Kiribati - Work - Tools, Copra. Village, Maneaba ...

Father Ernest Sabatier is part of the history of Kiribati. His book: Soux l'equateur du Pacifique was translated into English by Ursula Nixon and published by Oxford University Press in 1977, under the title: ASTRIDE THE EQUATOR - An Account of the Gilbert Islands.

I have taken the liberty of reproducing below, for the benefit of researchers and other interested parties, who would like to learn more about Kiribati, some interesting aspects of Kiribati life, along with some very important observations and recollections of Father Ernest Sabatier, a missionary in Kiribati for many years.

Also, I will be including some of my own comments below, in italics, on certain sections of the text that may need to be discussed and clarified a little further from an I-Kiribati perspective.

It is difficult to think about the tools used by primitive man without being gripped by emotion. The Gilbertese of a hundred years ago hadn't even entered the Stone Age. Nor need we imagine an Iron Age or an Age of Bronze. Even flint was denied him. the islands offer only limestone and it doesn't take much either to break it or make it melt. so the early Gilbertese made their axes from the hard heavy shell of the giant clam. with this tool it was possible to cut down trees and shape planks for the canoes, which could be more than thirty metres long. Knives were made from thin mollusc shell. Porous stone was used as a form of plane and the skin of a sting-ray was used as a grater. His rather strange brace and bit - common, however, in the Pacific - was worked by a cord winding round a pivot and making it turn clockwise and anti-clockwise, alternately. the bit was made from a pointed shell which was rather harmful to bare feet. Grindstones were made from pumice stone and a sort of stopper used as a form of door by a sea-snail. another type of shell was used as an awl and marks could be made with a piece of charcoal. these were all the tools used by the engineers, foremen and workmen who made canoes capable of sailing across the Pacific. In that work there was evidence of patience and sheer labour as well as clever ideas that we can admire every bit as much as the effort that goes into the building of a modern liner. this is especially true if we rememb3r that wood was a rare commodity and of poor quality.

The Gilbertese had pandanus-wood picks to dig their babai pits and shovels hardly any bigger than hand-size, made from scales taken from the same shell as furnished them with knives. Seated firmly on his backside and equipped with a long handle on to which his little shovel, gleaming with mother-of-pearl, was tied, a man could throw aside hundreds of cubic metres of sand. In order to plant babai he had to dig right down to water-level. Nowadays what little cash he had means that the local can buy essential tools.

The local person usually makes up his mind to work between eight and ten o'clock. He is a firm supporter and long-standing patron of the short working day! At about two or three in the afternoon he looks up at the sun and says 'Ah .. it's night again ... let's go back home'. He hasn't tried to get away from the midday sun, whose rays are filtered by the forest leaves. The Gilbertese worker has no balance in his day between rest and doing his job. If he feels like a break, a rest or a siesta then he simply takes it. Usually he only puts his back into it once a day - for about as long as his energy will last in between meals. Of course he does have to collect toddy from his trees both morning and night.

Off he goes then to gather nuts for copra, armed with his axe, knife, bag and basket. As he doesn't care much for solitude he arranges to take his wife and the children with him - or some friends who happily oblige him for a day. usually it is left to the wind to bring the nuts down. sometimes, though, the tree has to be climbed. Makin, Butaritari and Marakei are known for their good clumbers. Arms around the trunk, legs bent like a frog's, up they climb. The coconut tree has a far from smooth trunk: it's as rough and wrinkled as elephant hide. Notches in the trunk show where every frond has fallen off and here a bare foot can cling on, pressing firmly against the tree. to climb a coconut palm you need muscles and a thrust of the legs. It is a gymnastic activity and quickly becomes exhausting. Not every Gilbrertese is a good climber, but he uses his brain to help what his feet have to do. He ties a length of cord to his ankles and this winds almost all the way round the tree, catching on any knotty parts. In his hands he has another loop of rope and he can take his weight on this while bringing his feet up. When he gets up to the nuts instead of hoisting himself into the fronds - a delicate operation - he fixes a cross-piece to the tree and this gives him a good support. He lashes himself to the tree and then has both hands free for thrown down the nuts.

