Monday, July 25, 2011

Marquesans and other people

Kristian Isringhaus
Nuku Hiva, Marquesas, French Polynesia
07242011, 1622 local time/ 07252011, 0352 GMT

As I said in my first blog posting, I want to learn about mankind on this trip. I want to meet as many people from as many different cultures as possible in order to find out why my own kind is incapable of living together in peace and why we so diligently destroy the world we’re living in, rendering it uninhabitable. I think I have reason to believe that the majority of mankind is not bad or evil—so what makes us fight? I hope to maybe find a common code of ethics during my travels that suits every culture’s idiosyncrasies, and that could help all people live together in peace despite their different beliefs.

I have made some first observations about the Nuku Hivans. I will try to judge as little as possible, because judgmentalness is likely one of the major problems of our time. I will merely relate my encounters with these and six other people.

In Nuku Hiva, it would be hard for us to starve, even if we desired that, because everyone keeps giving us all kinds of food. It would be hard to get rained on, because people offer us shelter wherever we go. It is even hard to hike, because everyone driving by wants to give us a ride.

When we set out for the little town of Taipivai, for example, we didn’t even make it out of Taioha’e before an old lady told us to hop into the bed of her pick-up truck. In Taipivai we told her we were looking for a place to pitch our tent, so she commenced finding a place where we could camp. When she asked a group of youngsters about this matter, one of them, Te’iki, told us to follow him. Five minutes later he led us into a spartan guestroom of his parents’ little plywood house, told us to take a shower, and asked us to hand him our dirty laundry, which he intended to wash.

Six of the seven family members gathered around the kitchen table for dinner. They did not have glass in the windows and the shower was merely a permanently attached hose in a corner that is separated from the kitchen by a few cinder blocks. And yet they made a fine cut of beef for dinner and lots of it.

Overall, they seemed, if possible, even happier to have us than we were to have a bed for the night. An interesting thing was the fact that two of their three sons were mahu, transvestites. Mahu are an important part of Polynesian culture. Tolerance is not even an issue here, it is not required. When everybody—no matter what their beliefs, desires, or problems are—is a fully integrated and accepted part of society, no one needs to just be tolerated. I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m judging this to be good, because I do not want to judge. It does, however, appear to me that acceptance might be a more valid way to world peace than fear-born, uneducated raging.

Nuku Hivans are like Mandy, who—in a cheesy eighties song—gave without taking. The difference is that they are not cheesy. Their hospitality and friendliness comes absolutely naturally.

On our first day in Colette Bay, a remote little bay close to Taioha’e, where we spent three days, a woman gave us a mango for no other reason than the fact that we walked by her. We wanted to return the favor, so we went to the tent to get a couple of cigarettes. We had seen her husband smoke, and cigarettes are the only thing we have that people could possibly be interested in. The husband, who also goes by the rather common name of Te’iki, took a cigarette, but the feeling we might be even on favors didn’t stay for long. After that they started feeding us like no one’s business, gave us beer, which is anything but cheap here, and even wrapped up some cake for later. Before we left, Te’iki made sure to also pass us some weed, before we could even explain that we barely ever smoke dope.

He told us that over the centuries, his people had been hospitable and nice to everyone. He said things had changed and these days everybody cares about money too much. I should probably believe him, seeing that he knows the people here better, but after a month on the island I have yet to encounter that type of attitude.

Even drunken youngsters, in most places in the world a potentially aggressive lot, will do nothing but invite us to hang out with them, share their spendy beverages, and smoke with them. Weed is offered to us as often as fruit. But it is never a questionable dude in a questionable neighborhood muttering a creepy question. No one wants to sell us anything—they just want to give. There is enough for everyone.

In Taipivai we had to strike our camp on a beautiful and remote beach rather suddenly, when on the third day the tide came in two feet higher than the days before, washing into our tent. We decided to go to Hatiheu that night, for setting up camp in a different spot in Taipivai and then striking it again in the morning didn’t seem to make sense. The road led over a 1400 foot high pass and the 175 pounds or so of luggage on our backs slowed our steps. We left Taipivai after dark, which falls early here, and at that time of the day no more cars went our way. After about an hour, though, a car came across the other way. And that’s apparently all it takes to get a ride here. The driver turned around and came back for us, only to drive back to Taipivai after dropping us off in Hatiheu. The detour probably cost him at least 45 minutes, for even with a car, progress is slow on the winding, pot-holey dirt roads of Nuku Hiva. He never asked for anything in return.

