My teenage summer in Tahiti
not sure where the English teacher was from but it certainly wasn’t an English-speaking country). We went on blood-boiling runs through the surrounding hills for PE and to the local market at lunchtime to gorge on lolly-sweet pineapples and baguettes marinated in Pepsi.
On the last day of school, I spotted Selena across the quad and broke my jandals in my rush to get to her – my first experience of how wonderful it feels to spot a compatriot, and better yet a friend, when you’ve been overseas for a while. The guy she was staying with was, she said, gorgeous. Incredibly for a goodlooking boy, or so I then thought, he was also a nice person. Selena didn’t divulge many juicy details before we had to go our separate ways but it was clear she was winning the race – although most likely she was unaware she was a competitor – to find true love.
For a tropical island virgin, the short flight to the 77-atoll Tuamotus was a revelation. And, after my time in the capital, a relief. The technicolour blues of tourism brochures, I now saw, weren’t just a marketing gimmick. They were the actual colours of the water in these parts. Set with emerald-centred motu ringed with white-gold sand, the archipelago was more exquisite in real life, I decided, than anything printed on a glossy brochure.
The tiny, open-air airport terminal was packed, with men, women and an astonishing number of children spilling out almost onto the tarmac. Maruia’s parents welcomed us all with open arms and tiare (flowers) to tuck behind our ears, but made it clear from the outset that they’d be speaking French to no-one but me. Why should they use the language of colonists from the other side of the world, they asked, when they had a perfectly good one of their own? Deciding that ‘‘because my teachers will report back to my parents if I don’t improve my French at all on this trip’’ wasn’t a good enough answer, I kept quiet.
Riding in the back of their pick-up truck along the dusty road to their house, my pasty complexion provoked pointing and giggles from pretty much every kid we passed. Being in the ethnic minority, I was discovering, can make one feel very conspicuous – and self-conscious.
The next four weeks are now a bit of a blur, with one day passing much the same as the next. I’d wake on my mat in the upstairs bedroom the family shared, realise I was the last up as usual and head downstairs to pour a couple of buckets of cold water over my head (there was no running water on the island). When my host dad returned from his morning shift at the black pearl farm, we’d pile into the family dinghy and, after he’d speared a few multi-coloured fish in the lagoon and wrenched a few oysters free from the rocks, go in search of a desert island to while away the afternoon on. We’d build a bonfire, cook the fish and eat it with boiled rice and my host mother’s dense, addictively sweet coconut bread. On Christmas Day, she brought along a cake she’d flavoured with Wattie’s Tomato Sauce. Not the kind of French cuisine I’d been expecting, but not unpalatable.
Thus satiated, we’d swim in the lagoon or, if it happened to be teeming with baby sharks, as it often was, collapse under a coconut palm before heading home to collapse on the couch. Usually to ancient episodes of Friends dubbed into French. The family would fall asleep almost immediately and, with no-one but Ross, Rachel and the rest of the fantastic five for company, I would succumb to feelings of homesickness that often brought me to tears. Away from my entire immediate family for the first time, I realised I’d been wrong to pass up their company so often for that of my friends. I loved them dearly really. Even my sister. At midnight, my host dad would rise to drive to the end of the island to turn off its power supply – my cue for bed.
Bored out of my mind late one night, I grabbed a torch and headed out for a walk, destination unknown. Following the sole road out of town through a coconut grove, I decided to keep going until I reached a secluded enough spot for a skinny dip. I’d been walking for about 20 minutes when I heard a rustling in the bushes and scenes from I Know What You Did Last Summer (this was the late 1990s) flashed through my mind. I’d begun creeping back in the direction I’d