 |
| Breadfruit. Image: wikipedia |
I wonder what happened when Obama was elected: was Finn empowered to reclaim her American-ness? I suspect she might've been, at least in part. Do you see it?
On the following morning, Finn left for the dock outside the
Tahitian capital Papeete, to find the archaeology ship she’d spoken of that
would take her to the Marquesas Islands, one of the remotest areas of the
Pacific and indeed the world, while I prepared to fly east towards equally
remote Rapa Nui and on to Bolivia where I was teaching English.
Together we’d shared a single day, circumnavigating Tahiti
Nui, the larger circle in the roughly figure-of-eight island of Tahiti Tahiti ,
Finn herself was a series of circles.
Her grey hair like her body was short and rounded and there was neither
too much melancholy nor too much seriousness in her dinner plate face. Rather she looked as she was,
practical-minded and ready for the road, of which she’d clearly seen a
few. I’d thought to tell her she was as
I, a jajabor, but I didn’t get around to explaining the Bangla word for
nomad. I’d never travelled with a
Dutch-American grandmother before. It’d
been a first.
It was early evening by the time we’d arrived back at the
guest house. We walked up the small gravel
laneway from the highway, past the breadfruit trees I admired for their bulbous
green breadfruits and the easygoing fleshy leaves. There wasn’t much talk between us then. We were tired.
An hour or so earlier in Papeete we’d found le truck, the
Tahitian bus service with half-open sides and impromptu seats, to take us on that
last leg back to the south, and I was glad we were no longer in the pick-up
truck since there was a gendarme checkpoint and riding in the open back of
pick-ups wasn’t allowed. On le truck
there could be no problem apart from the evening jam on the singular, circular
highway we’d followed all the way back to the beginning.
After pulling up to the kerb in Papeete ’s centre, I’d climbed down from the back
of the pick-up and shook hands with the driver by way of thank you. Finn handed me a necklace that the driver’s
wife had given us, one each, of red seedpods threaded along a string. I’m not sure if it was the brightness of the
red or the exotic Tahitian origin of the necklace, but I thought to give it in
turn to one of my English students in Bolivia , the one who liked to wear
saris that we all called Señora Mumbai.
It would suit her, I thought.
Afternoon was already passing as we’d stood beside the road
on the island’s north coast, where the sea is rough and the sand is black. We needed a ride into Papeete and there was less traffic on the
north side. A pick-up stopped to offer a
lift. At first we thought to refuse
since the cabin was full and it wasn’t perhaps the best for Finn to ride in the
back. But seeing she was of a
grandmotherly age one of the passengers from inside the cabin agreed to give up
his place.
A few minutes earlier we’d been admiring the Arohoho
blowhole. Without the reef that lies in
the south, surfers were there to take advantage of the ocean swell. With each wave came a snort and a spray, like
an elephant might make while enjoying itself in a river, as the wave passed
through the rounded rocky blowhole and burst upwards into the air. We were close enough to be wet.
‘So how did you start travelling?’ I finally got around to
asking her.
In the 1960s Finn had run a small guest house, she said, in Amsterdam . With all the guests coming and going, talking
of their adventures and plans, in the end she’d wondered, if others could do
such things, why couldn’t she? ‘First I
packed up the children and we all went to Spain ,’ she said, ‘Do you see
it?’ It was before travelling became
popular.
A few minutes earlier we’d walked back from the waterfall to
the coast road where the blowhole was, but it wasn’t far and Finn in particular
was well-rested. She’d taken time out by
the falls.
There are three waterfalls at Faarumai. Finn had found a rock to sit upon at the
first of them, Vaimahutu
Falls Bangladesh ?’ She said she had and with breath held I asked
what she thought.
‘I liked it,’ she said, and immediately spoke of the
friendliness of Bangladeshis.
An hour or so earlier we’d just been setting off from the
main road towards the falls on foot when a red car stopped for us. It was a couple of Canadians on their
honeymoon, and they’d hired a car. They drove
us to the start of the trail.