A couple days later we went to the tiny town of Anaho. Anaho is located in a beautiful bay and can only be reached by foot, horse, or boat. An eleven-year-old boy called Mano’a, who soon became our friend, told us to camp outside his parents’ yard. The funny thing is that his parents actually run a pension with five bungalows. It is their business to rent these out to people like us—tourists. Nonetheless they were not only OK with us camping by their yard, they even let us use the bathroom in one of the bungalows and their kitchen for cooking. They gave us coffee and breakfast in the mornings and offered us whiskey and weed at night. When bored, the man of the house, Tu’aki, would entertain us with traditional music that he played on the ukulele or guitar. They also let us use their kayaks to explore the bay.

The day we wanted to get our Nuku Hivan tattoos, the ATM was out of order. We asked the tattoo artist if we could maybe pay him the next day. I had little hope, seeing that we are tourists. We could easily be gone by the next day with our unpaid tattoos on our bodies. He, however, said he trusted us and went ahead with his work.

The list of nice, selfless deeds that were done to us is long. A random dude gives us two huge bags of super ripe and sweet grapefruits and a bag of bananas. Another one drives us to his backyard to pick fruits off his trees before driving us back to our camp. Our friend Jean-Pierre comes over regularly to lend us his dogs for the chicken hunt. When there is no time to hunt, he brings over pork, which is not even cheap in the stores. Today, our last day at the camp, he woke us up at 6 AM to bring us a breakfast of chicken and bread. A taxi driver picks me up in the pouring rain to drive me to the hardware store. Not only does he not ask for a fare, he even waits there to give me a ride back to the dock. A random dude gives us coconuts. A random dude wants to pay for me in the store because my wallet is in my huge backpack, which is a pain to get off and on my back. Always and everywhere there is a random person who will want to do something nice for us.

The above stated are facts and not judgmental. When I use the word ‘nice’, I use it for the sole reason that Merriam Webster encourages one to use it in order to describe this type of behavior.

I know that I should not over-generalize. I will not go ahead and dumbly state that peace on earth would be easy to achieve if everyone were like the Nuku Hivans. I suppose it might be easier to give when there is an abundance of everything and when food basically grows right into your open mouth. There are more coconuts, mangos, papayas, bananas, guavas, limes, and grapefruits than anyone can eat. It is sad to see them rot on the ground at times, but I guess when every tummy is filled no one bothers picking them up anymore. Cannabis grows everywhere as well, which makes sharing easy and an illegal black market impossible.

When Nuku Hivans are hungry, they fish, or they hunt wild pigs, sheep, goats or cattle with nothing but a knife or a machete. There is not even an actual need to bring snacks to the beach. There are crabs, cowry snails and sea urchins all over. Grab a few crabs and snails from the rocks, break them apart, rinse them in the ocean and squeeze a lime from a nearby tree over them. You’ll have the most delicious and fresh seafood you can imagine. Sea urchins don’t even require lime. You can just eat them as you go.

Now, one could say that it’s easy to share when there is an abundance of everything. But why do the Nuku Hivans give us their expensive beer? Why do they make a 45 minute detour to give us a ride? Why do they let us sleep in their houses? We do know that historically they weren’t always peaceful. Despite there being enough food for everyone, the different tribes of the island led brutal wars against each other that usually ended in the eating of the defeated warriors. Also, I do not know whether they only give to strangers to keep a nice appearance to the outside world, or whether they are like that amongst each other as well.

Maybe they don’t give without taking after all. Maybe what they take without us realizing are the stories that we have to tell about our homelands—like paying with a mango for a little piece of the outside world, if you will. Te’iki said people here think about money a lot these days. Also, Ta’oa, a local that we met in Anaho, told us how he got screwed over by a business partner. Even though we do feel safe to leave our tent alone all day, we know that theft does sometimes happen.

