This time I think I’m going to lose it. I mean I just can’t see not losing it. Even before placing the tasty morsel in my mouth, the mere sight of it in the bowl proffered to me is enough to start a little retch in my stomach. Alas, this is my first day with my new hosts in Tupuai, and the impulse to do right by them is mighty so in it goes and it…is…ghastly! We are talking about a strip of raw sea cucumber served in a mixture of lime juice and, yes, fafaru. (For an explanation of fafaru, please the post from Feb. 1) The texture is that of rubber bands, eraser bits and snail slime inside of a small hot water bottle you are trying to chew through. It is chewy. It is gooey. It is occasionally crunchy and always tough. The lime makes my mouth pucker and the fafaru fills my whole head with the essence of rotten fish. So I try to concentrate my thoughts on things like the taxman and Sarah Palin’s 2012 presidential campaign and the task at hand: Do not throw up all over the inside of this rather nice big late model Ford pickup truck. Eventually my hosts’ attention is drawn to their interlocutor on the other side of the car, and I can fling (with extreme prejudice) the still-intact sea cucumber bit out the window, smile and smack my lips in appreciation as the attention eventually returns to me. Whew.
With this introduction it is my intention to dwell for a bit on my culinary adventures thus far, and the diet around here in general. No pictures with this one, I’m afraid, as in a role of a guest I find taking pictures of the things on my plate just a bit too weird. Here’s a partial list of what I’ve eaten so far, though. Fish; boiled, fried, dried, salted, rotted and raw. Lobster; baked, roasted, rotted (in fafaru). Coconut Crab. Snails. Limpets. Turtle. Yes, turtle - unlucky for the turtle, it does make one good stew and is traditionally (though currently illegally) eaten all over Polynesia. I have reached a point where, when offered the gizzard of a goatfish or the gonads of an urchin, I can just pop the thing in my mouth and dwell on the texture and taste without many of my prejudices of old.
Some prejudices are harder to overcome than others, though. In Rangiroa I started partaking in the lovely Tahitian habit of saying grace before meals. I even developed my very own silent prayer I uttered before sampling a dish of unknown identity: Please, dear God, don’t let it be Dog. Yes, they eat dog around here, and yes, I hear it reported that it too tastes good in a stew. And tell you what, there are plenty enough dogs around! Further, after a few restless nights punctuated with the inevitable dogfights around town and the loud and persistent protest of every canine around to the passage of some nocturnal interloper, I find even this prejudice start to recede. Oh, and I also know why you kill chickens by wringing their necks. Because you bloody want to, is why! Yes, the cocks call their cock-a-doodle-doos at dawn – and every other fracking hour one is trying to catch some sleep. Yes, wringing their necks is the only way of extracting some justice in a land where you sleep with the windows always open.
The veggies are fewer in number than the animal options; uru (breadfruit) and taro are just about all that are regularly eaten, with lots of French fries in the menu in the local fast food joints. Green things seem out of fashion pretty universally. Oh, and bread. Lots and lots of bread, really cheap (but good) baguettes, subsidized by the French taxpayers and available in every village fresh every morning for the ridiculous price of about 70 cents. Also rice, a lot of rice. As a matter of fact you could say that the modern Tahitian food is dominated by starch and fat. After a month of eating at family tables I do understand clearly now why there are so many big – and I mean scary big – people around.
So many big people and so much diabetes and heart disease, in fact, that it has attracted international attention. I have the good fortune to have my stay in Tupuai coincide with the public delivery of the preliminary report of a comprehensive multi-island study of the diet/disease interaction in Polynesia, conducted by a team from Lavalle University from Quebec. Since the public presentation is conducted in French I miss a fair amount of the message and so can’t quote many details but: The picture is not good, obesity is rampant across almost all age groups and exercise is rare. Interestingly, many people I talk to afterwards blame their genes rather than diet, whereas the study finds the diet to explain 100% of the observed disease patterns. Denial is a universal defense mechanism, I find.
Ok, so I won’t dwell too much on the sights I’ve seen, but a couple of snapshots. Children and some adults assembling a Dagwood-style pile from wheat crackers and Nutella. And then they dunk this in a bowl of Milo, milk and sugar, eventually allowing the tails of the sugar sandwich to meld with the liquid sugar in the bowl to form this pap that is then spooned up with good appetite. Now I’m not saying this is any worse that some General Mills or Nabisco products on the shelves in the US, but it is a pretty peculiar thing to see.
