Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 16, 2025
Many times, when unable to evade the hospitality of my neighbors, I squatted with them about the brimming pahake set on their paepae, and dipped a finger with them, though they marveled at my lack of appetite.
There they were met by arriving guests, and the sound of laughter and splashing came up to us as darkness closed upon the paepae and the torches were lit. Lights were coming out like stars up the dark valley as each household made its vesper fire to roast breadfruit or broil fish, and lanterns were hung upon the bamboo palisades that marked the limits of property or confined favorite pigs.
It had fallen flat along the paepae, its poles sprawling ungainly; the rains and the mites contended against it; what remained seemed sound enough, but much was gone already; and it was easy to see how the insects consumed the walls as if they had been bread, and the air and the rain ate into them like vitriol.
A mile up the valley we came suddenly upon a plateau, and saw before us the remains of an ancient Pekia, or High Place, a grim and grisly monument of the days of evil gods and man-eating. This, in the old days, was the paepae tapu, or Forbidden Height, the abode of dark and terrible spirits.
But he wanted his gun, and he wanted it quickly. I calmed him with the twice-convenient namu, and after promising to explain the situation to the governor, I sat for some time on my paepae in the moonlight, talking with the unhappy convict.
Haabuani, master of ceremonies at the dances, the best carver and drum-beater of all Atuona, who was of pure Marquesan blood, but spoke French fluently and earnestly defended the doctrine of the Pope's infallibility, even coming to actual blows with a defiant Protestant upon my very paepae explained his attitude.
The hut, which, by measurement, was ten feet by six, held six women and girls, all lying at ease on piles of mats. It was a rendezvous of gossips, a place for siestas and scandal. One had seen and hailed me, and when I came to their paepae, they all filed out and surrounded me, gently and politely, but curiously. Obviously they had seen few whites.
For many weeks before I came, they said, no man had gone fishing. There were so few natives that the trees supplied them all with enough to eat, and the melancholy Marquesan preferred to sit and meditate upon his paepae rather than to fish, except when appetite demanded it.
The intrusion of insects and lizards was not considered to injure the flavor. I often sat on her paepae and watched her prepare the day's dinner. Putting the rancid mass of ma into a long wooden trough hollowed out from a tree-trunk, she added water and mixed it into a paste of the consistency of custard.
It was erected upon a paepae about ten feet high, reached by a broad and smooth stairway of similar massive black rocks. The house, long and narrow, covered all of the paepae but a veranda in front, the edge of which was fenced with bamboo ingeniously formed into patterns of squares.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking