The final hot August night is closer than you think.

Talia Goldenberg

Still life. With cat.

The first thing I noticed about Talia Goldenberg was her body – she was showcasing a goodly portion of it and what was on display wasn’t very meaty.

Those two aspects alone were enough to tell me she wasn’t a local. The clincher was that all that bare skin was the colour of fresh milk on a snowy Minnesota morning.

I encountered Talia at the Avarua Wharf. I had ventured there because I was bored at the office. When your contract is nearly up and you’re desperate for a new one, sitting around the office looking bored is not the prescribed method for ensuring future employment.

I was hoping to find local kids leaping from the wharf into the harbour, so I could hand in enough photos – Hey, Look What The Kids Are Up To On Their Summer Holidays! – to fill a page in the Cook Islands Herald.

Instead, I encountered My Fine Young Colleague (MFYC), sitting on the top level of the lone set of bleachers that resides outside Trader Jacks. MFYC is 19 and and model-worthy and eager to embrace all the adventures the future may hold. Everything I’m not, actually.

Talia was  sitting on the bottom level of the bleachers, drawing in a sketchpad.

I greeted MFYC and, once I had his attention, indicated the young lady with the pen and paper. He shrugged in a way that told me he didn’t know who she was or what she was up to.

 Being the grizzled veteran, I took the lead, sitting down beside the young lady to ask what she was drawing. “Water,” she said, and then introduced herself as Talia Goldenberg, 20, from Portland, Oregon.

I do things like that – march right up to the Talia Goldenbergs of this world – because I am a highly-trained professional journalist and, as such, understand that stories do not drop, neatly wrapped and tied with a bow, on your lap. Sometimes you have to plunk yourself down beside a  young lady and go fishing.

It turned out that Talia was one of 25 art students – 21 ladies and the four luckiest lads in the history of the world – from Carleton College who had stopped in Rarotonga for six days en route to New Zealand and, later, Australia. They would spend 10 weeks away from home as part of an art course that would include such topics as drawing from nature and printmaking.

Home – as MFYC and I, now armed with our recording gear, discovered later when we met up with various members of the group at Paradise Inn for a round of interviews – is Northfield, Minnesota.

For what it was worth, I scored some serious brownie points by knowing Northfield was the setting for one of the James-Younger Gang’s heists.

It was at this point, however, that my fear for the future of the world was cemented.

MFYC: What gang?

Me: James-Younger. You know: Jesse James. The bank robber.

MFYC: Wasn’t he married to Sandra Bullock?

Me: Um, actually, I’m talking about the OTHER Jesse James.

MFYC: Never heard of him.

Me: Oh. Dear.

This exchange, conducted in front of Talia and her friends, their faces shiny with pride as they displayed their sketchbooks, was not the first time that day MFYC had demonstrated how big the gulf actually is between baby boomers and whatever generation is just now graduating from high school (iGeneration? Wii Generation?).

Earlier, at the office, MFYC had spotted a pile of LPs on a desk. We’re talking vinyl here, folks, the real deal. Classic with a capital “C.” MFYC held up Hot August Night, Neil Diamond’s live double album that every self-respecting baby boomer played until the needle on their turntable wore down to a nub.

“That, my young friend,” I said, “is one for the ages. They don’t make music like that anymore.”

His brow furrowed. He peered at the image on the front of the dust cover. Then he looked up at me.

“Who,” he asked, “is Neil Diamond?”

The generation gap just widened. If it continues to do so, it may just swallow me completely.

The heat is on Santa when it comes to tropical deliveries.

There are kids here in Rarotonga who have never touched a snowflake.

That’s the price you pay for living in the tropics but, having once lost a car axle to the combination of an icy road and a very hard curb, I can’t say I miss the demolition derby that is winter driving.

I’ve now spent a number of Christmases in the Southern Hemisphere, where Dec. 25 falls four days after the summer solstice. I still don’t like it.

Just as I prefer a hint of mint with my chocolate, so too do I like a touch of winter in the air come the time St. Nick makes his annual sojourn. I like it when Jack Frost nips at my nose. I like to see my hot breath exhaled into cold air like so much steam released from the twin bellows of my lungs.