In addition, this might not apply to all Marquesans. We have heard that the people from Ua Pou, for example, are anything but nice. They hate and fight the Nuku Hivans whenever they can. According to Nuku Hivans they steal and are bad people in general. I would, however, bet that Ua Pouians say the same thing about their northern neighbors. My friend Adon was in a serious fist fight with a drunken dude from Ua Pou, knocking out three of his teeth. While relating his heroics to us he does not forget to remind us repeatedly that Nuku Hivans are anything but that, that the drunken Ua Pouian started the fight, and that here no crimes ever happen. I guess I will have to take his word for it, and it matches my experiences here.

We also cannot know whether Nuku Hivans are as happy as we have been here. For us this is super cool and super interesting, and the food is super great. For them this is just super normal and they probably have to deal with issues like disappointment, unanswered love, moods, jealousy and envy as well. I should not blindly call this paradise, but on a first glance it looks like it’s damn close.

These are my observations about the Nuku Hivans. I cannot say much more without judging and of course I do not want to attempt to find a general code of ethics yet, after experiencing only one of the countless cultures of this planet. As a feeble attempt of a conclusion, I want to say that interest in foreigners, their cultures, and their ways of life is a much better way than fear of them. Fear is a fertile ground for hatred. A scared person is easily influenced. We can see that in Europe right now, where nationalism is taking over in way too many countries. Now, I am sure judging nationalism is wrong here. I dare do that because history has already taught us where that will lead. I do not need any further observations to figure that out.

I did not find eternal truth quite yet and I doubt that I ever will. For now, I hope that my experiences inspire you.

As a little bit of an appendix, I want to add a few more encounters that I have had, mostly with people from different cultures. Again, I hope I don’t sound like I judge when I relate them. Please note that these are all single encounters that do not necessarily need to be representative for the respective nations.

Two American men in their sixties, Brent and Mike, came on a boat. They had never read anything about Nuku Hiva anywhere and displayed a great lack of interest in the place and its people. They stayed for four days and left the boat only for necessities, never, though, to explore the island or meet its people. They did, however, see enough to wonder how ‘these people’, as they condescendingly said, could afford their in some cases new and nice pick-up trucks, and how they reproduced when half of the men were transvestites. Well, I’m glad they had time to make some observations of their own that they could relate to me ever so non-judgmentally.

A French dude, who goes by the name of Yannik, became our neighbor, setting up camp close to ours. He had come on a boat whose captain he complained about a lot. That cruel captain had dared ask him to help with the sailing of the vessel—even at night. Yannik does not believe in helping. After setting up camp, he didn’t lose any time before raiding the neighboring backyards for fruit. The first night, he figured out that the hospital was open but deserted at night, allowing him to shower there and take as much food as he needed. He might not have needed a lot seeing that he usually ate our food while repeatedly trying to steal our silverware, which consists of exactly two forks and two spoons.

Again, I do not want to judge quite yet, but I feel that a little more altruism might be a more valid way to a peaceful world. Yannik managed to get even me agitated—and that’s not easy.

Then there were three old Japanese guys that we had an interesting encounter with. They go by the names of Sam, Sho, and Jon. Sam, Sho and Jon also came on a boat. Like any other yachtie, we asked them if they would maybe have room on board to take us to Tahiti. They answered that they did not have any room on their small boat, but that they would, however, be happy to host us for dinner. They picked us up in their dinghy and fed us freshly grilled skewers with beef and vegetables, grilled sausages, bread and salami. We spent the most wonderful evening on board their boat engaging in interesting conversation while drinking beer and wine. Not only the difference in culture, but also the difference in age made this invitation both unexpected and enjoyable.

Apparently, the word spread that we were now accepting dinner invitations, for a few days later an elderly Canadian couple, Val and Jerry, invited us to their beautiful boat that they have been sailing around the world on for 20 years. It was again a most delightful experience with unbelievable food and unbelievably nice people.

Let me repeat that these encounters are probably little representative for the respective nations. Wynne is an American just like Brent and Mike and yet nothing like them.

