Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [41]
Our original plans included visits to Kanak villages or outlying islands during our stay, but our poor health prevents us from taking the long day trips necessary for that. Instead, for any introduction to Melanesian life, we have to rely on two museums, virtually the only places in Nouméa that accord much recognition to Kanak culture. The traditional way of life, still widely practiced, revolves around clan membership and subsistence agriculture based on the cultivation of the yam, taro, and banana. Chiefs rule through their connections to clan ancestors, the most powerful of the many animistic spirits that influence all aspects of life.
The Museum of New Caledonia provides a historic overview of the carved-wood art that represents and propagates the status of chiefs, including prestige objects such as ceremonial axes handed down through generations and haunting, emotive masks used in funeral rites. The exhibits also cover items of everyday life from the past, including simple coiled pottery for cooking, nets and traps for fishing, wooden spades and stakes for farming, and stones in the shape of yams and bananas to bury in fields to give strength to crops. Before Europeans arrived, women wore short skirts made of coconut fibers or banyan-tree roots and men donned only a woven penis shield, less from modesty in both cases apparently than to protect their reproductive organs from the evil eye and other bad spirits.
While the museum offers an anthropological perspective on Kanak traditions, the Tjibaou Cultural Center celebrates them. Named for Jean-Marie Tjibaou, the Kanak leader who helped to negotiate the Matignon Accord and was assassinated the next year for his efforts, it evolved from the 1988 agreements as a way of honoring New Caledonia’s indigenous people in the province where their presence is the least respected. Architecturally, it soars majestically in a contemporary interpretation of the conical style of a chief ’s house, providing facilities for research, exhibitions, and performances devoted to the Melanesian legacy.
The most impressive galleries during our stop deal with Kanak and other Oceanic artifacts as art rather than as historic relics. Dramatic masks, totems, ceremonial axes, and additional pieces—many of them on loan from the Museum of Man in Paris—show the expressive skill of Pacific carvers, a theme carried over into exhibits of contemporary work. Other rooms pay tribute to Tjibaou’s life and tell the story of the Paris Commune prisoners sent to New Caledonia in exile.
Knowing the center has a restaurant and figuring that surely it must serve Kanak dishes, we time our visit to be here for lunch. No luck again. The menu offers croque-monsieurs, quiche, and even hot dogs, but nothing related to the culture being commemorated. That’s the day we end up with a Tex-Mex lunch back on the Baie des Citrons, giving a nod to part of our own heritage at least in lieu of a more appropriate one.
After a week in Nouméa, we’re ready to bail for Singapore, where we’re looking forward to real food adventures. New Caledonia treats us well in many respects, allowing us to recover from our bronchitis in a fortuitously favorable clime. Both of us leave much healthier and happier than when we arrive, which constitutes a wonderful gift, but we also depart with new pangs of hunger.
THE NITTY-GRITTY
NOUVATA PARK HOTEL
www.newcaledoniahotelsresorts.com
Anse Vata, Nouméa
687-26-22-00 fax 687-26-16-77
The four-star Park Hotel wing,
containing 110 deluxe rooms and 6 suites,
is far superior to the other,
less expensive wings.
L’ASTROLABE
35 promenade R. Laroque
Baie des Citrons, Nouméa
687-28-44-44
lunch and dinner
LA FIESTA CHEZ ALBAN
5 promenade R. Laroque
Baie des Citrons, Nouméa
687-26-21-33
lunch and dinner
Poisson