Manawa Toa Page 5

  I saw pictures of deformed infants—‘jellyfish babies’—from the US nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands. I can never erase them from my heart. We cannot let this happen in Tahiti. I know there are deformities and cancers already but the French are still denying the illnesses have anything to do with the tests. Unreal!

  Please let us know what else we can do. I’ll keep you emailed on our movements. Sahara is cool. She can be trusted to let you speak in your own voices. She understands about colonisation and wants to help inform readers in the UK and Europe. She’s keen to be aboard one of the boats, or will report from the land marches. Can you help ensure this in case our trawler never makes it? Mahalo.

  Please pass on our aroha to your people. We’ll get as many tangata whenua there in support as possible. There will be widespread protest in Aotearoa. Some are talking about a Peace Flotilla already. Stay in touch. We’ll need to act fast.

  Ka pai—kia kaha—arohanui from us all—

  Cowrie.

  Kei muri i te awe kapara he tangata ke, mana te ao, he mu.

  Shadowed behind the tattooed face a stranger stands, he who owns the earth, and he is white.

  Over the next two weeks, frantic emailing takes place between Tahiti Fa’a’a, Greenpeace Aotearoa, the Tahitian Independence Movement and the range of conservation and peace groups scattered about Aotearoa and the Pacific.

  There is only one fishing trawler large enough to take a waka on board to get to the test zone. From there, the waka will encircle the twelve-mile exclusion zone daily, tie up to the trawler for safety and report back to media by night. It will ensure an indigenous presence and attract media attention. There will be representatives from other iwi on board the trawler, some media, and crew. Muriwhenua are in support of the action. Meantime, all over Aotearoa, boaties and sailing clubs, peace movement activists, fishermen and people from all races and classes are pulling together contingents for a Peace Flotilla and continued presence at Moruroa. The aim is to prevent tests from taking place and to keep a vigilant presence should testing happen. Greenpeace stresses that it is vital to keep the world’s media attention on the test zone or the battle will be lost.

  The first boats in the contingent aim to leave within the next two weeks. The tests are reported to begin in six weeks. They’ll stop off at Rarotonga on the way to replenish supplies, join a land march in Tahiti Fa’a’a, then sail for the test zone at Moruroa once enough boats have arrived to create media interest.

  Before they leave, Sahara is keen to explore the mighty sand dunes that stretch out beyond Te Kotuku marae. They plan a trek into the seaside desert. “There’s a few wrecked English sailing ships up the coastline, so you might meet up with some of your ancestors,” Kuini suggests.

  Sahara grins. She’s getting used to being teased. “Might make good kai for dinner then, aye, Kuini? Like Captain Cook?”

  “Never tasted him myself, but I hear from the Hawai’ians he was rather gristly and they had to spit him out,” replies Kuini, quick as a flash.

  “Na, Tahitians wasn’t it?” adds Cowrie.

  Kuini turns on her in mock surprise. “C’mon Cowrie. It was your rellies on the Big Island that got to taste him finally. You should be proud of it.” Kuini rolls her eyes for good measure and pokes out her tongue as if ending a haka. Sahara is suitably impressed.

  “Shit! I really put my foot in it then. I remember telling Nele and Peni he got eaten on a beach in Tahiti. Fancy them believing me. You’d reckon that detail wouldn’t be missed in their school books, since the historians love painting us all as cannibals.”

  “Ya can’t cover up your mistake that easily Cowrie. Wait’ll I tell Mere. She’ll disown ya then,” Kuini laughs.

  “No way! I’ve been abandoned by one mother and Mere sure ain’t gonna get the chance to do that trip on me, sister.” Cowrie covers her vulnerability with bravado.

  “C’mon you two. Quit quibbling. Let’s get packed for the journey and be off before it gets too hot.” Irihapeti grabs a flax kete and starts piling in towels and fishing line.

  “What’s the string for?” asks Sahara. “Will we go fishing further up the coast?”

  “You just wait and see, Sahara,” grins Iri. “But I reckon you’ll like it.”