His wife and children pile them up under a simple shelter and then another task begins. Each nut is split lengthways with one blow of the axe. perhaps some fibres still hold the two halves together. Then a child, with one foot on the husk, separates the two pieces. tog et the pulp out of the shell a special knife is needed, with a strong blade rounded at the tip. Old flat bayonets, broken off at the point, are much desired to knives because of their good quality steel. Now a whole series of them is manufactured. Thus equipped, the man sits down and braces the nut against his left foot. Using four or five circular movements of the wrist he scoops out the pulpy flesh. Some men, who are real artists at the job, can extract a hundred pounds of copra in an hour. This is the average amount produced by an ordinary worker during his short day. In the Gilberts the copra is always dried in the sun and this takes two or three days. There's no lack of sunny weather anyway. It would be good quality copra but the people tend to drag it through the sand or leave it in the rain. So it is often bad.

As we have mentioned, the coconut tree is given no particular attention. The only careful cultivation is of babai. Babai is a huge tuber with elephant's ear leaves. One leaf is about two square metres in size. Babai seems to grow indefinitely. On Butaritari one fairly tended to root which was about forty to fifty years old. The original tuber was rotten but there were plenty of offshoots in a thriving condition. If it is well looked after babai can be table-height in five years and as thick around as the trunk of a coconut palm. You need to cutlass to chop it up! If it is cooked in water it is floury, dry and insipid. in flavour. Moreover it has to be very well tended if it is to flourish. the thin short roots like water and light soil within their reach. the huge leaves don't like the sun. So, when he makes his babai pit, the Gilbertese farmer has to dig down to water-level, cut away any roots around the pit and heap up the earth around each plant. The plant is managed in two ways: it may die of thirst - or drown from too much moisture. the main task is to bring lots of humus and leaves to heap up round the base of each plant. this must be done frequently. a hard worker can have some return each day from this vegetable he likes so much. In actual fact those who are lazy don't even eat it every Sunday and there are many such people.

Shortly after the establishment of the Protectorate, the British government imposed seventy-eight days per year of community work on the people. Later this was reduced to fifty-two. Nowadays it is up to each island to organize its programme of work for the year. this will take an indefinite time, dependent on the industry of the workers and the intelligence of those who organize the work. Islands which have a low density of population find the work they have to carry out very burdensome.

From the age of sixteen men and women are called on to help with community work. the schoolmaster and his assistant, however, are exempt, as are government employees. there are quite a lot of them and they have their houses built by the community. At one time workers employed by the missionaries were exempt too but nowadays this is a very unusual favour. On Abemama a hundred workers had the responsibility for maintaining a hundred and thirty buildings, ranging from the big maneaba to the policeman's little kitchen. Also the island has to give fifty tons of copra as tax. Every month thirty-five kilometres of road has to be weeded. for some time the people have paid for the luxury of widening the road by five arm's lengths on each side; all the fronds between the road and the lagoon had to go. Add to this labou the time spent kn getting to the work area and the road programme alone demands thirty days labour per year from some people. In the villages the battle of the lawn has been declared. Eav3y morning the housewife has to sweep around her hut and get rid of any rubbish and dirt that the sea has thrown up on the shore in front of her home. Your local people prefer to leave things as they are. they may do so for some time and then one fine morning the police wake up and fines are rained on the villagers. Even when this shower is over, more are sure to come.

It was really necessary to organize and tidy up the Gilbertese village, however. The average village isn't very spruce but it is at least clean and tidy. The ground is covered with a white layer of coral fragments. Rows of grey huts line each side of the road. In more luxuriant islands they are concealed amongst breadfruit and pawpaw trees. Sometimes the village meets the full glare of the sun's rays. then bacteria find it hard to survive. the reflection of the bright light is wearing, but the open-sided huts are pleasant and well-ventilated. Nights are superb, under the silvery radiance of the moon - provided there aren't too many mosquitoes around, shrilling fiercely. In any case, all villages don't have the same problem from mosquitoes.

The regularly spaced hugs are all built on the same model. Every family has three: a house, a kitchen and a store-room. The dwelling-house is simply a rectangular roof some six feet above the ground, thatched with pandanus leaves and supported by four posts and various props attached to these. At about table height there is a very springy floor, made of flexible latha. Between the roof and the floor coconut-frond mats act as blind-cum-windbreak. All day long these are rolled up, just as the mosquito nets are put up. People live a fairly open existence, with plenty of fresh air. If you are curious you can count who's sleeping by the number of heaps under mats. When night comes the blinds are lowered on the side open to the prevailing wind and rain. the lamp is lit and it burns low until morning - this isn't only for the sake of the babies, but also so one can easily find that pipe so necessary for easing insomnia. The average Gilbertese has an innate dread of darkness. could this be fear of the Anti? Possibly he is still troubled by half-forgotten memories of the sudden descent of enemies in the night, come to massacre whole families.

