Tahuata

“What I like best in the whole world is Me and Piglet going to see You and you saying 'What about a little something?' and Me saying 'Well, I shouldn't mind a little something, should you, Piglet,' and it being a hummy sort of day outside, and birds singing.”

I am reading 'the Tao of Pooh' at the moment, having just finished 'Candide' by Voltaire, two perfectly appropriate books for these last days. 

We are anchored off a small island called Tahuata, in a bay known locally for the pods of dolphins that hang out here. They come each morning and evening, around 20 fins cycling around, occasionally flipping and spinning. I have been out to kayak amongst them, and hope to swim with them before we go. To convey the scene and mood of the bay stretches my descriptive powers to the limit, and I fear I will come across a bit boasty, but I think if I write it down it will seem more real. 

I must start with the colours of the sea. Jade with a sheen of turqoise, moving in patches to a heavy navy, the sun and gentle swell shifting patches of silver at 45 degrees. To the west, open ocean radiates patches of brilliant white where the sun comes through the clouds. Curving from north to east to south is the bay. At it's base, boiling white waves suddenly vicious on rocks. Above, a metre or so of bare black volanic rock, not going anywhere, then the green begins, everything arching out over the sea to catch as much sun as possible – hundreds of coconut palms, fat yellow coconuts visible from the boat. Trees and bushes, the passing clouds moving zeppelin shadows over them. The ridges and peaks maybe 300 metres high, tapering down to the north and south. The masts of the four other boats in the bay like matchsticks in front of a cooker. Our boat, on just one anchor, arcs slowly with the current, providing a constantly shifting panorama for those too lazy to move their own head from side to side. The same 30 degrees celcius it has been for the last 3 weeks, placated by a rising and falling breeze.going anywhere, then the green begins, everything arching out over the sea to catch as much sun as possible – hundreds of coconut palms, fat yellow coconuts visible from the boat. Trees, bushes, the passing clouds moving zeppelin shadows over them. The ridges and peaks maybe 300 metres high, tapering down to the north and south. The masts of the four other boats in the bay like matchsticks in front of a cooker. Our boat, on just one anchor, arcs slowly with the current, providing a constantly shifting panorama for those too lazy to move their own head from side to side. The same 30 degrees celcius it has been for the last 3 weeks, placated by a rising and falling breeze.

Time has flattened. I took my watch off a few days ago to see what it would be like. Strange at first but, for now at least, the days have seperated not into minutes and hours but into meals and sleep and the time in between each. I wake up at dawn with at best a vague idea of the programme for the day, and over crepes and homemade mango jam people state their intentions for the day and any work that needs doing. From this vague beginning the days seem to fill themselves -albeit at a leisurely pace- and before I know it I am settling down with a cup of tea to watch the sunset and play a little mbira. 

Yesterday was one such day. I had a single aim – to kayak 2 miles to the nearest village and go to the clinic to pick up some fresh bandages (the final symptom of the infection I have had the last few weeks is a big hole on the top of my right foot). All was going well until I tried to land the kayak on a particularly tricky jetty. The swell made the kayak rise and fall, but was never quite high enough to get a good grip on the slippery rocks. I tried playing it safe for a while but wasn't getting anywhere, so I took a deep breath and Went For It. The odds were against success, and sure enough I ended up in the water, the kayak was upside down and rocking about, and it took a good few minutes of dodging waves before I finally managed to haul myself and then the kayak onto land, heart beating fast. And oh no! Big crack in the kayak. Daylight visible through the hole. Shit. So I left the kayak on the dock, still noone else around (the village has maybe 100 people in it) and went to the clinic, which seemed to be the local transexual hangout (gender bending is an accepted part of the culture here), and got a fist full of bandages from the nurse there. Objective 1: complete. But what to do about the kayak? I decided the best course of action would be to hang around and chat to people for a while. After a strange conversation with some local youth trying to trade fruit for first whisky then cocaine (ignoring my repeated explanations that I had neither), surely enough I met the man who operated the local JCB, and he had some epoxy resin, so we went to look at the kayak and then he went home and came back with the resin, mixed it, and I slapped it all over the crack. He assured me it would dry in an hour or so, and (on his request) I bought him a big bottle of coke to say thanks, and then he went off an reappeared with a half dozen grapefruit as a gift for me. So there I sat, in the tiny bit of shade I could find, eating grapefruit and peanut butter and reading herman melville's typee, waiting for the resin to dry. 

I waited and waited and then the sun moved behind a cloud and it began to rain. Que lastima! The resin isn't going to dry now. Having missed the only boat back to my home bay, and not wanting go back without the kayak, I was in a bit of a pickle. So I decided to hang around a bit and see what occurred. 

After a while imspotted some kayaks heading towards me, and who should appear on a kayak but melanie, a french singer from the last island we were on, and the man whose boat she was staying on. Allah akbar! I asked them straight up if they could give me a ride home on their boat and they said yes. But first they had to fill their water, pick some fruit, then we all went back to their boat, me paddling fast but the epoxy holding ok even though it was wet still, where we ate meatballs and spaghetti and then they took me the couple of miles home. 

Now that we have moved to a bay that doesn't have loads of other boats dirtying the water, lots of water-based activities have got going. The hull has been cleaned, the coral admired, and people have dived into the sparkling sea from various parts of the boat and rigging. However, the chief activity is spear-fishing – swimming around with a snorkel and flippers and a big and mean looking speargun and shooting fish. Sounds simple but actually is both physically and mentally very demanding. Three people go out – two with spear guns, plus a support kayak to store any fish that are shot. Due to the hole in my foot, I have only been able to kayak so far, but it has been very good to watch Tom in action: he snorkels slowly, looking for an edible fish (some contain toxins from the coral and are inedible). When he sees one, he floats face down in the water for a second, then slowly, as if in slow motion, he dives vertically down to around 10 metres (but sometimes up to 25 metres!) where he waits poised (at 10 metres his weight is equal to the water so he neither rises or falls) before releasing the spear into the head of poor mr fish. If he is successful, he grabs the fish and holds it above his head as he ascends to the waiting kayak, before the sharks can steal it from him. The other diver uses her speargun to gently push away these sharks. Watching this and doing a bit of deepish snorkelling myself as I start to train to be a Badass Hunter, it becomes so clear that we, floppy, oxygen dependent humans, are in alien and hostile territory when underwater. Many dangers, no easy catches. a cr. 

So to mitigate our corporeal weakness, sometimes we need to use those big, dangerous brains of ours... I have been using mine to design and build a lobster net! Looks like this:

Built from plastic netting, string, cable ties and a tin can. I am immensely proud of it, but this pride is suspended until it actually CATCHES a lobster, which after 2 days in the water it hasn't yet. 

The few locals around also seem to spend a lot of time fishing and hunting. There are wild goats, pigs, chickens and horses on this island, and in preperation of any big party (especially weddings), groups will head up into the hills for a day or two and come back with enough meat for a feast. In these more remote valleys it is possible to be almost self-sufficient, and it seems that the only use locals have for money is to buy petrol and alcohol. Despite being a person who neither makes nor spends much money, this way of living I find so hard to imagine. But examples of it pop up here and there – last night a boat pulled up next to us, the three drunk and exuberent men inside offered to exchange meat and fruit for rum. We poured out half a bottle for them and they came back with a big tupperware of delicious meat with various fruits. We ate royally.