The last encounter I want to relate was one with a Nuku Hivan again. One night, when Wynne and I were engaged in pre-somnial intercourse, we heard a noise by the entrance to our tent. Startled, I went to check—only to find a friend of ours, who we had just eaten dinner with, masturbating while peeking through the meshed wall of the tent. When I inquired what he was doing, he urged me to go on with our ever so suddenly interrupted activity, for he wanted to watch and finish his own business. Not entirely opposed to voyeurism, but taken by surprise in this case, I told him that I was not planning on doing so with him lying there. It took me a good ten minutes to convince him to get out from inside our rain fly. The fact that the next day he addressed us without the slightest bit of shame, as if nothing had happened, gives me the feeling that what he did is not uncommon here and possibly a widely accepted part of the culture. That, however, is but a wild theory. He might just as well be a pervert. He is, as it turns out, a convict, who escaped from prison in Tahiti, and is chilling in Nuku Hiva because authorities here will let him be as long as he behaves. His prison sentence he got for stealing, though, and not for voyeurism. Thinking about that situation retrospectively, I do not really see anything bad or wrong about his behavior. Open-mindedness in any part of life is a good key to a better understanding between cultures. Wynne and I still hang out with him and value his friendship.

My next blog entry will probably talk about Australians a lot for we will soon leave Nuku Hiva with a very nice Aussie named Butch.

Paradise Without Toilet Seats

Taioha'e, Nuku Hiva, French Polynesia
1610 local time

            Kristian and I have been in Nuku Hiva for a month now. The first two weeks we spent traveling around the island, camping, hiking, fishing, and enjoying the company of the locals. The past two weeks we’ve been back in Taioha’e, the island’s main town. I have been here long enough to make what I hope are a few accurate observations about the people and their lifestyle.

I will begin by describing Taioha’e, a sleepy little tropical town nestled in a bowl-shaped valley, which serves as the administrative capital of not just Nuku Hiva, but the whole Marquesas island group. It boasts a population of about 1700 people. When we returned to Taioha’e from our wanderings around the island, it actually felt busy, with cars, shops, restaurants, tourists, and all those big-city things. This impression of Taioha’e is only possible to have by direct comparison to the quiet, undisturbed, undeveloped bays elsewhere on the island. “Back to the Big Apple,” we said. “More like the Big Napple,” Kristian corrected. “The City that Never Sleeps…between the hours of 7 AM to 11 AM, and 3 PM to 5 PM.” This is not an exaggeration. Business hours are flexible, and people enjoy an extended siesta mid-day. In addition, most folks on Nuku Hiva strictly follow Benjamin Franklin’s sage advice, “Early to bed, early to rise.” The only exception seems to be Friday night, when groups of young people cruise on the beach in their pick-up trucks, blasting heavily auto-tuned, foreign pop music and drinking into the wee hours of the morning. To get a better sense of the pace of life on Nuku Hiva, let me describe our first day here.

            We went ashore in Taioha’e on a Friday, and we needed to take care of our customs paperwork right away, since all the offices would be closed for the weekend. We went to the gendarmerie, the local police station, which also deals with customs and immigration issues. We found out that although the horaires, the posted hours, said that it would be open, neither of the two officers scheduled to be there were around at the moment, and we should come back at 11:30.

            In the mean time, we decided to find the tourist information office, which our guidebooks said had useful maps and a helpful staff that could answer all our questions. We had quite a few—about camping, fishing, transportation, and so on. But the tourist information center was locked up tight. A big piece of yellow poster board with a block of hand-written French text indignantly declared that the staff had gone on indefinite strike until the government in Tahiti decided to allocate the funds to properly run the tourism department on Nuku Hiva. So much for all our questions.

            In order to orchestrate our day, we needed to change our watches to the local time in Nuku Hiva. This was more difficult to accomplish than one would think. The clock on the bank’s ATM, the clock inside the bank, the German cruisers we talked to by the gendarmerie, and the random local guy I asked in the bank parking lot all said something different. Later, when we related our attempt to find out what time it was to the officer in the gendarmerie, he said with a knowing hmph, “Oui, c’est difficile ici.”

