In 1976, Hokule’a made her first voyage to Tahiti. After staying in Papeete she sailed to other ports, finally arriving in Tautira (where the canoe is now), Nainoa Thompson, now a pwo navigator and leader of the Polynesian Voyaging Society was then a humble young man. Here is his description – an excerpt from my book, Hawaiki Rising – Hokule’a, Nainoa Thompson and the Hawaiian Renaissance – of that first encounter with a very special place. As part of her grand Tahitian tour, the canoe anchored inside a fringing reef off the town of Tautira. Above the lagoon where Hōkūle‘a was anchored, tall, deeply eroded mountains rose like knife blades to form the Vaitepiha Valley that sliced inland, channeling a shallow river that snaked between the peaks. The mountain slopes were green with ferns. Mango trees stood above the ferns and lower down were stands of pandanus. Lower still were ironwood and milo groves and ‘ulu trees with broad leaves shaped like human hands, yellow in the palm, dark green at the fingertips. Coconut palms fringed the shore. Small fishing skiffs were parked in lawns and outrigger canoes were drawn up by the bureau du maire near where village women washed their clothes at a public tap, hanging them to dry in the yard—brightly colored pareu of many designs. “It was like going back in time,” Snake Ah Hee recalls. “It was so quiet and peaceful and the people were so nice. The canoe builders all lived in Tautira and they were all champion paddlers. They had fishing boats and fishing nets. It felt like the old days.” Hōkūle‘a was moored close to shore with an anchor astern and the bow tied to a coconut tree. There was to be a party for the crew, but Nainoa worried about the canoe. “The current was strong,” he recalls. “What if the anchor dragged and we damaged the canoe?” Captain Kapahulehua agreed that Nainoa could stay aboard on watch. The sun began to settle over the nearby mountains. The canoe bobbed serenely. Nainoa enjoyed the twilight solitude. “Finally, the sun went down,” Nainoa recalls, “and I saw this little girl, maybe four years old, on the beach. She had a flower in her ear and she was waving to me to come on shore. She just kept waving. So I went on shore and she grabbed me with hands so small that she could just hold two of my fingers.” Nainoa followed his tiny escort down the dirt road toward the village. She walked barefoot, he with flip-flops that made a slapping sound on the road. The distant music of ‘ukulele swirled through the sweet aroma of vegetation cut by the sharp tang of frangipani and ginger growing alongside the road. The little girl led him on. Nainoa had to bend slightly to accommodate her stature. Even so, she occasionally lost her grip on his fingers and he bent lower still to find her comforting tiny hand. He was uncertain about leaving the canoe and more so about intruding on the gathering that loomed in the glow of gas lanterns in a house down the road. The din of laughter and music beckoned and taunted him. “I should not be here,” he thought. “I don’t deserve this. None of us do.” “She led me into a house with a dirt floor,” he remembers. “They had the whole crew in there and they were feeding them shrimp and steak and all kinds of food they could not afford to eat themselves.” The Tahitian men wore bathing trunks and tee shirts, a few of them emblazoned with an image of Hōkūle‘a under full sail, gifts of the Polynesian Voyaging Society. The women wore flowing mu‘umu‘u or draped pareu and they moved in and out of the kitchen with plates of rice, taro, kimchi, poisson cru, steaming pork, beef, and baked fish arrayed on breadfruit leaves. On the lawn in front of the house, a group of men sat on homemade wooden chairs and played instruments and sang. For Nainoa, it was like stepping back into a distant dream of Polynesia—the music, the Tahitian language flowing through the trees, the laughter of his fellow crew members, the food, the colorful pareu. Wally Froiseth sat between two powerfully built Tahitian men, their dark faces bent toward him as he told a story using a smattering of French and Tahitian he had learned sailing among the islands. The men made a place for Nainoa on a wooden bench drawn up to picnic tables. The house belonged to Puaniho Tauotaha and like most of those in Tautira, it was a simple place—cinderblock walls, tin roof and a dirt floor. “Puaniho had powerful eyes,” Nainoa remembers. “He was very strong. He couldn’t speak English and I couldn’t speak French or Tahitian. We sat there.” Nainoa had been to other, more formal parties sponsored by canoe clubs and government officials. This one was different. It was more intimate, simpler, more direct in some way that he could not clearly define. Perhaps it was the presence of Puaniho—his quietness, his welcoming gaze? “Like we are family,” Nainoa recalls. “I was overwhelmed by how much the village people gave when they had so little to give. Somebody would stand behind you and if your beer glass was half empty they would fill it. They didn’t have floors in their houses, much less beer and steak to share. I felt awkward, we didn’t deserve all this.” The party continued deep into the night. Heaping dishes of food replaced depleted ones. Glasses were filled. Only when Captain Kapahulehua gave signs that it was time to leave did the Tahitian hosts rise to say goodbye. Plates of food were placed in hands to be carried back to the canoe. Hawaiki Rising is available at good book stores throughout Hawaii and from Amazon. If you buy the book from the author (Sam Low) he will sign it and inscribe it especially for you. Aloha
Posted on: Fri, 04 Jul 2014 12:59:18 +0000