Which way is starboard again?

Mi laekem Bislama

Because there are more than 100 separate languages spoken in Vanuatu – and that’s excluding English and French – a universal language is needed to prevent headspinning confusion.

This is Bislama, a variation of Pidgin English. It is the national language of the republic of Vanuatu and it is the coolest language to try to learn.

Bislama is phonetic and in some cases hilariously literal.
A bra is ‘basket blong titi’ (basket belong titty), a helicopter is ‘mixmasta blong Jesus Kraes’ (Mix Master belong Jesus Christ) and a helicopter landing is ‘mixmasta blong Jesus Kraes I foldaon’ (Mix Master belong Jesus Christ he fall down).

We’ve heard several gorgeous variations of piano, but the gist of it is ‘bigfala bokis, wan blakfala wan waetfala, yu kilim emi singalot’ (literally – big European box with some white and black teeth. You hit it, it sings.)

A trap for young players is the word ‘kilim.’ It means ‘to hit’ not ‘to kill.’ If you want to finish someone off completely you ‘kilim I ded.’

Other favourites are ‘no smoking’ – ‘yu no maekem fia (don’t make fire), broken down is ‘bagarap’ (despite stemming from the English ‘bugger up’ it’s not actually considered vulgar in Bislama), if you repair something you ‘fiksimap, and the motto for the local drop, Tusker beer, is ‘bia blong yumi’ (our beer.)

In statistical terms there is a distinct language for every 1200 Ni Vanuatu inhabitants – one of the highest language densities in the world, and Bislama has several roots. In the first half of the 19th century many islanders were recruited as crew for whaling boats and a type of Pidgin English developed to help Europeans and Islanders communicate. When they’d managed to kill most of the whales the traders in Europe, Australia and China turned to sandalwood and bech de mer (sea slugs) – both of which were plentiful in Melanesia – and the language grew from there.

By the 1860s the sandalwood and slug industries were in decline and were replaced by sugarcane, which was grown on a commercial scale and exported to Queensland and Fiji. This was all very labour intensive and Melanesia was seen as a rich source of labour. Sadly many of those labourers were recruited through a practice called black-birding (pretty much another word for slavery) and never saw their homes again.

Over a 50 year period Bislama evolved into a language that has enabled people with different dialects and from different cultures to communicate.

Paddy and I try to learn the local word for thank you in every place we go. In Tonga it is ‘malo’ or ‘malo aupito’ (thank you very much), Fiji has ‘vinaka’ and in Vanuatu it is ‘tangkyu tumas (tumas is ‘very much’).

We decided to learn a bit more Bislama because – particularly in villages on the islands – our ‘tangkyu tumas’ was greeted with a delighted ‘yu spik Bislama?’ to which our reply was always an embarrassed ‘we’re learning.’

Most of these guys could speak at least some English and I am sure a bit of French as well and we thought if they were making that kind of effort we should have a bit of a crack at learning their own language. When I think about it, it’s a little embarrassing really. Some of these people live – literally – in the middle of nowhere and they are bi, if not tri-lingual. I did about half a term of 3rd form French (only because I knew we got chocolate gateaux at the end of the course), studied a dead language at university – ancient Greek for translation purposes in Classics – which I failed miserably (the Greek not the Classics) and picked up Pig Latin primary school – quite pitiful really!

We also decided to learn it because it’s heaps of fun. We discovered a book called ‘Evri samting yu wantem save long Bislama be yu fraet tuman blong askem’ (Everything you wanted to know about Bislama but were afraid to ask) which has been brilliant. Rather than just being a phrasebook it looks at the mechanics of the language, which makes it much easier to pick up.

I’ll leave you with some of our favourite translations:

You = yufala
You two = yutufala
Ol trak ia oli bagarap = this truck is buggered
Good = gudfala
Bad = nogud
Big = bigfala
Old = olfala
To cook = kukum
Bathroom = rum blong swim
Refrigerator = aisbokis
Cemetery = beregraon
A boastful person = bigmoat
Ocean = dipsi
To assist = givhan
Barracuda = longmaot
A little = lelebet
Excellent = nambawan
To be confused = meksap
New Zealand = Niu Silan

Ta ta,

Anna and Paddy xxx

“It’s not a holiday, it’s an adventure!”

