Mixed feelings

I’ve just discovered that Penelope Fillon was born near Abergavenny. For those of you not following the French presidentials, she’s the wife of Francois Fillon, the candidate for French left (right-wing in British terms). She and her husband are embroiled in a huge scandal about fictitious employment, after claiming she had never been involved in her husband’s political career, it turns out she was paid very well (some €680,000) over 15 years, as his attachée !!! A hugely damaging scandal that could inadvertently increase Marine LePen's chances (Front National=the French version of Trump) of being elected, even though she has also been involved in a similar, though less costly and flagrant scandal at the European parliament. That, combined with the abysmal rugby results  and Brexit craziness (Wales, unlike Scotland and N Ireland, voted out !) are leaving me less proud of my Welsh heritage, just two weeks after St.David’s  day.

March 5th 1797

Yesterday was a national holiday, celebrating 220 years since the first European missionaries arrived in Tahiti. A day celebrated with vigor by the Maohi Protestant Church, and definitely a turning point in the history of the islands. For better or for worse, the Christianization of French Polynesia had a profound impact on the Polynesian culture.

Above is an engraving of the Duff  a vessel belonging to the London Missionary Society arriving in Matavai Bay near Point Venus, Mahina, a location that Cook's first expedition, before them, had used to observe the transit of Venus in 1769.

Happy Wales Day!

A quick nod to 'Dewi Sant' (St. David) the patron saint of Wales, the 1st of March is his day, a holiday celebrated since the 12th century. That's a little after the first Polynesians arrived on Rurutu, if we can believe the current radio carbon dates. Apart from several miraculous acts, St. David is thought to be responsible for the leek becoming a Welsh symbol. Apparently he advised his men to put leeks in their hats to avoid friendly fire, during battles against the Saxons.

I'm ashamed to say I didn't even make leek soup this year ( no leeks to speak of at the market in Rurutu!). Though I have made the pilgrimage to  St.David's cathedral several times, during school holidays in West Wales, which is more than many!

Lotus eaters

One of our guests this week is a Brit who has also made Polynesia his home. It's fascinating to meet someone who's followed a similar path to my own. It gets me thinking about the choices I've made.

In Homer's epic poem the Odyssey, after days being tossed on a troubled sea, Odysseus and his men come across an island inhabited by lotus-eaters, a people whose food source was the flowers and fruits of the 'lotus', a plant which induces an apathetic state of torpor. Three of his men taste the delicious fruits and no longer wish to return to their previous life of hardship and toil.

When I first made my decision to 'fall off the face of the earth' I was warned about lotus-eating, by a friend. And it's true, moving here has profoundly changed my life, but I'm not sure it's necessarily lotus-eating (though Polynesian society's penchant for kava and pot, does have some parallels). The 'lotus tree' that Homer refers to was most likely Zizyphus lotus, a plant in the buckthorn family, that grows in the Mediterranean into Northern Africa, related to the jujube, and not necessarily the water-lily Nymphaea lotus, though the Nile blue water-lily, N. caerulaea, does have psychotropic properties.

It's true that our idyllic lifestyle and the incredible beauty does help you forget about the world outside, the incompetency of the local government, the horrors of the Trump administration and Britain's blundering towards Brexit. It just all seems less sharply in focus from here. I can put it in context, it is less crushing. I am no longer ruled by stress and dissatisfaction, the malaise of the western world. I'm now more active than ever, and every day brings new challenges, new projects, I learn just a little more. I have a simple life, but one that is honest and deeply satisfying. Even more so, now that I have rediscovered my literary passion. I do wonder where I might have been if I had continued in academia, but its ivory towers and smugness often felt just as detached from reality as here. So tell me who is it that's eating 'lotus'...