The maneaba is in the centre of the village. next to the war canoe it is the masterpiece of Gilbertese culture. Like the houses it is built in a rectangular shape but the two ends differ somewhat. The maneaba architect is usually some old man who has learnt his trade through experience and from traditions in his family. Of course he is also something of a sorcerer, because an undertaking like building a maneaba required invocations to the Anti, the observing of certain rites and following of rules which it would be foolish to forget.

The meaneaba is well adapted to the island climate and to its function. Its roof is supported on shoulder-high stone pillars and even the king ahs to stoop to enter. The wind can easily blow in under the low-hanging thatch, but if it becomes irritating mats can be put up to keep it out. The thick thatch is a perfect barrier against the heat and the rain. Below is a vast nave, as it were, sometimes more than forty metres long and ten high. It is beautiful and somehow rather imposing. Two and sometimes even four rows of pillars support the roof and enhance the cathedral-like atmosphere. Clearly an intelligent and proud people have been responsible for this symmetry, the artistic arrangement of the beams and the skilful building. And shaped with an adze and tied together with coconut-fibre string. there isn't a bolt anywhere - or at least there never used to be.

The Gilbertese is very comfortable in his maneaba. It is wide, cool and airy. In it he feasts, dances and sleeps. sometimes all there activities are going on at the same time! there is no constraint in his grandfather's mummified body to honour the dancing. The skulls of defeated warrior were lined up t here too. Were they perhaps present to envy the living, staring at them out of large gloomy eye-sockets? Or were they there to deride them, grinning at them in an impudent fashion? On Tabiteuea and on Abemama there was the skeleton of some important person on a special ceremonial bed for lying in state that was let down or put away in the rafters again and the skeleton took part in the feats or any other honours, sharing in these with the living.

Even without attractions like that, a meeting in the maneaba isn't lacking nowadays in touches of the picturesque. Particular gathering have specific rites and ceremonies, handed down from the time when the Beru warriors conquered the gilberts. Ceremonies are similar in most of the islands.

Villages and districts like that, a meeting in the maneabas. They are divided into two groups with different names for those in the south and the north. some names, such as Moungatabu - sacred mountain - clearly indicate Samoan origin. Just like a wart canoe or a village, each maneaba has a name, traditions and a personality. The stone pillar in the centre of the north side is the first one to be set up. this is the place for the Anti of the maneaba. Here, Tanntoa, the chief of Beru, sat and still his descendants take that place. All the way round, the maneaba is divided into places and each family has a set position in official gatherings. A stranger who is a guest in another maneaba enters it under the same beam as he would in his home maneaba. Anyone who belongs to several families chooses the least cluttered place to sit. As far as official feasts are concerned there is a strict code of etiquette to observe. One clan supplies heralds who announce what the shares of food will be; another family is responsible for distributing the food. The portion of honour belongs to such and such a family and in sharing out the food a fixed order of precedence is strictly followed. The least mistake or the slightest forgetfulness is taken as an insult.

Seemingly th4 equal of the great ancestors Tabuariki, Auriaria and Taburimai, Nei Tituabine is the best known woman in Gilbertese family trees. She was a Polynesian whose descendants emigrate to the Gilberts, probably to Makin and Butaribari, by way of Beru. One night she introduced a giant amongst the dancers. His name was Koura and she made him into a king. One man called Tewatu didn't like this and refused to submit to Koura's authority, fleeing to Tabiteuea instead. here he took a wife and had a son, named Tautua. Tewatu didn't stay long on Tabiteuea as war broke out. He took his son and sailed off to the west. At the end of a long voyage he came to a big country: Matang. he settled there with his Anti, Tabuariki, and married a woman of Matang: Nei Abunaba. They had a son: Tewatu-te-I-Matang (Tewatu the white man).

On the death of his parents this son left Matang with his family and sailed off to the east. With him he took his father's skull and his mother's too. He had a long voyage and a hard struggle against the wind and currents. At last, however, he managed to reach Beru. he landed at Teteiro. Tewatu-te-I-Matang had acquired bad habits in Melanesia. he hunted people and ate them. Now the king, Tanentoa, who lived in the north of the island, didn't approve of these practices - but how could he stop it without upsetting things? He tried diplomacy. He called Bareiti to him - the man in charge of his fighting fish - and ordered him to give a polite invitation to the cannibal to come to the maneaba at Tabiang to feast and have a discussion with the king. Tanentoa, seated in the place of honour, waited for him. The meeting narrowly escaped turning out badly when an animal intervened. Teitake's dog went for Tewatu but the ogre seized the unfortunate creature by the back legs and tore him apart. Then armed with a dog's leg, he made for Teitake. The king intervened.

