My Tahitian Brother

It wasn't until "late" last night that I was able to pry myself away
from the beach walk sunset, glass of red French wine on C and B's deck
w/moonrise, then long extended dinner with hors'd'oeurves, followed by
an old French movie that probably never made it to the USA. Late here
is around 9 PM, because we get up so early, same with cold here is
below 70 degrees when you have to put on long pants and long sleeve
shirt, still no socks; a flannel sheet would be good for a blanket
instead of the thin cotton one. On the bike ride to the village the
crabs were also responding to the big moonlight, running across the
road, showing a lot of ownership.

The little outdoor restaurant next to the wi-fi place was closed so
using one of those chairs and tables for my little office was for me,
no need to buy a $4 mini glass of canned grapefruit juice. Across the
little garden trail on the other side of the village I could see the
lights of La Iguana, the classic old veranda style colonial
bar/restaurant, French music just loud enough for me to enjoy, swizzle
stick customers sprinkled about on the comfortable stools, big chairs
and couches. I didn't see Humphrey Bogart; he was probably in the
back room making some deals with the black pearl traders. I noticed a
light flashing around in the darkened closed area I am occupying, a
big, long grayish-haired Tahitian man quietly rolls up next to me.
Says he is the night watchman, will be there until 5 AM. He's glad
I'm there and says to stay as long as I want; his name is Leon, very
mellow. We talk for a bit, agree that staying up with the news is a
waste of time and using the Internet to communicate with family is
about all it's good for. He tells me to come back anytime and hang
out there; we both knew that during the day when this place is open
neither one of us could afford to be a customer.

Claude too has bumped into many Tahitian brothers, more and more as
the stay is longer. Sisters too, with their long cotton wraps and
flowers in their hair, often with a big one on the side (depends on
marital status), guys too can have flowers in their hair. Gaston the
plumber and his crew of tattooed and necklaced dudes doing the palm
slap and knuckle touch have slowly completed their big below ground
tank and graywater system here. Tahitian Claude, a big long haired
guy, probably knows Leon, our age 50x, is a builder artist, works a
lot with local woods, pandanus roofs, tiki style structures, gets a
lot of business with the tourist industry. He became very concerned
when he heard of our Claude's problems with the spoiled French
bureaucrats living next door. It was then that we realized that the
problem was finished regardless of the dumb threats. All Tahitian
Claude has to do is go over there and politely tell them not to bother
his friend Our Claude, that's it, over. (Just heard today that Bruno
and Carol are moving into an apartment in Papeete, closer to his work
and Lulu, their 3 year old, will have more friends.)

Riding my bike back from the village I inadvertently tandemed with a
bent over kind of ragged Tahitian guy, he asked me if I wanted to buy
any pot or coke, I shook my head no, then he asked for some money so
he could buy a coke, I told him sorry, we parted ways. I guess if I
was a smaller, frailer person I might have been a little scared about
that kind of dark messenger, but I looked at him, then at me, and
realized I could easily squash him if he got weird. The Tahitians
speak French of course, just like Mexicans speak Spanish, but they
also speak Tahitian and it is nice to know that if you speak English
they love it because it means that you are not part of the repressive
French colonial regime. The Tahitians are fine with everyone,
including the many French speaking Chinese, but are always wary of the
French.

Big Round Silvery Moon Orb

We knew it was coming, Moorea's modest lagoon tides were unusually
low, hidden chunks of coral reef were exposed, little sand islands
popped up, the beach was slightly bigger. The night before was cloudy
so you couldn't see much of the big white ball, although it did make
the dogs howl and cats jump around. Tonight it was completely clear,
full of the brightest big stars while waiting for the moon to peek up
over the rugged ridge of the jagged little green mountains that make
this island (we look at these, we never climb in them). When the moon
did rise above the ridge it was huge, much too big, how could we make
it through a clear night with that hanging over us. My only thought
was that it was doing the same thing over other places I knew and
people I love, my family and friends, dealing with this same big white
thing many thousands of miles to the north and east or west of us.

Here it is almost like daytime it is so bright and easy to see, the
trees provide shade and the white coral beach looks completely normal,
just a little bluish. Off in the distance the waves keep breaking on
the barrier reef, you can hear that drone of the surf twenty-four
hours a day. In the water tropical fish are swimming around just like
in the day. Down along the shore there are lights from the Tiki
resorts (whose drumming and dancing shows we occasionally hear while
we linger on our deck) with moon lit silhouettes of palm trees doing
their leaning over the water thing. A couple of gringo boats, one
trimaran, one catamaran, bob around at anchor just off of our beach.
Claude and I swam out to them earlier today and got the low down on
this one guy's trip; our age, single or whatever, from Texas, been
bumming on this beater trimaran since 1999, eats well, takes it easy,
does some charter, knew the people on the other boat from the
Marquises and Ecuador, picks up and drops of chicks on occasion, so he
says (his beer belly wasn't commenting).

