60 and mostly ab fab!

4.9.20

Jo-tu enters the world

This morning, at two minutes past midnight, baby Jo-Ann was born at Puanangisu clinic.

I’ve just been to visit, she’s beautiful. Because she’s named after me, I’m not allowed to touch her which is an exquisite torture, but I touched her all over with my eyes.

I’d taken Sila up to the clinic yesterday morning for her weekly check-up. We’d been expecting the baby for the past few weeks. Sila’s tummy had been enormous and it was increasingly hard to believe that she still hadn’t given birth as the tummy grew bigger and tighter week by week. She looked well however her feet had begun to swell and I was a bit worried about that.

Elizabeth came up for the trip too. She had her blood sugar tested (18) and her blood pressure (very high) so things are pretty much normal for her in that regard; not good. We had another talk about eating the right foods.

“Jo-Ann, waet raes i gat suga in?” Elizabeth asked.

Again I explained the process of white rice being converted to sugar by the body, that it didn’t have sugar added to it. Again I described a good diet based on plenty of vegetables and salad. Again I forbade her eating white rice, white bread and biscuits.

“It’s okay,” said Elizabeth at the end of all that. “Mama blong bebe Tim, blad suga blong him emi 20.”

Pointing out other people with higher blood sugar levels seemed to be somehow exonerating, to Elizabeth anyway.

Anyway, it was bedlam at the clinic yesterday morning, which, by the way, was my second trip in two days. Only one nurse was working and there was a big crowd of patients and preggies, mostly from Pele who’d come across the wild seas by boat. The nurse didn’t do a full check-up with Sila but she looked her over briefly and they did discuss the swelling. A plan was made for Sila to return to the clinic next Wednesday and get a referral for a scan in Vila, and high time too, I thought.

We headed back to Bethel. I had toast with ham and tomato for lunch which was so good, toast is such a luxury when you don’t have a toaster. I had a nap in the afternoon while the wind raged outside. It’s been howling for days!

Joel wandered up at 5pm to tell us that Sila had some pains in her back. I asked him to time the contractions and when they became steady at ten minute intervals that would be the time to travel up to the clinic. I wasn’t expecting the baby to come that night; Sila’s last baby was born exactly thirteen years ago today so I thought this labour would be similar to a first labor.

I started making dinner at 6pm. I tried a new recipe I’d thought up, Greek and Japanese fusion. I call it Grapanese. I used the gyoza filling recipe wrapped in cabbage leaves instead of wonton wrappers and simmered them in my version of French onion soup. I suppose it’s a three way fusion, maybe Grenchanese would be a more accurate descriptor.

I was making couscous to go with the cabbage rolls when I saw torchlight wobbling up towards the house. Joel again, coming to tell me that the contractions were now ten minutes apart and that Jimmy was in the middle of a kava run up and down the coast so he and his bus weren’t available.

I told Joel I’d just eat my kaekae quickly then I’d be down in the truck. Tim had a chill from standing out in the cold wind, showing Joel the vegie garden when he’d come up earlier so I said I’d take everyone to the clinic. I changed my clothes, got Tim to fill our 5L water container with rainwater because there was no drinking water at the clinic last week, put some food on a plate and had just taken my first mouthful when the phone rang. It was Joel. The contractions were now five minutes apart. I dropped my fork, picked up the car keys and ran out the door.

It didn’t take too long for the crowd who was coming to get themselves sorted and into the truck with all the food, pots, bedding, clothes and everything else you need to bring to stay at the hospital. Onboard were Sila and Michael, Elizabeth, Janet, Helen, Big Espel and two other ladies, one was Michael’s sister. On the way up, just before the nabanga, Sila said something which was translated to me as ‘Jo-Ann, be quick!’ I sped up a little only to be told to stop at the nabanga where we waited while Elizabeth had a little chat to someone through the open window. After a few minutes I said, “Come on Elizabeth, we need to go.” And off we went, dodging potholes and people strung out along the sides of the roads wherever kava bars were in operation which was in plenty of places. At Takara, Sila told us that she could feel the baby’s head which had me pushing more firmly on the accelerator. I was so pleased to see the sign to the clinic shining in the headlights as we drove through Puanangisu.