  Sahara is so used to them speaking over top of each other or being enigmatic, a local custom apparently, that she decides not to enquire further. She returns to the nikau hut with Cowrie to grab her backpack. Cowrie watches her piling in gear, then hands over a kete. “You’ll find this more comfortable, Sahara. It’s made from flax—natural fibre—and doesn’t sweat like that plastic stuff. I’ve made special handles so that it can be used as a pack to free up the arms. “ Cowrie indicates the woven straps.

  “Wow! This is so beautiful Cowrie. The texture reminds me of dillybags I saw in an Aboriginal weaving exhibition in London.”

  “Yeah—these are also used for fishing and shellfish as well as hunting and gathering. Make jolly fine head pieces too, old bean, to protect us from the glaring London UV rays.” Cowrie mocks a British accent used on television ads and places a kete over her head, strutting out the hut door as if she is modelling a new hat for Christian Dior.

  Sahara grins. “You’ve got the Pommy accent down well, Cowrie.”

  “BBC drama, old girl. We were fed on it as kids. Jolly fine fare, too, I say, old bean!”

  “At school, we actually called each other ‘old bean’. Can you believe it?”

  “You’re kidding me, Sahara. I thought that lingo was reserved for BBC telly and upper-crust do’s. Not real life.”

  Now it’s Sahara’s turn to strut. She leans back, thrusting out her pelvis, pretending to smoke a cigar and imitates one old bean talking to another. In minutes, she has Cowrie bent double, weeping with laughter at the absurdity of the scene.

  “But didn’t you go to a British girls’ school? You know, great breeding grounds for horsey-faced society ladies and dykes.”

  Sahara grins. “No. I got lucky. My mother’s brother ran a boys’ prep school. When mother left, he knew Dad had no money for our education, so he offered to take me and my brothers for free. We stayed there during the week and went home on the weekends.”

  “But how did you survive in that environment as a girl?”

  “My hair was cropped short like the boys and because Uncle Quentin ran the school, everyone accepted us. I even made it to the first eleven.”

  Cowrie’s eyes widen. She checks Sahara’s expression carefully. “You’re not having me on are you?”

  Sahara reaches into her wallet and extracts some photos. One shows her dressed in a choir outfit, which she explains is a cassock, with a white tie at her chin. In another, she sits plumb in the middle of the cricket team. Cowrie is speechless. Sahara takes full advantage of the moment and bursts into a boy soprano rendition of the “Allegri Miserere” solo. Her voice is exquisite, touches her listener deeply. After she’s finished, Cowrie swears she sees an angel hovering above the nikau palm fronds, her wings shimmering in the heat.

  “Mahalo, Sahara. Now that’s a part of your tradition that really moves me. Gothic cathedrals and boy sopranos could even lure me into the coloniser’s land to have a closer look.”

  “Glad to hear it, Cowrie. So you’ll visit me after I return home?”

  “Only if you sing to me like an angel.”

  “I’d be delighted.”

  Irihapeti interrupts their moment of intimacy to tell them to meet at the marae kihini to get water and kai for the trip. They finish packing and head for the community kitchen, swapping stories of their schooldays.

  Ma roto hoki kia ora ka pai te korero.

  If the inner person is refreshed, the conversation will be agreeable.

  After galloping up the coast for a mile, they head inland, to the heart of the dunes. Far from being a city slicker, Sahara is an expert horsewoman, having ridden for her team at school. She admits she’d not gone bareback before, but soon adjusts. Once they move into the softe
r dunes, it’s clear why they need to be on horses. It would take hours to make progress on foot. When they stop for lunch, they sink knee deep into the sand. Kuini suggests they remount and head for the stream that runs down to the sea so the horses can have a drink too. Here, there is shade under a few scraggy manuka. In the distance, dunes as far as the eye can see.

  “Have you ever been lost in here?” asks Sahara. “There’s so few landmarks and the dunes all look alike.”

  “To the untrained eye they might, but unless there’s a sandstorm, you can usually follow your tracks back to the sea, then you just ride along the coast,” explains Irihapeti.