Yeah, not going to happen here.

The Pitt Media Group held its staff Christmas party on the weekend. Most everyone played and swam in the lagoon. Afterwards, we ate sausages and patties grilled on a barbecue and drank chilled refreshments. In December. The week before Christmas Day.

I asked a workmate if, as a child on Rarotonga, his image of Santa was the same one I grew up with in Canada: a big-bearded man with twinkling eyes, all bundled up in a fur-trimmed suit, hat jammed down over ears, gloves pulled tight over fingers, perched in a sled from where he commanded a team of flying reindeer.

The answer was yes.

Apparently Santa – or at least the one the marketing department at Coca-Cola have fed us for decades – is a universal symbol. Brown-skinned children, who shiver if the mercury drops below 15C, believe in a jolly fat man who lives in a place of eternal winter.

I attended a pair of Christmas-themed events last week. Rotaract presented its annual Christmas in the Park at the BCI Stadium, while the CITC main store hosted a CD launch in its parking lot.

Santa attended both events and posed later for photos with children on his lap.

Considering the natural girth of Polynesian men, I naturally expected a local lad to don the traditional costume. Instead, on both occasions, it was a papa’a (white) man behind the bushy beard and the padded tummy.

Maybe none of the locals felt up to the task of being mobbed by children clawing for lollies dispensed from the trademark sack o’ goodies.

Or maybe Santa just needs to be Caucasian because, well, that’s the way he’s depicted on all the cards and decorations and Advent calendars and wrapping paper in the shops.

I can only hope, considering the heat and humidity of a South Seas December, that Old St. Nick has time for a quick dip in the lagoon before carrying on, if only to doff all those winter clothes for a couple of minutes.

Santa dropping from heat stroke in Rarotonga would be very naughty indeed.

Looking back with hatred can be hazardous to your future.

Oscar Temaru

Tame Iti

I don’t usually stand out in a crowd, and I prefer it that way.

OK, yes, there was that one time when I somehow managed to spill a box of McDonald’s gift vouchers on the basketball court at Walnut Grove Secondary during a Langley Times-sponsored tournament. That was a wee bit embarrassing but, fortunately, the play was at the other end at the time and I managed to grab up all the bits and pieces before the action came thundering the other way.

While in the employ of assorted North American newspapers, I was simply referred to as “that reporter guy.” Nobody special. A white face in a sea of white faces.

And then I moved to Rarotonga. Here, in the heart of Polynesia, I am a visible minority. I am a white face in a sea of brown faces. I stand out.

That was not a good thing during my first stint with the Pitt Media Group in 2001. At that time, a fellow named Jason Brown worked for the rival Cook Islands News. Jason, allegedly, was infamous for misquoting his sources and getting his facts wrong. (He has since mercifully taken his skill set to New Zealand.)

Jason was younger, taller, stockier and blonder than I was. Didn’t matter. All the Cook Islanders saw was a white face with a notebook. I had a difficult time convincing people that I would not make them look bad in print. That they could trust me.

Things have gone smoother this second time round. Maybe those whom Jason (allegedly) burned have moved on. Maybe seeing me on TV has added a personality to my name. Maybe I just have an honest face.

But just when I was starting to feel like a local, like I was fitting in, I had two reminders this week that I will always been the foreigner. The invader. The unwanted.

The occasion was the visit of two men to Rarotonga, both of them fiercely nationalistic, to the point that the White Man, any white man, is pretty much a sworn enemy.

The first of these was Tame Iti, he of the tattooed visage, whom I’d seen on the New Zealand news often stumbling along the line in the sand that marks the boundaries of the law.

Iti is a New Zealand Maori but I say that only to differentiate him from the Cook Islands Maori. When I was introduced to the man, I played dumb and asked if he was from New Zealand (if I needed a first clue, it was this: Cook Islanders don’t feel the need to disfigure their features).

“I’m from Aotearoa,” came the answer, as I knew it would.

Iti, of course, was using the NZ Maori name for the country. Loosely translated, it means “the land of the long white cloud.”