Pulled up outside the maternity ward, I knew exactly where to go by now. I found myself directing the other women to help Sila out of the car and to bring her straight onto the ward which was dark and closed up, but thankfully unlocked. I found the light switches while Janet and Helen went off on search for the staff on night duty. Soon we had everyone and everything inside and then all we could do was wait and watch while Sila went through the excruciating business of transition. It brought back memories, I found myself clutching my stomach. The ladies massaged Sila’s back and bump, at least four hands smoothing over her body at once while she stood or sat. Two nurses arrived. Sila was seven centimetres dilated at seven thirty so she still had at least three hours to go and as it turned out, it was five hours. I sat with everyone for a while and then drove home at nine thirty as I couldn’t do anything more, plus I was starving.

The return trip was much less stressful without a woman threatening to give birth in the back seat.

When I got home, Apu was snoring so I ate two servings of Grapanese and it was good. I’ll make something similar again. Spinach or bok choy would work better as wraps I think. I’ll have to plant some.

Anyway, I’m glad bebe Jo-tu has come now; she has been long awaited and joyfully received.

As to the rest of the week, in brief, it went as follows.

Monday – first day of Term 3 and fifty percent of the staff were absent. We had no Year 3, 4 or 6 teacher and two out of the four secondary teachers were a no show. The Year 2 teacher didn’t arrive until 8:40 and the Year 1 teacher didn’t grace us with her presence until nine o’clock so as you can imagine, it was a quiet riot, not so quiet in places.

I cancelled lessons but spent four hours sorting the last of the old library books from where I’d found them in the darkest corners of the ‘old library’ which is basically a storeroom. I also unearthed a hundred brand new rulers, another 60 brand new pencil cases (I’ve already given sixty to Year 3, 4 & 5 students), a box of kick-boards that the swimming school teachers from Vila have been looking for since Cyclone Harold in April and thirty packs of one hundred brightly coloured sheets of A4 paper which teachers have been wanting but haven’t been able to get because none of the yearly funding has arrived yet which is another long story but apparently on the last day of August, the school received forty percent of the first installment of forty percent of the annual grant which should have been paid back in March. Hmm. Some schools in Vila have had to close as they had no money to pay for electricity and water.

After sorting all that stuff I took a truckload of kids back to Epule due to the lack of teachers.

Tuesday – second day of term and fifty percent of the staff were away. No, you are not experiencing deja-vu, it’s just a repeat of Monday. I did manage to teach one class and worked with groups from another class after setting the kids to work, trying to work around the problem of the missing teacher.

Our library, note the 'slippers' outside the door

Interior of the library before school, it is even busier at break times

Wednesday – I took the day off. What the hell - when in Rome. No, I had a rash on my back, near my under-arm and it was painful. I was worried that it might be the beginnings of impetigo, well, can you blame me? Tim was booked to take bebe Tim up for a weigh-in so I thought I’d tag along and get someone at the clinic to have a look at the rash. Janet and Mary came too as they had the flu.

At the side road, we completely filled the back of the truck with people with flus and kids with sores who all needed to go to the clinic. We made sure there was enough bum room for one more passenger, Mr Kalo, who we collected a hundred metres up the road, He needed to go to Onesua school to collect some paperwork and he’d arranged the ride with us the day before, well, I’d actually arranged the ride for him as it was easier for me to do the thinking and get him organised rather than letting him fart around.

Several hours and multiple antibiotic needles later, we took the crowd up to Emua so they could buy cooked fish from the road market for lunch before bringing them back to Kingdom Road.

There’s no need for kids to develop sores so large that they need antibiotics. We’ve told the people at the side-road to let Tim know if sores need treatment. Obviously that plan has not worked.

As for my little rash, the lady who looked at it thought it looked like it was healing rather than getting worse (Tim thinks so too) so I will continue with the cleaning and dressing routine for now, no antibiotics required which is the best thing. It’s not as sore today which is good.

