Building a Vaka

If you want to build a vaka, first plant a garden.
Ni-Vanuatu saying

Building a large vaka can take more than a year. It can only begin if the right trees have been planted and are ready to use. A spiritual expert often performs a ritual GLOSSARY ritual - ceremony to ask the spirits for permission to cut down a tree. The experts might be paid with valuables like weaving and food as well as shown great respect. Another expert guides the vaka builders. In Satawal, heís called a senap (master vaka builder). Young children watch, and older boys help out.

Before Europeans arrived in the Pacific, people used things from the world around them to build canoes - like stone or shell axes to cut the trees and shape the canoe parts. There were no steel tools and certainly no chainsaws like today! A canoe builder knows which trees are good for different canoe parts. The wood for hulls must be strong and long-lasting but not too heavy. Other canoe parts - like the outrigger GLOSSARY outrigger - side float and the sleeping platform on Satawalese canoes - are made from softer woods. Some of the wood used for the sleeping platform is brought by ocean currents GLOSSARY currents - the directional flow of the sea from unknown places. If a community doesnít have building materials or a canoe builder, they may trade for canoes from other islands.

After the canoe is tested, thereís a ceremony to celebrate. In Satawal, they throw food all over the canoe. When theyíre finished, they feast!

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Lata is part of us

Simon Salopuka and Harry Vanosi

“Those kinds of stories make me feel like part of what Lata had done before. So I really believe that Lata is part of us.” Harry Vanosi “I heard about the story of Lata, but now I feel like I am actually in that story…the way we are sailing now.”

“From The Vaka Taumako Project.”