They came from afar

I am convinced that I have one of the most surreal lives on this planet. Last week’s proof: the visit of the Tahitians.

Yes, that’s right – Tahitians in Uruguay. Ten Tahitian women arrived in Montevideo last Tuesday evening as part of the Women’s Caravan of Peace, an ecumenical movement which began in Africa in 2006 as a way to carry the word of peace to all corners of the world. The move began in Morocco, when two women of one of the Protestant churches in the country went on a mission to Côte d’Ivoire to speak a word of hope and peace to those suffering in the aftermath of the nation’s civil war. From there, it spread, a chain of peacemaking across the world. An international ecumenical group of 35 churches has been paying to send two women from each church to visit their closest geographic neighbor in an east-west movement. The Tahitians recently received a visit from the church in New Caledonia, and the Valdense Church of the Rio de la Plata happened to be next on the list to visit.

So, on Wednesday morning, the normal flow of things at La Obra was interrupted by the arrival of 10 older, fairly tall Polynesian women with crowns of flowers on their heads. None of the group members spoke more than a few words of Spanish; being that their islands are part of French Polynesia, they all spoke French, in addition to their native language, and two of the women spoke English fairly well. I got to explain the Centro de Estudios in what might have been the world’s worst spoken French (they still understood, though), and then proceeded to help with the translating (mostly from English, thank God) of their sit-down with the youth from Casa Jóven. This was all good stuff, but the best of the day was yet to come.

We went out for a walk through the neighborhood. You’d have thought that we (we being Milton, my choir friends Mabel and Mario, and I) were guiding the first delegation of Martians to visit the planet Earth around the barrio based on the reactions of several of the people…especially the kids. We had a gaggle of elementary-age students tailing us for a good ways, imitating the women’s Tahitian language and asking them questions. Adults, too, came out to take pictures and ask them where they were from. But that wasn’t the best, either.

Oh no, that came when we got back and the Tahitians spent time with the escuelitas. We started off with a game – we all held hands in a huge circle and passed two hula hoops around…everyone had to pass through the hoop without letting go of anyone’s hand. If you have never watched a 68 year old Tahitian women with a floral crown try to crawl through a hula hoop while holding the hands of two eight year old Uruguayans, I highly recommend it. We then went inside and sang a few songs for the women, who then in turned did a dance for us and then made us get up and dance, Polynesian-style, with them.

The kids were transfixed. We’re talking complete and total fascination. Kids who have non-existent attention spans and capacities to sit still were entranced, watching the Tahitians in perfect silence and stillness. They danced, too, most of them. After spending half the afternoon with us, the ladies moved on to another get-together, and I met up with them again in the Valdense church for an evening presentation, which involved the world’s funniest French-Spanish dialogue, namely due to our translator’s being an 80-something year old retired female pastor who didn’t quite get the finer points of using a microphone. The other translator arrived shortly, however, and things went a smidge more smoothly and involved more dancing, plenty of singing, and food.

The next day, while I was otherwise detained workwise, les Tahitiennes went to visit with a female senator in Uruguay, as well as with the Liga Femenina Cristiana, and to have lunch at the Mercado del Puerto. The meeting with the senator was perhaps one of the most honest encounters in political history – the Tahitian women told her that their hearts were crying for the extreme poverty they saw in the Barrio Borro (where La Obra is), and for the extreme difference between rich and poor that exists in Uruguay. This dichotomy just doesn’t exist in Tahiti; people aren’t really at one extreme or the other, and it was difficult for them to see it and not be affected. Lunch, however, was more light-hearted, and involved one of the women dancing on a chair in the restaurant while a passing street musician played a milongo (similar to tango) on his accordion.

That evening, the women came to the grupo de jóvenes, again to share about their mission and about the lives of youth in the church, which is enormous compared to any of the Protestant churches here – 100,000 members, or about 40-45% of the total population of French Polynesia. They have youth gatherings, district youth gatherings, with 5,000 participants. The Valdense Church of the Rio de la Plata had about 100 participants in their churchwide youth gathering in January. It was the classic case of two different worlds colliding and being amazed by the lives of the others…and also a fruitful encounter that might result in a youth interchange in a few years between the two. We shall see. Then, we danced, a lot, ate empanadas, a lot, and the Tahitians gave out some gifts – mother of pearl medallions and traditional garb for Wilma and Álvaro, and some more modest (but still very cool) shell and seed necklaces to those of us who helped translate, show them around, and were willing to make fools of ourselves dancing…for me, on multiple occasions. I am now a near-expert on Polynesian male dance moves. Just ask Lucia and Florencia, the sisters from Colonia who got volunteered to dance with me during one of the sessions.

And then Friday, they left. Just like the beautiful, fragrant Tahitian flowers they told us about, they’re here for a while and then move on…but today feels just a little bit sunnier in their wake. Thank God for this being such a small, surreal world.