“He says he had three boats. They were there, he went fishing, he taught his children. He taught his children how to fish, and after awhile he started to get old, alone. And there you go, he stopped fishing a little bit. But, for the morale, he still has the morale to go fishing! Oh yes, he still has the morale. It is enough if somebody comes to find him, ‘Let’s go fishing.’ He will go. He will not wait. He gets up, and he prepares.”
Fishing is often not just a livelihood for Marquesans, but also a pastime. Many fishers talk about “la maladie de la pêche,” or the fishing illness, in which fishers “go crazy” if they haven’t been out on the sea in awhile. As fishers get older, it becomes harder to get out fishing–especially in villages like Hanatetena, where the sea is often rough–but, they often can’t shake the deeply ingrained longing that a true Marquesan fisher will always have inside.
Original French:
Il disait, il avait trois bateaux. Etait la, il ete a la pêche, il a appris ces enfants. Appris ces enfants pratiquer la pêche, et puis après il a commencé etre vieil, seul. Et voila, il a un peu arrêter la pêche. Mais, pour la morale, il a toujours la morale de aller a la pêche! Ah oui, il a toujours la morale. Il suffit que quelqu’un vient le chercher, ‘on va a la pêche’ s’aller. Il va pas attendre. Il se lève, et il se prépare.
The Edited Jottings of an Amateur Anthropologist 