I see it used a lot in the Cook Islands, even in the CI News, in place of New Zealand. I’m not sure why, because the last time I checked my atlas, that grouping of three islands southeast of Australia was still labeled New Zealand.

The second man I met was Oscar Temaru, the former president of French Polynesia. Except, during our interview, Temaru referred to his country as Tahiti Nui.

“You mean, French-occupied Polynesia,” he responded when I asked him about this discrepancy.

Iti and Temaru – two men from different countries with the same dream: to see every white face leave their respective country. Two men who are all about Poly Power. All about xenophobia.

Two men whom I took great pleasure in making shake my hand. My white hand.

I’m from British Columbia, you see. Canada’s gateway to the Orient. I’ve seen the future. It arrives on every flight from Asia. It’s taken over entire communities in B.C.

Tame Iti doesn’t understand that it’s not the White Man he needs to worry about. It’s the Chinese.

For his part, Oscar Temaru is openly courting China to fund all manner of civic projects. He has obviously not visited the two buildings on this island that China built in exchange for Cook Islanders waving the “Taiwan sucks” banner.

The justice building and the police headquarters are twin disasters, infested with so many architectural and construction problems that it would be a small mercy to just bulldoze them into rubble.

These are the sort of problems Temaru is inviting in, opening his country’s doors like a willing victim ushering the vampire across the threshold, all while praising the sharpness of its fangs.

Needless to say, it’s going to end in tears.

Iti is equally misguided in the venting of his spleen. While ‘European’ New Zealander politicians have tripped over themselves to apologize to NZ Maoris for something that happened several centuries ago, Asians in New Zealand feel no such compunction to play nice. They simply work hard, pay their taxes, let the Maoris rant and rave, and then import all their relatives.

While Iti and Temaru shake their fists at the White Man, vowing to drive the entire Cacausian horde into the sea, they are so busy looking backwards at past slights to see what is bearing down on them like a human tsunami.

By the time these two misguided flagbearers of jingoism turn around, it will be too late: their great-grandchildren will be speaking Mandarin.

What do the Chinese call New Zealand and French Polynesia? We’re about to find out.

My future never looked so bright.

This brochure looks, um, colourful.

Announcing a new career choice.

Busted!

Objects in the rearview mirror.

I’m ready for my closeup.

Smile for the camera.

No gang signs, please.

Smile for the nice photojournalist.

In one of those haphazard instances of synchronicity, the same week I reported on a Careers Expo in Rarotonga, word reached me that someone was in the process of organizing yet another reunion for my grad class from Langley Secondary.

I was already reminded of my high school days as I circled the Telecom Sports Arena where more than 30 booths had been set up in an effort to disseminate information to students from Rarotonga and several other islands in the Cooks chain.

The colourful balloons and posters and banners and brochures were all designed to lure the 600-plus teens into banking. No, wait, make that a career in law. Or the New Zealand military. Or the Cook Islands police force.

Become a chef, a healthcare worker, a mechanic, the person who scans your groceries at the supermarket.

Work for the government, work for Air New Zealand, work for Telecom Cook Islands, work for an investment firm.

The Pitt Media Group had a table there as well, just in case anyone had the urge to be underpaid and overworked for the rest of their professional lives. Mostly the kids just wanted to play with the TV camera, freeing me – a mere photojournalist – to wander and wonder.

The wandering produced enough photos of fresh-faced future Captains of Industry to fill an entire page in the ensuing issue of the Cook Islands Herald.

The wondering has never ceased.

You see, during the half-decade I spent meandering the venerable halls of LSS, there was no such thing as a Careers Expo. No future options carefully stacked in a neat pile at a cardboard booth. Not a single balloon in sight.

Nobody to take my hand and gently place a brochure in my palm while pointing out the door to my future. (That would be the big, bright door, the one with the rose-coloured light beaming around its edges.)

Instead, we had guidance counsellors whose advice appeared to be limited to this: Never become a guidance counsellor.

Instead, we had an aptitude test for those of us nearing the end of our five-year sentence. I don’t know who designed it, and I can’t, so many years on, recall a single question. But I do remember that the idea behind the aptitude test was this: depending on how you answered the questions, you could glean a rough idea of what career path might best suit your present skills and interests.

