Tahiti and Me!

Robert Oliver, my BBF from high school, is currently jaunting around the Pacific, travel-writing for his book about to be published by Random House. I've been taking sneaky peeps and, to my horror, have just read that he never understood why, growing up in Fiji, he always felt like he was supposed to detest Tahiti to the very fibre of his being, and how, after finally visiting the place, he found he was almost upset that he didn't and that he actually felt like a traitor for loving it so much.

Well, maybe Robert's forgotten the reason for that richly-deserved hatred - you traitor, Robert! - so We Righteous of the Pacific must remind him why we never mention the word "Tahiti" without spitting, and why we ensure every word we utter about them is infused with much twisted bile and venom.

Yes, I know it's unbearably beautiful. And I honestly think Morea Island is the most beautiful place I've ever been, and can hardly credit it that people actually say that it's not a patch on Bora Bora, which must be too too beautiful to be endurable. Yes, I know all this but still ...

... it's TAHITI!! It's YUCK! It's that simple!

Afterall, you have to recall what those 'besterds' did to us in the Pacific, and why we are thus obligated to use every opportunity to remind ourselves and the world that they have earned the entire Pacific's deepest and most abiding enmity.

Remember the atom bomb testings at Moruroa, and all those whispers about subsequent deformities and 'jelly-fish babies' - babies born with transparent skin and no bones -  the French were supposedly whisking off to France so no one would know?

And then there was dad, during those tests, monitoring radiation levels for Fiji. You recall how the levels were expediently skyrocketing with each explosion, so the French kept changing the figures for "the safe level"? And remember how dad was getting vastly higher readings - hundreds of thousands of times higher - IN FIJI, a thousand km away from Tahiti, than the French were issuing from around Ground Zero?

And remember how they were forever trying to high-jack the agendas of any Pan-Pacific gatherings so they'd always be about promoting French colonial interests?

And, hey, remember that time, back in the '70s, when mum organised that enormous "What do Pacific Women Want?" Conference, and the French delegation issued that totally fraudulent press release saying that this conference voted in favour of French nuclear testing in the Pacific?

And remember how terribly askew they tried to slew that entire gathering ... but they were no match for Margaret Whitlam, wife of the then-Prime Minister of Australia, were they! Gosh, there was a lady who knew how to take charge. Routed them big-time! And she did it with such grace, charm, poise and intelligence too. Mum hero-worshipping that Towering Lady from that week onwards and could never understand why Australia didn't use her vast and blatantly-obvious talents more effectively.

Oh yeah, and remember how Tahiti used to bring in "ringers" - French Olympians - to represent them at all the South Pacific Games? And how they tried to kidnap my older sister, Julia, because she beat their Olympic ring-in during the pre-race time-trials, so they didn't want her in the real race?

And Rainbow Warrior? Who can ever forget what they did to the mighty ship Rainbow Warrior! And all that awful treachery of the after-math!

And dad used to forever rant and rave about how the Pacific's French colonies, through their indifference and inefficiency, were screwing up all the various medical treatments and how they were actually "creating a reservoir of truly frightening diseases that would come back to 'bite the world' once everyone had forgotten to be afraid of them"!

And then, when I went to Lifu, in French New Caledonia, in 2000, I saw for myself exactly what he meant.

I should put it out there, since Lifu is now opening itself up as a tourist and scuba diving destination, that the place is riddled with leprosy. I grew up next door to Twomey Leprosy Hospital and can spot this awful disease even in its most early stages, and, boy, was I spotting it bigtime on that island. And there was also that mad dash into the jungle by a whole pile of people when I first walked into a village ... but they weren't quick enough and I know what I saw: gross leprous disfigurement!

WHO really needs to be told about this, doesn't it! Something has to be done! And it can't be done by the colonial French either, because, if they had the WILL to do it, it would already be done!

Oh, and there were cockroaches everywhere in those Lifu villages, and I remember a paper published in a very prestigious medical journal written by one of the Twomey nuns, which said that leprosy was spread by cockroaches as the intermediary host; that these nasty critters eat the sloughed-off flakes of leprous skin and, later, their droppings become airborne and are breathed in by others and thus the disease spreads. She concluded by saying that cockroach control was the single most important factor in stopping the spread of this hideous illness.

But that's all by-the-by, since the focus of this post is meant to be Tahiti.

All of the above makes it understandable, yes, why I dislike the Pacific's Colonial French Islands, but ... well, all that's possibly academic and intellectual ... and the real reason, the deeply visceral and abiding reason, is the "more hands-on" treatment of me by them.

What happened there ... well, on the grounds that a picture paints a thousand words, I'll post up this HK cartoon!


In this cartoon, found in The Standard, Master Qi accidently pulls down a girl's dress. In Papeete, it was no accident. As I walked along the waterfront, all the hideous young dudes were leaping out of cars and pulling my dress down to the ground. The people I was with thought it was hilarious too, but the whole thing made me feel deeply violated and vulnerable.

Those besterds!

Thus, Robert, gorgeous treasure, there's no wiggle room here.  You cannot play nice with Tahiti and stay nice with the rest of us! Tahiti (spit!) is contemptible, The Colonial French are contemptible, and we hate them and that, when all is said and done, is that.


Non vive la Roi!