HEITIARE

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HEITIARE!

I AM THINKING ABOUT YOU ON YOUR VERY SPECIAL DAY. I WISHED I WAS CLOSER TO CELEBRATE WITH YOU YOUR 22nd BIRTHDAY.

HAVE A WONDERFUL CELEBRATION MY DEAR.
I MISS YOU…
I LOVE YOU MY BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS.


HERE IS YOUR BIRTHDAY SONG.

Heitiare

Heitiare tau tamahine
Heitiare tau tamahine

Ia vai te hau
E te maitai
I roto
Ito oe mafatu
E heitiare hoi oe
No te
Here

Ua riro
Hoi oe
E tapo’o
Note Aroha
I nia
Ite fenua
O te mau tupuna

Heitiare
Tau tamahine
Ua here au ia oe
Eaha ra ia moe
Ito oe na metua

Heitiare
Tau tamahine
Mahana o’ao’a
Te ie
Eaha ra ia moe
Ite ie nei here

No hia mai
Te ie here
Na te tupuna
Maohi e
I faahei
Atu Ia oe
I teie hei tiare...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!



KISSES AND HUGS
GOD BLESS YOU MY PRECIOUS DAUGHTER
LUV U
MOM

MERRY CHRISTMAS

I would like to wish all of my children, family and friends in the USA, UNITED KINGDOM, FRANCE AND TAHITI a Merry Christmas and a Happy New year. You are all dear to me and very close to my heart.

I dedicate these two following pictures to my three children Manea, Heitiare and Tahaki. I love you kids very very much.

God bless you all with what your heart wishes for this coming New year.

With much love,

Tararaina Vairere Vahine

This last picture is Tara with Sister Hinanui.

PUHI

PUHI(s) ARE ARE SOFT WATER EALS.














They are games for the house dog Capus (a short name for Sac a Puce: bag of flees). It likes to walk along the water to watch the Puhis swimming on the top of the water. Capus gets very excited with a constant bark here and there...


A Puhi is very important to keep a spring alive. It is constantly looking to keep the flow of a spring free from any obstruction. It looks for new garleries in order to bring underwater lakes to spring out from the Earth.

A Puhi is a natural vacuum cleaner. It sucks up any dead creatures that might have fallen into the water.

A Puhi is different from a sea eal. It cannot harm you. A sea eal could section your fingers if it felt agressed.

The soft water Puhi has teeth as a grater. If really bothered it can only scratch the skin of your fingers but not more than that.

Puhis are wonderful creatures. They are very friendly and live in harmony with us. When bathing in the spring, we are gentle we them.. We protect them and love them like any of our children.








In our family we say that the Puhi symbolizes the Mother or Grandmother Energy. We rejoice when it comes to us. It brings back memories of our lineage. The last one of the lineage was our Grandmother Toimata. We think that she is with us when we find ourselves around the spring and bathing in it. We think of all the Mothers before her that contributed to nurture that spring. After a swim in that water, our body, soul and spirit feel cleansed, light and at peace.

Puhis like to live in cool temperature water. They can get out of the spring to get to the lagoon for hunting purpose. It is part of their survival instinct.

While swimming with them, little, my kids used to like to hold them. To the touch they are kind of slippery. They don’t stay in your hands very long. There are times they come very close to you and in between your legs. Ha ha ha O.K right it is kind of a strange feeling sometimes.

Puhis look scary to some but they are in reality very nice creatures and great gardians of springs.

Stay with me…I will show you pictures of a school of Nato (fish), of Osha’a(s) (shrimps), kokopu (fish), Jack-Fish, tilapia and shells. They all in their own way contribute to keep the spring clean and alive.



Here is a picture of Nato(s). As you notice one of them is going for the french bread (baguette) that is floating at the top of the water.















Mother Osha’a with its baby.














Kokopu(s) come in different colors














A jack- fish. It is very unsual to see this fish survive in soft water.














Shells to keep the rocks of the spring free of algie.













There are tilapias as well but I had a hard time to approach them.

I would like to thank Puatea and her companion Angelo who were very kind to let me borrow their underwater camera. We can all thank both of them for these beautiful pictures.








Written by Tararaina

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO TIARE TANE AND TIARE VAHINE

I would like to dedicate this page to my parents. TIARE TANE AND TIARE VAHINE's 49th Wedding Anniversary on this day Dec. 12th 2008.

We, children and family, will be rejoicing with them tonight by the water.

Next year celebration promises to be a bigger deal because we will be celebrating then their 50th anniversary.

Jack, grandchildren in Nevada USA, United Kingdom and France are wishing you a happy anniversary.

Congratulations to both of you Tiare Tane and Tiare Vahine! We love you very very much. Mouah! Bisous xxxxoooo

HOW TO GRATE COCONUT

GRATED COCONUT
































My cousin Michel loves to eat local. He finds no trouble grating coconuts to get his milk. He shares with me that he loves to eat his fish with coconut milk.

Today he came by the house to get a few coconuts and while working his routine he allowed me to take pictures.

Polynesians have different words to identify the coconut at different stages of its growth or of its existence.

OMOTO coconut is before being ripe (which is the OPA’A stage) and it has a soft flesh in the inside. The shell is green or red depending on what variety of coconut it is. OMOTO is what we pick from the tree to drink… then we eat the OMOTO (soft flesh) with a spoon cut out from the coconut shell.







OPA’A is ripe and the shell or husk is brown. You normally find it on the ground when ripe.

UTO is a coconut that has been laying down on

the ground for weeks and is starting to grow a

tiny pointed trunk. The husk is brown like the OPA’A and inside you find the UTO. UTO is

excellent to eat and makes a great healthy appetizer at parties.

