Wednesday, 5 February 2014

Fara Way 8



‘On the Thursday flight (17 December) Dr. Lawrence Winkler and his  
 wife Robyn arrived. They are from Nanaimo B.C., on Vancouver
 Island (where several Rotuman families live). They stayed at Motusa
 in new huts--accommodations recommended by Sunflower Airlines.
 The Hospital Board of Visitors had a Working Bee/Breakup Day on   
 Friday, 18 December, so we invited them for lunch, and we all met
 the couple. Robyn originally came from New Zealand. In the
 afternoon I took them to the Bennett's at Itu'muta and met up with  
 another couple from New Zealand, Samo's son and wife with their two
 children. We toured around the island, calling into places and ending
 up at Rocky Point for cold beer.’
                                  Archived News, Rotuma Community Bulletin Board

                                                                                                                                              
The day before we ended up at Rocky Point for a cold beer, two days after the Hospital Board of Visitors decided to invite Robyn and I for lunch, the day after the harvest festival, right after our third night of Faracidal insomnia, I rolled over next to the sponge mattress, and shook Robyn awake. Her fanning didn’t break Farastride.
“Do you realize that we are sleeping next to some of the most beautiful beaches on the planet, and almost halfway through our time on Rotuma, we’ve only seen the seashore once?” I asked. For a Kiwi, this was an unconscionable source of shame.
“Today.” She said. We dressed and closed the powder blue door to our cabin, jaws grimly set to overwhelm Julie’s sense of family togetherness, and escape to an isolated beach on our own. But we had no idea that, here in the most remote Polynesian paradise, this was not just impolite, or impolitic. It was treason.
Rotumans are a gentle people, culturally conservative and strongly socialized, with an emphasis on collective responsibility enforced by a sensitivity to shaming. No one did anything without everyone else’s participation, except perhaps, in a rare free dove cord moment, making other Rotumans. And Julie was the perfect Polynesian Pollyanna, far too happy and in love with everything, which she believed rightly, in Motusa village at least, to derive from, and return back to, the family. She was the living Nash Equilibrium embodiment of Southern Sea survival. How could it be possible that we, in our most evil manifestation of individualistic inconsideration, even think of abandoning our adopted village, for a single day of selfish gratification? The easy answer was, of course, was that it was necessary. Robyn and I had never been creatures of collective conformity. We were mavericks, nabobs of narcissism, which is why we fell in love in the first place, and made a life together, based on not belonging. When we had first arrived on Vancouver Island, I was approached to join the local Rotary Club.
“You’re not a joiner.” Robyn had said. And the Rotarians were condemned to do without.
“Julie?” I asked, a mouthful of morning pawpaw in my mouth.
“Yes, Wink.” She said.
“Robyn and I were thinking of hiking across the isthmus, to
Vai’oa Beach.” I said.
“Lovely, Wink.” She said. “What time should we go?” Then it got hard.
“Well, that’s what I wanted to ask you about.” I said. “We thought that, for just today only, we just might go alone, to give you and the girls some time to yourselves.” I looked across the floor mat, into eyes that couldn’t decide whether to be hurt, or offended. 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. Meltdown.
“Are you sure?” She asked. I nodded.

“OK.” She said. “Enjoy yourselves.”

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