So. That was the week that was.

Hope your day is going well. I loved the sixty second per month video, a good way to keep a journal and it’s a very, very cute journal now you have a tail wagger in it. Give her a cuddle for me.

Love x x x x x x x x x x

PS: There has been a very large and dead whale washed up at Eton and everyone, school kids included and Elizabeth, have been going down to look at it. Eeeeeuuuuu! Hope it doesn’t start an epidemic with everyone touching it. I have no idea what they are going to do with that enormous, rotting carcass but the chief has been charging everyone fifty vatu per head for viewing privileges. Again, Eeeeeeuuuuu!

Friday 11 September 2020

Babies & fires

As I told you before, Jo-tu was born just past midnight last Friday morning.

Apparently the ladies who attended the birth celebrated by drinking copious quantities of kava until 4:00 am, then locked the door of the hospital before they crashed into oblivion. They slept so soundly that they didn’t hear the banging on the door which was the midwife trying to get into the clinic with a lady in labour who’d just arrived by truck and who proceeded to give birth on the concrete verandah since access couldn’t be gained to the delivery room. None of the ladies told me about this, I heard it at school from Leikarie who took great delight in sharing the story with me.

I decided to go and visit the new baby at eight o’clock on Friday morning. I thought that Joel would be busting a gut to see his new grandchild. The ladies at the hospital were in need of a thermos of hot water and a kettle so they’d asked me to see that someone delivered those things as soon as possible. I was pretty sure that that someone would be me.

Arriving at Bethel at eight, Jimmy came out to ask me if I could wait until ten o’clock as Joel wanted to cook some chicken to take to the ladies. Well, no, I couldn’t wait. Tim needed to go to Vila later on so I planned to be back by ten.

Jimmy said he’d take Joel and the food up in his bus later. Good idea, I thought, you’re here so why not? Then Espel and Joseph got in the truck and five year old Navit too, to my surprise. I tried to tell Jimmy that Navit should stay and at one point he agreed and Navit was told to get out of the car but Navit had his mind made up and as usual, dictated the terms. I really should have told all the kids to stay at Bethel and come up with Jimmy later on but I must have been tired from all the excitement the night before so I just drove off with the kids in tow. Really, the last thing the ladies needed up at the clinic was a troop of kids to arrive even though they were their kids. Jimmy should have realised this but he was probably hoping to swing some ‘me’ time.

By the time we arrived at the clinic, Navit was bawling. He’d had a cut on his toe from earlier in the day, one of the reasons that Jimmy used to send him up with me, to get it bandaged. It wasn’t a big cut, more of a scrape really. Anyway, by the time we got to the clinic, the two older kids had convinced Navit that he was going to get a needle. Navit wouldn’t get out of the car when we arrived because he was so worried about the needle.

I visited the baby. She is absolutely gorgeous, really doesn’t look like a newborn at all. Had a chat to the ladies who all looked very tired which I attributed to the birth but of course later discovered that they were hungover.

No one wanted to come back to Bethel, kids included of course, so after half an hour, I tootled back home, rather pleased to have a quiet journey without passengers.

The wind had been terribly strong for days. Someone decided to light fires on Friday afternoon which had us running to close the windows due to the smoke. Luckily the fires weren’t too close but they were close enough.

The next day was a different story. The winds were even worse than the day before and the fires started from early morning and were much, much closer. The first was only about thirty metres away on the other side of a patch of tall elephant grass, cordon trees and other jungly rubbish. We could see and smell the thick smoke, it was filling the house. We could hear the crackling. We could hear some shouts but we couldn’t see who was responsible.

This time last year, Mary had lit a fire in the same place in gale winds and gone to sleep under a mango tree. The flames had come all the way up to our mown area, embers falling all around. We used most of the precious water we had in our tanks to put the fire out. We looked at the movie clip the other day. I remember the sickly smell of burned vegetation lasted for weeks. Mary was so sorry that she cried and promised never to light another fire again.