That’s what Paddy always tells me when things get a bit rough, I’m feeling sick or just a little scared – and I guess he has a point.

Before we went on this trip he told me that going through a bit of hardship to get to a destination makes being there even more special, and he’s right. There’s a much bigger sense of achievement in it than just getting on a plane and being there in a couple of hours.

When I was a kid I had a pretty good imagination. I read a lot and I planned to go on loads of adventures when I grew up – although my idea of adventure back then didn’t involve quite so much spewing!

As you can probably guess our trip from Fiji to Vanuatu was a little wobbly – at least at the start. It was also the first passage of more than a day or two that Paddy and I have done without crew.

I have to admit I was more than a little apprehensive about this leg, my biggest fear being that something might lay me up forcing Paddy to do all the work or something would happen to Paddy leaving me to sail the sodding boat on my own. Luckily for both of us neither happened, and now that we have successfully done it I am feeling a lot more confident.

One of the issues with cruising with just two on board is lack of sleep because there always has to be someone up on deck, particularly at night. The usual night shift schedule for a boat of two is four three hour shifts. We do 8pm to 11pm, 11pm to 2am, 2am to 5am and 5am to 8am (though often one of us will give the other an extra hour or two’s sleep if they are looking particularly shattered.)

Generally the skipper is the one who ends up getting the least amount of sleep though, because they are the one who gets woken up if the person on watch is unsure of something. I always feel bad about waking up Paddy so try not to do it unless absolutely necessary.

I found myself having to in the small hours of the morning of our second day at sea though – when I noticed a dirty great fishing boat bearing down on us. I’d been watching it for a while, thinking it might be one of the regatta boats. When it started to head straight for us though, I began to get a little concerned. I got Paddy up and we identified it as a fishing boat. He told me to keep an eye on it and to let him know if it got too close for comfort. I was determined not to get him up unnecessarily, but it just kept on coming – and I’m not talking about your little local fishing boat either. This was a great rusty hulk that could have eaten our boat for breakfast and used the mast to pick its teeth. For a horrible moment my sleep deprived brain was convinced it was trying to ram us. Paddy said it would pass us very closely, and it did – so closely in fact that he had to start the motor up and floor it to ensure there was a decent amount of space between us, which was a little ‘fascinating’.

Paddy tells me the fishing boat was in the process of ‘mowing the lawn’ (fishing in a grid) and we happened to be in its path. Not only did we have right of way because it was motoring and we were sailing, but it was approaching from our port side so even if we were motoring we still would have had right of way. The fishing boat however seemed to see it differently. It was broad daylight and he backed up a little once we moved forward, so the sod definitely saw us. At that hour of the morning I was deeply unimpressed. A second boat appeared on the horizon and the two of them started yammering to eachother on the radio (on channel 16 – the emergency channel – I might add). I couldn’t understand what they were saying but I am pretty sure some of it was Chinese for “ha ha – I just scared the pants off this yachtie girl. You should have seen her face!”

Another thing I have discovered about cruising with two that I hadn’t really thought about was that it can get a little bit lonely. Because you are getting broken sleep during the night it is really important to try to sleep during the day (NOT always easy!). So, while there are times when both Paddy and I are awake together, a lot of time is spent with one awake while the other sleeps, which means you get to spend a bit of time alone with your thoughts (or music or audio books). This, combined with lack of sleep, also means that auditory or visual hallucinations are quite common among cruisers. Paddy has heard radios and whispered conversations where there have been none. I’ve seen lights on ships that didn’t exist. During this trip I heard opera music and saw a man’s face clear as crystal in the early morning clouds, while a pile of ropes morphed into an old man with a walking stick for Paddy – hey, who needs drugs?

We actually managed to make pretty good time on this leg – mostly thanks to the ‘new’ second-hand headsail we picked up in Denerau. Wildflower doesn’t go particularly quickly directly downwind – and can be pretty wobbly to boot – so headsail number two was a bid to combat that. Paddy poled one sail out on each side in front of the boat so we were effectively set up like an old square-rigger (translation for non-boaties: the sails in front of the boat were kind of a stingray/diamond type shape instead of a triangle.) This made the boat a lot more stable and meant we were averaging 5 and a half knots (we were up to 7 at a couple of points) which is pretty good for a floating steel housebus!

