Cook Islands: Where the coconut is king!
Paradise. That has what my home’s felt like this week as I read my way through Miss Ulysses from Puka-Puka — a young girl’s account of growing up in the Cook Islands in the years before the second-world war. With her childhood wisdom, she (Johnnie Frisbie), details the dangers and joys of remote atoll life, where land, sea and imagination must provide all you need, and where self-reliance and dubiously young romances (the 15-year old’s boyfriend is also a pilot) are the norm. I can only describe it as like reading a Polynesian Greta Thunberg. Take for example, this quote:
“It was brought home suddenly to me, like a slap in the face, that the world was actually at war, that the remote islands on the borderline of paradise were being destroyed one by one. A hundred years ago Blackbirders had raided Aitutaski to steal most of the strongest men for the slave islands; then scores of whalers had kedged off the reef while their crews stormed ashore to carouse, steal women, burn villages for the fun of the thing, shanghai native men, and murder anyone who defended his life and home; then traders had come to teach the need of clothes and food and rum; then Government had come to make laws, to fine people and put them in jail. Yet through all this, Aitutake had held fast to its happy spirit — until, finally, transports had steamed up to the reef to land a thousand soldiers and all their noisy smelly tools of war. Then, overnight, Aitutaki had lost its soul.”
But Frisbie never loses her soul and the book ends with her 60 years later post-script outlining the need to battle the climate crisis which is now destroying the Cook way of life beyond recognition.
If we were all to learn from their way of living, then maybe the full extent of the climate catastrophe could be averted. For example, they use coconuts for everything, from cleaning implements, to cooking fuel, to food and drinking cups.
Starting with food, I am proud to say I was able to find coconut husk charcoal — one of the things that Johnnie often talks about cooking on. I used it to grill plantains and to make my own version of Ika Mata. It is usually made with raw fish (which you can now buy a vegan version of in Wasabi), but we were hankering after some of the coconut roasted fish that I had read so much about, so we cooked our banana blossom fish on coconut charcoal, and soaked it in coconut milk.
Although we washed it down with the classic coconut cocktail, pina colada, as you can imagine there is more than one cocktail on this island paradise. So we trusted trader jack and also made a bird of paradise, and then an ocean breeze, making full use of the cocktail cabinet that has become well stocked by my virtual travelling!
You may be surprised to learn that this week’s film was Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, starring the non-Cook Islander David Bowie. To give the film authenticity, the director had a two-to-three acre camp built on Rorotonga, and, as Bowie said, you could “feel” that the camp is definitely there. You don’t really learn much about the Cook Islands by watching a film based on homoeroticism in a prisoner of war camp, but it’s nice to revel in the beautiful scenery and imagine the stories that Johnnie Frisbie tells brought to life…
…stories such as the importance of each island having its own dance and song. When travelling to other islands you would learn their song and dance and bring it home to impress your friends. Well sadly I don’t have any of their dances, but what I did find was a playlist of Cook Islands drum beats, so for now we will just have to make our own.
When Johnnie finally left the Cook Islands, heading to the US, the journey took months, but one of the benefits of carbon-free travel is that you can arrive without travelling and so it is that I bid farewell to the Cook Islands and hello to Costa Rica. From one paradise to the next!
