Channeling Bourdain with Bougna in Lifou

by Stephanie Rillo (Australia)

I didn't expect to find New Caledonia

New Caledonia has a special type of charm unique only to French provinces, and Lifou, one of its Islands, combines that charm with the natural beauty of a tropical paradise. I was fortunate enough to visit Lifou for a day and decided to forgo the sunbathing and swimming for a more authentic experience. Withstanding chafing thighs and a sunburned scalp on a sticky January afternoon left me with unforgettable memories and the invaluable opportunity to better understand one of the world’s oldest civilisations. My tour group was met by Marie, a tour guide and member of the Kanak people. We piled into her minivan and headed up to the village as she used the extent of her English to recite facts about the island Fact: Did you know that Lifou’s fresh water comes exclusively from caves and wells on the island? Another fact: speed limits don’t exist on the roads in Lifou. That didn’t mean we were in a Fast and Furious film though, people just used common sense to get from A to B in one piece. Our trek to the village included an actual trek, because the village was some way away from the traversable road. Marie kept palm leaves out of our faces as we were guided through to the heart of the village. As she pushed the greenery aside it was as if she was revealing a hidden gem, something so secretive it was hidden even from passers-by. We were soon greeted by a half a dozen mongrel puppies, playfully yipping and fighting each other, as one curious kitten looked on close by, too intimidated to join in or approach us. The villagers made their way around them with complete indifference while us tourists gazed adoringly. There were about five villagers in my line of sight, three were lounging on woven palm leaves as they conversed in French, the other two were husking coconuts. Marie invited us to sit on a log while she demonstrated a traditional Kanak cooking technique. Marie was preparing Bougna, a traditional Kanak dish made by mixing chicken, yam, sweet potato, banana and pumpkin with coconut milk, then wrapping it in banana leaf and burying the parcel under the ground with hot coals. Marie demonstrated the prepping process and left it to cook before revealing another parcel in a ‘here’s one I prepared earlier’ kind of way. She unwrapped the banana leaves and proceeded to serve The Bougna, which consisted of her sorting through each of the ingredients by hand until each was segregated on their own plate. January in Lifou is hot, and with heat comes flies. I began to count the bugs that were flying down to make a home inside the Bougna, and my count was up to eighteen before Marie called us to help ourselves. As I hesitantly made my way up, a thought entered my mind: what would Anthony Bourdain do? That was enough for me to put my preconceived notions about sanitation aside and give the Kanak culture the respect it deserved. Bougna was unexpected, but welcome nonetheless. It was interesting see how much unexplored potential was in foods that I’d tried a million times before. The banana was banana, but not as we know it. Plantain bananas aren’t nearly as sweet and closer in texture to a potato. All the foods had a hint of coconut and smoky, charcoal flavours. My personal favourite was the pumpkin, because its creamy sweetness was unlike any pumpkin I’d tasted before, yet still somehow had a comfortable familiarity to it. There’s undoubted beauty in the simplistic lifestyle of the Pacific Islanders. As the minivan made its descent back towards the shore, I was able to reflect on my experiences in the last three hours. With all of the environmental issues facing Earth, it’s impossible to come to Lifou and not make comparisons to the way the Western world lives. The humble gratefulness in everybody I met heightened the overconsumption and greed that immerses us in modern society every single day, yet witnessing how happy the islanders are without the first-world luxuries shows just how achievable sustainability really is.