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.

...

A quarter millennium since two worlds collided

All the UK hype around the Pacific this year is linked to the 250 year celebrations of Cook's first voyage around the Pacific. This includes the series Oceans Apart and Handmade Pacific on BBC4, that has been recently aired and stars members of my talented Rurutu family.
Cook left England in late August 1768, arriving in Tahiti on April 13th 1769 ( he then incidentally went on to "discover" Rurutu on August 13th 1769, with just a little help from his Tahitian interpreter-navigator Tupaia!). It seems like an appropriate moment to reflect on where history has taken both societies since then.
While we can know little of really how the Polynesians themselves experienced these first encounters, the accounts being predominantly European, it is fascinating to put yourself in the place of characters like Ahutoru, a Tahitian who returned to France with Bougainville, or Tupaia, Cook's Tahitian interpreter during the first voyage, and Omai (pictured here), a Tahitian who made it to England after Cook's second voyage, and the only one of the three who made it back to his islands - bringing livestock and a coat of armor, among other gifts (pictured right)!

The anniversary has also motivated several interesting exhibitions of Polynesian objects, many of which, much like our own ti'i A'a, are lingering in museum collections outside the Pacific. One such exhibition, called Oceania will be opening at the Royal Academy in London this week, and will be attended by the French Polynesian Minister of Culture among others! An occasion for Polynesians to reclaim their cultural identity, to make sense of all that was lost, forgotten and stolen over the intervening centuries. Today, after the far-reaching effects of introduced diseases, that literally decimated the populations of our islands, and the arrival of Christianity and the cultural upheaval that it brought, it is heart-warming to see the Polynesians rediscovering their roots, and moving forwards. The dynamism and innovation that we are seeing here in the world of contemporary art is simply thrilling. It's an exciting time to live in French Polynesia!

A momentous weekend

While I spent the weekend looking a bit like this, in Tahiti at the salon du tourisme, drumming up business, caught up in the usual social whirl..........our friends in Hawaii were hosting a Rurutu evening, to honor the trip and share Rurutu taro growing practices they learned, when they visited us back in July.... and to premier the short film they made about their experience and the traditional lifestyle here...

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, my cousin Michael married Amy, a beautiful wedding by all accounts, Aunty Sue and Uncle Dave were both looking very distinguished! Sad to have missed it but thankful for facebook! Wishing the happy couple a long and contented life together!
And if that's not enough I also just got confirmation that Viriamu will be coming soon to British screens as part of a series about the impact of first encounters in the Pacific! BBC4 September 17!

Talking about his cultural heritage, looking a bit like this!

Then just afterwards, his very talented mother will be starring in this series, showcasing Rurutu pandanus hat-weaving!

Looking a bit like this!

A veritable Rurutu bonanza on BBC4!!!

The end of the long holidays!

Yesterday it was back to school....
The kids were dutifully by the side of the road, ready and raring to go! Amai in his last year of kindergarten, Heimana in CM1 and Mato already in her second year of highschool in 5eme. It's gone real quick, but a lot has happened!

The guest house has been busy as ever, the whales arrived early this year and the season already seems to have been in swing for a while. I counted seven on my way to the store yesterday!



There was also the heiva to distract us with a couple of weeks of festivities. This is one of my favourite events, not as glam as the dancing, but worth a look! Starch weighing - heaviest taro/bananas/tapioca roots, in different categories!
There was Heimana's birthday lost in the middle of it all, along with the horse race and our Hawaiian group.

 The week of taro related and cultural exchanges were pretty intense, and Viriamu was in his element as the taro master! Here's hoping we'll make it over to visit them in a year or two, to see how it's done in Hawaii.

Mahie caused a storm by pouding taro, an activity exclusively reserved for Rurutu men.....those radical Hawaiian wahines.

 Then the rest was a blur of holiday rush and translating - Air Tahiti Nui celebrates its twentieth very soon, and boy do I know a lot about it all now!

So, here we are on the other side, looking forwards to an outing to Tahiti for our biannual salon.