Ritual and politics in the heart of Polynesia
Unu, wooden boards with engraved
geometrical designs, have been set up on the paved marae platform. (Click here for more French Polynesia photos)
“And here is my bedroom and my wardrobe.” With
a sweeping motion Bill, our guide, opens the sliding door and gives free sight
of his 250 shirts. We are on a historical tour around Raiatea, and Bill had
stopped at his lovely house to show us around, although we had rather expected
to have a look at the archeological artifacts he has collected over the last 30
years than at his socks and trousers. An anthropologist who has lived in
Polynesia for a long time, Bill must have given fascinating insights into
Polynesian culture and society in his “Almost Paradise Tours.” But he has turned
85 two weeks ago and his memory sometimes fails him now, which made it
difficult for us to extract information from his pleasant chit-chat.
According to legend, Raiatea is the centre
of the Polynesian triangle between New Zealand, Hawaii and Easter Island, and
all the founders of the other Polynesian empires came from here. With Bill we
visit several maraes, Polynesian
ceremonial platforms, in the south of Raiatea. “Today people still come here to
pray for important issues – look at those barn doors.” Bill points to the unu, wooden boards with engraved
geometrical designs, which have been set up on the paved platform. “They used
to belong to local chieftains, and their descendants have brought them here a
few months ago to pray for a solution to the political stalemate,” Bill
maintains. To us, they look like freshly wood-stained fretwork by a group of
high-school students, and we wonder to what extent Bill incorporates legend
into reality.
“What are the fools doing?!” Rosina, the owner of the family pension
on Bora Bora, spends the evening eating pickled sea-urchin and commenting in
turns on the red wine she has been drinking to celebrate her recent or upcoming
birthday, and on the heated debate in Parliament being shown on TV. “Gaston vs.
Gaston,” proclaims the caption. French Polynesia’s multiple ex-president Gaston
Flosse is just being ousted by his rival Gaston Tong Sang in a no-confidence
motion. Tong Sang had won a majority of votes in the last election, but Flosse,
a long-time manipulator in French Polynesian politics and staunchly against
independence, variously accused of corruption and intimidation of prosecutors,
had managed to get himself elected president again. His unlikely supporter was
Oscar Temaru, the third on the merry-go-round of presidents in the past couple
of years. Temaru is vehemently pro-independence and an archrival of Flosse. The
prayers for political improvement seemed necessary indeed.
“Many people around here are fed up with
corruption.” Captain Rupati sighs as we stare at the blue sea and watch a small
palm-fringed island pass by. And with Gaston Flosse, we gather. “Many of the big,
expensive hotels have been standing empty for years.” Most of the profits from
tourism do not stay in French Polynesia, he complains. The big hotel chains
make sure that all the business they generate is on their own premises – bars,
restaurants, tour operators, tattoo shops. Though the colony should have
benefited greatly from French financial transfers (especially those related to
French nuclear tests on two atolls in the Tuamoto island group), most islanders
wonder where all that money has ended up.
A week later we stand on the paved stones
of the large Marae Ahu O Mahine on Moorea. The inhabitants had abandoned the
area in the 19th century, we learn, and the marae has been rediscovered and restored in the 1960s (by a
colleague of Bill). Again, we wonder how much of what we see is unbroken
tradition, and how much imagination went into the restoration. As the original
name of the marae was lost, it is now
named after Moorea’s most famous warrior, chief Mahine. When Captain Cook
visited Tahiti,in 1774 Mahine was in the process of fighting bloody wars with
his colleague on the next island…
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