Freedom and Paradise are in the Mind

Looking back at Tahiti over the Moorea lagoon while on the windy little island road to our special part of the island. We swim in this lagoon frequently, it’s sort of like an extremely large swimming pool with all desirable depths, beautiful sandy bottom, little islands, calm times, wavy times, and always refreshing times. Near our place is Les Tipaniers with the Polynesian lounge, outrigger, kayak, scuba, and boat rental, not to mention the swooping palms overhanging the water, the topless Parisiennes, guys in string bikinis, and well-tattooed French and Tahitian locals.

Yesterday Claude and Barbara went to Papeete for basic supplies and to look at possible materials for this project. They found a few things and a few things weren’t available and again saw the endemic high prices. While they were away les boys had a hot and sweaty day of regular forward-backwards remodeling b.s. The converse while you work lamp was lit and we found out a bit more of who we are, what we (think we) stand for, and of course topics and lingo drifted into the little bit more dirty being that the bosses were away. How can you ever know a person if you can’t be out doing a sweaty remodel with him, working your butt off with potentially frustrating conditions and just letting the curtain rise on whatever is crossing your mind. Of course some people might be a little disturbed with some of the seeming extremes in thoughts as real problems, others just consider them a different worldview that doesn’t really change the nature of the sweaty dirty stage of this remodel.

Charlie and I got into a pretty big conversation about 9/11, Muslims, Israel, news sources, etc. for starters. It wasn’t until round two when he elaborated on his apocalyptical evangelical religious views that the real nature of the conversation took hold. The Catholic Church has lost (or never actually had) much ground to the evangelicals across these inlands (in South America too); Tahitians are heavily locked in to this way of thinking. Being that Charlie was “rescued”, adopted, and married into a large Tahitian family it is no wonder he is spouting this stuff out. Yet other aspects of his life style would absolutely knock the socks off of a tried and true Seventh Day Adventist, once again it is a pick an choose religious commitment, par for the course worldwide. I let it go and only tried to get the point across to him that his CNN news sources might be laced with propaganda that he is not picking up on because it fits so well into his apocalyptical view.

Even with the ease and abundance of internet and wi-fi service here, I can pretty much vouch that most locals, as these guys are, do not use it much or at all. All three of them, Roger (Tahitian wife and 5 kids, here 25 plus years), Steve (Tahitian wife and ex-wife with kids, here 15+ years), and Charlie (Tahitian wife and 2 kids and wanting 2 or 3 more, here 7+years) all say they love America and don’t even have great problems with the “American way”, in fact, they love the American way, so they say. All I said was if they loved America so much why the heck aren’t they there? So we all agreed that the next day’s topics would be focused on myths and fairytales (that might be a better venue for discussing the American way and the popular media’s depiction of world events).

Lots of the conversations that I only could hear as I crawled up in the rafters trying to get this ceiling closed-in was the three American island boys yammering and whining and warning each other about their Tahitian wives and how it is a loosing battle to get a handle on that, especially with the large extended Tahitian family system that comes with it. The Polynesian transvestite tradition was also discussed, some pretty funny stories of encounters were told. In Hawaii too transvestites are completely accepted and integrated into the local society, I remember seeing a couple of comfortable looking “wahoos” (Moorea term) at the Honolulu airport, not a big deal.