We boarded the single-engine plane with three
other passengers and a fuselage stuffed with cargo then set out on our journey,
banking over Rarotonga and into a boundless, blue, ocean horizon. I stared out the window at cotton-batten
clouds, pensive and a little worried this single-engine aircraft couldn’t
handle its bloated stomach, when suddenly my hair tossed wildly in a gust of
wind. I shot my head up like a sparrow
just as the co-pilot jettisoned a candy wrapper out the window and pulled the
window shut. Julia and I glared at each
other with gathering terror.
Our destination was Mangaia, part of the
archipelago known as the Cook Islands.
Outside of the Cook Islands, few even know it exists, and the only
reason we chose it was because the flight to our intended destination, Atiu,
was booked. With two available seats on
the Mangaia flight, an Air Rarotonga employee called her friend (Tu) and booked
us three nights at Ara Moana Bungalows.
This impromptu change of plans seemed mildly adventurous, so off to
Mangaia we went, with no expectations and no idea what was about to
transpire.
The plane lit on a gravel runway and trundled
to a stop in front of a wood and corrugated-steel building, with a hand-painted
sign saying “Kia Orana” and “Welcome to Mangaia.” A large woman stood at the edge of the
canopy.
“Tu?” I asked, assuming it was her, since the
airport was otherwise deserted.
“Kia Orana,” she responded, her face
brightening like an island sunrise. We
attempted to shake hands, but she opened her arms wide and consumed us both
with a motherly hug. She guided us to
her 4x4 pickup truck and we set off through lush tropical foliage, following
earthen tracks formed by the balloon tires.
Twenty minutes later, we arrived at Ara Moana, which was buried under a
canopy of palm and pandanus trees. She
showed us to our bungalow, a tiny A-frame building painted coral yellow. From
the outside, it looked like a garden shed and on the inside, the inside of a
garden shed. Carving out most of the main
room was a double-bed and toddler-sized furniture. Looking to the back, which was about six
average paces, there was a toilet, a sink, and a cold water shower that only
allowed you to rotate on axis. We
instantly realized that this was not the “Polynesian Room” at the Fantasyland
Hotel, but the broom closet at the Howard Johnson.
With no itinerary, no apparent recreational
activities, and a queue of gangly black hornets on the door-handle of our
bungalow, we walked over to chat with Tu and her sister. They were weaving brooms from broad grasses
and coconut husk, which made us feel part of a museum diorama for traditional
crafts of the Maori. Tu’s sister told us
she had moved back to Mangaia after her husband died, but that she could still
feel his presence. Glancing around, I
observed that Ara Moana had all the ”cabin-in-the-woods” slasher movie tropes,
even Tu’s nephew was named “Jason.”
Tu suggested options for our three-day
itinerary: “You can take the stairs to the bottom of the cliffs. You’ll find a lovely beach down there. There are many hiking trails. I will talk to my cousin Tere and see if
he’ll take you on a cave tour. Tomorrow
morning I’ll drive you to the craft market, oh, and you’ll have to come to the
island festival tomorrow night; it’s our biggest festival of the year!”
How serendipitous it was for us to arrive at
the same time as their biggest festival of the year. We expected a cultural showcase of intricate
percussion and knee-jerking, hip-jiggling, Cook Island dancing. We booked Tere’s cave tour for the morning then
were forced to retire early because the electricity cut abruptly at 9:00 pm.
With little ambient light in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the darkness was
profound and unnerving, the perfect location for Jason to launch into a killing
spree. The door on our bungalow didn’t
lock.
We awoke the next morning to dazzling sunlight
and walked to the patio where we met Jason, the resident chef and an expert
with knives. A large box of Corn Flakes and
jug of milk were perched on the table. I poured some cereal, milk, then
listened while Jason apologized for the breakfast choice.
“There’s no electricity for the toaster,” he
said. “The island is rationing diesel fuel for our electrical generators
because a TV show, “Survivor,” has commandeered the supply boat for
filming on Aitutaki. We get three hours of electricity per day and
only in the evening. Oh, and we don’t
know exactly when the power is going to be cut.”
“It’s a little rustic,” I said to Julia, “As
long as we keep our flashlights close by, we should be fine.”
I passed Julia the box of cereal and as she
tipped it over, a cockroach the size of a prune, tumbled out of the box and
into her bowl, scrambled out, skittered across the table, leapt off, then
disappeared between the floorboards. I
stared blankly at my half eaten bowl. [CLANG!] Julia dropped her spoon and buried her face in her hands.
“We’re leaving tomorrow,” she whispered
intensely.
After breakfast, we greeted Tere beside the
garden for our cave tour. His Saddam
Hussein style mustache belied a friendly, jovial demeanor. Minutes later, a man approached and
introduced himself as Benny. He, his
wife, and another couple had arrived that night, having flown all the way from
Sweden. Our group of six followed Tere
into the cave where he carefully pointed out every jagged obstacle that could
break an ankle, or stalactite that could cause a cranial wound. We climbed deeper until we came upon a three-metre wide crevasse.
“This is called the tortoise,” Tere said,
pointing to a rock that emerged from a semi-circular mound resembling a
tortoise shell.
“Ah,” we all said in unison.