To

grate coconut for milk…you will want to look for an OPA’A. You remove the husk off with the help of a strong pointed stick…then break the coconut in half…empty the water that you can drink (personally I like to drink from the OMOTO better}. Then start grating.

Put the grater on a chair and a huge bowl underneath. Sit on it as shown on the picture and start grating.

Once you have gathered all of the grated coconut…the next part is to bring two handful of coconut into a clean cloth and start squeezing the milk out. You will obtain a rich milk. Michel likes to add water with the grated coconut before squeezing…By doing it that way he is getting a lot more milk out of his one coconut plus it is just less grating for him to do. Smart!
I have tasted both ways and I am fine with either ways.

Coconut milk is used to make oil for the body (Monoi Tahiti) or for purging in between the different traditional medicine that you are undergoing. It is used as well in many other Polynesian medicine.

In a different article I will explain how to prepare the purging oil. There is so much to share with you all.

In nowadays, you can buy your grated coconut at the store. They have an electric grater. How convenient for so many.
My wish is that this tradition that Michel is still honoring will never disappear and that the knowledge will always be around for future generations.

Written by Tararaina

HINANUI

HINANUI
Known as the Mother of all
An Angel…


























Everybody knows her as the Queen of the Polynesian Dance.

About a year ago she has devoted herself to the Arts of the Polynesian Dance.









She has blossomed since. Hinanui has become this beautiful flower that friends love and long to come close to… knowing that they would benefit from the beauty that she so graciously radiates. A beauty not only that can be seen from the outside but that is also very much present within her. Her heart overflows with a constant love for people. She is known as the Mother of many, friends and in particular her girlfriends.

If you find anything that you do so boring… it is because Hinanui is not part of the plan or doing it with you.

Hinanui, who is a natural, carries the spirit of joy. Wherever she goes she brings along with her that spark of fun, love of life and happiness that is just so contagious that you just can’t help to smile, laugh and be thankful for life.

None has tried to stop her and why would anybody want to do that? Ha ha ha

When She says, “the Show must go on”. Everybody is saying “YES!” and all is ready for more joyous time in her good company.

Time does not exist in her World that she has many of all ages included. Her World is so energizing and full of life that the age becomes only an insignificant number.

Her way of life and of thinking makes it “turning 50 feels wonderful!”





















By the way I checked…In her world, Hinanui is nowhere to be found on the time line ‘cause she had to be a God sent person. Living in her dimension we all recognize in her the Angel she is.

Knowing this…we all have a very good reason to want to celebrate with Hinanui her 50th birthday on this beautiful Planet Earth.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANGEL HINANUI MOTHER OF ALL



YEAH!!!!….
WE LOVE YOU

GOD BLESS YOU WITH WHAT YOUR HEART DESIRES AND ALL OUR BEST WISHES TO YOU ON YOUR 50TH BIRTHDAY
AND YES, WE ARE ALL WITH YOU…THE SHOW MUST GO ON!

This last picture is showing Tararaina and her sister Hinanui. As a joke, we call ourselves the Twin Sisters (Les Soeurs Jumelles!). There is not one to hold the other one back. What do you want this is the complicity of Sisters.

Written by Tararaina

TUPA Land crab

TUPA
Land crab

Tupas are very much part of the world I live in.

I grew up being accustomed to having them around me.
Tupas are night creatures. During the day they chose to stay in their holes. In the dark they love to wonder freely around my home. Tupas like to leave their “Apoo Tupa” (Tupa Holes) in the pitch dark to find leaves to nourish themselves.

In their holes they work and dig galleries leading very often to roots of a lot of beautiful plants.

I must say Tupas are a nuisance to so many of my plants. Archeologists would love them and should seriously look into hiring them as assistants because as they dig they bring out along with the soil all kind of great things but unfortunately they’re very often mostly pollution. In their doing though they are keeping Mother Earth pretty clean!

Although one is a predator to the other…I love to be surrounded by plants and at the same time at night I love to be greeted back home by the Tupas. Some of them are very brave and don’t budge when I walk closely by. Others do get scared. You can tell by the noise they make when they swiftly run away to hide.

My mother grew up in a Tahitian Hut. Her parents had their dirt floor covered with white sand. They had a great cohabitation with the tupas. Every morning my mother had a routine… To keep their house floor looking clean and pretty, she did not vacuum but had to plug all of the Tupa holes before she could cover it back again with sand.

Little, I remember finding them in our house. They apparently let themselves in through the open door at night. The enchanting scratching noise they made always led me to quickly locate where they were hiding and it is with the help of a broom that they were swept right out of the house. What is it with those tupas liking to come into our house!? Could it be that they are missing living among human and with a roof over their heads? (Ha ha ha) or is it that we are the one who are trespassing and living on their territory?

Nowadays let me reassure you that all houses in Tahiti do have modern floors. My father is telling me that rare were the occasions he had to sweep a tupa out of his house…

Ah! Those stubborn Tupas! I just love them.

In her living my Great-Grandmother “Mama TANE” loved to fish. She fished until late in life. She would paddle her outrigger canoe from home to MOTU TAHIRI (TAHIRI ISLET) which is where the FAA’A International Airport is located today. That place used to be a virgin islet. Mama TANE would go fishing at night around that area and when there was too much current and wind to paddle back home…she would get off on that Motu…dig a big but not too dip of a hole in the sand with her paddle and sleep in it until dawn. When morning came she would find these same kind of tupas running all over the place. She would collect them and take them home…keep them in a cage for a couple of days to cleanse them by feeding them grated coconut. When this was all done she boiled them in water and ate them with coconut milk.
Bon appetit!

Written by Tararaina