COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA
“Poor Losa, there are no boys in her house and always she must make the oven.” But the girls always help and often do a great part of the work.
Once they are regarded as individuals who can devote a long period of time to some consecutive activity, girls are sent on long fishing expeditions. They learn to weave fish baskets, to gather and arrange the bundles of fagots used in torch-light fishing, to tickle a devil fish until it comes out of its hole and climbs obediently upon the waiting stick, appropriately dubbed a “come hither stick”; to string the great rose-coloured jellyfish, lole, a name which Samoan children give to candy also, on a long string of hibiscus bark, tipped with a palm leaf rib for a needle; to know good fish from bad fish, fish that are in season from fish which are dangerous at some particular time of the year; and never to take two octopuses, found paired on a rock, lest bad luck come upon the witless fisher.
Before this time their knowledge of plants and trees is mainly a play one, the pandanus provides them with seeds for necklaces, the palm tree with leaves to weave balls; the banana tree gives leaves for umbrellas and half a leaf to shred into a stringy “choker”; cocoanut shells cut in half, with cinet strings attached, make a species of stilt; the blossoms of the Pua tree can be sewed into beautiful necklaces. Now they must learn to recognise these trees and plants for more serious purposes; they must learn when the pandanus leaves are ready for the cutting and how to cut the long leaves
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