'Wait. don't hit him. He's your servant - see, he's at your feet. Look - your place is with Karumatoa's clan, on the south side of the maneaba. Go and sit down there and chat to them. The last share of the food is for you - the dolphin's tail. You arrived too late to have the head and the Tabiang people have eaten it.'

Tewatu the whit4 man married a woman from Beru, from the family of Tekirikiri and Tebaa, whose place was on the north side of the maneaba. They are the stock of Karumaetoa (quarrel between giants) from whom many well-known Gilbertese families are descended.

How can we describe the young girls of bygone days? They were small and insignificant, passive and rather savage-looking with big frightened eyes and sleek much-oiled hair flowing loose. Now the same sort of girl is in evidence but she is gentler and less wild. She clothes her body, shining like new bronze, in a lava lava or a short dress which doesn't hinder her movements. These young girls worked hard at school, are devoted church members and in the hands of the Sisters and missionaries they are malleable. In addition, the Holy Spirit is at work in their souls to make them little saints. but what happened in olden days?

It's hard to imagine a young creature given over entirely to idleness who couldn't even amuse herself. the girl's mother didn't both4er with her - her grandmother was like a servant to her, hoping to find for herself a confidante to brighten up her lonely existence. Instead of getting her grandmother to help her the girl would follow her own whims. A little before puberty she was shut up for many months on end in dark hut. She was there to be made more attractive having her skin whitened through being kept in the dark. this was hard en durance test for the lonely girl. She could no longer be looked at by men and she saw no light. thee was no recreation for her and she had no companions - only her grandmother who brought her food to her, told her stories and murmured all sorts of charms over her to make her pretty, as well as saying other spells to protect here. The only things she could do as a distraction were to bathe herself, perfume her body, comb her long hair and get rid of lice. She couldn't even see herself in the well any more. When her skin was bleached, however she would be even more beautiful in the maneaba and dancing would be her only task. her marriage didn't bother her much - everything was arranged without consulting her and whatever chance brought her she would be found to be sensitive but resigned.

The first year of marriage was the best time for a young girl. She followed her husband everywhere and began to see, think and understand to some extent. She had changed her family too. Everything was new to her; people were ready to help her and the world seemed a fine place. As soon as she became a mother she was once again confined with very little to do. All the available relations were there to help the mother and the baby. Nowadays it is rath4r more complicated for there are things to be sewn and clothing to be washed as thee are now fresh demands. Nevertheless it is not at all unusual to find women stretched out, spending the time sleeping alongside their babies. They don't use a cradle and as soon as the baby cries he is picked up and soothed and taken around. The infant tyrant is well aware of this and as soon as he wakes up makes it known that he doesn't want to lie flat on the cushionless mats. A women who has no help and has to look after he baby and cook for her husband believes she is really hard done by. Should she have to children then she is really at her wits end. this is one reason why parents are so quick to get rid of their children by making them available for adoption.

In brief, all the main household tasks fall to the grandmother's lot. At such a critical age the Gilbertese woman has to set to work. It is rather grim for those who have had no training for this, but that is the system. Nature and fate work together to wean men and women from their selfishness and to lead them towards ways of charity and self-denial. Let us try to picture a day in the life of a woman in olden days, though slightly adjusting her timetable of work. Remember too that what she did the modern Gilbertese women still do. So ... it's morning and the first toddy-cu8tter begins his song. The woman gets up, scratches her unkempt hair, adjusts her lava lava and thinks about washing. There's no water but the coconut shell containers are ready there, tied to the forked piece of wood that one carries over the shoulder. Off she sets to the well, a little to the east of the village, the shells clattering together like skulls. She has to hurry up and get the toddy containers rinsed ready for her husband to go to his tree. She pours a little water into the bottom of each coconut shell and scratches them clean with a bit of stick. then she does some sweeping and drags a few fallen palm-fronds round her hut into the sea. Her husband comes back with the fresh toddy. She mixes a little later with some toddy and gives this to her lord and master with the remains of a piece of fish and some bits of coconut. That's his breakfast and then he can go off fishing.

