Wajuyu Festival on Maré
The Warjuyu Festival in the Pacific island nation of New Caledonia was created in 2006 on the initiative of the Maré fishermen. It celebrates the only fish the Nengone elders used to fish for outside the lagoon: snapper. The festival — November 7, 8 and 9, 2014, this year is held in the tribal village of Roh in the northwestern part of the island.
The memory of the Armistice of November 11, 1918, is the opportunity for the organizers to celebrate “the snapper of peace, reconciliation, love and friendship”. “We wanted to launch this festival to promote this product and highlight the fishermen’s expertise,” explains Charles Wamejonengo, chairman of the Maré fishermen’s association (Association des pêcheurs de Maré – APM).
At the end of the ceremonies and official speeches, the Wajuyu Festival gets started. A succession of songs, kaneka concerts and traditional dances are seen on the podium over three days. Market stalls are weighed down by the land’s produce: pumpkins, yams, Poingo bananas, bush hibiscus spinach, sweet potato, choko, aloe vera, pawpaws, sugar cane, wael (a very sweet variety of yam like the walei on Ouvéa), “four corners bean” seeds and popcorn.
A vendor from the Simoacace clan (Wabao and Cengeite tribes) makes caramelized salted plum lollipops and black vanilla seeds with grated coconut, as well as soursop juice.
The Vanille no Nengone association offers baskets and flowers made of pandanus, as well as vanilla, and a sculptor is showing flèches faîtières (wooden totems) and doorposts.
A single instruction for the food-service stands: prepare dishes based on seafood. On the menu is snapper in every style: in coconut curry, in parcels, fried, or baked. At lunchtime, storyteller Kaloi Cawidrone, from the neighboring tribal village of Tenane, reads several Nengone tales: the coconut crab and the hermit crab, the story of the octopus that ate the children, or the one about the Devil and the grandmother.
There are several varieties of snapper. The smallest are the goldband snapper, rose snapper or the ornate jobfish. Then there is the rusty jobfish, violet in color and with a less rounded mouth than its fellows. And the two most sought-after species, the two-spot red snapper and the flame snapper.
New Caledonia is an island nation off the coast of Australia.