by Graeme Lay
Returning to the wharf, we see the governor-general’s party preparing to be taken out on a game fishing trip. But alas, His Excellency’s boat returns hours later from its voyage along Niue’s northern coast with no catch at all.
Every village on Niue has a church, a big church, sometimes an extremely big church. In Liku, a village whose population has been decimated by emigration, the church is nearly as long as the green next to it, although half the houses surrounding it are empty. It is built of concrete blocks, with stainless-steel guttering and long-run iron roofing – all imported from New Zealand. The cost must have been crippling.
Loveliest of Niue’s churches is the one at Avatele, which is also the island’s prettiest village. Located at the southeastern corner of Niue, Avatele has a huge green which slopes down from the church to the road. The church is large, white, steepled, but in need of a paint job. Women, all in woven hats, and men, mostly in dark suits, are ambling towards the church as I arrive. Avatele is providing lunch for the governor-general and his party, and the neighbouring community centre – a long, low building decorated with palm fronds – has tables and chairs set out under its verandah, awaiting the dignitaries’ arrival. In the meantime, I attend the village church service.
A suited man greets me at the door and tells me, ‘Sit anywhere you like.’ This is easily done – although I’m a few minutes late, there are only six people scattered about on the wooden pews. I take a seat on the left-hand side, and wait. With its towering ceiling, the church is airy and not too hot. The high pulpit is flanked by two lower ones, and all three are decorated with vases of scarlet hibiscus flowers.
A youngish, skinny Palagi – European – woman comes in, looks around nervously and sits down next to me. She’s wearing a floppy white sun-hat and a dark blue, floral-patterned dress. With her very thin, sharp features and stick legs, she looks like a pied stilt. As we wait for the service to begin, she tells me she’s from Wellington and is staying in a village guest-house.
‘What’s it like?’ I ask.
She looks doubtful. ‘I can see the cockroaches, and deal with them. But this morning there were teeth marks in my pawpaw.’ Then she brightens. ‘But after this I’m going back to finish roasting the leg of lamb we brought from home. We’re having roast carrots, roast potatoes and Surprise peas, too. And I’ll do gravy and mint sauce. We brought all our food with us from Wellington, in a suitcase. It makes the holiday so much cheaper.’
Roast lamb and gravy? Even in mid-morning, inside the airy church, it must be going on thirty degrees.
The pastor enters through a side door, stands on high in the pulpit and, when he sits, disappears altogether behind the lectern. He’s quite young, late twenties perhaps, with short crinkled hair, a flat face and blackcurrant eyes. The service alternates between Niuean and English, with most of the sermon devoted to giving thanks in various directions. A surprisingly adult Boys’ and Girls’ Brigade, who marched in at the beginning with banners, assist in these expressions of gratitude and frequently take up positions at the lower lecterns.
A collection is taken up during a hymn and the woman and I both put five dollars in the dish. The money is promptly counted by a man at a table in the front of the church, who writes figures in an exercise book, then delivers the book to the pastor, who at the conclusion of the hymn gives thanks, ‘For the offerings made today, which total twenty-six dollars and eighty cents.’
The hymns are sung in rollicking fashion to the accompaniment of a synthesiser played by a tall, slim, greying man with a small moustache. Later I learn that he is Hima Takelesi, local musician, broadcaster and businessman, who is to become Niue’s next high commissioner to New Zealand. The singing lacks the volume and part-harmony of Cook Islands’ singing or the lustiness of Samoan congregations, but is still melodious enough to lull me into a very secular stupor.
There is a laid-back aspect to this service. People shuffle and scratch; a dog strolls in through the pastor’s door and up the aisle without admonishment. The Boys’ Brigade members don’t bother to stifle their yawns: one goes to sleep and is woken up only when another one passes around a packet of cheeseballs. Babies in their grandmothers’ arms goo, gurgle and eventually drop off to sleep too. My only discomfort is caused by the woman behind me, who has the worst case of halitosis I’ve ever smelt. Every time she holds a high note I’m engulfed by her breath, and even by shuffling a metre or so to the left I can’t escape the fallout.