An hour before that it’d been raining and on Tahiti Nui’s
eastern shore we stood. There’d been a
car with a driver kind enough to take us that far, but it wasn’t going any
further and we hoped for transport to the falls we’d read about. Vehicles are less likely to stop for
strangers in the rain, so to improve chances I stood back and we put Finn out
in front as a kind of bait. Who wouldn’t
stop for her? Sure enough the driver of
a small truck thought to apply his foot to the brake.
Perhaps twenty minutes before that the car had picked us up
at the entry to the Paul Gauguin museum.
Finn was telling me she’d been to Yemen
and Egypt . ‘Have you ever been to a dangerous country?’
I asked her.
‘There’s no such thing as a dangerous country,’ she said,
‘only people can be dangerous. Do you
see it?’
‘And please don’t mind,’ I asked, ‘but in places like Yemen and Egypt is it a problem being
American?’ It’s well known that American
backpackers will deliberately sew Canadian maple leaf flags onto their
backpacks when they travel, for extra safety.
‘Sometimes I say that I’m Dutch,’ she said, ‘it makes things easier. Do
you see it?’
Yes I saw it, and I’d long enjoyed saying I was Australian
because it’d meant once something quite different to American, at the start of
the journey.
 |
| Tahitian Women on the Beach, 1891, by Paul Gauguin. Image: wikipedia |
Paul Gauguin finally left France in 1895, never to return. He sailed to Tahiti
to escape European civilisation and ‘everything that is artificial and
conventional.’ And he was something of a
ladies’ man in Tahiti as he took to his easel
and canvas, with several of his companions featuring in his paintings, which
were for the most part unrecognised as significant works of art until after his
death. And there were legal
ramifications for his support for the Tahitians against the French
colonialists. He was fined five hundred
francs and sentenced to three months’ gaol.
Before entering the museum Finn had been quite taken with
the entanglement of trees along the driveway.
Among them she saw mushrooms. She
stopped to admire them and told me their scientific names. ‘When I’m not travelling,’ Finn said, ‘I like
collecting mushrooms. There are pine
forests on the northwest coast of America where I live, and they’re
good for mushroom picking. Maybe you
think it’s a silly hobby but I like it.
Do you see it?’
Perhaps an hour before that we stood on the road in Paea,
where there are two maraes worth seeing: Arahurahu and Taata. Before the arrival of Christianity the Maohi
of Tahiti pursued their own religious rites and at each marae or open-air
temple there was usually a stone platform with sitting places for the chiefs
and an ahu or altar, as well as a tall post around which sacrifices were
made. In absolute silence the tahu’a,
the local priest, would offer prayers.
In Tahiti perhaps the most popular of
the gods was Oro, the god of war and wisdom.
The first marae was not altogether far from the guest house
so that morning we’d started the tour on foot.
On the highway’s inland side the hills rise up, almost
immediately, firstly covered thick with tropical foliage, until the cliffs and
jagged peaks take their place almost impolitely towards island centre. It leaves a ring of humanity in Tahiti , along the inhabitable strip around the island’s
coast. It’s a circular society.
Without transport we proposed where we could to take ‘le
truck’, and otherwise to hitch. Being
two might be a disadvantage in getting a ride from strangers, I’d thought,
since it would need to be a vehicle with two spare seats rather than one. On the plus side they’d be perhaps more
likely to stop. Who was going to leave a
Dutch-American grandmother standing on the side of the road?
It was on the night before that I’d met Finn, in the
semi-outdoor kitchen area of the guest house.
We were scrambling together a bit of food, each our own, when the
talking started. Finn was on her way to
the Marquesas Islands , she said, but with a
day spare before the ship’s departure, one way or another she agreed to
accompany me on a day-tour around Tahiti Nui.
Do you see it?
 |
| Black sand beach in Tahiti. Image: wikipedia |
Islands have many personalities. Sometimes they are brave and witty, at other times they make us wonder about human beings, and still at other times islands come to visit us in the city.
This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: Do You See It?
No comments:
Post a Comment