Ten Pacific Island Culture Shocks
By Tom Thumb, Posted Jun 10, 2009
 Did Gaugin give them false teeth, too? http://www.flickr.com/photos/the_taxing_one/ |
Paul Theroux lets us know some of the stranger sides of humanity out in Oceania.
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Rereading Paul Theroux’s excellent The Happy Isles of Oceania, I felt moved to share some of the juiciest cultural oddities. At Road Junky we’re a fan of culture shocks to illustrate just what an absurd species humans are and how relative everything is. So put your politica correctness aide and read on:
1. “Can”-nibal Food
Across the Pacific, islanders subsist largely on canned food – spam from South America (with only a vague hint that corned beef resembles human flesh and thus strikes a chord with ancient cannibalistic tastes!) and tinned fish from Japan. The seas have been so exploited by Japan in any case that it’s hardly worth going out fishing any more.
2 Seasick Islanders
While the ancient Polynesians were the most accomplished navigators in human history, crossing thousands of miles of open sea in canoes on a regular basis, the modern islanders get invariably sea sick within minutes of setting foot on a boat.
3. False teeth Girlfriends
The French Foreign Legion maintain a strong presence in Tahiti and in keeping with the time-old exotic dream of the sultry naked island girls, many of them take a mistress. As Tahitians tend to snack continually on sugary food, however, many of the girls have terrible dental problems and so a common declaration of love is to buy her a set of false teeth. When the legionaries depart for a while though they often take the teeth with them to render their girlfriends less attractive while they’re gone.
4. Cargo Cults
Cargo cults are alive on some Pacific islands, where islanders are still waiting for the planes to arrive bearing all the precious material goods that they were once promised by a white man named Jon Frum who quickly passed into local mythology. Some have even built runways to accommodate the cargo planes when they come.
5. Funeral Feasts
On some islands, a pig will be slaughtered when to feed the village when someone important to the family dies. Thus a dying person might assess everyone’s opinion of how much time they have left by when they start fattening up the pig.
6. Starlight Reading
The stars in the Pacific are so bright in places as to read by. ‘the whole dome of the sky a storm of light above my head.‘
7. Missionairies and Cannibals
The Pacific islands are full of missionaries, especially if there are rumors of a cannibalistic past. Theroux writes: ‘rumours of cannibalism are like catnip to missionaries who are never happier than when bringing the Bible to savages. Missionaries and cannibals make perfect couples.‘
8. Mormons
The Pacific is also full of Mormons who believe, rather misguidedly, that the islands were colonised by Native Americans. And as Mormons believe that Jesus managed to fit in a North American tour, that means that the Pacific Islanders are actually Mormons and just don’t know it yet.
9. Gulf War Voyeurism
Theroux is in the Pacific during the first Gulf War and hears repeated worries that the fighting will come to the Solomon Islands just like during the last big global conflict. Islanders bring back home videos of news footage of the falling bombs to watch with all the family and many speculate that the scales will tip in favour of the US forces once Rambo arrives on the scene to help.
10. Weather Chiefs
There are chiefs on the islands who are reputed to be able to control the weather. ‘It seemed wonderful that there is a place where you could actually blame someone you knew for the weather.‘
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What a load of rubbish!
OK, yes the corned beef part is true of a few places in the Pacific. BUT Oceania is a diverse and complex region, full of many peoples and customs and histories… and this article just plays on a long history of exoticism of Pacific peoples. At the expense of any real understanding.
bollox.
dreadful, I have read many travel/history books regarding the pacific islands and was very excited when a copy of theroux’s happy isles fell into my lap, that is, until I started reading it. How this man got famous I will never know, he is the michael moore of the travel world, he decides what he believes before he leaves his house then goes out to prove it through baited questions and refusing to hear anything that doesnt suit his purpose. I had to discard the book half way through because the mans constant ridiculing and criticism of local life and custom made me a little ill. he managed to warp all the islands fascinating history and culture into his own personal joke. lets look at the natives and laugh at their primitive ways!
This is Theroux’s best book for me. He has the pure road junky spirit in that he doesn’t pander to any political correctness, he just calls it as he sees it. He spent 2 years going through the Pacific and I loved seeing it through his eyes.