But by the time we stroll outside into the sunshine the air has cleared and I feel benevolent and reposeful, as if I’ve been meditating, which in a way I have. The stilt-legged woman walks off to baste her leg of lamb, a couple of elders shake my hand and thank me for coming, and that’s it. There’s another service after lunch, but I’ll leave it to the locals. Sunday on Niue, as in Tonga, is high Victorian in its strictures: no shopping, fishing, working, or playing games. Swimming is tolerated, but only just. But I also get the impression that the church’s primary function here is more social than spiritual, that the services, like the games of kilikiti, are a chance for the community to get together, talk and enjoy themselves.
Next day it’s the lunch at Avatele for the governor-general of New Zealand and Niue and his party. His Excellency arrives in the New Zealand High Commission limousine, a long white vehicle which draws up and parks at the bottom of the expansive, sloping village green. He and his party walk up the hill to the community centre and take their seats at the long table under the verandah. Girls walk to and fro, waving palm fronds over the food to keep the flies away. There are prayers from local leaders, a song from the assembled, and the speeches begin. A village leader talks at length, then presents the governor-general with a gift: a beautifully carved and rigged model of a Niuean vaka. The governor-general makes a heartfelt and eloquent speech of reply, concluding with, ‘And now, we have a gift for you, from the people of New Zealand.’ Then he looks around expectantly at his aide-de-camp, and waits for the gift to be handed to him.
The aide-de-camp hesitates for a few moments, then goes over and whispers to the governor-general, who nods. The aide-de-camp walks off down the hill towards the car. ‘Our gift will be here shortly,’ the governor-general explains, then resumes speaking to the assembled gathering, this time extemporaneously. He is an excellent speaker, and the Niueans nod appreciatively as he says how moved he has been to visit their lovely island. But when a few minutes later the aide-de-camp returns, he is empty-handed. He whispers in the governor-general’s ear, and the redness of his face is not entirely due to the midday heat. His Excellency, now also a little flushed, clears his throat and tells the crowded table, ‘It seems that our gift is locked in the boot of the High Commission vehicle. The boot is being unlocked and the gift will be here shortly. In the meantime …’ The governor-general looks unusually wild-eyed for a moment, then looks down exultantly at his hosts. ‘Why don’t you … sing!’
The Niueans look confused for a few seconds, then they too recover. Rising to their feet, they launch into a song, which sounds as if it could be a hymn. They sing one verse, then another, then sit down. The governor-general and his party applaud loudly, but there’s no disguising the fact that we can all see the aide-de-camp working frantically at the boot of the limousine, and that it is still firmly shut. The governor-general rises once more – ‘Your singing is wonderful. We would like to hear some more. Do sing for us again.’
A little uncertainly this time, the Niueans stand, then break hesitantly into song. Once they’re away, their singing intensifies, their unaccompanied voices rising and falling beautifully before fading away some minutes later. As the Niueans sit down, the viceregal party applauds again, but the gift has still not been liberated from the boot. The governor-general launches into yet another speech, this one a little repetitive. He is obviously beginning to feel the strain. This is not how viceregal timetables are meant to proceed. The Niueans too are looking discomfited, probably because they know that their song repertoire
has been exhausted. Then, just as it looks as if the event will have to be reorganised, the aide-de-camp arrives, breathless and flushed, bearing ‘the gift from the New Zealand people to the people of Niue’. It is handed over with due ceremony, a speech of acceptance is made and, with relief, everyone sits down to lunch.
One of the most appealing aspects of any island is that it attracts eccentrics, people who have retreated from a large, densely populated land mass to a much more circumscribed world surrounded by sea, in the hope that their unconventional habits can remain intact. And to some extent that is true. I have met or observed many people on islands whose way of life would be the subject of ridicule elsewhere but is tolerated by fellow islanders.
I cannot imagine, for instance, the Italian environmental sculptor I once met in Samoa practising his art back in his native Milan. Gino went from lagoon-side village to lagoon-side village throughout Samoa, setting up trios of trimmed palm tree trunks in the sand, aligning them perfectly east to west. What was the purpose of this? To use the life-forces created by his sculptures to repair the hole in the ozone layer.