We spent most of our first day in the gendarmerie and the bank, where everyone was helpful, friendly, and laid-back about details, but not in much of a hurry to get the job done. Generally speaking, Nuku Hiva is not ruled by the watch. Day one taught us that store and business hours are flexible, that sometimes places close if opening is inconvenient or there isn’t enough demand, and when things are open, people are never in a rush.

            When we went to find a place to stay for the night, we got our first experience of a Marquesan home. We had to leave the boat and we didn’t have time to find a campsite, so, following the vague and inaccurate directions in our travel guidebooks, we finally found an inexpensive pension, or family-owned boarding house, Chez Fetu. We wandered past a large, aggressive dog tied to a tree, under mango, papaya, and palm trees, to a house near the end of a muddy dirt road. It was small, and had a porch-like living room open to the air and adorned with a television set and many images of the Virgin Mary. Just as I was about to try to ask where Chez Fetu was, the old woman sitting at a table in front of the house, no doubt recognizing us as tourists by our pale skin and the looks of utter confusion on our faces, got up and asked us if we needed help.

            After the most incoherent French conversation in the history of French conversations, we finally managed to obtain a room for the night in what was in fact Chez Fetu, right in the main house, sharing a bathroom with the family. The room doubled as a storage area, and the mattress was thin and sprinkled with a few dead bugs. Spartan, I thought, but a place to sleep. Little did I realize that this was a pretty solid house, by Nuku Hivan standards. The walls were not made of plywood, and there was glass in the windows, unlike many homes here. But when the temperature is never below 70 degrees, why bother with walls and windowpanes? As long as your house is tolerably waterproof, that’s enough. Just sit back and enjoy the comforts nature provides.

            We didn’t (and still don’t) have enough money to stay in pensions every night, so the next morning we set out to find somewhere to camp. Cleared by customs and ready to rumble, we packed our affaires (a word I learned in that most confusing of conversations with the proprietress of Chez Fetu, and which I will never forget), all eighty kilos of them, huffed and puffed them onto our backs, and set off toward Baie Colette, one valley over from Taioha’e. We’d asked around, and everyone said it was a good place to camp. We heard nothing about any rules or regulations regarding camping, and decided that we’d just give it a shot, and hope we wouldn’t upset anyone.

Before we got out of town, we decided to buy a bottle of water at one of the town’s four little grocery stores. When we walked in with our mountainous backpacks, we drew stares from the clerk, and the one customer in the store. They asked us where we were from, and where we were going, and I nervously tried to respond in French. Turns out Nuku Hiva doesn’t get a lot of backpackers. Most tourists arrive on sailboats, and therefore have a place to stay. Anyone who has the money to get here by plane probably doesn’t have to camp, hike, and hitchhike around the island. As we would learn in our travels, American tourists, and especially American tourists carrying everything they owned on their backs, were a rarity.

While I tried to carry on a conversation with the two men in the store, Kristian realized that he didn’t have any coins in his pocket to buy the water, and had decided to take off his backpack to get some out. I think that the other customer anticipated the logistical nightmare this would become, and he offered to buy the water for us, but, unaccustomed to such generosity toward strangers, I turned him down. I now regret this decision. Knowing, as I now do, that people here are extremely generous, the customer probably thought we had left our marbles in the United States or wherever we came from when he saw us purchase the water and then wrestle to get Kristian back under his backpack and up on his two feet, when it would have been no big deal to just buy the water for us and avoid the whole situation.

            When it became obvious that I couldn’t speak enough French to chat with them, the two men silently watched our struggle, and eventually we said “au revoir” and left the store. Unused to the weight of our impossibly heavy backpacks, we dragged ourselves up a winding dirt track full of switchbacks, gulleys, and rocks over the ridge and down into the next valley. When we reached the valley floor, there were a couple plywood shacks back in the brush off the road, and a sort of disorderly little ranch/orchard area with a haphazard collection of lime trees, noni trees, and some bananas and a few coconut palms way off the road, almost hiding another plywood shack. On the thin strip of land between the ranch’s fence and the pebbly beach, a horse was wandering around, dragging a piece of rope that was supposedly once used to tether it to a stationary object. A half-feral dog with a litter of puppies also called the waterfront her home.

