig in Moerai, complete with dance-show and lots of Hinano (Tahitian beer).......we're opting for a quiet night in, instead!

tau Matari'i i ni'a

Tomorrow, nov 20th, marks the beginning of the 'season of plenty' in the ancient Polynesian calendar and is signaled by the rising of the Pleiades on the horizon, the celebration occurs on the first new moon in November, and the constellation sets in mid to late May heralding the end of this season (Matari'i i raro) and the beginning of the cooler season. The arrival of the Pleiades heralded a favorable time for planting food, for fishing, marriage and also for travel (the stars were used by Viriamu's ancestors to navigate the vast Pacific Ocean). The Pleiades are a cluster of seven bright stars, also often known as the Seven Sisters or affectionately as M45, located on the shoulders of Taurus near Orion. I haven't yet tried to locate them, but I have remarkable trouble with the Southern Hemisphere sky....you can be sure I'll have my eye out for them....anyway they should look something like this....

The constellation was recognized by many ancient cultures and has many legends and stories attached to it. In Greek mythology the Pleiades were the seven daughters of Pleione and Atlas, handmaidens of Artemis and playthings of the gods (both Poseidon and Zeus had children with one or more of them!). Legend has it that they committed suicide with grief after the disappearance their brothers the Hyades and death of their father, Zeus honored them by transforming them into stars. Merope the youngest of the sisters was wooed by Orion, but she refused his advances, and it is said that Orion's constellation still pursues the Pleiades across the sky. One of the most beautiful legends I just found comes from the Kiowa, a native American tribe, and is linked to Devil's Tower national monument in Wyoming. It goes something like this, seven young maidens were out playing by the river when they were set upon by bears, they climbed upon a large rock and in fear they called upon the spirit of the rocks to help them, pitying the maidens he raised the rock high into the sky, and though the bears tried to climb it, they could not, their claw marks can be seen on the side of the rock today, now known as Devil's Tower. The maidens, unable to descend from the rock, ascended into the heavens and were transformed into stars.

Devil's Rock National Moument, Wyoming (photo:Colin Faulkingham)

Here in Tahiti the celebration of Matari'i i ni'a is focused on teaching and reviving traditional cultural practices, learning how to prepare and preserve food. Of course, with the missionaries, the celebration of this festival was forgotten and it has only recently been re-established. Along with kava drinking ceremonies, which were also forbidden by the missionaries. So to open the Matari'i celebrations there is a kava drinking ceremony. To see pictures and find out more about the festival (in French), click here.

Heiva de Rurutu 2008

The heiva is a month long cultural festival celebrated every year across French Polynesia. In Tahiti it's a large and rather professional festival, but in the islands it remains charmingly rustic. This year was the first year that I've really done the whole heiva in Rurutu. The festival includes a huge variety of competitions ranging from sporting events like paddling,

stone-lifting,

and, of course, the bareback horse race along the beach.....

(Viriamu got third this year, but his little brother got first! It's supposedly a friendly race, but there's definitely some pride at stake)

There are also dance, singing, music, flower-arranging and weaving competitions, as well as the country-fair sort of things, the longest/heaviest bunch of bananas or taro root, coconut husking and taro-pounding competitions, all in all it's a lot of good fun for the whole family!!

manioc (tapioca) roots (above left), varieties of bananas and taro (above right)

a prize-winning bunch of bananas weighing in at >40kg

poi-poi making (taro-pounding)

An illustrated guide to making coconut-milk (for beginners!)

Coconut milk was not something I gave much thought to a few months ago – it was just something you got out of a tin. Well not here, one thing that we are never short of is coconuts.

The trick is to figure out how to turn this...

into this...

This is just one of the many things that make me feel like a total idiot – most Tahitians have been opening coconuts since they were knee-high to a grasshopper, so I come in at a skill level of a bout 4 years old here, it’s kind of strange being so incompetent at so many things! But I’m learning, oh yes I am. Husking coconuts is now no longer a mystery, in fact I might even be getting better at it. So here’s a quick how to, for you would be ‘survivors’.

First choose your coconut. For coconut milk (versus drinking and various other Tahitian concoctions) you need a mature coconut, so one with a dried brown husk. Make sure it’s not sprouting too much and give it a shake to see if it’s got some water in it. If it’s good then you can start the husking. The tool of choice here is a sharpened stick or metal spike stuck into the ground, so you deftly skewer the coconut onto the stake and peel away the husk in one or two swift movements (alternatively you can spend 20 minutes working up a sweat wrenching and cursing, peeling off at least a dozen small shreds of husk, hopefully without taking out an eye or too much bodily harm).

Good, so you’ve peeled your coconut and Maroro is happily playing with the shredded husk (incidentally this is good stuff for making fires to keep away the mossies). So now you have a fibrous lump that needs cleaning with a few swift machete strokes, then whack! One resonating thump with the machete makes the coconut fall into two perfect halves – the first time I did this it worked like a dream, and I can’t tell you how satisfying it was....but I’ve never managed to repeat the exercise so now I resort to throwing it against the wall, smashing it on the floor or a few satisfying blows with a hammer, all of which have the same effect, just less finesse.

Anyway you have your delicious white coconut meat to hand, now for the grating. We have a little stool here and a board with a grater, so you just squat down on the stool and grate away...a little bit of skin usually gets grated at some point, but it’s just a minor flesh wound so you continue undaunted ‘til you have a beautiful white fluffy pile of grated meat. Then you get a dampened dish towel, take a handful of meat into the dish towel and squeeze as hard as you can, a small trickle of white liquid will pour into your receptacle of choice, you’ll get about half a cup per coconut. So go on knock yourself out with the stuff! It’s actually great exercise for the upper body and arms, I’m considering making a workout video ;-)

CONGRATULATIONS ON COMPLETING LESSON 1!