FIRE

We have sailed over to Moorea a few times, and when Stephanie and Nancy came we went to Huahine, but we always managed to return to Papeete, for our visa or for the wind generator. Now we are on our way. Spending time on Huahine was beautiful. We toured the island by car which did not take so long, but the views were spectacular. Once we returned for our visa extension we saw some of the movies in the film festival, which were all well made and interesting. They covered a huge range of topics but all centered around the Pacific islands (Australia included). My dad, Dylan and I went surfing a few times over at the beach break at Papageno in Tahiti. I saw some good improvement, and my board sustained some injuries. After all that we left for Moorea where we stayed for only one night because the winds were just too good to pass up, so we set off again heading for Raiatea in the evening. The wind generator, recently installed, had been doing a pretty good job. We have two solar panels on the stern so we ran the wiring for the wind generator together with the solar panels. Both went throught a 25 amp charge controller (regulator), which was a little small but it was only temporary. Anyways, come a middle of the night rain squall and there's an electrical smell down below. My dad and Stephanie are on watch. I sort of wake up and hope that I can continue sleeping but the smell is only getting stronger so I get up. Out of the back lazarette smoke is sort of billowing out, surrounding Stephanie in noxious fumes. We looked in at the stern but saw no flames, so we reconsidered and my mom and I looked down below. The regulator had melted; it was mounted below the starboard aft bunk. I peeked through the cushions and saw a lot of smoke. I started taking off the cushions and then made way for my dad with the fire extinguisher. He lifted up the board and the fire flamed with new fury from the intake of oxygen. The board was put back after my dad attempted swatting the fire. It took two brains to overcome the complexity of a fire extinguisher, which is locked with a pin. The lever is on top of the handle, not a very ergonomic design so I pushed the lever while my dad aimed the thing. The fire was out, and the whole cabin was covered in white ash that smelled horrible and probably did a number on all of our lungs. The night proceeded as normal.

It took quite a bit of cleaning to spruce up the cabin, but we managed after quite a bit of sleep. This of course is only a side-remark on our ongoing war with ants. We have the worlds smartest on board. They are incredibly quick and they hide. They run into the cracks or crevices that are too small for our fingers. Furthermore, they love damp plywood, so they have hatched some baby ants on board near the condensation from the fridge and other choice places. We have been inhaling more noxious fumes from the penetrating epoxy sealer that makes the wood less inhabitable. So far the war rages on.

We had a great time in Raiatea. I got to paddle an outrigger, which after flipping in the first ten seconds turned out to be really enjoyable. We also ate the best pig of the trip so far.

Right now we are on Tahaa and Benoit, from Makemo, is visiting us. We are on the closing end of our stay in French Polynesia and we will depart soon for the Cook Islands. English comes.
Giovanni

Notes on a Tahitian Dance experience

Today my heart is soaring, yet it is only out of a sadness that I am aware of this "incredible lightness of being". We will soon leave Papeete and I attended my final Tahitian dance class today. I will make an attempt at describing my experience at this unique school. The "Heiragi Ecole de Danse" is this amazing (and I am sorry to say rare and unusual) space where women of many ages and backgrounds gather to study Tahitian Dance. The owner whom I fondly refer to as "Il Generale" is of Tuomotan heritage and infuses the school with a cultural force that proudly displays the beauty and strength of the Polynesian people. She brings a deep sense of her culture and for her it is dance that is a woman's expression of Polynesia. She expects us, the learners of this kind of dance, to come each day ready to work and to keep on working (she often reminds us, " boku travail"), both to learn the dance forms in an exacting yet artistic way, and to know the Tahitian words for the individual moves. When she attends the classes everyone becomes just a bit more serious in their studies, yet she also brings along her big belly laugh that reminds us of our shared womanhood. I call her assistant "La Professora", and she very sweetly gets each dance class started, and the very difficult labor of learning this dance begins almost effortlessly under her guidance. She too brings along a good humor and suddenly we are all laughing because she has imitated our awkward attempts at a particular form, then the laugh is over, now she warmly gives us the corrected move. Many women look in the mirror as they attempt to imitate her; as for me, I am so far from approximating her form that I simply watch her and imagine that it is my body moving with just the same grace as hers. We " ladies of the dance" come in all shapes, our common thread being women joined together in the learning of this art of Polynesian Dance, and it is interesting how beautiful we are each becoming as the work begins to reshape us just a little and gives us a bit more grace. There are a handful of women that are of Polynesian heritage, the two dozen others are mostly from France with a sprinkling of ladies from Australia or New Zealand, and me, the lone American. Children often attend the classes and become a part of the dance. The baby in the stroller who begins to fuss is cooed at by anyone near, the dropped toy retrieved as one of us dances by, and when the fuss becomes a near scream, the baby is suddenly in a mother's arms, the arms usually belonging to "Il Generale or La Professora", the baby now happy to watch our mostly clumsy display from a new vantage point. Newcomers are always welcome in this school, even now as the dance school begins the more serious preparation of their performance for "Heiva", a huge cultural "fete" held in July. "Il Generale", actually Veronique Clement, has chosen the songs and created a choreography that she and Selena, "La Professora", are teaching us. As we learn the individual moves and begin to put them together, she also writes out the Tahitian words to the songs and explains just what our gestures are meant to convey. The dance forms that are often described in the French language are now frequently referred to by their Tahitian names and we students must know the meaning. Since my days at this special dance school have come to an end, Jeff joined me at the class today to take photographs of all of us hard at work. I introduced him to a woman in the class I call "my Tahitian Idol" and asked him to watch her move and attempt to capture that on film ! This woman is much shorter than I and quite a bit more broad, her movements are completely fluid and graceful and she never seems to tire, her hips just keep on circling round and round as if this is the way a woman's body is made to move. The only way to perceive just how hard she is working is to be close enough to see the wet glow of her skin, or when her butt length hair falls out of its clasp as she dances. For me, she absolutely shines with a true womanhood, the kind that many of us belonging to the world of the dominating cultures are attempting to obliterate with our excessive thinness and surgical sameness. If you were to attend this class I think you would agree that the fashion photographers of the modern day are really taking photos of nothing, the emaciated, hollow-eyed, soulless shapes being nothing when compared to these dark- haired, full- figured beauties. My heart soars at this very lovely and surprising experience here in Tahiti, and I know that although I can grow my hair long, clasp it up, wear a pareo as my dancing skirt, it will not be so easy to build a space that carries an equal amount of feminine strength in its architecture as the simple "Heiragi Ecole de Danse". Maururu Roa to Veronique and Selena and all the "dames de danse" of Tahiti.
Ia Orana, Teresa