            We set up camp in a tree-shaded spot on that same strip of land by the beach, and ended up staying three nights. In Baie Colette, we gained a better understanding of the lifestyle and character of people on Nuku Hiva, which further affirmed that most people’s lifestyle is relatively simple, but their character is very generous. Those plywood buildings we saw on the hike down were in fact inhabited, and before long we got to meet the people who lived there. On our second day a pick-up truck showed up at our camp, and a woman got out and greeted us warmly, as if we were old friends, with a kiss on each cheek in the usual Marquesan fashion. Confused by her friendliness, and hindered by the fact that like many people here, she had two names, her Marquesan name, and her Christian name, it took a while to understand that her name was Tahia, aka Gabrielle. She lived in the valley, she explained, and it was her grandmother who owned the orchard/ranch we were camped next to. Her family owned most of the land in the valley, and a few of them still lived there.

We were afraid we were in trouble for camping on someone’s land, but apparently that wasn’t the case. She and her husband, Gabriel, came and hung out at the camp like they knew us, and taught us to fish out of kayaks, eat raw crabs and snails they caught on the rocks, and roast breadfruit. They encouraged us to catch the big crabs we found living in holes in the sand by the creek. They were good eating if you boiled them for a few minutes. Tahia gave me shells, and insisted I wear her sweet-smelling flowers in my hair—“Marquesan perfume” that would make my honey fall in love with me all over.

Hanging out by the ocean, eating raw crabs and looking at the impossibly bright southern constellations, trying desperately to respond appropriately to Tahia’s warmth and friendliness in French, I had my first full-length conversation in another language. I actually felt like I was sharing meaningful information, relating my history, learning about their lives here on the island. Afterwards, I felt giddy. Suddenly it was possible to have significant relationships with millions more of the human population—the entire French-speaking portion. Since then, my French has gotten better. I’ve gone from being terrified to ask for a cup of coffee, to being able to more or less carry on a conversation with anyone I meet, and even impress the French cruisers with my ability to speak their language. My biggest limitation wasn’t my lack of knowledge, but my timidity. But here in Nuku Hiva, very few people speak English, and, as they say, necessity is the mother of language acquisition. Or something like that. Random business hours, horses wandering around the streets, strange new foods everywhere, the almost confusing generosity of the inhabitants, and myriad other foreign sights and sounds make the ability to ask questions quite important. I advise future travelers to Nuku Hiva to at least carry a French phrase book and dictionary. That, and friendliness, will get you pretty far.

On our last day in Baie Colette, we had an epic Polynesian feast. I had the privilege of seeing Tahia’s home up close, when I went with her to make rice on her gas burner. The house was one room with a couple windows (no glass), and a bed. Out in the yard there was a sink attached to a hose that pumped water up from somewhere or other, and two roofless structures made of scrap plywood, one of which housed a toilet, and the other a cold-water shower. While we made rice and hung out, Kristian and Gabriel, Tahia’s husband, were off fishing in kayaks, and when we returned to our campsite, they’d caught eleven small fish. Since then, Kristian and I have tried many times to imitate various aspects of Gabriel’s technique, with modest success. Let’s just say I’m glad I didn’t spend too much time researching a cardboard-box smoker construction.

After we cooked the rice and caught the fish, a breadfruit magically appeared, presumably from one of Granny’s trees, and we roasted it over an open fire. Some of the fish that the boys caught Tahia and Gabriel grilled, and a few they cut into small pieces and soaked in the juice of some limes also gathered from Granny’s trees, to be eaten raw. Tahia spread some coconut fronds over the rough table, and, surprisingly quickly, a feast materialized—rice, soy sauce, grilled and raw fish, home-made BBQ sauce, fresh basil, and roasted breadfruit dipped in rich, delicious pork lard. We sat around the fire and ate with our hands off of big leaves.