The wind was pretty much all over the place though. In between good bursts we had a bunch of squalls (a few wind changes and a lot of rain) and then no wind at all, which could be extremely frustrating.

The lack of wind got me to thinking about boats I have read about in novels and poems that all seem to have ‘sails gently flapping in the breeze’. I have read it a tonne of times and never given it a second thought, but I am afraid I am going to have to pour cold water over that particular image.

If a sail is flapping – gently or otherwise it means;
a) there is no flaming breeze. Sails need wind to fill them and if there is no wind they become useless, floppy hankies. and
b) you are probably doing damage to your sails. Sails don’t like flapping – it puts strain in all the wrong places. In racing boats they reckon it costs $10 a flap.
So I am terribly sorry to all romantic readers, but there will be no gentle flapping on this boat if we can help it.

In other news – the Mighty Speights Lure had a bit of plastic surgery after getting munched by a few fish and became the Mighty Some Other Brand of Beer that Comes in a Blue Can Lure and managed to snag us three tuna on the way here. None were as big as the Tuna of Doom from the Tonga passage but they were pretty decent nonetheless – photos to come

What we have seen of Vanuatu so far has been beautiful and the people are lovely, but that’s a whole different blog. We are thinking of you all heaps – particularly those in the snowy isles at the moment. Try to stay warm! xxxooo

Hi all,

Just a quick note to let you know Paddy and have survived our first decent passage with just the two of us. We arrived in Vanuatu safe and sound yesterday (sorry not to blog sooner but there was a fair bit of sleep catching up to do!)

The trip took six days, I got sick twice, we caught three fish, it rained a lot, and a couple of bird hitch-hikers thanked us by crapping all over the boat (Paddy reckons it’s good luck)- all in all not a bad trip! It was really good experience and I feel heaps more confident now I know we can actually do it.

Full passage blog on the way once my brain is fully functioning again.

Thinking of you all at home xx

In countries all over the world people refer to large cities as ‘the big smoke’, but Lautoka in Fiji takes the cake.

Lautoka (which henceforth shall be known as Lausmokea) is the home of Fiji’s cane sugar mill. It  burns heavy fuel oil (HFO), which is about as dirty as you can get, and belches thick black smoke across the horizon. The entire city is coated in a layer of black grime and on the welcome sign the stuff’s so thick you could write your name in it.

It’s not just the mill that produces black smoke either, it also spews out of the exhausts of most of the cars. We were warned not to spend the night close by because boats have been known to come out of there covered in black treacle.

Lausmokea also has the most sickly looking street people we have seen. It was really sad and gave us the feeling that people who lived there probably did not make old bones. Cane sugar however is one of Fiji’s biggest exports – and I am guessing that takes precedence over any environmental concerns there may be.

Lautoka was also the town where we had to do our coastal clearance (a kind of localised version of clearing in and out of other countries, which can be a bit of a pain in the butt). Our brush with the bureaucracy lasted a little longer than most too, because we had to remove Diane and Fergus from our crew list without them actually being present – since they left us in the Yasawas (where there was nowhere we could have cleared them out from anyway). We had it sorted out though. We had copies of their passports and flight tickets and had called customs in Savusavu – where we cleared in – to explain. Still, it wasn’t the way you are supposed to do things and the immigration man in Lautoka was a little bit grumpy with us!

It did give me a good opportunity to see the Fijian bureaucracy in ‘action’ though. We arrived with the crew of another boat in the fleet – Kharisma II – and did the customs side of things together. We turned up only to find that the customs people had gone to lunch (in Fiji lunchbreaks run from about 12 to 2pm) so we settled in for a wait. When it passed 2pm I began to get a little bit nervous that they might not be coming back. Paddy and I had previously had the experience of turning up to customs in Fiji at 4pm in Tonga only to find that everyone had decided to go home.

Normally this wouldn’t have been a problem, but we were due to meet our friends Janie and Bob in Musket Cove and if we couldn’t clear out on the Friday we would have to wait until Monday and they were only going to be in Fiji for a week. Luckily customs came to the party (eventually) apologising for taking a long lunch. That side of things went pretty painlessly and we were told that all we needed to do was see the man in immigration, who we were assured was ‘s0mewhere around’ – ‘Somewhere’ however, was most definitely not his office! So we settled in for what turned out to be another couple of hours waiting.

