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Non-Fiction - Fatu-Hiva: Back To Nature
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Non-Fiction - Fatu-Hiva: Back To Nature
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| Title: | Fatu-Hiva: Back To Nature |
| Author: | Thor Heyerdahl |
| Published: | 1974 |
| Pages: | 303 |
| Category: | Non Fiction |
| Summary: | Since he was a boy, Thor Heyerdahl dreamed of returning to nature and living the simple life. Finding a woman with similar ideals, he marries her and they set out live on a pacific island with the most basic equipment. In this pre-second-world-war adventure, the young couple face hardships such as disease and unfriendly natives but also learn to survive in polynesia. |
| Review: | 5/5 An inspirational and thought provoking account. |
| An explorer. That was what I wanted to become. To penetrate on foot, by horse, or by camel, unknown parts of our vast world. Planet Earth had not yet started to shrivel seriously in dimension. Certainly, with steamships, America was only a quarter of the distance away compared with what it was in Columbus's time, but even that was far. It took me three days to travel with my parents from the port of Larvik to our mountain holiday cottage in the Norwegian midlands, partly by train and partly by pony and trap. I was amazed beyond description when some friends showed me what they called a "radio", a square battery-box with holes into which we plugged our earphones and eagerly discussed whether or not we heard distant music. | |
| After a couple of nights in the local hotel, where neighbors on each side could look down on us by standing in their beds and peeping over the partition walls, we decided to take off for a brief visit to the country. | |
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Then we both heard someone approaching. We heard steps in the dry fallen foliage, and the casual sound of cracking twigs. The sound came closer, then stopped. A long silence. Then someone tiptoed right up to the tent. A sudden silence again, while we listened in complete darkness with racing hearts. Who in the world could it be, slinking up here at night and now standing motionless outside our tent? In our minds eye we both saw a revengeful native with elephant legs leaning over the little tent with a fishing spear, or perhaps a heavy stone, in his raised arms. They had no reason to love the white man here where our worst diseases played havoc, where no one could read or write, and the cannibalism mentioned in the old encyclopedia persisted until very recent generations. If we disappeared, nobody would ever know when or how. Lacking any weapon I hurled myself through the zipper opening with an ear-splitting yell. It is hard to judge who was most afraid, for outside was a wild white mongrel dog staring at the tent with a stupid expression. It suddenly became so madly frightened that it shot off like a white arrow into the bush and down the slopes, never again to venture into our domain. | |
| It was barely daylight next morning when Ioane reappeared, and on the trail behind them his wife and four other natives followed. They bought us pineapples and had come to show us how to build a bamboo cabin. But before work started, everybody, including Ioane once more, had to look at the unbelievable treasures in our possession. First our tent, this amazing little roll of cloth that could be transformed in a minute into a waterproof hut. I could have kept on for hours pulling the zipper opening up and down, a performance invoking the utmost respect. But Ioane wanted the suitcases reopened, and the excitement had no end of spectators. To them the outside world was synonymous with the cargo of the trading schooner. Planks and corrugated iron. Corned beef and canned salmon. Enamel pots, matches and underwear. Everyone shouted with joy as they struggled to peep through our tourist binoculars which "moved the mountains". My little microscope transformed a blood-filled mosquito into a monster which startled Ioane's wife so much that she shrieked. And the shaving mirror which magnified their already broad noses made them laugh so much that they bent double as they took their turns at poking their faces into it, making the most peculiar grimaces. Yet my wrist-watch attracted Ioane more than anything else. He held it upside down and could not tell the time, but he made signs by measuring with his arms that he wanted a really huge one of the same kind, and he dug into our suitcases in the vain hope of locating one. We later realized that a large clock on the wall of Willy's bungalow was the envy of the entire island. If we had brought along one of these we could have purchased a kingdom on Fatu-Hiva. | |