Tahia and Gabriel said they wanted to go have a little siesta (a common afternoon practice here). Before they left, they offered to give us a ride back into town the next day. I didn’t understand this at first, since I was confused not just by French, but by how generously they were willing to carry us and all our “affaires” into town. We set a time, and the next day we got up early and broke camp. At about 8 AM we chucked our backpacks into the back of their banged-up truck, and ourselves into the cab, and bumped up the rocky road to Taioha’e, listening to American music on Tahia’s cell phone. Here on Nuku Hiva, we’ve encountered generosity like this many times. People here have offered us food, given us rides, invited us into their homes, showed us their towns, and taught us to fish, open coconuts, and find fruit. Hospitality is not a rare or occasional thing here. People here are curious about travelers, want to get to know them, and easily give whatever they can to friendly strangers.

In addition to the flexibility of time here and the generosity of the inhabitants, I have noticed some interesting preferences for certain technologies, and priorities of spending, here on the island. For example, like Tahia, many people here choose not to put glass in their windows, or they construct their houses with thin plywood walls. Many homes don’t have hot water heaters. Most toilets do not have toilet seats. I haven’t seen any microwaves. Yet most people still have cell phones, and most homes have a television. You see kids hanging out in pick-up trucks on the beach or in parking lots, drinking (notable because alcohol is quite expensive here) and blasting the latest hits in French and English through their portable sound systems. Many people have vehicles, often new and shiny ones, though there’s a pretty high ratio of banged-up pick-up trucks as well. Having a four-wheel-drive vehicle is more of a necessity if you want to get anywhere on the island. Cars, phones, televisions, and music are some luxuries that Nuku Hivans seem to prioritize.

In the United States, these items tend to come as part of a package. If you have enough money to have a cell phone, a television, a nice stereo system, and a car, you probably also have a microwave, toilet seats, glass windows, and a house made out of something besides plywood. I couldn’t get over how strange it was to be rocking out to American pop music that was piped through the cell phone of someone who lives in a one-room plywood shack on a muddy dirt road, in a valley with no public services, on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean. Yet I kept seeing items like this in the most surprising places. I watched part of an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie with a kid on his family’s laptop. He lived in a little village of about six homes on a remote bay accessible only by boat, horse, or on foot. I’ve hung out with a family in their plywood, windowless kitchen/dining room/bedroom, looking at photos on their daughters’ cell phones, while the parents half-watched television. The oldest son had recently acquired a brand-new, sparkling 4x4, which we saw him lovingly bathing in the front yard the next day.

You see these apparent contrasts everywhere on the island. Not surprisingly, the longer I’m here, the less weird this seems. People simply have different priorities here. Why bother ridding the streets of the fornicating packs of feral dogs, or the scavenging wild chickens? They’re not causing any harm. What we would consider the essential comforts of a bug-free, sterilized, hermetically-sealed home are not important here. People here are more comfortable with nature. Although some people do prioritize cookies, cheese, and Nutella as luxury items in the same way they choose to buy cell phones and new vehicles, most of what is required for basic nourishment can be grown in their backyards. There’s no shortage of fruit, seafood, and even wild chickens, pigs, goats, and cows, as Kristian and I know from experience. On Nuku Hiva, nature is your best friend. While it produces your food and a generally comfortable climate, it also occasionally lets loose a little wind or rain. But that never hurt anyone, and there’s not much on the island that is poisonous or bites, except mosquitoes, nonos, and centipedes. So why bother with window panes?

Kristian and I don’t even bother with the walls. Our tent is waterproof, and that’s all we need. After our first days in Taioha’e and Baie Colette, we spent another ten days exploring the island, with the blue sky as our ceiling and the lush mountains as our walls. We camp, with the ocean always a few meters away, and the sound of the surf in our ears at night. It’s pretty easy to lose track of time, especially in beautiful nooks like Anaho, the village only accessible by boat, horse, or on foot. Entering that valley was like falling off the end of the world into the domain of eternal chillaxitude, where the gentle swaying of the coconut palms, the break of the surf, and the rising and lowering tides are the only things around to beat out the rhythm of passing of time. We have enjoyed making friends with the people here, and give what we can in return for their generosity. Although no place is free of problems, I don’t think it would be inaccurate to say that despite the lack of many luxuries, the closeness of nature and the relative simplicity of life here contribute not a little to people’s happiness. I don’t blame the inhabitants one bit for not letting themselves live by the clock.