During this time I was able to identify three different types of official; people who stride about purposefully clutching sheaves of paper, people who stride about purposefully clutching sheaves of paper while talking into celphones and people who stride about purposefully clutching sheaves of paper and wearing hardhats. As you can probably tell, Fijian officials love their paperwork! Eventually Mr Immigration actually did turn up and, after giving Paddy a good telling off, decided to let us go.

We have been moored up in Musket Cove for the past week or so and, despite my pious ranting about villages being much nicer that resorts (which they are!), have actually enjoyed being tourists for a little bit. Things like guilt-free hot showers, washing machines and restaurant meals have been something of a novelty! Though I am about ready to move on now. It was also great to catch up with friends. I didn’t really realise how much I miss you guys back home until then. It was like a lovely postcard from the ‘real world’ we have left behind.

All going well we should be leaving Fiji for Vanuatu this weekend and the trip (again, all going well) should take about five days. We are full swing into preparation mode at the moment. Paddy’s been busy fixing all sorts of stuff on the boat and I’ve been horribly domestic. I’m pre-preparing meals for when we are on passage because our chief chef, Diane, has gone and I’m buggered if I’m cooking at sea! Yesterday I made a quiche, with homemade pastry – because you can’t get the readymade stuff here (thank you Edmonds cookbook!) and today I pickled what was left of the giant tuna we caught on the way to Tonga (yes, I actually pickled something – stop choking you lot!) Tomorrow I am going to have a go at a pizza base recipe Diane gave me and make some pizzas to go in the freezer – I’m actually starting to scare myself a little!

Part of the preparation was a reprovisioning trip to Nadi (pronounced Nandi) though I didn’t end up getting everything I was after. It’s easy to get to Nadi from Musket Cove, you just jump on a Ferry to Denarau marina (which takes about an hour) and then catch a bus to Nadi for $1. Paddy and I decided I might as well go by myself and save a ferry fare. In hindsight that wasn’t one of our brightest moves. Nadi is fine if you are a bit older or you go with someone else, but if you are a young (ish) – hey, let me dream! – woman on your own, everyone tries to ‘help’ you. I never felt threatened but I definitely felt as if I was seen as an easy mark and, after repeatedly shooting down offers to carry my bags, I was getting a little over it. One fellow I couldn’t quite manage to shake though. He pounced on me and tried to steer me towards the local market. I told him I planned to go there anyway (I actually did – we needed fresh fruit and vegetables) but was looking for a hardware shop to get stuff for Paddy first. That was my first mistake – I’d asked for directions. He told me where to go and offered to take me there but, after assuring him I could find it quite well on my own and that I would head to the market afterwards, he let me go. I thought I’d lost him but he reappeared when I stopped at a craft market on the way to the veggie one. It was then that I got a local example of the ethnic tensions that exist in this country.

(History lesson time): When Fiji became a British crown colony in the 1870s, the British governor decided the chiefdom system worked rather well for them and ruled the country through its existing chiefs – whose communal land was protected from ever being sold. More than 80% of Fijian land is still owned by indigenous Fijians today. To keep said chiefs happy the British governor decided to exempt Fijians from working on European plantations, instead turning to indentured Indian workers. Tens of thousands of Indians arrived in Fiji to work out 10 year contracts and when those expired many decided to stay. Because they didn’t have access to communal farmland many went into business and today the vast majority of Fijian businesses are owned by Indo-Fijians. This has caused all manner of political tensions – particularly in terms of property ownership and political clout – but that’s a story for another time.

Back in Nadi my new friend (an indigenous Fijian) was busy trying to haul me away from the craft stalls (many of which were run by Indo-Fijians), saying I should only buy from local people and the Indians weren’t local. He kept on at me and pissed me off enough that I pretty much bought the first thing in front of me – a jade bracelet (Paddy reckons it’s actually glass but I don’t care, it’s pretty and I like it!). I was later told (by Indians who had apparently been in Fiji for generations and considered themselves locals) that he made a habit of that and to watch out for him. And sure enough, he seemed to pop up wherever I went. I did end up going to the vege market, where the indigenous locals were lovely, let me do my own thing and weren’t pushy at all – I also got some great deals ($2 for half a tonne of eggplant, $1 for a big pile of mandarins) so it was a rather successful mission in that respect. I refuse to get involved with Fijian politics for many reasons and I certainly will not be taking sides when I’m shopping, but it did make for a rather exhausting day!