All of the little bungalows here are lit up with this sunny moon with
our building project standing out as the break through design idea.
Our shed thing, that everyone else has, is now cleanly attached to an
"outdoor" kitchen, separated by a five foot wide breezeway which leads
to the new deck where we sit to watch the sun or moon rise, facing the
field of Tahitian flower bushes. One thing that was on the to-do list
that got done, only took twice as long as we thought, was ripping out
the poo poo brown wood grid and opaque fiberglass window in front of
the big shower stall and replacing it with sixty glass bricks, six of
them turquoise blue made in Italy, the rest bubble pattern French.
The moon shone on this, with all of its meticulous grouting work and
trim, the big ugly pile of dirt and rocks from the gray water tanks
put in the ground were also cleared and a happy little winding path
sculpted in its place. These Society Islands are one unusual society,
that all zaps me when I see things like the bright white zinc oxide
coated nipples of the bare breasted, well bounced-up, tanned and
stacked French woman lying there in the white coral sand, dark brown
skin with two funny looking jumping full moons with volcanoes sticking
up resting calmly there in the gentle warm breeze.

In fact the moon makes it so much like day I think I'll go down to the
beach right now and test the water. After making a last minute wine
run before the store in the village closed and a check in with
tiki.net where I got to chat with Sophia again, Claude and I had a
dinner of boiled potatoes with olive oil while we watched a cheesy
Catherine Deneuve movie (she's in her 20's), fortunately my eyes
crashed down and I keeled over and landed on my floor mattress for a
good nap. Barbara also conked out quite early after a day of glass
brick grouting, we'll all probably be up around 5:30 or so waiting for
the sun to peek over the jagged ridge and the Tahitian ladies picking
blossoms at the palm bordered flower plantation to begin another day
of pulling this remodel together with a mixture of American, French,
and Tahitian guys smoothly doing their thing.

Old French Ways vs. Something Else from the West Coast

Gosh, what a grand opportunity, we have run up against some people
with out a vision, with lots of property and money, and they loudly
insist that we know nothing and can do nothing, right here in
paradise. We will have to learn some big things with this group.
Guess it's not a coincidence that the team consists Pierre, a retired
French colonial bureaucrat (tax collector with out a constituency any
more) who prides himself on having reached the 12th (highest) level of
pension and also to have perfected the technique of sleeping with his
eyes open while sitting in an office chair, and his son Bruno who is
at a much lower civil service level now in the same bureaucracy but
working his way up as fast as he can. Bruno has almost perfected
saying "et voila" after all of his hollow pronouncements and
proclamations, use it sometime and see how it works, or doesn't. The
poor wife and daughter-in-law is quite reasonable when in public, but
must play along with her husband and in-laws whenever they are chewing
over "the big issue".

The first big blow-out came when Pierre, who bought the little
bungalow for his son (he owns 16 apartments in Paris and he and his
wife get the 200% pension with no taxes because of their "hardship" of
living here in French Polynesia) came over and ranted, raved and
threatened to take us to justice over futzing with the portion of our
deck that he fenced into his son's deck zone, his argument was you
bought the place "as is" and that was that. These taunts have been
going on for a while, the big property line hub-bub where we all
agreed to go 50/50 on a survey and they backed down (having an
objective definition of this line might hurt them more than help),
then there was the Xeroxed page from the French Polynesian law book
that said condominium neighbors have to have an agreement on
construction. We were supposed to receive a copy of that to get us to
straighten out, the copy never appeared. The night before Bruno had
said that he did not care what we did on our side of the property
line, well, we agreed to that, isn't that an agreement? Then the next
night he came over with two hand written copies of his same letter
stating that he officially is not in agreement with what we are doing,
he demanded that Claude sign the paper and return one copy, he didn't,
that really got the steam rising. Then Bruno's dad, Pierre did his
sticking out the tongue thing and "I don't know you" line to one of
the old time neighbors who thinks our place is great.

Michelle and Marie France, in their 70's elegant retired people who
hang at the beach, are really glad to see us doing our design,
Michelle even made a drawing of how Bruno encroached upon our space by
building a kitchen with a stove, sink, and washer under Claude's roof,
imagine that! Well, most of the people around here, Chinatown, French
retirees, Tahitians, and investment rental people, all like the fact
that this place has no building codes, permits, inspections, or taxes,
AND WANT TO KEEP IT THAT WAY. So Bruno has gotten the word, in fact,
I don't believe anyone was joking when the possibility of serious
physical harm could result in further annoyances. This did not come
from us, but there are people here, French gangster types and Tahitian
tabu types that do not want any government people coming near this
little community, we like that. It feels like a general libertarian
attitude, not liberal or conservative, beyond both, maybe not the best
mode for corporations, but at this small scale it seems to work.

