My Scholarship Entry 2013 (2) and 2014

SAMOA | Thursday, 4 July 2013 | Views [1533] | View Smaller Image

Fale is the Samoan word for houses, from small to large. Generally oval or circular shape, there are no walls. Traditionally the fale is lashed and tied together the plaited sennit rope. Making enough lengths of afa for an entire house can take months of work. The construction of an ordinary traditional fale is estimated to use 30,000 to 50,000 feet of ʻafa.

Practically every part of the tree, can be used by the Islanders, trunks, leaves, mid ribs, husks, husk fibers, shells and the nuts themselves. Here a local “husks” a “nut” using the traditional methods, piercing the husk with a stake and pealing away the husk from the better known brown hard shelled nut. Plaited sennit rope called ʻAfa is made from the husk. They are soaked in fresh water for 4-5 weeks then old men or women beat the husk to separate the fibres. After a further washing fibres are tied together in bundles and dried in the sun, then manufactured into sennit by plaiting, a task usually done by elderly men or matai, and performed at their leisure.

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Traditional Cooking, Of course the coconut provides food and ingredients for cooking. The tree also provides other uses in this activity. The basket in the foreground is woven from coconut tree leaves and is used to collect banana leaves for covering the traditional “stone” oven during cooking and gathering cooked foods when done. The coconut shell is used as a container to heat liquid foods, such as this tuna in coconut cream being ladled (by a shell) in the picture.

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My Scholarship Entry 2013 (2) and 2014

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