“Here, there are many young people that practice fishing. Over in Vaitahu, they practice drinking!”
I’m visiting the village of small Hapatoni, one of four villages on the island of Tahuata, when Tehei makes this joke about the drinking problems of the people in his village. We are sitting around an outdoor work bench with three women whom I am interviewing for my research on Marquesan fishing practices. Rose is the mother of Franceline and Myrna, both in their thirties. While Myrna has answered most of my questions throughout the interview, Franceline and Rose have chimed in as well, and do so more towards the end. We have been discussing differences between Hapatoni and Vaitahu in terms of fishing practices. Vaitahu is a bigger village, and the main port of the island of Tahuata. It is a twenty minute drive from Vaitahu to Hapatoni. Tehei begins discussing the differences between the two villages with this joke about beer: Although Tehei jokes, making the others laugh, I can’t help to notice the satirical truth in his words.
Rose continues to explain how important fishing is in her village:
“Even the children [fish] here, eh? Sometimes, they take the fishing cane and they go to the beach. Afterwards, they return home with their fish and say, ‘Voila, here’s my fish, it’s 500 francs!”
Here, Rose also deliberately jokes about social novelties: the new prevalence of the cash economy in today’s society. Earlier in the interview, when asked about changes that have occurred to the village, Myrna doesn’t give specifics but rather says,
“We prefer our lives from before rather than our lives today.”
They tell me of new structures such as paved roads and a new port, which makes everything feels less natural. Franceline tells me this is due to ‘la modernisé,’ or modernization, and when I ask what modernization means to them Myrna responds,
“There are new goods that have arrived. For example, before there were no telephones or iPads, but nowadays there are.”
Although they never say it directly, they speak subconsciously about new levels of consumerism and capitalism that have reached their society, due to processes of modernization and globalization. Beer and cash are an important part of this global island. Knowledge transmission is changing too, as Tehei tells me in answer to my next question: “Why do you think that more young people fish here than in Vaitahu,” I ask.
“Because [in Hapatoni] the parents transmit [the knowledge to their children]” he says, as if it were obvious. But I am still wondering about the differences between Hapatoni and Vaitahu.
“But why don’t they do this in Vaitahu?”
“I don’t know,” says Tehei, and Rose instantly agrees, “We don’t know…” Today, Tehei, Myrna, Franceline and Rose are at the pinnacle of change within their society. They prefer life before, but they can’t quite name why it is changing.
Tehei corrects his answer from before and says,
“Yes, yes the parents [in Vaitahu] do transmit [knowledge], but their children don’t listen. They prefer to drink beer rather than to fish.”
It’s not a joke this time, it’s the truth and nobody laughs. Rose accepts his statement by saying, “Voila!” as if we had cracked the code, but questions still remain for me. Why have young people stopped caring about their cultural knowledge systems? How has globalization, capitalism and consumption changed the livelihoods, hopes and desires of modern day Marquesans? And how can it be different from one village to another? The constant beer jokes seemed pointed. Do people see beer as a blockade to the continued transmission of important cultural customs? And if they do, they don’t entirely understand why, nor how to do anything about it.
Myrna finished this discussion and our interview by adding her own joke on beer, again displaying the differences between the mindsets of those from Hapatoni and those from Vaitahu:
“First we fish, then we drink! It’s better this way.”
(This interview taken in May 2018)
The Edited Jottings of an Amateur Anthropologist 