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Savage Island
With all the buzz about Niue and its Wi-Fi in blogs, I was reminded of Blue Lattitudes, the book my dad gave me when I left for Sydney. It's a wonderfully personal resource for those interested in the South Pacific and Cook's travels.
This passage contained excerpts of what Cook wrote about the atoll in his journal:
When the English attempted to land, islanders burst from dense woods 'with the ferocity of wild Boars,' Cook wrote, hurling rocks and spears. Cook and his men fired at their attackers, 'stout well made men and naked except their Natural parts.' A footnote said that the warriors' mouths were smeared red, as if with blood. 'Seeing no good was to be got of these people,' Cook wrote, he withdrew to the boats, gave the island its unflattering name, and sailed off.
Drawn by the lure of balmy tropic adventure, Horowitz left for Niue with his pleasant drunkard pommy friend Roger, whom he'd met in Sydney. A large part of Niue's appeal was that so little was known about it, apart from the thrilling passage about savagery. Horowitz wasn't even initially sure how to pronounce Niue. According to the book and in case you wondered, the pronunciation of the island's name is something like "NEW-ay."
On the way there, they got an inkling of what modern Niue was like just from the banned goods list: "'handguns, flick knives, swordsticks, etc.' Also banned were 'indecent goods,' such as adult videotapes and magazines." On arrival, they learned about some of the major activities on the island from a young taxi driver: "'It is plane day,' he said. 'People want to see who is coming. There is not much else to do on Sunday, except church.'" Since swimming and fishing were forbidden for the day, they rented a car to go exploring. "Niue was only seventeen miles long and eleven miles wide. 'It'll take you about two hours if you drive very, very slowly,' Mary [the car rental agency owner] said." By the end of the day, Horowitz observed: "Savage Island was beginning to seem like a disarmingly safe and pleasant place." Apparently, Niue was trying to disassociate itself from its "Savage" history. The red-colored teeth of Niue's warrior ancestors came from chewing the hulahula, or red banana, but Horowitz had a tough time even finding one of the plants growing anywhere on the 17 by 11 mile island.
The island didn't seem to make much from tourism. From the descriptions, it didn't have any gorgeous beaches to speak of (though it did have remarkably clear ocean water)-- most of the shoreline was cliff face. It did make much of its income by leasing its phone lines, selling .nu internet domain names, and registering offshore companies. Some of this allowed for business dealings that were at odds with Niue's strongly Christian culture, but since many natives left for New Zealand to make money (the figure quoted was almost ten times the island's population), something needed to be done to attract economic growth.
But perhaps in some ways its lack of touristy sophistication was the island's saving grace. Even debauched Roger admitted to the unique innocence of the people. In a drunken episode, Horowitz and friend managed to mistakenly "steal" the police minister's car, which looked exactly like their rented white sedan. First car theft in years. The island might not be the ideal techno-natural haven that some geeks might envision when they think of a tropical getaway with free Wi-Fi, but it was described with a unique purity that other islands didn't seem to reflect.
'We're actually much cleaner and better educated than other islanders,' Herman said. 'In Tonga they still have pigs running down the roads. In Fiji the villages are very poor. Tahiti is full of whores. But we're the red-teethed savages. Anyone who tours the island will see that's not so.'
We asked Kahika how he felt about Cook's name for the island. He shrugged and told Herman, 'It is tradition, and sometimes tradition doesn't work in your favor. But I am proud we fought them off. If we hadn't the Palagi [foreigners] would have taken this place much sooner than they did.'
{ link me }Carol shrugged. 'I like it [the hulahula], it is from our history. When I was young, I hear the story about our men scaring the Palagi with the color of that banana. I really enjoy that story. So I went to the bush and got the seeds so I can remember how Niue scared Captain Cook with red teeth.' She studied the plant proudly. 'I may be the only person on Niue with a hulahula. I don't give the seeds to anyone else. Just for me.'
Annodex
A few months ago I went to have coffee with Adam at uni and watched a little demo that a friend of his had been working on for hyperlinked media. Pretty neat stuff, even in the demo stage-- you could jump through a video clip and associate different bits with text or other information. I didn't know much about it at the time, but now I see they have a website about the thing, and it's all being structured by a markup language to create a Continuous Media Web. How long until we have video blogs? It sets up lots of little sparks in my head.
Sometimes it pays to have a boyfriend who's interested in research.
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