Within an hour, two fires burned, then another and another. Who in their right minds would light fires on a day like today? This is a question frequently asked by Tim to me and vice versa at this time of year but it doesn’t appear to be asked by anyone else around here with two legs and a box of matches.

By the time Espel appeared at ten o’clock to tell me that Sila wanted them (me) to take some cooked chicken up to her at the hospital, I already had my response prepared.

“No, I can’t take you, sorry. Look at the fires.” I pointed in the direction of the blazes through the smoke swirling around us on the verandah. “The fires are too close. I can’t take the truck away today. Ask Jimmy to take you.”

I was pretty sure that Jimmy and his bus were at Bethel, just as he was yesterday. Espel didn’t tell me that he wasn’t, so that sort of confirmed it. If Jimmy was sitting down there, I thought, he could go and take the food.

Two hours later, Joel came up the steps, phone in hand to tell me that he’d just received news that Sila and the baby were being discharged today, now, and could I go and get them?

The smoke wasn’t as thick as before but the wind was just as strong and I feared that more fires would be lit that afternoon. I took the chance to have another talk with Joel about the continual fire problem and how we are worried to leave the house in case we come back to find it burnt out.

“Who lit that fire Joel?” I asked pointing to the first spot.

Mary lit it! I couldn’t believe it.

We then had a talk about the problem of Mary being allowed to light fires and what happened last year. I should have shown Joel the movie clip. We talked about how dangerous it is to light a fire in gale winds, how fires get out of control and how would you be able to stop any fire that is out of control? There is no fire brigade and we only have very limited water. We talked about the best times to light a fire, if you really, really needed to, would be on a day with no wind and in the early morning when everything is damp from the dew. Tim chimed in with some fun fire facts about damage to the earth and the air but he did it in a cranky voice and I’m not sure that any of that information was registered.

I’d really like to think that Joel understood our talk. Unfortunately, Joel likes to light fires as much as everyone else, perhaps more. No one seems to understand just what we are worried about. Whenever we talk about our fear of fire, I can see people thinking, stupid Australians!

I advised Joel to get Jimmy to bring Sila, the baby and the ladies home. Apparently Jimmy was out and about somewhere but was planning to be done by three. They’d just have to wait until then. It would probably take them that long to get packed up.

The ladies got home that afternoon so Jimmy must have picked them up. If he was driving up and down the coast it really wouldn’t be that difficult for him to make a deviation. It is also possible to hire a bus in Puanangisu, there are several in that village.

Not sure if Joel passed the message regarding our unhappiness with the fires along to The Family or if it was just a coincidence but on Sunday, no fires were lit until late that afternoon and that one was on some other families land. The wind had dropped too, thank goodness. It was nice to have a smoke free and quiet day for a change.

Last week, I had invited big Espel to come for lunch on Sunday. Will she remember or won’t she, I wondered as I made a banana cake and Tim made a pizza for the occasion. I didn’t have Espel’s number to phone her and she’d had a big couple of days up at the clinic with Sila and the baby. As it turned out, she didn’t remember. Tim and I had a nice lunch anyway.

Lewi and her friend, Evelyn, arrived after lunch. Lewi brought her phone to be charged. I gave them some cake and we sat on the verandah and had a chat. We talked about the baby and other things until the topic of conversation rolled around to diabetes or ‘sik suga’ as it is known here.

“If you have diabetes, this cake is no good for you. It has sugar in it. Sugar is like poison to people with diabetes,” I commented. “White rice and white flour, many white foods are bad for you. Brown rice and brown flour is much better but it is hard to buy them in Vanuatu.”

“So… brown sugar is good for you?” asked Lewi thoughtfully after putting two and two together and coming up with three.

Monday and Tuesday were fairly normal school days to my astonishment. The Year 6 teacher didn’t show up but the Years 3 and 4 teachers did after a whole week’s absence. I actually managed to teach each of my three classes on each day. The kids are out of routine though so it’s still hard work to swing them back into my way of doing things which I know they are capable of.

On Tuesday morning, I arrived at school at 7:40 am bearing Sophie and the Epulites in the truck.

At five to eight, I walked into the Year 2 room with an arm full of big books which I wanted the Year 2 teacher to read to her kids, to expose them to simple English language patterns. I strode into her room, never expecting her to actually be in the room because she usually doesn’t arrive at school until half an hour or so after the bell has gone. To my shock, she was there, sitting at her desk, working. Fifteen minutes after giving her the books, I spotted a man in a blue shirt walking around the school. He was an inspector and he was here to observe our Year 2 teacher this morning. What a fortunate coincidence that she had arrived ahead of time! I’m guessing she had been advised of his impending visit but I’m a little bit impressed that she remembered which day and time.

We woke on Wednesday morning to the steady rain we’d heard all through the night with half an inch in the rain gauge.

“Well that’s it. There’ll be no school today, it’s raining.” I said to Tim. It was a half joke made based on prior experience.

At 7:15 am, as I drove along the road towards Epule for my morning rendezvous with Sophie, the streams of water on either side of the road, sucked at the tyres and steering wheel so I tried to stay in the middle, passing sodden clumps of kids making their way to Matarisu and Ekipe schools. Matarisu is an ecole, a French speaking school.

I collected Sophie, Mr Aleck and six kids, managing to squeeze them all into the cab. Further along the road, another eight kids jumped into the tray. They kept their umbrellas up so I drove extra slowly but by the time we arrived at school, their bums were saturated from sitting down. They are probably better off walking rather than sitting in the back of the truck when it’s raining especially on the way to school. On the way back they can change their wet pants when they arrive home.

At ten past eight there was no sign of the Year 1, 2, 3 or 4 teacher nor any secondary teachers. I stood outside the locked Year 4 room with the handful of kids who had arrived. I was dripping wet by then just from walking from one undercover area to another. There is no guttering on the buildings so you pass under a waterfall whenever you walk under a roofed area.

At twenty past eight, no teachers had yet arrived and I was getting cold. I went to the Year 5 room where Mr A was hanging posters while his class loitered outside or ran around yelling with all the other kids.

“There are no teachers,” I said.

“Maybe they are all asleep,” he laughed.

“Are they drinking kava at night? Is that the problem?”

He laughed and said, “I’m not sure.”

“There are no teachers and I’m wet. Look at my hair,” I shook some droplets his way. “I’m going to go home and get dry.”

“Oh. Will you teach my class?” he asked, walking over to the timetable on the wall.

“I’m meant to teach your class at nine but no, I’m going to go home and get dry and I will do other things at home today.”

I was a bit pissed in all honesty. Mr A wasn’t worried about getting his class into the room to start work and it was already twenty past eight. The other two teachers were also missing prime teaching time by not even showing up to school. One lives in the village where the school is located, the other lives one kilometer up the road. Their behavior is disrespectful towards their students and it’s disrespectful to me, having us standing around waiting for them to make an appearance. Yesterday, my last words to the Year 4 teacher were, “I will see you at eight o’clock tomorrow morning for our lesson.”

It’s also difficult to try to teach a quiet reading lesson when half the school is running around bellowing at, and ‘killing’ each other; when one kid has hit another with or without a stick, the bawling one will tell you, “hem i kilem mi.”

I was a bit over it. So I went home and dried off and had a cup of coffee.

Yesterday Tim went to Vila to lodge our Police Clearance forms which we need for our new visa application. He also needed to push our return flights back another eleven months which is the maximum push back allowed. It’s funny because there are no flights in reality. The one we’d been booked on towards the end of this month was non-existent as it had been cancelled months ago but we have to have the paperwork for the visa. He managed to get both jobs done quickly and called in at Traverso on the way home to pick up onions, corn and capsicums. Potatoes are finished apparently; goodness knows when we’ll see them again. He saw a deboned leg of lamb so he snapped that up and roasted it for dinner last night. It was succulent!

Today he’s going to attempt making bread rolls so we can have lamb rolls for lunch. And maybe lamb rolls for dinner too.

It was a week ago today that Jo-tu was born. I wonder if she’s meant to go to the clinic today for a check up? Haven’t heard a word. I’ll wander down later and find out what’s happening although if it is today no doubt Lewi or someone will wander up in the next half an hour and tell me that they are ready.

Have a lovely day x x x x x x x x x x

Friday 18 September 2020

Anything-can-happen-any-day

This week, anything-can-happen Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday went pretty much according to plan; they were relatively normal days and I managed to teach my scheduled three classes on all three days. Haven’t had a ‘week’ like that for months.

What am I saying? I didn’t have a week like that at all!

On Tuesday and Wednesday I did teach classes but not on Monday because on Monday, it rained. Not flooding rain, not problematic-in-any-way type of rain, just regular type of rain. It fell over Sunday night and into Monday, just over an inch (30 mL) all totaled.

On Monday morning, on the way to Epule, I picked up Joylci, Jaylene and Espel who were walking along the road from Bethel to school.

“Navit and Annieline, Michael and Joseph, are they coming to school today?” I asked the girls.

“No. It’s raining,” they replied.

I rolled up at Epule at to find Mr A waiting, alone. Through the rain, I could see all the kids hanging around their houses, none of them ready for school.

“The children are not coming to school today?” I asked Mr A.

“No, it’s raining,” he laughed. “They are under their blanket.”

Well, maybe some of them.

We drove further into the village to see if Sophie was coming to school. An older lady standing outside yelled our enquiry to Sophie who was in her house then the old lady yelled Sophie’s reply back to us.

“Sophie i no kam todei. Plenti ren.”

Arriving at school, I could see no teachers and few students but I could see the writing on the wall after twenty months of life in Ekipe. I dropped Mr A at school, turned around and went home to work on reading record analysis.

On Wednesday, at recess, I could tell that something was up with some of the teachers. Leikarie, Winnie Joe and Julie were talking in hushed but rapid language with Rachel, the Class 3 teacher in her classroom. I was in there tidying up the book boxes.

After the other teachers left, I asked Rachel if anything was wrong. She told me that her fourteen year old son had run away from home. After some surveying I found out that the son had been hit by his father on Monday night, for some transgression. The next morning, he’d been given money to go and buy bread in the village so he took the money and ran. It wasn’t much money, only sixty vatu about 75 cents, it wouldn’t get him very far.

Rachel and her family and friends had formed a posse and searched the village on Tuesday evening but hadn’t located Jeff, the son. They’d spoken to his friends and phoned one of his friends in Eton where Rachel’s family had lived for a few years before moving back to Ekipe.

“I worry for him because he committed suicide before,” Rachel told me.

“You mean he tried to commit suicide,” I suggested, because if he’d actually managed to commit it, surely he wouldn’t have still been around to have run away.

“No, he committed suicide but the rope was too long.”

After further surveying, I discovered that this event had occurred seven years before, back when Jeff was only seven years old and the family had recently moved villages again.

I wasn’t worried about Jeff and I told Rachel exactly what I thought.

“He’s run away to make you worry and guess what? It worked! You’re worried. I wouldn’t worry about him too much. When he gets hungry, he’ll come home.”

I started work with Class 3, my last lesson for the day. At the end of the time, Rachel said, “So this is your last lesson?”

“Yes,” I confirmed.

“So, you will take me to Eton so I can look for my son?”

“No,” I replied. “I need to take the Kindy children home.”

I wasn’t about to go wandering all over the island looking for a wayward boy who could well be hiding in the bush just around the corner.

Anything-can-happen Thursday dawned bright and beautiful. I drove towards Epau school as I wanted to visit with a few teachers, particularly the Class 4 teacher, Yolland. I’d made another sixty readers and a set of laminated English alphabet posters for her to use with her class.

