At the end of the day, the dancers all paraded into a huge central area that was divided into quarters. Here the tribes performed their final dances of the day en masse, parading into the ring a group at a time, and it was quite a sight to see them all swirling and singing in their brightly-colored and feathered costumes.
Once the dancing finished, two of the tribes, who had the longest and the biggest boats, paraded down to the shore to the sound of someone blowing on a shell, carrying their painted oars. Here they performed a short ceremony where they removed some flowers from the bows of their canoes and carried them away.
And then it was time to party! Again to the sound of notes blown through a large shell, huge squealing pigs were carried on poles through the crowd, presumably to be slaughtered and then roasted for dinner that night. I felt so sorry for these pigs, their eyes rolling in terror, and thought how can they do to this to these poor pigs, but then I remembered that we had just eaten a roasted suckling pig for dinner a few days before and I hadn’t given a thought to how that poor guy got there! I saw at least three pigs being carried away and about 4 more lying tied up on the ground under some huts, awaiting the same fate.