  Sahara looks over to the far dunes. Wind has created ripples of sand that mimic ocean waves as they roll in toward them. In the distance, mighty dunes, each one higher than the former, layering the landscape. They can no longer see or hear the ocean, and the dry desert engulfs them; the only relief is the trickle of stream that flows from the far mountains and out to sea. She screws up her face as heat shimmers from the grainy surface, trying to imagine her parents making love in the sand. How could she have been conceived in such arid conditions? Yet the magic of the dunes her mother recounted to her is apparent even here in this foreign land. Mountains of hope. That’s how her mother described them. Before she abandoned her and her brothers. They’d never heard from her except for brief snatches of information from Uncle Quentin. Evidently, she was staying in some mansion and teaching English as a foreign language in France. Beyond that, she knew nothing. At least she has this in common with Cowrie, whose mother also deserted her, leaving her at the local orphanage. One night they shared stories in the hut, but it brought up more pain than relief for Sahara and she was glad when Cowrie dropped the subject.

  “Hey, Sahara. Come and help me make a fire for the billy.” Cowrie is collecting twigs from beneath the manuka. Sahara joins her while Kuini and Iri unpack fruit and dried smoked kahawai. They grub amongst the leaves and twigs for suitable fire material. Suddenly Sahara screams, flinging her hand and arm around wildly. “Oh, my God. It’s the ugliest looking giant cricket I’ve ever seen. Get it off me!”

  “Ok, Sahara. Just hold your hand still. It’s scared. It won’t hurt you. It’s not poisonous.”

  Sahara gapes as she tries to hold her hand steady. The cricket’s claws are barbed and dig deep into her skin. “Poor bugger. It’s clinging on for dear life,” remarks Kuini. “Now look closely, Sahara. Isn’t she so beautiful? Look at the barbed feet and scaly back, those gorgeous prehistoric jaws, those exquisitely long antennae. She’s a female bush weta. They’re a protected species in Aotearoa and it is a privilege that she chose you to cling to.”

  Sahara is too frightened to move and Cowrie doesn’t get very close either. “Well, I hope it’s my last encounter with one too, Kuini. You’re sure it won’t bite?”

  “Yep. We don’t have any poisonous bugs or snakes in Aotearoa. That’s why they call us the clean green Paradise. But don’t tell too many Poms. We’ve got enough crawling over the country as it is.” Sahara looks up to see if Kuini is joking or serious. It’s impossible to tell. She glances back down to the weta. Its body is the colour of kauri and it is an impressive-looking creature. Kuini holds her hand next to Sahara’s so the insect can crawl over. She gently places it onto a tree branch. “There. Now count yourself lucky you didn’t encounter our ancestors or we’d’ve eaten you for lunch.” She grins and returns to face the others. Sahara is pale but relieved the creature is not so close. She can now admire it from a safe distance.

  “Did you really eat them?” she asks. “Barbs and all?”

  “Yeah, the legs crisp up nice, finger licken good,” adds Iri, with just the flash of a grin. Sahara joins their laughter.

  Kuini bends to reveal a nest of huhu grubs at the foot of a tree. “Hey, Sahara. Have a squizzy here. Now these little beauties, as far as I know, are not protected like the weta—yet. So we’ll have them for our entree.”

  “Now you really are kidding me!” exclaims Sahara. “I’m not that gullible!” She watches, horrified, as Kuini gathers up the huhu grubs, bites off their heads, cracking their bodies with her teeth, then places them on the lid of the coffee tin to roast over the fire. “Ugh, I have no intention of trying that!”

  “Wasn’t it the Poms who invented chocolate-coated grasshoppers?” jokes Iri. “The upper classes bought them from Harrods and served them up with a giggle at their cocktail parties as a bit of a lark.”

  Somewhere deep inside her memory, something stirs. “Oh, my God, Iri. You’re right,” admits Sahara. “I recall Uncle Quentin having guests to dinner one night. Some sort of weird collecting club. I remember it so well because they were all dressed the same. They looked like, how can I put it, like potato amphibians, with their pudgy wee bodies and their checks and ties.” The three of them scream with joy at the description, and, on a roll, Sahara continues: “Uncle Quentin was a bit of an eccentric himself and he decided to shock them this night so he served up some sort of insect out of dainty little tins as if it was an exotic delicacy. They didn’t know what to do. In British culture, it’s important not to offend your host, especially when he is the headmaster of the local prep school all their sons go to. So they ate them, grimacing quietly and trying to be polite. Crispin and I were standing in the kitchen, looking through the leadlights. We thought we’d die trying to keep straight faces.”