Half way there I came across a group of people walking along the road, with brand new mats in hand so I figured that they’d be heading to Epau for an important reason, hence the mats as presents. I asked them if they wanted a lift. They all piled in and told me the sad news that a young woman, only twenty five and also the mother of a small baby, had died in the village overnight and they were going to pay their respects. Apparently the young mother had been very sick for some time. Cancer, I thought. Magic, I was told.

I dropped them at a small settlement just before Epau. Crowds of people walked up the road from Epau towards us. I realised that the school would be closed today as everyone would be attending the funeral so I turned around and headed to the side-road at Ekipe to check off the next job on my to-do list.

Big Espel’s daughter had a large and infected lump on the back of her neck. Tim had noticed it the afternoon before when he’d gone to the side-road to check and dress various wounds. Before Tim could properly see the wound, a poultice of mashed leaves had to be removed leaving bits of green all through the open wound.

Tim had wanted to take little Sosa to the clinic immediately but Espel said she’d leave it until Friday when I was going up to the clinic with Sila and small Joan (Jo-Ann).

Tim worried about that lump all night. He couldn’t understand how it had happened. No, she hadn’t been stoned or killed, everyone said. No, she hadn’t been bitten by a milpat (centipede). Apparently this massive, weeping wound had just mysteriously manifested itself over the past three days.

“Have you heard about black magic?” Edwin had asked Tim.

Tim said to me that it looked like the wound had been caused by a blow to the back of the neck. He’d asked me to go and check on it after I’d been to Epau.

I went to the side-road and looked at Sosa’s sore. Ten minutes later we were heading twenty minutes north to the clinic. The chief’s wife had an infected lump under her eye so she came too along with eight interested onlookers, young adults and older kids who were keen to go for a trip to anywhere just for something different.

You’ll never guess who we saw while sitting on the grass outside the clinic? None other than Jeff, the runaway. He’d made it as far as Puanangisu and stayed with an older relative who’d made sure that he called his parents so that they knew he was safe. I offered Jeff a ride back to Ekipe but he’d already made arrangements to go back later that afternoon. I suppose he wasn’t too keen to face the music when he got home.

After the two patients had been attended to, we drove five minutes further north to Emua to call in at the road market that has vegetables, fruit and cooked fish for sale. Everyone loves to get a piece of freshly cooked fish. I suppose it’s a lot easier than doing battle with the ocean then having to clean then cook the catch.

After dropping everyone back at the side-road, I’d just walked in the door and put my bag down when my phone rang. The teachers at Ekipe wanted to go pay their respects to the young lady who’d died at Epau. I suppose she would have been a past student at the school.

Half an hour later I drove down to the school. An hour after I arrived, the teachers finished dicking around and finally piled into and onto the truck for the trip to Epau.

I wasn’t planning on sitting around eating a big meal in the company of the poor dead lady so I left the staff there, telling them to call me if they couldn’t find a way home.

“No, don’t leave your bag in the car, take it with you, perhaps you will find a different truck to come back,” I told Rachel when we arrived at Epau and she was debating as to whether she’d leave her backpack in my car or not.

I arrived home to discover that Tim and Michel had planted a mini pineapple plantation next to our vegie garden. Michel had given Tim twelve runners from his plants. They looked so good arranged in a big triangle to the eastern side of the garden fence that Michel suggested making another triangle of pineapples on the western side of the garden so after lunch they got more runners and planted them.

Pineapples on the left, those big bushy things in the fenced garden are carrots!

They also planted four of the big red hibiscus that I’d grown from cuttings. All the cuttings have buds and will be blooming within days. These flowers last two days which is quite unusual, most hibiscus only last for the day that you pick them then they close up by night. I now have ten of them dotted around. I don’t want my flowering bushes to crowd each other but I have enough room left for a couple of special ones. I saw pictures on Facebook the other day of a bright blue flower and another that was half blue, half pink. Think I need to carry some scissors in my handbag, they might come in handy.

I’ve got my feelers out for some coloured frangipani. There are some spectacular salmon, orange, pink and red frangipani in flower right now. You don’t think of frangipani flowering in late Winter or early Spring but some do here.