This long story has been shortened, but some of the extreme Frenchness
of it all is better than any movie or TV show. On the surface the
whole thing has to do with real estate, therefore money. But
underneath, the father/son dynamic seems to be in bad shape. The
mother, Franca, came over here a couple of times and in a very loud
and clear French told us all off in a variety of ways, standing right
in our faces while we worked, on Claude's property. Eventually she
huffed off to the beach, on her way back she smiled at everyone and
said how much better she felt and hoped we felt better too…is this
normal?

Our Other Friends

Usually I get completely away from our lagoon-front work-zone about once a day, sometimes mid-day, sometimes not until evening. Using the cruiser bike is the quickest way, bouncing with those big fat tires over the little island ring road to the village. So far I haven’t hit any crabs, but they always get my attention, sometimes there are so many of these land crabs popping in and out of their holes, crabbeling their way across to other holes, that the palm covered road shoulders appear to be moving like the ripples in the lagoon. These are big light gray crabs bigger than my fist. They seem to be quite comfortable scurrying around those palm fields and hiding in their holes, haven’t yet seen any squished ones on the road.

The most amazing domestic animals around here are the poultry. Contrary to the savaged and desperate looking chickens eking out an existence in the Andes or the Amazon, the hens and roosters hanging out around here are tall, clean, colorful and very healthy looking. Beautiful deep reds, white, orange, curly long tail feathers, well tapered necks and perfect beaks. No scrawny featherless crouching beggars, these birds rule here, they might even be the direct descendents of the rosignol used for the French made skis. We are reminded of that their sovergnty each morning, little herds of them run around in just about every open area there is. Fortunately for use they choose to eat the cockroaches and centipedes and whatever else of the local bug population we don’t really want to see, too bad they don’t eat mosquitoes.

In our little lagoon zone there are several little clutches of mommy hens with little troops of chickies weaving in and out of mommys’ legs and the colorful bushes as they all look for munchies. These little families usually start out with about eight or ten members, by the end of the first week that has been cut in half, by the end of the first month the numbers are very low. The poultry population seems to be in perfect balance. After the first months of life, the chickies get big enough to survive the daily dangers, until the Tahitian owner comes along who is preparing for dinner. The ready-to-eat size are bartered, you see them being toted around between legs on mopeds and bicycles on their way to service.

You have to look pretty hard to find the bigger nasty bugs but when you score, the experience is universal, shriek! I couldn’t get over how fast those long wormy centipedes could cruise. First of all they are big and fat with a long stripe down their purple body. Their head has some nasty looking pinchers especially when it’s doing its defense stance thing, opening them up and staring at you. All of those little legs, at least one hundred of them, work fast giving it the mobility to crawl up or down anything, especially your barefooted leg. The cockroaches aren’t so special, just the regular big bug that moves as it pleases and stays out of sight, a nice meal for the chickens.

While lying in the white coral sand on the lagoon shore I saw the most beautiful lime green tern fly across my view, wow, no one ever told me about those. When I saw the next one I figured it out, the bright turquoise green water of the lagoon was reflecting up on the bird’s puffy white plumage. Other birds around here are the myna, typical of India and everywhere in between, they make their collection of screeches and yammering. Lots of little birds with crests or mixed colorful plumage jump around in the bushes and palms of the fields, if I had time to hike around more I’m sure there would be lots of discoveries made, these islands are a happy abundant refuge out in the middle of the ocean.

Our little cat is not looking like those generally seen on the American west coast, he’s Tahitian. His head is a little pointier, his coat has more spots on it than stripes, sort of like a little leopard, most of all his attitude is very laid back. He can lie on his back with legs spread out and head to the side, sleeping right in the middle of a busy room under construction. He hangs out on top of our tools or at the top of a lonely post looking down at everyone doing the building thing. In the evening he just pushes his way into you and does the purr things with great skill.

It’s the furry coated (usually pedigree) pet dogs that some of these French people have that I feel sorry for, they are being held hostage down here with clothing on them that would do fine somewhere in the foothills of the alps but looks pretty silly in the tropics, poor doggies. The Tahitians have their dogs too, short haired, healthy looking but very slow and passive. I guess sometimes they come out on the road and scare tourists, but all I’ve ever seen is tired looking mutts just hanging out on the sidelines, nothing to be afraid of.

Fishies abound in the little lagoon, long silvery clear needlefish, angelfish with bright colorful stripes, deep dark iridescent blue fish with lacy fins, and even plenty of Hawaii’s state fish the Humu-humu-nuku-nuku-apu-aa. Supposedly, just over by the little motu islands nearby our lagoon beach are manta rays, friendly ones, that swim around and jump out of the water doing tricks for the tourists in the glass bottom boats, haven’t been there or done that yet.