Hitolo, hunger or famine, names the season of scarcity that gave the hiri its purpose: the western Motu, whose sandy coast yielded poor gardens, voyaged to the sago-rich Gulf to secure against want, exchanging their pots for the starch that would carry them through the lean months. In the mythic economy of the trade, hitolo is the adversary that the founding voyage of Edai Siabo and the pots-for-sago exchange were established to overcome. Sources treat it variously as a bare condition and as a named force personifying scarcity.