A volunteer cocoanut grove, with trees of all ages
Climbing for cocoanuts
The grated breadfruit in the holes was called ma, and bore the same relation to popoi as dough bears to bread. When the ma was sufficiently soured Apporo opened the pit each morning and took out enough for the day's provision, replacing the stones on the banana leaves afterward. The intrusion of insects and lizards was not considered to injure the flavor.
I often sat on her paepae and watched her prepare the day's dinner. Putting the rancid mass of ma into a long wooden trough hollowed out from a tree-trunk, she added water and mixed it into a paste of the consistency of custard. This paste she wrapped in purua leaves and set to bake in a native oven of rocks that stood near the pit.
Apporo smoked cigarettes while it baked, perhaps to measure the time. Marquesans mark off the minutes by cigarettes, saying, “I will do so-and-so in three cigarettes,” or, “It is two cigarettes from my house to his.”
When the cigarettes were consumed, or when her housewifely instinct told Apporo that the dish was properly cooked, back it went into the trough again, and was mashed with the keatukipopoi, the Phallic pounder of stone known to all primitive peoples. A pahake, or wooden bowl about eighteen inches in diameter, received it next, and the last step of the process followed.
Taking a fistful of the mass, Apporo placed it in another pahake, and kneaded it for a long time with her fingers, using oil from crushed cocoanuts as a lubricant. And at last, proudly smiling, she set before me a dish of popoi kaoi, the very best popoi that can possibly be made.