Umu

Emma tells how her family prepared the umu for the ceremony.

Emma: We had an umu here. The umu is an earth oven, so we didn’t really dig a hole, he just fixed this big drum and put it on the ground and went up the road and got some soil and put it around it and we got an umu. It still took us a week to prepare for the umu, so the weekend before he fixed the actual drum and everything on the ground. We already had the rocks from before and he got some more from his brothers. And then the food, it’s getting the food that’s really time consuming over here because everything is so far. We have to go to the taro shop about three kilometres away—oh no, more than that—taro shop is about 20 minutes away from home.

We try to cook as much Niue food as we can. The night before the function we had a few families that came and helped prepare the food and we had families who brought food to help us with our function so they came, one family brought a whole pig.

We stay up on Friday night, prepare the food for the umu. Because the umu takes a bit of time. We light it at around 8, 9 o’clock in the evening and prepare, wrap, all the food, have it ready. And we didn’t put it in the umu till 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. So, put all the food, leave it for three hours and it's ready.