To top it off, just as I was about the board the ferry, I had our beer (a carton of Vonu – a local drop that is really quite nice) taken from me. A very officious ferry spokesman told me that, since the military takeover, they refused to take alcohol on board (I’m not sure what his reasoning was there. Did he think they would be boarded at gunpoint and have the booze confiscated?!) He was good enough to give me time to get my money back for the beer though. The funniest bit was the marina security guard who suggested I just take the bottles out of the box and hide them among the rest of my bags – I would have too if I didn’t have the ferry official keeping a beady eye on me the whole time! So I arrived back beerless and tired but with lots of fruit and veges and a lovely bracelet!

PS – you may have already seen this, but if not – check it out. KFC is pulling out of Fiji because they refuse to reveal their secret 11 herbs and spices to the government. Priceless! http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/world/5388944/KFC-flies-the-coop-in-Fiji

For those of you who aren’t facebook geeks – I have put up enough photos for you to be thoroughly sick of.

You can find the public links for them here:

Fiji (general)

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150326314601420.390850.619276419&l=0842b70da6&type=1

I know what you are all thinking but this is not a blog about drunken sailors (we are all teetotalers of course!)

Instead of poor quality booze, ‘grog’ in Fiji is what the locals call kava.

Kava is a mild narcotic brewed from the root of a type of pepper plant. It looks like dirty dishwater, tastes like slightly peppery mud and makes your lips and tongue go numb. It also has huge cultural significance for Fijians and is central to a practice called sevusevu – a way of asking for permission to enter a village.

The first time I tried kava was actually on a tramping trip in the West Coast of New Zealand. A friend had bought some back from a trip to Fiji, along with a ceremonial bowl. When we reached the DOC hut we were staying at we had our own kava session – sitting in a circle, clapping our hands and trying not to gag on the stuff.

After a few rounds I was utterly convinced it was having no effect on me. I was still convinced it was doing nothing when I dropped a torch down the long drop and then spent 20 minutes staring at the light shining up from the darkness. I spent about another 20 minutes trying to make my way back to the hut (which was only a few meters away from the longdrop) before admitting to myself that perhaps my brain may have in fact gone on a wee holiday. I woke up with a stinking headache and swore I would never touch the stuff again.

Luckily so far participation in kava ceremonies has been voluntary. I will drink it if it would be insulting not to, but I have no intention of taking part in any extended sessions!

The process of giving sevusevu is a really good way to get a bit of an insight into Fijian village life. Basically, if you are a visitor then you present kava to the village chief. This in turn gives you free reign of the village, beach, snorkeling and diving spots. I must admit we probably didn’t really appreciate the significance of this at first until we had it explained to us in Savusavu by a local girl called Leiwa (we were really impressed by her. She was a representative of the junior sailing club and was also pretty much running the show at the marina where we were moored. She was a really great help when Paddy had a few issues with customs over some packages.) She told us that Fijian villagers saw the ocean and beaches as their backyard – so parking a yacht nearby and clambering around on the beach is the equivalent of pitching a tent in someone’s garden. So in that way, offering kava is not much different from buying someone a beer for letting you stay in their backyard. We thought that was kind of cool and were happy to take part.

Sevusevu can be very ceremonial, with the ‘head man’ of the village speaking on behalf of the chief (Fijians love their hierarchies) and the chief accepting the kava. If possible visitors should elect their own chief and head man to speak on their behalf too. The formalities aside, everyone grins, shakes hands and has a bit of a gossip before (if they want to) settling in for a grog session.

We have been here for a while but the terminology still cracks us up. When we were in Eakau village they very earnestly told us they wouldn’t be able to have a grog session until after church ( I had a few issues keeping a straight face over that one!) They have ‘grog shops’ in the towns too which always make me smile.

A history lesson from Captain Paddy:
The term ‘grog’ actually came about when a senior member of the British admiralty decided that sailors should only be allowed watered down rum. Funnily enough the sailors didn’t take too kindly to this and referred to the offending official as ‘old grog’. Since then ‘grog’ has been synonymous with booze of questionable quality. Goodness knows how it transferred to kava!

