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flirting with supervision, and the custom of ‘going Fara’ superseded the past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 s’ kat 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
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