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.