A Journey to the Disappointment Islands (2019)

“How did you hear about Napuka?” Marama asked me, as we walked back towards town. I told him that I had read about the islands in a very old book.

“Byron?” asked Marama with a smirk.

“Yes,” I answered. “Byron came here in 1765.”

“You know,” said Marama, “the people here are not very happy with Byron. He called us ‘The Islands of Disappointment’, right?” He laughed, “I wish people knew the truth about this place. You really have to know the people to understand.”

“I know,” I said. “And now that I’ve been here, I know that Byron was wrong.”

Indeed, it seemed impossible to feel disappointed in the scene that enveloped me at that moment. The sky seemed Photoshopped with evenly-spaced clouds, and the lagoon glowed the colour of California swimming pools. Twenty metre-high coconut palms danced slowly, and I had just made a new friend who would take me fishing the next day and then swimming at his favourite beach. He would introduce me to dozens of new friends, including Maoake Tuhoe, one of the oldest men on the island, who claimed I was the first foreigner he remembers coming to Napuka since, “those Peruvians passed by in that boat.”

Upon further questioning, I discovered ‘those Peruvians’ were, in fact, a group of explorers aboard a raft led by Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl in 1947 that washed up in the Tuamotus 72 years ago.

Marama would be there on the day I left, gifting me a necklace he had strung with large, fragrant flowers and kissing me on both cheeks like a brother. And I would leave him my favourite cowboy hat, the one that kept me from getting burned in the scorching South Pacific sun. He wore it as he waved to me on the plane.

Back

It took a day of island hopping to get back to Tahiti, where I felt overwhelmed by everything: the traffic, the streetlights, the tourists and even the hot running water in my hotel bathtub. I had filled notebooks and hard drives with words and images from Napuka to Tepoto and back again, but I wanted a more professional opinion.

“The Byron story is the only recorded account we have in which the Europeans arrived, yet failed to make contact with the natives,” said Jean Kapé, who grew up on Napuka and now serves as director of Tahiti’s l’Académie Paumotu, which is dedicated to preserving the language, culture and environment of the Tuamotu Islands. I had met Kapé’s brother in Napuka, and he had connected the two of us.

Responding to Byron’s sense of disappointment, Kapé said: “If someone from somewhere else gives their opinion about a place, it’s already false, because that opinion is only based on what they know.”

Byron’s unsuccessful landing represents the ultimate missed connection – a spark of static that failed to ignite. And yet, his failure may have spared Napuka the same fate as many islands in the South Pacific.

from Hacker News https://ift.tt/3hSDwzD