On Niue you don’t have to look for long to find such people. Every evening, for example, just out of Alofi, a pair of swimsuited Americans, a man and a woman, come down to a small bay, carrying a kind of harness. They slip into a large rock pool, secure one end of the harness to the shore and the other to themselves, and swim. They swim and swim, steadily, diligently, one arm over, then the other, for an hour, staying in precisely the same spot. When this aquatic exercycling began some time ago, the locals would gather at the top of the steps leading to the rock pool and watch in wonder. Some of the children giggled, which upset the Americans, but now they are just part of the local scene. Rumour has it that the swimmers-who-go-nowhere are former flower children and acid-droppers who left not only their hearts but many of their brain cells in San Francisco.
There is also the usual impermanent population of yachties, moving through the Pacific before the cyclone season begins. Their boats are moored in Alofi Bay, and on their visits ashore they add a cosmopolitan flavour to the island. While I’m here the little flotilla includes some nautical Sloane Rangers (very English public school), some Germans, and Philippe and Heidi, from Switzerland, who make their presence felt almost immediately. He is about thirty-five, and very skinny, with an untidy beard and red pot-scourer hair, like Tom Hanks in the latter stages of the movie Cast Away. He goes around the island in shorts and bare feet. Heidi is very short, with blonde, Joan-of-Arc-style hair. She is about sixty. They have both been burnt dark brown by the Pacific sun.
Philippe grins and shouts at everyone as he passes. ‘Hellaw! How are you! Ees fine day! Yes! Good day for swee-ming, for snark-ling, yes!’ And always at his side is tiny, ageing Heidi, beaming a grin as wide as the island’s horizon.
One morning at the wharf I see them loading a basket of coconuts into their inflatable tender, and call out greetings. Philippe grins dementedly, waves his arms around his head.
‘Yes, yes, ees loverly day! Wonderful day! We get coconuts from market, see?’
Heidi nods, beams, points down at the laden basket.
‘Where have you sailed from?’ I ask them.
Philippe flings his arms in a roughly northerly direction. ‘Med-dee-terr-ran-ean! Af-rica! West In-dies! Pun-a-mah! Tah-hee-tee! Rar-ro-tong-ga! And now …’ He looks around confusedly, as if seeking a signpost. ‘And now … we are … here!’
‘It’s a long trip you’re on, then.’
His eyes bulge further, he leans back, shouts again. ‘Yes, yes, long long trip! Not over yet! Rest of world! New Zeeland! Os-tral-ya! May-lay-syuh! And … others … Very hard work!’ He throws his arms about. ‘We go now, to boat, with coco-nuts! Ees lovely day, yes!’
And the odd couple push off in their inflatable.
Biking along the road from my motel, I call in at another, newer motel at Avaiki, where friends are staying. I ask them if their accommodation is satisfactory. ‘Oh yes,’ replies Jane, ‘it’s lovely here.’ Then she looks cross. ‘Apart from the Germans next door.’
There are three middle-aged Germans in the next unit, Jane explains, two men and a woman, who make a lot of noise. Not raging parties or anything like that, but radio transmitting, most of the day and all of the night. They call Berlin, Munich, Hamburg on their powerful transmitter, and the sounds carry through the wall, especially in the still of night. Jane saw one of the Germans pay one of the Niueans who is working on the building site next to the motel five dollars to climb up the big coconut palm outside their unit with an aerial. He stuck it on the top, then climbed down again. The Niuean man told Jane that the Germans chose this motel especially: it was the only one with a very tall coconut palm right outside the door.
At first I think Jane must be exaggerating about the radio noise, but when I pass their unit on my way out, sure enough they are at it, headphones on, frowning with concentration, twiddling dials, speaking German into microphones. What on earth can be going on?
Back at my motel, I mention this odd behaviour to a man I’ve met here, David, who happens to be Jewish. He laughs, but with a degree of unease.
‘Are you sure they’re Germans?’
‘Quite sure. They come from Bavaria, apparently.’
