August 21, 2012

We spent the morning with Paul Atallah, Island Eco Tours. When I asked about birds he said that no, he doesn't know his birds, but he would tell us what he knows about birds in relation to archeology.  When the Polynesians arrived about 500 AD there were many more species of birds than there are now and those birds had no predators so they were unafraid of humans, the only mammal that had ever been in Polynesia.  The Polynesians would simply scoop up the birds as they rested and devour them.  The feathers were used for ceremonial and decorative purposes. One of the few ways to indentify early settlements was by finding a site with many many bones of birds.  This easy pickins caused 60% of the birds to go extinct.


The following is what he had to say: French Polynesia is incredibly expensive for 3 reasons.  Wages are determined by French standards, $1600/month and 5 weeks vacations in contrast to $200/month in places like Tonga.  All goods are imported and there are import taxes and indirect sales taxes tacked onto the price of everything.  These taxes are extremely high because there is no income tax.  Businesses are monopolies.  For instance, Air Tahiti is the only airline flying between the islands.  Wan Air couldn't make it.  [Speaking of monopolies, Robert Wan owns just about everything in French Polynesia starting with the black pearls.]  Everything looks good in French Polynesia - good roads, cell phone towers, TV, good schools with good teachers, excellent medical care and facilities and a fiber cable from Hawaii to Huahine; but that is because France pours $2 billion (my book says 20 billion Euros!) a year into French Polynesia with a population of less than 300,000 .  This can't continue and when the axe falls - paradise will be no more.  That also is why the total independence idea doesn't fly when the Polynesians have a chance to vote on it.

Many of the dates for initial contact, for instance when people first arrived in the Marquesas, have changed as carbon dating has improved.  The Marquesas were probably populated around 400 AD.  The names of things show migration and contact paths. (Similar to York, then migrating to New York or Orleans then moving to New Orleans. Sweet potato is kumra in South America, kumara in New Zealand and kumra in New Guinnea.  Hawaii is the name of many places in French Polynesia.  During the migration, the Polynesians brought small seedlings of their food-producing trees, except for the coconut,which is everywhere.  They brought dogs, pigs, chickens, rats and maybe cats.  Rats may have been stow-aways and rats eat seeds, which prevents trees from reproducing.  It would take several years for the plants that they brought to bear fruit or tubers to eat.  They could not eat the animals that they originally brought because they needed them to reproduce and multiply first.

French author Rousseau's "noble savage" concept notwithstanding, it was not a paradise in Polynesia when the European explorers arrived.  There was constant warfare, human sacrifices, infanticide, cannabalism and a multi-class society.  There were  many religious rituals asking for rain, abundant crops and marine resources, fertility, protection from enemies, success in combat, etc.  Cloth was rare and sacred, so white sails on European ships looked divine.  Smoke, noise and destruction from cannons looked like lightening from the gods.  Since lighter-colored skin was associated with high rank in Polynesian society, European's skin color placed them at a higher rank than Polynesian royalty. The higher rank of lighter skin came from the fact that the lower ranking people who worked outside in the sun all day were darker whereas the nobility could stay in the shade and avoid the tan.  The Polynesians' resources were limited to stone, coral, wood and shells.  The Europeans' metal tools, mirrors, optics, pottery, guns, cloth, etc. were beyond the ability of the locals to comprehend or produce with their limited resources.  Since mana or power was a sign of the gods, they thought the Europeans, backed by their technology, were gods.

We visited blue-eyed fresh water eels in a mountain stream.  They are the same species as what we saw in Tahiti and Hawaii and are in the Marquesas.  Acacia trees were introduced and have gone viral.  They are pretty but invasive. The economy is very bad now in French Polynesia.  The biggest and best hotel in Huahine has 44 bungalows and, as of this moment, only 8 are filled.  There is very little tourism in FP compared to other vacation destinations.  For instance,  Hawaii has the same number of visitors in a week as FP has in a year.

On a personal note, he has been divorced from 2 Polynesia wives.  He thinks the reason is because Americans and Polynesians have very different ideas when it come to money and raising children.  Polynesians slap their kids around and speak to them very rudely.  They have no foresight when it comes to spending/saving money.  He took offense that his boy's teacher said Americans are all fat.  He said the facts are that 30% of Americans are obese, 50% of Polynesians are and 25% of Europeans are.  Polynesians live on a diet of meat and refined carbohydrates - usually in the form of fish or pork and white rice or French fries. (To which we can attest.) Also, he told us where to find the tofu in the market, which we did.)  He said the high level of Polynesian generosity comes from the fact that in the old days there were no freezers or other forms of preservation, so if you caught a lot of fish or your bananas got ripe the best and most practical thing to do was to give away the excess.

By the way, the engine runs fine without overheating ever since Barry cleaned the raw water intake.