We have definitely seen two sides of sevusevu though. In the smaller villages it is a great way to get to know the locals and show that you appreciate them letting you into their home, but when you enter a full blown tourist operation where you are expected to pay for everything anyway it does seem a little cynical. We were a little dubious when we were expected to do sevusevu at Sawa-I-Lau island, where we were also charged $10 a head to swim in a cave that they keep locked up. It was a fresh water pool like the one we swam in in Tonga but not half as nice. There were so many tourists and teenyboppers in bikinis that it felt more like a public swimming pool with rock walls – so they would have made a packet. Don’t get me wrong – I think it is great that they are making the most of their natural resources, but in my mind sevusevu and chasing the tourist dollar don’t really sit well together.

Where it seemed to clash completely was at Blue Lagoon. Blue Lagoon was the set of the tacky 1980s movie/soft core porno that shot Brook Shields to stardom. Ironically the ‘isolated paradise’ where the film was set is now swarming with tourists, plastic deck chairs and cruise ships. It is also full of ‘no tresspassing’ signs telling you where you can’t go unless you are staying at a resort or are part of a Blue Lagoon cruise. Blue Lagoon Cruises appear to have the monopoly over a good chunk of the island, and most of the ‘no trespassing’ signs belong to them. The rest is carved up between the resorts and private owners. In a way it is a bit like the McDonalds of the Yasawas where you can go for a McHoliday, hang out with other tourists on white sandy beaches and sit in McDeckchairs – but only if you buy a McCruise happy meal. We didn’t give sevusevu to the resorts or the cruise company but to a woman who owned a patch of beach where we had a bonfire on to get rid of some of our rubbish, so in that way it wasn’t commercial. I guess it was also a strike for women’s rights because normally only men can accept sevusevu – but you certainly didn’t get that nice vibe you do from a village.

Just around the corner from Blue Lagoon though is a lovely slice of the real Fiji – Naviti Island. Naviti Island’s claim to fame is the wreck of a WWII plane that you can snorkel on. It takes a bit of bush bashing to get there and the wreck has certainly seen better days (though there are lots of pretty fish living on it) but the real beauty of it is the location which is idyllic and so peaceful. A woman named Clara and her husband (whose name was something like Tobias but not quite) own the land where the wreck is. They are a lovely elderly couple, full of stories and happy to share their slice of paradise. They won’t accept money for tramping all over their property but those of us that came with gifts (like t shirts and fruit drink) were rewarded with fruit and beautiful nautilus shells. Paddy and I both agree it is definitely a place we would like to come back to and spend more time. Across the bay from Clara’s is Samosamo village where we had a similar reception to Kia Island. There were kids lined up along the beach to help us pull our dinghy in – we presented our kava and were given the grand tour of the village. We then had the option of having afternoon tea (a cuppa and roti cooked in coconut cream) for a small donation to the island’s kindergarten. Those who arrived before us (the walk to the plane wreck took quite a bit longer than Paddy and I had anticipated) were also shown how the roti were made from scratch. Afternoon tea was a great chance to chat with the locals and find out about the village, which is much bigger than Eakau village (about 300 people). They have a kindergarten, a primary school with 100 students and a secondary school with 200. As soon as people found out we were from New Zealand they started on about the All Blacks (which of course I know stuff all about, but managed to bluff – I hope – convincingly). Interestingly about every Fijian we have talked to about rugby supports the All Blacks over the Fijian team (though of course the All Blacks is full of Fijians!) The villagers were lovely and friendly and the kids super excited to be gifted with balloons. It just felt really genuine.

We have visited so many lovely places but have only been able to spend a day or two in each (we have a deadline because we are meeting friends of mine at Musket Cove very soon). But we are already putting together a list of places in the Yasawas that we would like to come back to and spend a decent amount of time.

PS – we haven’t had internet access for the last few days but should have it back again soon. When we do I will put up more photos on Facebook and send out a blog with the links.

Sorry for the blog double up – I have a bit of a backlog and am sending them all now that we have a bit of downtime.

Our jump off point to the Yasawas was Kia Island – a little place where I learned a lot. The island is broken up into three villages, the largest boasting just over 100 people and the second largest, Eakau village, 80. We spent just over a day in Eakau village and I was really struck by the people there. They have so little materially, but they are happy and healthy, grow and catch all their own food, collect rainwater and make the most of the resources all around them.

