Vaka Eiva Canoe Blessing

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The opening day of the Vaka Eiva was today and one of the things that happens is the canoes are blessed. This is actually pretty much all that happens. I thought it was going to be a usual day building canoes and then attending the ceremony. Nope.

At lunch I find out that Mike is supposed to do the blessing. And that I’m to take part. Interesting. My role will be to carry the holy water. So I don’t have to say anything, all I really have to do is stand there, look dashing, and follow them around when they’re baptizing the canoes. Pretty simple.

So about an hour or so before the ceremony I had to get all dressed up in ti leaves and tapa cloth. At this point I’ll let the pictures do the talking for this part. The key was to have the tapa on good, so it didn’t come off half way through. For those of you with out experience with tapa its pretty stiff stuff, meaning it was a little awkward to walk around. But I survived.

Anyways, the ceremony was pretty nice. Mike said some very kind things about the work that I did for him and crossing cultural borders. This introduction also really helped me make some contacts later in the racing week, because everyone heard about me. The tough part was that damn vessel. The wooden thing itself was pretty heavy. Then I put in more water than was needed so it was even heavier. Combine that with a 25 minute static hold or so and my arms were shaking pretty badly towards the end. It didn’t help that I was absolutely petrified. Normally I’m pretty good in front of a crowd, but not this time. Since I was carrying around the holy water and wearing some awkward clothes I was horrified I’d trip on something and drop the whole thing in front of the crowd. Fortunately that didn’t happen so we don’t have to go down that path.

So here’s a rare treat. I was cruising the web looking for some racing pictures and I found this link:
http://rarolens.blogspot.com/2008/11/vaka-eiva-2008-blessing-canoes.html
I haven’t seen the video myself but I hear that I am featured in it. Enjoy!

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Photos

Making Clothes
Make your own costume. Unless your white. Then you get to watch someone else make it and take photos. The leaves are ti leaves, which have some mysterious properties relating to fire. Consequentially they're sacred or something along those lines. Contact the guy on the right for details...

Getting Dressed
Getting my tapa on. Fortunately I had assistance in getting dressed.

Canoe Blessing Speech
Mike giving his speech. At this point I've been holding the holy water for a while, my arms are quite sore and shaky. Didn't help I was worried I'd screw something up...

Standing By Canoe
I didn't take off my shades during the performance (partially because it was bright, partially so I could hide/not look so scared) so I thought a picture without would be better. This is standing by the canoes I've been building. I'm willing to bet a decent amount my mom's going to want to put this into the family Christmas news letter...

Comments

[jocelyn]

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH \AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH ok i might be done now. that was GREAT! i was seriously doubling over in laughter, sitting by myself in my dorm room, watching that video, and looking at these photos. so great. so weird. you did a fine job, hope your arms were ok afterwards! (hope NZ is going well!)