Home sweet home

Shortly I shall be making my way back to Amsterdam.. It has been wonderful and exiting but it time to go home and yet again start a new adventure. Keep me posted if you hear of a job, I am up for pretty much everything.

Foto Frenzy!!!

With June and Andre. Everybody here is so shy it takes a while before they even talk. Let alone having a picture taken! Local customs don't really make it any easier with strict rules on behavior and especially the interaction between woman and man.








After another great fish, rice and coconut dinner (each plate served in a separate dish wash bowl to make sure we eat enough. The guests eat first with one host and grandmother if she likes, then the man, than the woman and finally the kids. Here we stayed overnight in the hammocks.








The cats are called ' poes', just like in Dutch.


















Making the outrigger canoe is a communal task. A continuous supply of toddy, an alcoholic drink collected daily in bottles hanging in every other palm tree to collect the sap from cut palm fronts (leaves), is made available to the boat builders for the labors.

The drink only turns alcoholic by way of fermentation if you leave a little sap in the bottle the day before. Without this the sap makes for a nice cup of sweet tea. A substitute for water which is in short supply everywhere.



The new canoe on its maiden voyage. A packed lunch is hanging of the outrig.












Another great sunset with flat sea.














The local fishcatch is admired, commented on and then distributed to the various village communities by the lady in the picture. She keeps a tight ship and detailed administration to ensure fairness.

The villages are organised by Maneaba. Or central hall. An roofed and elevated central plaza where each community meets. Each community is organised around extended family, church denomination for other purposes such as school, government e.d.



A night out..



















Another fish and rice meal. There are many types of fish and many ways to to cook fish... but fish remains fish and the lack of vegetables is beginning to tell. Halleluja for the coconut. It provides cooking oil, strained sap from coconutflesh for raw fish, rasped coconut flesh, refreshing coconut sap for drinking from the still green coconut and rasped soft coconut flesh from the same green coconut. Of course the drieed out coconut shell provides fibre for compost or starts a fire for cooking any of the above...

Tuvalu to Kiribati

Some excellent sailing interspersed by gritty visits to the atol islands of Tuvalu. As we go further west and descent -or ascent (north) more accurately- we are having to get used to the Micronesian way after months of having enjoyed the Polynesian hospitality with welcoming smiles. Instead a raising of the eyebrow is our welcome and a silence awaits our first words. In the end we still find ourselves at the table with enough to eat for a week and the pacific friendly faces of course.

In Vaitupu the local policeman who enquired after our papers subsequently invited us to his home every day of our stay there after and we feasted on the local specialities mostly fish and taro prepared in many different ways mostly with coconut in one way or other.

Nanunia is another paradise island on the way to Kiribati where we had to stay outside an enormous lagoon because the blasted entrance was not deep and wide enough for the Thira. All around the island the coralbarrier dropped straight down to hunderds of meters so we ended up ankered right in front of the lagoon entrance with 2 to 3 knots of current on each tide.

The evening was a little bizar as Andre had received an invitation to dinner for all of us from a 13 year-old girl named June. After having watched a group of man build an outrigger canoa while drinking 'grog' -fermented coconutleave sap- we spent the whole evening being entertained by June without even seeing the adults. A touch of bizar especially as we were fetted with an increcible array of food.

Tuvalu

After 6 days of sailing with full night watch Tuvalu is not exactly what I imagined it would be, so far... As we were leaving Fiji rather late in the season and after the weather window that provides save passage... we were on the look out for dead calms followed by sudden squals and rapidly forming gales that may turn into tropical storms or worse. In the end we did get a lot of rain but we had a good passage.

Of course nothing really happens on these night watches... but then there is always the one time.. On the last morning night watch -from 3 to 7am- I was neatly tucked away in my sleeping bag and wearing nothing but my sarong for comfort and using my miners headlamp to read 'sex with cannibals in the Pacific' a sarcastic satire tale by a Maarten Troost on two years of living on an atol in the north pacific, when suddenly the wind increased to the point where I had to take the helm from the autopilot.. while holding up my sarong of course. Now the rain started wipping down as well and Cedric emerged from his cabin to an ever-increasing squall wind. Next I had to get up in front to reef the main sail for which I was not exactly dressed appropriately. To the considerable chagrin of the capitan and my embarrassment I had to go inside to get some shorts on. Oh well... win some loose some..

Going through the reefs to enter the lagoon is a nerve wrecking experience every time and it seems to be getting worse as we progress.. we the GPS map off target by anywhere from 20 to 100 meters.. the GPS positioning of the ship not always accurate with the level of complexity increasing and the number of buoy diminish with each reef passage towards the North Pacific.

Tuvalu is an atoll with too many people and animals and very little atoll -or living space-. Water is everywhere you look but it is not the drinkable kind. Pretty dreary to be honest. The people do not even raise an eyelid when they see us, no welcoming smiles nor shouts of bula. Answering a simple question seems to require an extraordinairy amount of energy resulting in single word and grunt response with minimal armgestures. Sure is different from the Polynesians we have met so far in the South Pacific. Hopefully not indicative for the next and remainder of Melanesian islands to be visited for the next 4 months.

Pictures!!

Dramatic Fiji sunset. No more words needed I'd say.


















On the reef look-out with hunting party ready at a moment's notice.... Or are they just getting over the Kava day-after?

We had an succesful day of speer fish hunting, snorkling, scuba diving and swimming on the villages' reef outside Beqa island.

After having presented the sevu sevu gift -kava roots- to the chief of the village, we effortlessly joined in with village life.










The advance hunting party.













Part of the catch of the day.


















I found a more traditional and less useful way of wearing the headband of the chief of the fisherman clan. A double Winsor, effortlessly tied for the first time in many a year... Some things you will never forget..

http://www.nytimes-se.com and Fiji

Even though I am on Fiji time and hardly in touch with day to day life, fashion, politics and daily news breaking international disasters.. once in a while I get to read some real news.. http://www.nytimes-se.com. Try it for once. By the way I also recommend www.alternet.org, for a more independent and realistic view of the world ;)

Back to Fiji time.. We spent the last week as guests of a Beqa island -pronounced Benga- village. Where the emphatic Fiji welcome word 'Bula', is bellowed from the stomach with shoulder slaps and big smiles, followed by comparably friendly hospitality. We were presented with fish, fruit and vegetable; shared in sailing, spear fish hunting, scuba diving and snorkeling of the village-owned reef and were invited to a traditional Lomo feast (pronounced Lobo) which is prepared underground on smoldering coals and hot stones. We left one morning with big smiles and shoulderslapping after a long night of traditional kava drinking (mildly numbing feeling after a cup or two when prepared with light touch.....) and continuous singing of age old Fiji songs accompanied by guitar and ukalele.

What we learnt... listen to a villagers' advice on local natural phenomena. Thus.. especially when told that the tide is coming up, do not continue your exploration along a small beach with very steep rocky cliff blocking off the escape route. And again.. for those that do not learn quickly.. or those that are kava'd, leave when advised to do so with the dingy before the tide comes down, especially when you have a few hundred meters of sharp reef to cross with the dingy in tow.

Bula.

In the mean time I was, am and will be... here for a while