A local boy called Valance, who wants to be a teacher when he grows up, told Paddy and I all about the island’s resources – the ocean, the land, the weather. He asked us for a ‘blue pen’ (a ballpoint) and was absolutely rapt when we said we would bring him one the next day.

A group of us visited the school in Eakau and donated some books we picked up from the Opua yacht club, courtesy of Opua primary school. We mentioned to Valance the night before that we had books and he rushed straight up to meet me as soon as we arrived, hopping from foot to foot in excitement. I divvied up the books I had among he and his friends and we made a group presentation of the rest to his teacher. I have never seen kids so enthusiastic about books. They were just old school journals with short stories and poems (mostly from the 80s and 90s) but they pored over them like teenage girls with a Dolly magazine. The few ballpoint pens I gave Valance drew still more excited cooing, which gave a stark realization of how much we take for granted.

At the school we were treated like celebrities with all the kids wanting to shake our hands. It was a very strange feeling. A little sad because we have so much and they so little and amazing that we could give them so much pleasure just by turning up in their village. There was no feeling of jealousy or bitterness over the ‘rich’ foreigners – their pleasure at having us there and their interest in who we were and where we came from felt absolutely genuine.

They were also so proud of their village – constantly asking us what we thought of it and beaming when we told them how lovely it was. They have a lot to be proud of too. It is one of the nicest villages we have seen so far. It is beautiful and clean and really tidy. There is not a scrap of litter anywhere, which is a far cry from any of the places in the islands we have visited so far. They don’t have much, but they really take pride in what they do have.

I also have a new best friend – a 20 year old girl also called Anna. She was so taken with the fact that there was another Anna on the island that she pretty much latched herself to me, calling me her ‘nameshake.’ She went to secondary school in Labasa but decided to come back to the village after three years because she didn’t like it. She told me she didn’t want anything other than to stay on the island and that she was really happy there, which I thought was quite amazing. We wondered how the village managed to keep its young people once they were sent away to secondary school, but Anna tells me quite a few come back. It does make you think really. We westerners have so many options, so many things to do and places to go, yet there is so much discontent. We have so much but we always want more, we get bored and unhappy so easily. I guess our lives are much more complicated in a lot of ways, but here you have a group of people who have land, food, a beach, a school and not much else and they seem so damned happy. I am actually a little bit jealous in a way – I wish I could be like that.

The villagers showed Diane and I where they grew their food and a local girl clambered up some trees with a big stick to knock us down some fresh papaya which we bought from them. Each family has their own garden plot for food and the trees – like papaya and bananas – are communal.

Our guide to the gardens gave us a sad example of what we have that they don’t though. The very matter-of-factly pointed to a grave and told us her youngest son was buried there. He was born with a cleft palate and died of complications when he was two years old. In many other countries surgery could have fixed that and in all probability that little boy would still be alive. She just seemed to accept it though and wasn’t fishing for sympathy – she even pointed out that he had a lovely view where he was buried. I’m afraid I was a little lost for what to say to that.

A western influence is definitely apparent in other ways though – particularly in their education system. At the primary school, written up on the blackboard along with ‘strive to learn’ and ‘live a clean life’, is ‘always speak in English’. The kids’ grasp of English is amazing – even the tiny ones – but a Labasa local told us that because of this the Fijian language is going into decline. You still hear people speaking it and there are posters in Fijian on the walls at the school but English is definitely the main focus. In a way it is good because it gives the kids more options and opportunities, but there are definitely shades of the way speaking Maori was discouraged in New Zealand schools back in the day and it would be a real shame for them to lose that part of their culture.

On a brighter note our fishing drought has been broken. On its first outing the mighty Speights lure came up with the goods – a 15kg Waloo (Spanish mackerel) which tasted absolutely delicious. We’ll keep you posted on progress but so far the score for Fiji is; Speights can: 1
Fancy expensive lures: nil

PS – I have lots of photos of Eakau village and me and my nameshake which I will post when we have better internet connectivity xx

(Sorry that the blogs are a little out of order here. I still have another Tonga one to go but I’m going to cheat and jump ahead to Fiji)

We have been in Fiji for a couple of weeks now and have had quite an interesting time. Our first stop was a lovely little town called Savusavu where we met some amazing kids from the local yacht club. It’s a town that has tried to centre itself around sailing and has made it so any child who wants to learn to sail can, free of charge. As a result of this, Fiji’s four entrants into this year’s South Pacific Games all come from the Savusavu Junior Yacht Club. In an area of the world where there are often few opportunities for young people, we think this is really brilliant. I won’t write about this in any more detail though because I am writing an article on them for Cruising Helmsman magazine (everyone rush out and buy it!) and they don’t like publishing anything that’s already online.