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If we in our hyper-protected cities and communities were to live the way we had caused the Fatu-Hiva islanders to pass their lives, we should have had far less chance of survival that they. They were exposed to contagion wherever they turned. Most of them suffered from some chronic disease. Tuberculosis and venereal infections were most common. Leprosy and elephantiasis were most visible. Child-bed fever and infant mortality were most deadly. More than once we had shaken hands with an islander and found that he had only stumps for fingers, or that he lacked part of an ear. And one could not pass the village houses without seeing some man or woman sitting outside with legs as thick and heavy as tree trunks. Some had forearms as stout as their thighs. One man had a scrotum which dwarfed a pumpkin. From childhood onwards these people were used to such sights. To them maladies were not normal. It was part of life. These were busy days for our old friend, Ioane, whom we had not seen for a very long time. He turned out to be the island carpenter and coffin-maker. When someone became too ill to rise from his floor mat, then Ioane came along, dragging his materials, and started nailing the coffin together right in front of the poor fellow's nose. There was one thing to be said for the Polynesians: they had no fear of death. To them it was an opportunity to meet again the old folks whom they held in high esteem and their many dead friends and relatives. | |
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Lie and the old Frenchman did not trust any authorities. They did not want to discard evidence they themselves could see and touch, in favour of postulates made simply to suit a theory. Had I been close enough to see the landscape of Motane, the island we had passed coming from Fatu-Hiva in the life-boat? No? Well, that island was today completely treeless too, and yet not long ago it had been covered in forest like Fatu-Hiva and Hivaoa. Man had caused the island to turn into desert. How could we know that Easter Island had always been treeless as it is today? Crowded with monuments, that tiny island must once have been overpopulated and the forest could have been cleared away. Besides, argued Henry Lie, there were hundreds of treeless islands off Norway as well. Even Iceland and the Shetlands were barren, but this did not inspire the settling Viking wood-carvers to erect stone images. And who could say, even without looking at them, that the group of stone statues up in the Puamau valley were older than the hundreds of gigantic monuments on Easter Island? Until a riddle is solved, every piece of evidence deserves a fair trial, the old Frenchman said wisely, and with a raised finger he added pompously that there was one thing worse than ignoring facts and that was to try to explain them away because they did not fit in with the foregone conclusions. | |
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There were days when I roamed alone in the forest. Tei might be pounding poipoi or preparing some rather time-consuming dish. Or he could be out trying to catch a hog with his dogs. I realized I was a hypocrite not to join him, for I enjoyed eating the baked boar, but I hated seeing it slaughtered. The girls were always somewhere near the cabins and the sea. Sometimes, if I got warm or tired of roaming about, I would sit down in the shade on a fallen tree or perhaps on the moss-covered stones of an old pae-pae. I would sit and meditate about just anything. I felt so mentally relaxed. Here, unlike at home, I thought, we toil with our bodies and use our rested minds to enjoy all kinds of thoughts and emotions. This is a fine way of providing for ourselves and for our women. Tei and I hunt and fish, we pick berries, we stroll in the woods, we climb the hills, we swim: all for a living. We do as work what other people do in their holidays. They sit at typewriters, stand in shops, or work with screwdrivers eleven-and-a-half months out of twelve to get two weeks for personal pleasure. Then they rush from their big houses to cabins or tents. To any place in the sun. To a place where they can hunt or fish, pick berries, stroll in the woods, climb the hills, or swim. Primitive man's work has become modern man's leisure. Even fresh air and sunshine is luxury to modern man, I thought. He locks himself up with his vacuum cleaner and electric bulbs and toils indoors to earn enough to pay his electricity bill and his two weeks in the sun. I will never tell this to Tei, I thought. I have tried to tell him about aeroplanes. But I will never tell him that people at home do their work seated in chairs and get up to relax by lifting heavy iron dumb-bells or by rowing bottomless boats that never get out the door. Tei would not understand. I heard Tei shouting somewhere far away. His dogs were barking. For some reason he needed help. I ran as fast as my lungs permitted across the valley to the mountain-side from where the angry barking came without a pause. I found Tei waving, unhurt at the foot of the cliff, his two dogs dancing ferociously on their hind legs, trying to get up on a rock shelf. A beautiful, shaggy goat, white as snow, stood on it with head and horns lowered, ready for brave self defense. When I joined him, Tei sneaked up from behind and grabbed the goat by its hind hooves, holding it firm until I succeeded in getting a good grip on its horns. The goat was ours. It was a hard fight to keep the dogs away and get our struggling booty down to the coast where Liv and Momo helped us to tether the pretty animal to a pole beneath our cabin. "Now we can get milk!" Liv exclaimed enthusiastically. Momo bent down and shook her head. There was no milk to be had from a billy-goat. Liv offered the goat a banana, and it ate. Before evening the wild creature was relaxed and unafraid, with its belly taut from fruits and taro leaves. We had our first domesticated animal friend and called him Maita, meaning "white". |
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