This is a longer post—we need to put it up before we leave the internet here, so we didn’t edit as much—enjoy!
A couple of days ago, Arlo and Alma were invited by the president of the local and championship va’a (outrigger canoe) club to join a middle school paddling class. After class, which took place largely in with a twin-hulled canoe, Arlo and Alma got individual coaching from the master paddler in individual canoes. I expect Arlo or Alma will write more about the experience, as va’a (outrigger canoes in Marquesan) fever seems to have infected them, and they are already is talking about how to get outrigger canoes on the Oakland estuary when we return home. They’ve continued to paddle here at the school each day.
What I can’t emphasize enough is the ubiquitous generosity we are benefiting from so often. The paddling coach was the man who founded the Ecole Va’a here in Uo Pou. The school—the only of its kind in the Marquesas, now serves 390 students a week and produces champion paddlers at the big competitions in Tahiti (which, by the way, the coach said Arlo had the making of). The coach is also, we learned, a renowned singer and performer and a nurse at the hospital’s maternity ward, as well as the nurse that accompanies patients on inter-island transports. And he took the time to coach each of our kids using a mixture of English, French and a lot of modeling.
I hope the pictures show how far beyond gifts of fruit this generosity goes—though we do continue to be grateful recipients of bags of pamplemousse and bunches of bananas. We return the generosity as we can—with gifts we brought for the purpose, invitations to our boat, and of course, our enthusiasm. It doesn’t always feel enough.
We are still figuring out the relationship between the Marquesians and the colonizing French culture. The world over the colonial relationship is complex, and there is necessarily tragedy, old and new. Here, we see a powerful indigenous culture, but we also feel a shadow of sadness from 150 years of colonization. As in so many colonized places, contact with Europeans, which began in a big way about three hundred years ago, decimated the Marquesan population, reducing the roughly 150,000 inhabitants to about 8,000. There are stone foundations, paths, bridges, and tikis in all the valleys, testifying to this once-booming population. My French is not nearly good enough to have a sense for whether this shadow sadness is more in my eyes or how much it colors the lives of Marquesians. We are aware always of this uncomfortable history, we are grateful to be here, we are learning what we can and we are giving as we are able.
In addition to enjoying the hospitality of the Marquesan people, we’ve met with generosity by sailors on other boats—cruisers, as we’re called. Almost all sailboats crossing the Pacific each year stop at the Isles Marquises. And for good reason. The Marquesas are the first possible stop after leaving Mexico (about 3,000 nautical miles), the Galapagos (a similar passage), or Panama (an impressive 4,000 miles). For a boat like ours, those passages range from about 3 weeks to 7 weeks spent at sea. I’ve heard it estimated that about 500 sailboats arrive in French Polynesia each year.
In such a remote place, there’s a sense of being in it together—maybe not so far from the ethos of farmers in remote areas who know that they are the only ones available to lend a hand to a neighbor. Cruisers here make friends quickly and help each other before we have become friends. American boats are in the minority here. We’ve shared food and drink with folks from Australia, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Belgium, France, New Zealand, South Africa and England, as well as sailors from the Bay Area. We’ve been loaned tools and jerry cans and books and we’ve been given a relay switch for our engine starter, as well as star fruit and grapefruit. One new friend taught us how to use some open source navigation software, another swam over and introduced himself and dove on our fouled anchor with Jason. Of course, we’ve tried to be generous with our resources as well.
There are all kinds of things about cruising that are uncomfortable (stuffy heat, dirty hair), scary (squalls in the middle of the night after a boat anchors too near you), and annoying (endless flies, cash machines not working for days), but these have been dwarfed so far by all the good things that fill our days—the natural and the cultural. Our debt to those we meet along the way grows deeper, adding to the debt we have to all of you who sent us on our way with your help and love and letters and gifts.
Below Jason writes about the talent and generosity of two woodworkers we spent a morning with a couple weeks ago. Thanks for reading. We love hearing from you all!
From Jason:
When we first met Pori and Axel a couple weeks ago, they were working in a yard alongside the road, cutting a massive tree up into boxy chunks. Caitlin spoke with them in French, and Arlo & Alma and I tried to follow along. Pori, the boss, is broad shouldered and solid. Axel, Pori’s junior and employee is built like a sumo wrestler, bald headed and heavily tattooed. When they heard we were interested in wood and carving, they were excited to try to explain about the tree they were working on (locally called Temanu), the carving tradition, and their work. It was difficult to communicate, so we arranged to come visit them at their shop. Before we parted ways, Axel held a board down with his plastic sandalled foot, and cut a slab off for us. It made me nervous, but he’d obviously been handling a chainsaw his whole life, and he still has all his toes.
We found Pori and Axel in their shop this morning, overlooking the bay up the hill from town. Pori showed us the ukareres (the local varient of the ukulele—flatter and higher pitched and with double or triple strings at each of the four string sizes) he makes. He uses all kinds of local woods, the Temanu he’d been cutting when we met him, breadfruit wood, mango wood, and other deeply and beautifully grained and colorful woods from the hills around his house. The shop is a broad shed attached to his house, full of blocks of beautiful wood, with some nice stationary tools (a thickness planer, a bandsaw) and hand tools and power tools and a carpet of wood chips over the dirt floor. A shop I wouldn’t have noticed from the road held so much beautiful wood and work. When I showed Pori the spoon I was carving from the Temanu they gave us, his eyes lit up and he took it to show Axel, who was working in back of the shop on a large carving. Axel was pretty amused at the idea of a wooden spoon, and found it even funnier when we said I might make a knife to go with it. A wooden knife? He and Pori were supportive of the idea of hair sticks though.
I showed them the knife and gouge I use, and Axel sharpened them both, and at my invitation, tried them out on the spoon I was working on. While we talked with Pori, Axel hollowed the bowl of the spoon and shaped its back. We checked with him a few times and he demonstrated the way that he uses both of his hands to hold the work and control the blade. He has a two handed technique where he levers both of his thumbs against the handle and back of the blade to apply a lot of pressure with a lot of control. He makes it look quite simple, but I’m going to have to work to get the feel for it. He’s even more deft with small carving tools than he is with the chainsaw. His carvings, in the traditional Marquesan style, bowls and tikis, are busy with exceptionally fine detail. Their shapes are graceful and the elegance and perfection of the carving are amazing.
We went back and forth with Pori and Axel, talking about wood and carving and Ukareres. Pori played his ukarere–a little, faster and higher pitched than the Ukulele music we’re used to. We talked about tools some more with Axel. We looked at more of Axel’s carvings. I didn’t want the visit to end, but they had given us a couple hours of their time, carving lessons, sharper knives, and a lot of patience already. We let them get back to work, and wandered down the hill to town, wondering at our fortune in finding these two woodworking masters at random out alongside the road, and at connecting with people over shared passions.
Coconuts are a central part of life in the Marquesas. The ancient Polynesians provisioned with coconuts on their voyages, and now locals drink the water from them, eat the meat, and dry them to make copra to sell, which will be processed into oil in Tahiti. The animals eat them, I open them with my machete, and shrimp cooked in coconut is very good.
