A peculiar language and a scary dance

If you’d ask me why I love French Polynesia, I’d probably answer with an hour-long monologue. But each destination has its downsides as well. Let’s take Papeete, the capital of Tahiti. This exotic city is one of the most expensive destinations in the world. A cabbage costs up to fifteen euros, a lime one euro each. The second downside for me is that they speak French. When Rick and I were in Australia, I spent weeks improving my English, and when in Mexico we both learned Spanish, which we are almost fluent in by now. But with French it’s a totally different thing. I just don’t like it and I can’t help it.

At the beginning, I used to apologize to the local people: “I’m really sorry, I know I should learn …”. But with time I noticed that most of them didn’t mind. I learned that many of them don’t like the French language at all, so we made a deal: I have the right to ignore the language of the colonial power if I learn Tahitian instead. Tahitian is the total opposite to Slovenian: we’re missing the vowels, and they’re missing the consonants (they only have p, t, m, n, f, h, r, v). It’d be best for us to team up, really. We could mix our “čmrlj” with their “omoeoau” and come out with a pronounceable word.

Apart from that, their language is a fairly simple one, without declinations or conjugations. In a few months I learned the basics, and I could converse with local people at a very simple level. They were always so pleasantly surprised when they heard me speak. When I was deciding which language to invest my time in, everybody told me to choose French, of course. But the Polynesians kind of remind me of us Slovenes. In our capital, Ljubljana, every tourist will find his way around with just a little English. But if a Japanese person asked a question in broken Slovene, the reaction would be much more memorable.

The proudest of all the islanders are the people of Fenua Enana. This is the original name of the northernmost islands of French Polynesia before the colonials named them Marquesas. When we used to live there I began to learn their dialect, which is quite different from Tahitian. It actually sounds more like Hawaiian. (For example: hello, which  is kaoha in Marquesan, is aloha in Hawaii and iorana in Tahiti). And that is how I became a real star amongst the Marquesan people: by learning ten simple sentences in their language. One day I was told that they had even given me a Marquesan name. I became Puamau, which is a blossom that never closes. The Marquesan people are as proud of their roots and language as we are and, especially in recent years, they invested a lot into preserving their original culture. Their effort to save their independence shows itself in various celebrations, festivities, dance performances, cultural centers, and in an increasing number of skilled craftsmen.

Most of the craftsmen are sculptors and work with wood and stone. Many are tattoo artists or they paint tapas (tapa is the Polynesian version of Papyrus – it’s made out of tree bark, which women lay onto a smooth rock and smash with a wooden tool till it gets as thin as paper). Music is also very important in their everyday life as in their celebrations. There’s hardly a week without an excuse to have some sort of dance performance. The performances, unlike in Tahiti, are not meant for tourists. The Marquesan people dance for themselves. Also, not only a chosen few dance, but everybody does: tiny pre-school children, blossoming young women, elderly ladies, and muscular tanned young men. The heavy rhythms are mixed with soft melodies, and on stage the synchronized dancers perform a dance of strength and power, but also grace and elegance. Their dance is a dance of belonging, pride, beauty, and conquering. The swirling hips of the girls always enchant me, while the screaming, scary-looking males can be truly intimidating. If you sit in the first row, sometimes it’s hard not to run away.