  “Ok, Sahara! You are one helluva great storyteller. That gives you honorary status as one of us. I promise not to treat you like a Pom from now on!” Iri hugs her with delight. The others agree it’s time to lay off the teasing.

  “And I promise to at least try one of those hoohoo bugs.”

  Once golden brown, the grubs split open to reveal soft flesh and they taste the delight, imagining serving them up at an English cocktail party. “Hey, Sahara, you’d better take some home for Uncle Quentin. He’ll be in his element!”

  “Yes, I will. I wouldn’t mind serving them up to him!” They follow the grilled beetle grub with smoked kahawai and fresh fruit. “A feast in the desert! What a treat! Thank you for bringing me here.”

  “Thanks for being such a good sport and taking the brunt of our jokes, Sahara. We do like you, ya know. It’s just that we also enjoy having a scapegoat for the British colonialism that was forced on us at school. It’s not personal.”

  “Yeah, just like we don’t hate the French. We know many of them are against the tests too.”

  They fill themselves with talk, laughter and food, then mount their horses for the ride back. Once they’ve reached the beach, Kuini and Cowrie dive into the breakers while Sahara watches Irihapeti take out the fishing line she’d packed.

  “Ok, Sahara, find me some stalks of toetoe and I’ll teach you to fly.”

  “What’s toytoy?”

  “See that bush over there with the tall stalks of feathery plumage?”

  “Oh, you mean pampas grass? Sure.” Returning with the stalks, Sahara watches as the others, fresh from their swim, make a triangle with the sticks, tying the ends together with flax. They then weave raupo leaves over the frame, add paua shell eyes and leave two toetoe feathers dangling out the rear. Sahara, seeing a strange and wonderful kite emerging from their skilled hands, passes the fishing line to attach the string.

  The wind is not strong enough for the kite to fly on their first run down the beach, so Sahara offers to take it on a gallop up the sand on her horse. She screams as she lets go of the kite, watching it scoop into the air and be carried on a gust of wind out to sea. Cowrie holds the string attached to a piece of driftwood, leaning back as the manu toetoe soars and swoops on reaching the wilder sea squalls. As Sahara releases the kite, Cowrie feels a fiery energy surge from the toetoe down the fishing line to her fingers, sizzle up her arms and through her body. She watches Sahara race down the beach. There’s more to her than meets the eye. An invisible thread connects them which she does not fully understand yet.

  Tangaroa pukanohi nui.

&nb
sp; Tangaroa, the God of the Sea, can observe all we are doing.

  Tension rises over the next few weeks as France announces it will conduct eight underground nuclear explosions in the South Pacific ending in March 1996. The growing Peace Flotilla is determined that they will prevent the tests by creating a global outcry. According to Greenpeace, support is mounting in Europe and everyone is prepared for the protest to get ugly if the French persist in testing against world opinion. Te Kotuku Marae has become the headquarters for protest action, and faxes, email and letters of support are flowing in from all over Aotearoa. Kuini’s workers at Te Aroha have established an office for their activities.

  “Hey, Sahara, listen to this.” Cowrie balances on her toes amidst a huge pile of letters. She holds one up to the light. “This is from a group of school kids on Stewart Island at the southern tip of Aotearoa. ‘Tena Koe—We live on an island like the Tahitians do. We like to fish and swim and eat kai moana. If France tests under the water at Moruroa, then radiation will leak out to all our shores. We are sending our support to the islanders. Tell the French to test their bombs in Paris if they are so safe.’ —Signed by twenty-two children.”

  “I’ve got one Maata brought in,” adds Irihapeti. “It’s written by the kids here at the kohanga, in Maori and in English. ‘Dear Mr. Chirac. Some time ago, a local fisherman created underwater explosions to kill fish to eat. He thought it would be easier than fishing with a line. He killed our friendly dolphin, Opo. Children from all over our islands cried for weeks. Opo was a symbol of hope and love between all creatures on this earth. In addition, none of the fish exploded could be eaten, so it was wasted energy. They were split apart and got infected. They polluted our shores. Why are you doing this to innocent islanders in Tahiti? They are our brothers and sisters. Like us, they need clean water and fresh fish to survive. Please write back and tell us why you are doing this—Signed Maata, Piripi, Mattiu, etc.’”