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 one 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. Here meke one begins.
The people there open the box and are superbly happy that it chose them. They begin to translate it. It’s really difficult but by doing a little bit every day they slowly understand the message. No seeds! The part where we chop left past our eyes is possibly them wiping away tears of joy. The two hands back to the left correspond to lyrics about a book—the classic charades sign. And when we bash up and down on our knee, na siga, na siga, na siga, that is working on and on every day.

Special kudos to Save, Katie and Lisa for helping putting the first lessons EVER on doing the Meke.