From Savusavu we have traveled around a number of lovely bays (photos to come), done a bit of diving, met some awesome locals and failed miserably to catch any more fish. Though Paddy has created a couple of lures out of an empty Speights can (apparently fish go for blue) so we’ll see how we go with that.

For the past couple of days we have been anchored by a resort near a town called Labasa (pronounced Lambasa) and yesterday we hit the town in search of supplies. Labasa is a busy, dusty little town with Bollywood music blaring out from most of the shops. Like Savusavu there is a big Indo-Fijian influence with bright coloured clothes, saris and general tackiness aplenty (so of course I was right at home!) But by the end of the day we were sweaty, dusty and a little over it all – even I was tackyed out.

Our transport to and from Palmlea resort was a bit of a comedy of errors too. What was meant to be a bus was replaced by a minivan that had to take us all in several trips. This was all well and good in theory, but in practice a little challenging. Labasa township is an extremely bumpy half hour drive from the resort. An enhanced rainy season meant repair works on the roads weren’t able to be done so a big chunk of the road is rutted muddy track. There were eight people per trip, which was fine on the way there, but each of those people hadn’t seen a town for a while and were provisioning their boats so the return trip – loaded up with people, groceries, diesel and everything but chickens and goats – was a little cosy. Add to that the fact that we had to wait for an hour when we were done for our driver to pick up supplies for the resort and the whole thing was rather character building.

Our driver was amazing though, nothing seemed to phase him – he went back and forth, filling jerry cans with diesel and petrol and getting the money from us after, and all on a flat rate.

Unfortunately, after being left in a hot van for an hour, some of our groceries were a little worse for wear and our margarine had turned into soup. It also didn’t help that I, while trying to prevent a queue backing up behind us at the supermarket, helped our rather slow grocery packers by stuffing the margarine into a string bag instead of putting it in plastic. This of course was a recipe for a margarine explosion – which happened quite spectacularly pretty much as soon as we got it on the boat. We had margarine coating the mainsail sheet (actually a rope -don’t ask me why they call it that. sailors are weird), all over the cockpit floor, down the stairs leading into the boat and – unbeknownst to me – all over my bum. I couldn’t work out why every time I sat down to clean up a patch more of it got spread around!

Then the police turned up. Diane kindly pointed out that my rear was covered in dairy product, but by then it was too late – they were already on the boat. We have seen a lot of police in Fiji. At pretty much every little bay we have stopped at the local constabulary has turned up to check us out, get our details and find out where we are going. We now have printouts of our crew list and details that we can just hand out to them, which makes the whole process much easier. John and Lynn from the Island Cruising Association say this it the first time in all the years they have done this that there has been such a heavy police presence. The police told them it was to ‘keep us safe’ but we haven’t felt unwelcome or unsafe for a second since we have been in Fiji – the people have been absolutely lovely. We suspect it is more of a way of letting us know they are keeping an eye on us and since we have absolutely no intention of causing any trouble I am pretty sure we will be fine (though in the interest of harmony I shall refrain from tackling Fijian politics in here). The police that have visited us have been polite and friendly and the guys that boarded after the margepocalypse looked quietly embarrassed to be standing their while we were scraping the stuff of the boat. I myself was trapped – I couldn’t go downstairs because everywhere I went I spread yellow goo, I couldn’t sit down for obvious reasons and I certainly wasn’t going to down-trow in front of the police! So I was left hovering around the cockpit like an idiot, trying not to turn my back on the police, while Paddy sorted out the paperwork.

It was rather embarrassing but we had a laugh afterwards and we managed to get the marg off everything (including myself) so no harm done.

The next leg of our travels will be around the Yasawa island chain, which hosts a series of volcanic islands, beaches and lagoons. It is a bit off the tourist beaten track and, though it is more accessible now through a catarmaran/ferry service, it is still a part of the world that many people never get to see, so we are really looking forward to checking it out.