Another accepted food group are the various forms of canned oinks and moos commonly served in stews and as side dishes. I’m talking of course of Spam and all the other related potted meat products that just haven’t formed any part of my diet at any time in my life (Thank you, Mother!), and consequently find it amazing people eat the stuff when they do have many other good, affordable options around. Yes, I’ve tried them all when offered, and I reluctantly concede that they are actually a little better than fafaru.
While I’m at this, I might as well mention the liquid food group. Polynesians drink significant quantities of beer. Right, I’m sure you spotted the generalization in the statement above, for not everyone drinks that much (particularly the women) but boy do some guys make up for it and keep the average up! When you hear someone declare they only had two beers over the weekend, this actually refers to the number of cases they consumed – I’m not making this up! In my experience the guys on these islands make happy drunks very happy to share their beer with you. The scary part for the casual observer is the grim determination with which they keep downing the brews – there is no let-up, it is all go, go, go until either the beer or the drinker go out. The next day begins with a beer, and this bender can last well into Monday, which is casually known here as the “petit Dimanche” (the small Sunday).
A friend of Hérvé’s who showed up at the house around nine o’clock on Friday, the day before our departure, offers a good illustration of this behavior. He is in his late forties, a heavy-set guy who spills out from the front seat of his large pick-up that slowly creeps up the driveway. Hérvé knows what is coming, and carries three chairs out to the porch as soon as he recognizes the arriving truck. The friend spills out of the truck, staggers to the porch and wordlessly collapses on the empty chair - all the while holding a can of Hinano. He looks kind of morose, actually downright frightening in this inebriated state, but his face dissolves into this absolutely radiant and sweet smile when Hérvé introduces me to him. It turns out that the missus threw him out of the house, and he is here for a refuge – a situation I gather is not unusual. Long story short, another hour and a half and pass at a clip of about a beer every 15 minutes. At this point he runs out, staggers back to the truck and returns with a small box of Zumuva wine, a product exactly as bad as the name suggests.
At around eleven the talk turns to music, and Hérvé announces that a) the friend is a really good ukulele player and b) with his guitar and singing, they make one sweet Paumotu duo. Trouble is, the uke is back at the house and, despite my vocal pleas to the contrary, Hérvé and the friend pile into the truck and, with a few course corrections involving gear changes, back out of the long, dark drive. I resolve not to risk my own neck in this endeavor, because the friend is truly blotto. When he first proposes fetching the uke, I think he is just joking. Now, I don’t think him capable of finding his own butt with two hands at this stage of the night, and don’t really expect to see the two of them back anytime soon. Imagine my surprise then, when the headlights re-appear some twenty minutes later, miss all the palm trees and come to a halt in front of the house.
So now picture this. The friend sits slumped in a plastic lawn chair, occasionally threatening to roll right out of it. He is, as I mentioned, a stocky guy, with big hands and thick fingers worn leathery and calloused by cutting copra. His eyes are but thin slits, for all purposes closed, and he fumbles and almost drops the uke as he reaches for it. Yet somehow, once secure in place, his fingers know where to go, his face takes on a Buddha-like serenity and indeed the two of them play absolutely beautiful tunes together. I am astounded by this display of grace and mentally re-calibrate the performance scale for practiced drunks. I record them for a while, but eventually have to head to bed and leave the two friends playing together on the porch. Next morning they are both up early, but while Hérvé goes for a bottle of aspirin, his friend shuffles over to the truck and opens another box of Zumuva for breakfast.
Alas, this behavior does not always lead to mellow tunes; domestic violence and casual bar fights are apparently all too common, not to mention the economic hardships families suffer in this place of exorbitantly expensive beer. Alcohol abuse in Polynesia is a phenomenon that has been around since European contact, and fast solutions to the problem seem unlikely. I hasten to remind that the behavior is not universal, just distressingly common.
This post started in Tupuai, but I’m afraid I’ve gotten way off the track. I’ll get back on track with the next post, on some very interesting experiences both on and off the water on this beautiful island.
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