Fara Way 6

   “...as well or better cultivated and its inhabitants more numerous  

    for its size than any of the islands we have hitherto seen.”

                                                        Captain Edwards, Pandora, 1791

“Wink? Robyn?” It was Julie, and daylight too soon.

“I think these people are zombies.” I whispered to Robyn. “They don’t seem to need any sleep.” On the mats in Julie’s house at breakfast, she explained that Av mane’a was more than going Fara.

“Today we’re going to Manea‘ ‘on fa ma haina.” She said, dishing out additional vowels with the sliced papaya and pineapple. The girls fanned the flies and the Fahrenheit from our faces.

“What’s that, Julie?” Robyn asked.

“The harvest festival.” She said. Our family walked to Motusa, past some big Mother Hubbard women carrying large rolled woven mats into the village church. I looked up at what had been carved in a curve, above the door. Mt Sinai. Moses and the rushes. It was allegory. And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it fire. But the smoke was ahead of us, at the far end of an large expanse of lawn and a magnificent giant flame tree, under which were several open shelters, with tin roofs and pandanus mat floors, connected by upright wooden poles, each one wrapped with plaited palm fronds. Long horizontal cloth banners of red and white hibiscus flowers hung below the rooflines. Fluorescent lights were suspended from the ceilings. We were at play, in the field of the Lord’s Hawaiian carports.

The playground was a fairground, an agricultural exhibition farmshow, of big yams with big pink tags, big dances by the biggest people, and big watermelon filling up the big faces of little girls.

The yam farmers who couldn’t win a prize would have to give away their harvest, and go home empty-handed, but the women weavers could bring home the mats they hadn’t sold. They sat sidesaddle, purses slung over their big Mother Hubbard shoulders, waving their fans, and waiting for the feasting and the dancing to begin.

The old men were already drinking kava, at head tables covered with fine petit point linen tablecloths, punctuated at intervals with bouquets of flowers and brass salt cellars, pasted with Fijian money notes. Before the arrival of the missionaries, kava had been prepared by virgin girls with limestone-caked hair, who chewed and spat it into a slurry, before it was mixed with water by the older women. Since the arrival of the missionaries, the elders had begun blending in a little additional liquid from their hip flasks, which further muddied the waters, and hastened the collapse of their livers.

The smoke from the Koua earth oven, that wafted through the celebration, suddenly thickened, a sign that the sand was being raked off the leaves covering the old mats, that had been placed on the banana and papai swamp taro leaves, on top of the hot stones that had been carefully distributed over the food, with tongs made from the midribs of coconut leaves.

This koua had started with a large circular hole in the ground, lined with coconut tree trunks, and filled with kindling and a mound of parallel firewood, over which had been placed the lava stones, big ones on the bottom, smaller ones on top. A shredded coconut sheath had been lit to ignite the kindling, and the men had gone off to scrape breadfruit and taro and other root crops, and to kill the hogs. The pigs were turned on the heated stones to singe off their hair, and scraped with seashells or knives. Their throats had been slit, their alimentary canals tied off at both ends, so their guts, including the gall bladders, could be cautiously removed from their sliced-open abdomens. The male pigs had their penises tied, to prevent any urine from contaminating the meat. Everything to be baked had been washed in seawater. The large hot stones were spread over the bottom of the Koua with long poles, and any unburned firewood removed. The smaller ones were placed inside the pigs’ carcasses, together with their livers and breadfruit leaves, to keep the steam inside. The men, using the same long poles, slung the swine, belly down, onto the base of hot large stones, now covered with taro scrapings and banana leaf ribs, to regulate the temperature. The breadfruit and the root crops had been placed along the margins of the pit, because they hadn’t required as much heat to bake them. When the smoke finally cleared, out of the Koua, came roast pork and roasted chicken and corned beef, and breadfruit and cassava and taro, and ‘al‘ikou packages of taro leaves filled with coconut milk and onion, and taro fekei pudding. The food was hoisted with large pandanus baskets on poles, and placed beside the watermelon and pineapple and mango and pawpaw and sugar cane and jams. Some young girls fanned the food tables constantly, to keep off the flies, while others filled the closely woven tauga flat-bottomed coconut leaf baskets with food, to carry to the chiefs at the head table, most of which would have been too paralyzed by this time, to have fended for themselves, even if they had to. Everyone filed by the tables, filling their plates if they had one or, if not, supporting their overflowing fono basket in one hand, while the other held up the front edge, in a desperate race against gravity and gluttony. The feast was substantial, and superb.