Oceania: Myth and Reality

South Pacific Islands are spread on a surface of millions of square km. They include countries very different for hystory, language, traditions but that share the same feeling of living in full contact with nature and the immensity of the ocean and its marine environment. Our trip will take us to some of the most intact islands where we feel a different lifestyle will let us discover a different hierarchy of values and will put us in contact with the problems of living under a powerful but sometime dangerous environment for the forces of nature and learn from the skills that people living in these islands have developed to survive. After visiting French Polynesia in 1985, we came back to Oceania in 2009 to start this project aimed to study and discover some of last uncontaminated lands where people still live in contact with nature in a delicate balance with the changes brought up by needs and contradictions of modern lifestyle. We started visitng Cook Islands, with the help of Wilkie Rasmussen former co-president of the Joint Parliament for Africa, Caraibi and EU-Pacific. In our first visit to this country composed by several islands very different for geology, location, moods, art and crafts, we explored some interesting spots in Rarotonga and Aitutaki. Our exploration will continue with the far northern islands. Rarotonga is the largest and most populated of the Cook Islands and is the connection point to New Zealand, Australia, French Polynesia, Fiji, and to the outer islands. What is interesting, by our point of view, is to understand if and in what degree Rarotonga has been influenced by the development of the big countries that are only some hours of flight away. The first impression is that, despite of the consistent number of tourists, it remains quite friendly and spontaneous, compared to Tahiti for example. If a comparison is possible, Rarotonga for some aspects, looks like Moorea. The major changes in the dailiy life and activities, since polynesian settlement from Marquesas Islands around 1500 years ago, are concerning technology applied to all kind of work and the introduction of modern technology in crops farming. Compared to the traditional polynesian lifestyle of taking from the nature the necessary to live day by day (fruits, fishes, coconuts), probably Cook Islands have a more diffused tradition in crop farming, maybe also due to the younger age of the Cook Islands in respect of the first settlements of Fiji, Samoa and Tonga from Melanesia. Another reason for the large number of crops in Rarotonga is the subtropical climate that is never too hot or too cold and allows the growth of a large number of vegetables and fruits