As it has rained in the night the pandanus leaves are softened and the prickles less dangerous. The housewife sets off into the bush. Taking the leaf very carefully in the centre, with two fingers, she gathers bundles of pandanus. Once she has a load she puts them in a form of mat slung over her back. The tide is out and the sand is uncovered ... if she could find some shellfish to eat ... She takes her basket with her and she has the pick. Close to the surface - you only need to scratch the sand a little and there they are - she finds katura in abundance. They are delicious but no bigger than a finger-nail. near them, deeper in the mud and less numerous are a sort of oyster: the nikatona. If she wants to fill up her basket quickly, over there where the water laps round her ankles, she will pick up bun, being careful not to hurt herself on a type of shell with sharp points, the em (a sharp-spiked sea urchin) which flattens under her feet. She knows how to entice an octopus from its hiding-place and to bite into its head, between the yes, to kill it. She can even stun the eel that zigzags from rock to rock. When she gets back home her catch of shellfish is placed on coconut leaves and after a little cooking dinner is ready. Accompanied by this food, just done to a turn, coconut flesh has a distinctive flavour.

All this work really deserves a siesta - but not today. The babai pit isn't far away and though it is her man who does the digging, it is her job to nourish the plant. Off she goes to fill her basket with leaves from the katura (sida fallax) or to prepare bunches of pandanus leaves or to sift black earth in a; little sieve made of string. The babai likes any of these - anything in fact which is fine, rotten and easily assimilated. All she has to do is heap the compost closely round the base of each babai plant.

As evening draws in she has to think about the return of the fishermen with their catch. They are tired and grumpy as they haven't had a drink and haven't rested their sun-baked backs against a cool mat. It's better to have everything ready as if they were going to appear with a big shark or a swordfish with its long sharp point and devilish fin unfolding along its back. so the housewife digs a hole. If this earth oven is deep and narrow it is like the ovens in Kiroro (Gilolo in the Malayan archipelago); if it is wider, it is like the Nabanaba oven. cooked in steam the fish is done following the tradition brought to Tarawa from Onouna by Nei Katura, twenty-five generations ago. In the bottom of the dug-out oven she places broken coconut shells. Shells empty of fibre give the best heat. ones laid over the blue flames become white hot. One or two layers are placed there.

Her husband has chopped the fish up in thick rounds which the housewife rolls up in green leaves. She lays these on the hot stones and covers the oven with old mats. then she sits down and while she waits until the fish is ready to turn over she gets a bundle of coconut waste out of a basket. This has been softened in a container for a month and now there is only fibre left. She takes a few strands of fibre and twists them together by rolling them against her thigh with the palm of her hand. this is the Gilbertese method of spinning. From it emerges string which is springy and hard-wearing and very useful for tying together all the wood used in the construction of a hut or canoe.

In the evening when the oil lamp is lit or they sit in the light of scented embers of coconut shells and when her Ulysses is well-fed and launched on a fishing story with his reclining companions, our Penelope of a housewife busies her fingers with the weaving of a mat. This will take her many days. to make it meant going out in the morning dew to pick long pandanus leaves which were then stripped of their edges and prickles. These are spread out and then rolled on top of each other and hammered on a flat stone to soften them. Then they are split from the tip of the leaves into equal strips. all that remains is to weave them, on a board held across the knees, and to be careful to put leaves of different shades together so as to get pleasant designs.

If her husband has come back empty-handed from his fishing then they might take advantage of the low tide at night to go out to find food. for this the wife should have got some torches ready. A tied-up palm frond will burn for five minutes. she has perhaps a dozen. When they get to the fishing ground the wife carries them and the man goes in front looking in all the tidal pools. He raises his torch in one hand and leans forward to kill the dazzled fish with one stroke of his knie or else he scoops it up in his landing-net and empties the fish into the basket on his back. His wife hands him another torch as soon as the first one begins to die.

We have by no means exhausted the tasks a woman is responsible for. her cooking is hardly complicated, however. She does things as simply as possible: boiled rice, a few pancakes, and very rarely, bread, which she hesitates to try making. Babai and molasses puddings are only made on feast days. her personal grooming doesn't take up much time and her simple dresses are quickly made on a borrowed machine. for any duty work, the grass skirt is still used. what a lovely name this skirt has: kakeke-keke. this isn't like the rustle of silk but is an expressive word to imitate the dry rustling of leaves or grass. The Gilbertese language is rich in such words. The Gilbertese woman is hardly encouraged to work. her best produce: mats, baskets, fans and fine hats, don't have any sale. Once she has attended to her children she has plenty of spare time and dancing and card-playing doesn't fill it up. She has virtually unlimited time for dreaming.

	Jane's Polynesia Home Page
	Jane's Micronesia Home Page
	Jane's Melanesia Home Page
	Jane's Oceania Home Page