The Dolphin’s Last Dance

Malaita, Solomon Islands

I have always had a penchant for getting the annoying details of work out of the way so that I could explore. On Malaita in the late 1970s, I visited the village of Auki where lived yet another a colleague from theological college days, whose name was also Solomon, Solomon Wesley David to be precise. His parents were strict Methodists!

He took me in a canoe across a small inlet to the island on which he lived: Laulasi. On the trip I was delighted to be surrounded by dolphins. That evening, we ate delicious grilled seafood and as the important visitor, I was offered first dip into the local delicacy, fish eyes. Yuchh! I kid you not! If I screwed my eyes up tight I imagined they were caviar, but they tasted more like ball bearings coated in salt.

‘Did you enjoy those?’ Solomon David asked.

Now the etiquette lessons I received before I started on my peripatetic career included strict instructions on not offending your hosts by turning your nose up at local delicacies. I have found that they turn up their nose if I eat cheese, so I have never found it necessary to pretend on that score. If I don’t like it, I say so, mostly; though the night I ate leather cooked for five hours by the Baluchistan warlord’s cook, I did smile and say yummy. I think what did it was the way he kept caressing the machine gun kept by his chair: a South African made Vektor mini SS.

(Actually, on that particular occasion said warlord looked at me when I replied in the positive and said: ‘really? I think it is far too tough!’ which was a lesson to me on being true to yourself.)

Anyway, back to Laulasi Island. I asked about the dolphins. Solomon told me that the local people believed that dolphins and humans lived in separate but equal worlds. The dolphins kept watch over the sea while the humans oversaw the land.

While it was rare, sometimes it was necessary for the dolphins and humans to get together. On those occasions they needed the services of a dolphin caller. Calling the dolphins was only ever done in times of hunger.

‘How does it happen?’ I asked, intrigued. Here was my second visit to the Solomons. On both occasions I was the guest of ex colleagues from the Methodist Training Colleges and Theological colleges. On each occasion I was counseled with the utmost seriousness on the importance of talking to fish and communing with dolphins. Why was I so normal? Where had I failed?

‘We have a caller in our village,’ Solomon explained. ‘When we need to call the dolphins, she goes to sleep and guides her dreams into the dreams of the dolphins. Once there she can communicate with them and tell them that there needs to be a meeting between humans and dolphins’.

I had heard similar stories in Kiribati and also in Taku’u. I used a poem from Taku’u about humans and dolphins interacting in one of my operas. It was written by a Segaropa Putahu, a friend who comes from Taku’u, better known as the Mortlock Islands. That should read, came from Taku’u. Segaropa was killed in an IRA bomb blast in London in 1980.

‘You see,’ continued Solomon, ‘dolphins love company. That is why they are always so pleased to see us when we go out fishing’.

Apparently, the dolphins communicate with the caller and actually ask how many are invited.

‘How many of us should come?’ asks the dolphin dreamers.

‘Oh, about six would be fine,’ she would say.

‘Big ones or small ones?’

‘Half half’.

‘Fine’.

‘OK, we’ll see you tomorrow night’.

I looked at Solomon and raised my eyebrows.

‘So all would be set for the meeting between the dolphins and the humans?’

Solomon nodded.

‘The meetings are always organized to coincide with high tide,’ he continued. ‘The whole village goes to the beach and waits. Sure enough, the dolphins come. Some of us strip and dive into the ocean, pairing off, one swimmer with one dolphin. We caress the dolphins and whisper in their ears. This goes on till the tide turns’.

‘And?’ I asked.

‘One by one, they beach themselves, lined up side by side on the beach’.

I was staggered at this. It sounded so similar to the Segaropa’s story from Taku’u and even Tiutiana’s on Butaritari. I dreaded the next part of the story.

‘At this stage, everything is quiet. The dolphins lie quietly. We retreat slightly and perhaps we feel a little apprehensive. I know it upsets me. These are their friends’.

He paused again and when he spoke I had to strain to hear him.

‘Then, our strongest men take up parangs that have been secreted nearby and, stroking the dolphins with one hand, kill them with the other’.

Silence. I thought of the other places this happens. I thought of Japanese whale hunts. I thought o shark fin soup. I thought of all these things. Was this any less odious?

‘And what do you do with the meat?’ I asked.

‘We distribute it to all the needy. The only one who doesn’t get any is the dolphin caller. They are her friends. She can’t eat them’.

I remembered when Segaropa told me his version. In his version, the dolphin caller ends up dying young and becomes a dolphin. This is a sacrifice she makes for the honor of being able to provide food for her hungry people.

I recalled his poem explaining why dolphin calling was, for his people, a thing of the past.

‘On the beach

a school of dolphins shed their skins,

Taupu walks to embrace them unnoticed.

They dance till dawn

when they must retire unnoticed

Shed their skins and swim away.

Sunrise will kill a life!

She begged her skin,

Taupeara threatened her life.

A promise then they made,

A taboo was broken.

No more the sea women dance

at Taku’u’.

At least in this version, dolphin calling no longer happens. Why? Taupeara became a dolphin to save them. Which is the most romantic notion?

I left Laulasi—and Solomon David—next morning.

‘Did you enjoy the fish last night?’ Solomon David asked me as he said goodbye.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What sort of fish was it?’

‘Dolphin’.

I gulped.

‘Next time you visit, you can have shark!’ he promised.

I frowned.

‘We do the same with them’.

I have not