David’s smile vanishes. ‘Bavaria? Hitler had his power base there, didn’t he?’ He glances around, feigning anxiety. ‘Could they be preparing for the new world order?’
Unable to resist this intrigue, I inquire further. Yes, most people have seen the Germans, but no one knows precisely why they’re here. People just assume they’re tourists. I get nowhere with my research until I ask Stafford Guest, expatriate Kiwi proprietor of Sails Restaurant, further along the road. He shrugs.
‘The Germans? They’re radio hams. Lots of them come here, the reception’s so clear. No interference. And by sending their calling cards to Europe from such an obscure island, the cards become quite valuable. Collectors’ items.’
‘You can relax,’ I tell David. ‘They’re just radio hams.’
David frowns, glances round. ‘Radio hams? The perfect cover …’
Leaving Niue, staring down at the island lying like a great green pancake in the sea, I wonder, can this rocky, isolated nation survive the economic gales which have in recent years battered it as severely as any tropical cyclone? Nobody can say for certain, but no island deserves to survive more, not only because it is a rare phenomenon of nature but because of the people who have remained there to help stem emigration and keep the country alive.
Later, continuing to monitor events on Niue from a distance, I learn that when the last of the llamas flew away they were not replaced. It was a scheme almost certainly defeated by economics. As a business, though, it made more sense than another short-lived scheme – the conversion in the late 1990s of the original Niue Hotel to a medical school. This plan, devised by some overseas opportunist, must have been the wackiest of all the get-rich-quick schemes to be foisted on a South Pacific island in recent times. Mercifully, and predictably, the medical school died. Who in the world would recognise a medical qualification from an island they’d never heard of?
But as Niue entered the new millennium, there were signs of fresh hope. Although the population had declined to around 1,700, and was continuing to fall, occupancy rates at the new Matavai Resort had improved. The island’s air connection problems with the rest of the Pacific were finally sorted out when Polynesian Airlines started flying once a week direct to Niue from Auckland and back. Tourist numbers, although still modest, began to creep up, consisting mainly of people who wanted to dive, fish or explore the island’s remarkable topography. An efficient infrastructure was installed, and the loony schemes were replaced by soundly based ones: a fish-processing plant and a vanilla-growing operation. Then, in one afternoon, on 6 January 2004, all was lost.
Cyclone Heta had walloped both Samoas and side-swiped Rarotonga before it struck Niue. On its way it had steadily gained in inten
sity. Its winds were gusting up to 275 kilometres per hour and Alofi was right in its path. For five hours – reaching a peak at 1.30 p.m. – the cyclone blasted the island, creating huge waves which surmounted the twenty-five-metre-high cliffs with ease and drove on inland, devastating buildings, crops and trees, and killing a young nurse. The hospital, museum, hotel, fuel-storage tanks, dive school, industrial enterprises and homes were totally wrecked. A sea surge forty metres above normal sea level coincided with the afternoon’s high tide. When the sea receded, the coastline looked as if it had been struck by a small nuclear explosion. Alofi had virtually ceased to exist. It was Niue’s worst calamity in living memory.
Niue was not just back to square one, it was back much further. Although aid was rushed in and generous international assistance offered, once again those remaining on the island were presented with two choices: fly away for good, or stay and start all over again. Does the world’s largest raised atoll have a viable future? Only time, lots of time, and money, lots of money, will tell. The latest figure suggested for rebuilding Niue is twenty-five million New Zealand dollars. Twenty-five million dollars for 1,700 people.
EIGHT
HERMAN MELVILLE’S VALLEY
THE MARQUESAS
‘NOTHING CAN EXCEED the imposing scenery of this bay. Viewed from our ship as she lay at anchor in the middle of the harbour, it presented the appearance of a vast natural amphitheatre in decay, and overgrown with vines, the deep glens that furrowed its sides appearing like enormous fissures caused by the ravages of time. Very often when lost in admiration at its beauty, I have experienced a pang of regret that a scene so enchanting should be hidden from the world in these remote seas, and seldom meet the eyes of devoted lovers of nature.’