While that was too long ago now for me to remember my own results, I do remember a fellow named Ian taking great joy in announcing how he’d fared. According to the aptitude test, he gleefully announced, he was an ideal candidate to spend a lifetime being . . . a shepherd.

We all laughed, of course, as you do when you’re a kid and still living off the largesse of your parents and The Big Ugly World has yet to tighten its grip on your throat or your balls.

After a number of false starts – surveyor for the government; movie theatre management – I did eventually fulfil a childhood dream of being paid to write. Yes, I am underpaid and overworked, but – after seeing my name in print on a million pages and being amazed every single time – you learn to take comfort where you find it.

As for Ian, well, I see him on occasion whenever I return to Langley. He walks everywhere because I don’t think he’s ever owned a car. Or held down a steady job.

He grew his hair and beard along with the rest of us, and then decided to stay with that style well into middle age. Actually, he looks a bit like Jesus would if Jesus was six-foot-four, wore glasses and loved Tolkien.

And since Jesus has been described as someone who tends to his flock of true believers, well then maybe that aptitude test proved to be pretty darn accurate after all.

Real men wear bibs. They also have no need to bounce their balls.

At the wharf.

Performing at the market.

Rust bucket.

Back flop.

Blackrock beach.

Dancing colours.

Netball has several rules. I know. I’ve broken them all.

I’d never heard of this Southern Hemisphere game before I came to the Cook Islands. It didn’t help that, when I first heard a Cook Islander pronounce “netball” as “nitbull,” my Canadian ears heard “nipple.” Needless to say, I perked right up.

My best description of the game, from someone who has very little understanding of its finer points, is netball is to basketball what ringette is to hockey. As in that ice-based sport, this is a game played primarily by the female of the species. And, as in ringette, your position designates which part of the playing area you are allowed to occupy.

In other words, defenders defend and scorers score. If you’re looking to be backed up by your teammates, you’re out of luck.

The ball part of netball is slightly smaller than a basketball. You don’t dribble it. You can, I believe, bounce it off the floor if you are passing in the offensive zone. The hoop has no backboard, so no fancy bank shots and certainly no swinging off the rim after dunking.

You shoot from a stationary position – ideally as close to the hoop as you can get – by holding the ball with both hands above your head. So none of that fancy-dancy rolling-off-your-finger-tips showmanship stuff either. Each time the ball drops through the hoop, your team scores one point. So none of that hotdoggy long-shot-from-the-next-zip-code stuff either.

My best estimate is that you play a zone defence of sorts until your defenders are backed up to the net, and then they go man-to-man. Once an opposition player assumes the shooting stance, the defender has to back off about three feet before any waving of hands or jumping up and down can occur in an effort to distract or block.

Did you get all that? Yeah, neither did I.

The Pitt Media Group has a team – the CITV Ferns – in the mixed recreational league. Not only does the “mixed” part allow the male of the species to play, but each team is required to have a minimum number of those males on the floor (court?) at all times.

Which would explain why a middle-aged, out-of-shape, clueless white man was doing his best impersonation of a traffic cone during a recent match (game?).

As mentiond above, players are assigned to certain areas, which is why you wear a bib with initials on it, thus making it easier for the officials (refs?) to spot an interloper. GS = Goal Shoot; WD = Wing Attack – that sort of thing.

I wanted a bib with SS on it, to designate me as “Superstar.” Until I realized that was one word and I needed two letters.

My second choice was Canadian Superstar, until someone pointed out CS might represent something that rhymes with Lock Sucker. Considering every one of the officials appeared to be a member of the island’s drag queen population, I assumed it would not be prudent of me to suggest something other than their whistles might get blown.

In the end, I donned GD for Goal Defence. Meaning I was the player in charge of checking the other team’s top shooter. If I told you the score was 6-0 for the other guys after the first five-minute quarter, would that give you an indication of the success of my netball debut?

The games are only 20 minutes long, with the clock left running. By the time I caught my breath after passing off my bib, the game was over. The Ferns never did recover from that early deficit.

I blame that on our shooters. No goals over a full quarter? Are you kidding me?