He paused, sat on a rock, then pulled his leg
towards his stomach.
“Let me tell you about this place,” he said,
his voice deep and oozing gravitas.
“There was once a tribe who lived in this cave
that only came out at night. They hunted children from local villages and
brought them here. The children were
slaughtered, cooked, eaten, and their bones were discarded down here.”
He leaned over and peered into the crevasse then
invited us to look into the black void.
“Finally, the local villagers came after
them,” he said, “There was a great battle in the cave, but the cave people
lost.
He gazed back into the crevasse.
“Now their bones are down here too.”
There was a long silence, broken by Tere who,
suddenly upbeat, said, “My ancestors, they were misguided. C’mon, let’s move on.”
Tere’s oral history fused wit with dark humour
and was relayed with a toothy grin under his thick salt-and-pepper mustache.
“When the first missionaries came to Mangaia,
we ate them, so they sent more, and we ate them too,” he chuckled, “Finally,
missionaries came from Samoa with a picture of a man tied to a cross. It looked like how my people performed
sacrifices. That image led Mangaians to
adopt Christianity and end cannibalism.
Did I mention that my ancestors were misguided?”
The trail eventually led us to a field of
feral coffee plants and pineapple bushes.
Tere explained that Mangaia had once exported top-quality coffee and
their pineapples were “the sweetest in the South Pacific.” In the 1990s, globalization gutted
agriculture then New Zealand austerity measures slashed government services and
forced a mass exodus of the Island’s young people. Most sought service or labour jobs in New
Zealand, leaving their children behind to be raised by grandparents like
Tu. I asked Tere about promoting tourism
and he told me that Mangaians have rebuffed opportunities to build tourist
infrastructure on the Island, choosing instead to preserve Mangaia in its
pristine state for future generations.
Mangaians, he explained, are stubborn and fiercely independent, the only
Cook Islanders to worship the god, Rongo, instead of Tangaroa. But with a population of barely 500 and
dwindling, Tere worried their very existence was now threatened.
“Soon,” he said softly, “there may be no
Mangaians left to stop development.”
After an educational and entertaining morning
with Tere, we returned to Ara Moana in mid-afternoon for a brief rest. At dusk, Tu drove us to the Island festival,
where we joined Benny, his wife, and the other Swedish couple as
“guests-of-honour” in the front row. It
looked like the entire population of Mangaia was in attendance. Lanterns swayed and palm fronds sizzled in
the humid breeze. With heightened anticipation,
the first group walked on stage and the music started.
Unlike groups on Aitutaki and Rarotonga,
Mangaians had few instruments besides ukeleles and a few acoustic guitars they
all shared. Empty plastic tubs and other
discarded household containers were used for percussion, but the music sounded
virtually the same: a highly-syncopated, time-shifting rhythm, jumping between
melodic choirs and pounding, aggressive, drum stanzas.
Between musical interludes, they performed a
pantomime about a great warrior who fell in love with a simple peasant
woman. It was an enchanting story, but
there was something odd about the peasant woman; she had a chiseled physique
like the Statue of David. The second act also featured a female performer with
a muscular body and I was beginning to have suspicions. I bumped Julia with my elbow.
“There’s something odd about these women,” I
whispered, “they seem very muscular.”
“I think they’re men,” she responded.
Once the third act began, it was evident: we
were watching a drag show. The crowd
howled with excitement as successive men performed transvestite burlesque. The group from Tu’s village told the story of
a princess trying to seduce a lonely king.
She gyrated around the stage and shook her buttocks towards his face,
but he only yawned and slumped deeper into despair. When the princess’ servant boy arrived, the
king, suddenly aroused, had a steamy love affair with him while the princess
danced obliviously toward the audience.
The crowd roared with laughter then cheered
heartily with approval. When the
festival ended, we sat for a few minutes dumbfounded, glancing at each other,
mouths agape. What did we just witness? Was this culture or folks just letting off a
little steam? I still don’t know, but
whatever that was, only six people outside of Mangaia have this story to tell,
and four of them live in Sweden.
Driving back to Ara Moana, I sat with Benny
and a group of children in the box of Tu’s truck. The glowing red tailights receded into night
as we swayed and yawed. With our backs
against the cab and our asses bouncing on the bare truck bed, Benny and I
grimaced every time the truck hit a bump. The children laughed at us. Then, seemingly on cue, they all started
singing a traditional Maori song. Their
angelic voices rose above the crumpling stones beneath the truck wheels; a sharp
crescent moon followed us through the corridor of palm fronds. Benny and I sat in silence, ingesting the
experience, then he turned to me and said exactly what was rattling around
inside my head.
“You know, at this moment, there’s no place in
the world I’d rather be than right here.”
I smiled and nodded.
That night, with Mangaia blacked-out, Julia
and I sat at the cliff edge drinking a bottle of wine. The Milky Way speckled the night sky, the
stars so vivid, they beamed down like billions of minuscule laser
pointers. It felt like we had stepped
off the end of the World and were floating in outer-space.
“I’m so glad we came to Mangaia,” I said to
Julia, watching a solitary fisherman swing a glowing lantern while strolling
across the reef below. “That was an incredible day.”
“It was,” she replied, “but we’re still
leaving tomorrow.”
