. . . in Tahiti
come from when I heard a low hum – Maruia! Approaching, I scared her as much as she had me.
‘‘What are you doing here?’’ she asked in French when she’d recovered.
‘‘What are you doing here?’’ I responded in something resembling that language when I had.
She often visited that spot, she told me, when she couldn’t sleep; something that was happening more often the closer she got to finishing school.
Like me, she had a year to go but, unlike me, she knew what she wanted to do with her life: become a doctor. There was no medical school in French Polynesia so she’d have to leave Tahiti for the first time. Most likely, as Tahitians have French citizenship, for France.
I told her I thought that would be amazing – I would have watched Pokemon every day after school for my entire final year if it meant I got to escape to Europe, but she was far less enthused.
A s conflicted as she was about her home island (chief among her complaints were the lack of job and entertainment options and that she knew every boy on the island and only wanted to kiss the one her best friend was dating), she knew she lived in a version of paradise.
Even so, she’d make major modifications if she had it her way. Her parents had told her and her siblings to follow their dreams overseas if they must, but that would mean breaking the long line of blackpearl farmers in their family and away from their traditional way of life. And, quite possibly, their parents’ hearts.
Having suffered acute homesickness on this trip and the year I’d spent in England – although as yet ignorant of how sanitydestroying it can get – I was able to sympathise. But it took moving overseas myself years later to fully comprehend truths about home, family, identity and happiness that she seemed to understand intrinsically. As well as the many benefits of a simple life. At that point, I couldn’t see past my longing to travel the world.
After that night, we used our own cross-breed form of communication: part French, part English, part te reo Tahiti (similar to te reo Ma¯ ori) and part mime. By the time the six weeks were up, I’d come to think of Maruia and her relatives as my second family. While so badly sunburnt that my host mother refused to let me go out in daylight, I looked and felt far better than when I had arrived. My eczema had disappeared and I’d discovered long walks can actually be quite enjoyable when you’re exploring somewhere new.
At some point I mentioned that I’d like to get a tattoo one day and, probably because I mixed up my tenses, the family took it to mean I wanted to get one on that trip. Told one morning we were off to the tattoo parlour, I only had an hour to decide what to get. Describing what I wanted to the tattoo artist wasn’t easy in my still inadequate French but I emerged with a small dolphin in a traditional Tahitian design above my ankle that takes me back to being a teenager in Tahiti whenever I catch sight of it. While not the summer of love I had hoped for (the only boy I had a lengthy conversation with was Maruia’s 10-year-old brother), it was certainly lovely – and the adventure of my young life. And educational after all, even if my French afterward would have still made a language purist wince. See mum, your money wasn’t wasted really.