So, yeah, I may have to get offensive in our next game. I’m thinking of taking on the role of designated Ball Shooter. Because BS is my middle name.

White shoes.

His name was Tamarii Pierre but everyone in the Pitt Media Group called him T2.

I never really knew him that well. He worked with Alex, another young Cook Islander, to film the TV news. I referred to them as “The Dudes.” He probably thought of me as “the old white guy who writes for the newspaper.”

Our paths intersected occasionally. Sometimes, when the air in the office grew hot and sticky, I’d duck into the TV control room, where, due to the costly equipment stored there, the AC unit is cranked so high you can hang meat. At other times, we exchanged a word or two while passing off the keys to the company’s lone van.

I did notice that T2 and Alex were always dressed as if they’d just come from church: long-sleeve shirts, trousers. I’m guessing the idea was to look professional while on assignment. But as I sweated in my island shirt and hiking shorts, I couldn’t help wondering how they could stand wearing long pants.

I also noticed T2’s shoes. They were white and pointy. I thought that style went out with Elvis and sideburns and ducktails. I guess I was wrong.

I worked late Friday, with my computer plugged into an outlet near the front door.

I saw T2 dart out for a cigarette. He was back inside in less than a minute.

“That was a fast smoke,” I said as he hurried past the desk.

He just smiled and kept going. Seconds later, a station wagon pulled up in front of the building, an older man behind the wheel. My first thought was, dad doesn’t know son smokes, and son would prefer to keep it that way.

The front door was locked for the day but I let T2’s father in and he wandered down the hallway to the TV control room to fetch his boy. When I let them out five minutes later, locking the door behind them, I was the last person to see T2 leave the building.

Later that night, there was an accident. They say excess speed was involved. They say alcohol was involved. One whisper had the driver falling asleep at the wheel.

A vehicle lost control in the community of Nikau and slammed into a power pole.

T2 died at the scene.

He was 19.

The voice behind the camera contemplates wasted potential.

This is Travel Moeara.

That’s his real first name. One of his younger relatives was doing a lot of travelling for medical reasons when he was born and his name reflects his family’s situation at the time.

Travel and I work together for the Pitt Media Group. He films a documentary-style show for Cook Islands Television (CITV). The program is called Turama, which is a Cook Islands Maori word meaning to shine or enlighten. That’s what Travel does: he enlightens the people of the Cook Islands about the important aspects of life in a South Pacific country.

While Travel films the interviews, I use my tape recorder because, on the Wednesday after the program screens, I follow up with an associated story in the Cook Islands Herald.

I like working with Travel because he knows everyone on the island and so can arrange the interviews. Travel likes working with me because I don’t know everyone on the island and so can ask the difficult questions without embarrassment.

That also explains why a TV show, aimed mostly at the Maori-speaking populace, features a voice speaking with a Canadian accent. That might seem strange in another part of the world – having a foreigner figure so prominently in a local production – but this is the Cook Islands, where there is no hurry, no worry. People just shrug.

Travel asks me to photograph him when we’re on assignment. He says he wants a record of himself on the job to show his children when he starts a family. That seems legit, since Travel doesn’t appear to possess an ounce of ego.

But I still have a sneaky hunch he gets a kick out of seeing himself on the computee screen.

I don’t blame him. If I had this guy’s face, I’d pretty much be kissing the mirror every day.

* I learned another Cook Islands Maori word this week: momo.

Roughly translated, it means a waste, as in waste of potential. As in “She’s only 17 and she’s pregnant? What a waste.”

People say “momo” a lot on this island.

I don’t think Polynesian teens are any more sexual than their counterparts in the rest of the world. But, despite their girth and the fact they were quite happily living as cannibals before those interfering missionary bastards arrived to bugger up their lifestyle, Cook Islanders are, for the most part, a shy lot.

Too shy, it turns out, to acquire a condom. Too shy, it turns out, to ask to go on the Pill.

And so babies continue to have babies. And all those plans for a future filled with university studies and good jobs and seeing the Great Big World simply vanish in the time it takes some randy teenage boy to achieve orgasm.

Momo, indeed.