Sunday 2 February 2014

Fara Way 5



A hurricane lamp flickered into life outside our window, faster than we did inside.
“Robyn? Wink?” It was Julie. “Fara time.” It was still hot and muggy and my muscles ached from the dancing and the fatigue, but I told myself that this was, after all, why we had come, and roused Robyn, to tell her the same.
It was an even larger group this time. The word was out. All over Rotuma, at different houses each night, every night for a month, impromptu singing and dancing celebrations would burst into flame. The only difference for us was that, because we were extra special guests, it would happen at the same house every night. No sleep. The foreboding words of Sefo rang in my ear. But then the entire night rang into melodious song and smiles, and it didn’t matter at all. We were only in Rotuma for week. Compared to other things we survived that long, Fara fatigue would still be more fun.
The tradition had evolved from the manea’ hune’ele beach parties of old, where young people would picnic at the beach from late afternoon through the night, singing and dancing and courting. Here they could spend time with prospective partners, away from the suffocating tight knit social regulation of the strong Rotuman family and community pressures of collective conformity.
But then came the missionaries and the powerful church doctrine they represented. Manea’ hune’ele was decreed to be immoral and licentious, and the escapades and potential loss of virginity that might occur, unacceptable. But a compromise was needed, so as to still allow some form of courtship to occur. The Methodists found a method to combine flirting with supervision, and the custom of ‘going Fara’ superseded the past trysts on the beach that had occurred before Jesus arrived, and spoiled all their fun. The fun was given a more precise purpose. The flirting was now the search for a life partner. The young boys were told not to ‘play for nothing.’ If unsuccessful they were mocked as someone who ‘compresses horse manure,’ a’pat finak ne has, accomplishing nothing by riding up and down, except spreading horseshit on the roads, until it was packed down, or a’pat finak ne ha skat ma f’ia ra, returning from a fruitless fishing trip without any fish. The boys would sometimes orchestrate having their own Fara troupe taken hostage at the house where the girl they were enamored with lived, so as to increase their chances of success. Fara literally means ‘to ask,’ in Rotuman. For most islanders, all they asked was that it still be just more of a fun social event, more frolic than flirting.
As the nights followed the Fara way, Robyn and I began to follow the troupes to other houses as well. We would fall into unconsciousness, like cats in the heat of the day, whether we wanted to or not. Inevitably, inexorably, we were worn down. I had reached my limit, and I asked Julie, if we could be excused from that night’s festivities, just to catch up on some sleep.
I thought it was a polite formality, and it never occurred to me that, in an island culture so remote and isolated, the idea of separating awhile from your family, real or adopted, might ever be interpreted as antisocial behavior. But, for a brief movement, I saw a sag in Julie’s smile. She agreed not to wake us.
And so it was that Robyn and I looked forward to the arms of Morpheus, even though it was far too hot to look forward to the arms of each other. We settled into our linoleum lethargy,
and set a course for coma.
My eyes were beginning to wobble, and then I heard it, just once.
Strummummummummummumm.
I swore out loud, and then hoped that no one in the Fara troupe that had congregated outside our window had heard it. And then I swore again. Robyn just looked at me, waving her fan.
“There’s no point.” I said, realizing the futility of resisting the social pressure to participate. “We’re still the ambassadors of something here.” And we got up, and opened the powder blue door, and joined the singing and clapping and perfume in the dark. The moon was full, and the stars were bright, and I danced with the old women and the little girls, looking away all the time they danced, until I could dance no more. After each they said ‘Fa ieksia,’ thank you, and I said the same. And that, I had decided, was that. But it wasn’t, was it.
An electric ripple rolled up my back, from bottom to top. I turned into a radiant reflection of where it had all started centuries ago, in songs of colliding souls swept in with the tide to the shore.
She was intoxicating, sweeter than her caramel skin, than the coconut oil in her hair, than the perfumed flowers of her tefui garland, than the captivating one behind her ear. She moved like the story of what had been sacrificed for us to have met here, in the gracefulness of Mak Samoa, the Samoan way, first with her feet together, with a subtle shuffling in-and-out in time to the music, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, then with her arms, silk ribbons flowing fluent in elegant motifs from her fingertips, like slow breezes, then, from behind and within her titi skirt of long leaves, hips and loins pulsating, whirling ever more exuberant, and then, and only then, with her eyes, rolling and wandering, before finally fixing on both her hands, reaching out to me.
OK, I thought. Just one more.


tall and pleasant, well-built, and full of gaiety, with eyes large and  
 full of fire, noses a little flattened, white teeth, ear lobes pierced with
 a sweet-smelling flower, and almost naked.”

                                                                                    La Coquille, 1824

No comments:

Post a Comment