Tribewanted: Vorovoro

Thanks to the help of Save, Katie and Lisa – my special project while on Vorovoro was to film lessons on how to do Mekes one thru six. Here is number four as posted on YouTube:

Our mekes one to four are all from the same source and tell one story which fundamentally is the description of a tribe’s migration (hence all the place names). They neither start at the beginning nor finish at the end. Before we begin the tale goes like this: A man in Dawasamu received a message (from the sky rather than in the post) which he had written down. But he couldn’t then translate it. He wrapped it up carefully in a box and set it afloat. It sailed passed the village of Bureiwai but did not stop there. Instead it came ashore in Nabukadra.

Please check out the vlogs for Mekes one thru three for the descriptions and instructions.

Meke four is a summary of the last two. The narrator asks the men to listen to his message. He already passed on a great deal of wisdom, but has more. If you work all the time you loose track of day and night – we show this by moving our folded arms quickly and identically left and right – tautauvata; they become the same. It ends with the rhetorical question – why is there so much work? It is a question that is answered later on in this meke, but on Vorovoro we end there. Our five and six are from different sources.
 Meke five, with a bit of artistic license, is almost possible to translate word for word:

Mucho thanks to Lisa, Katie and Save for helping to make the first Meke Lessons EVER online!!