I’m also working on striking a couple of Bouganvillea cuttings that I took from two tree-like bushes at the clinic. They are so pretty, one looks like cherry blossoms, the other has a combination of hot pink and orange flowers. I’ve included a photo here but the pink and orange one was covered in bloom two weeks ago and has lost much of its colour now. In time, I can imagine cascades of brightly coloured Bouganvillea at the edges of our garden bordering the green jungle. Pretty, pretty pretty!

When you are able to visit I hope your socks will be knocked off by our (Tim’s) gardening efforts. This week, for the first time, I’ve been able to go to the garden and pick four or five different things to make a salad for dinner. Tonight we will have the first of our tomatoes. Can’t wait!

What else happened that was interesting this week?

Oh yes.

Elwood, hunter of monster rats, has recently adopted new tactics. After he landed, and killed that big rat a few weeks ago, yesterday he managed to catch another bigfala.

“Good boy!” said Tim, the proud father as Elwood brought it out from the jungle towards the house.

“No Elwood! Not under the house!” yelled Tim a few seconds later.

Elwood took the rat right up to the end of the house, under our bedroom which is almost level to the ground. No chance of humans reaching Elwood or the rat in that place. Tim was worried that the rat would be left there to decompose.

He needn’t have worried. Elwood flipped the rat around for a few minutes as he does with his toy rat, then he happily watched it run away. After a half-hearted attempt to winkle it out from where it holed up, he decided to come back inside for a few dried things and a little lie down. Catch and release. He may be the world’s first Greenie cat.

Elwood with the one that didn't get away

Anthing-can-happen Friday has gone as planned so far. Touch wood.

I’ve been back up to the clinic with Sila and the baby who is just so adorable, I could eat her up if I was allowed to touch her. We also had another mummy with her month old baby who was due for the first stik (vaccinations), Mosila of the well and truly infected leg, Helen – Mosila’s Aunty and Kati who just came for the ride I think. The young mum also brought her two year old who sobbed and sobbed when he got into the truck. I turned the music on and started driving and soon he sobbed himself to sleep in the back seat next to his mum. I thought that maybe he was sick but at the clinic I discovered that the little boy had been crying because he didn’t want to get into the truck. He was terrified of me. Normally the family lives at Lamin top, right up in the bush and he had never seen a person with white skin before, let alone one driving a truck to take him away somewhere. He was also terrified of the doctor but as the doctor was ni-Van, the little boy wasn’t quite as scared of the doctor as he was of me.

Okay, best go, might make some biscuits for Elizabeth’s fund-raiser at the nabanga tonight. It’s been cancelled three times running now. On the last rescheduled date, Sila decided to go into labour.

Elizabeth requested Tim’s help in ferrying the food down to the nabanga tonight. This morning, when I dropped Sila home, Elizabeth actually thought to make this arrangement several hours, rather than minutes, before the event. Usually the request goes something like this.

Espel appears at the stairs just on dark.

Espel: “Elizabet say he want to go to nabanga. You take him?”

Tim: “When?”

Espel: “Now.”

Gotta laugh. It’s easier after a drink or two.

Okay, hope you have a really good day. Stay safe and I’ll talk to you soon. x x x x x

Friday 25 September

60… & mostly absolutely fabulous

Turning sixty was fairly painless.

This weekend we celebrate our wedding anniversary… 40 000 years!

Ten years ago we were all sitting at Eratap quaffing a bottle of 1980 vintage Veuve Clicquot. I can still taste it! It was an exceptional bottle of champagne. The empty bottle is sitting on my kitchen bench. We remove the cork every year and have a quick smell.

Was it at Eratap that Stef proposed? I think it was a double celebration. He certainly strung it out carrying the ring around in the pocket of his shorts for days, waiting to find the right moment to pop the question. I knew he had the ring in his pocket for all that time and was terrified that he’d lose it. I remember telling him to get it over with while Tim and I had a massage. That little pep talk must have spurred him on because shortly after we arrived back, you came running up the beach with the ring on your finger. It was funny that he dropped it into the pool for you to discover as you walked past. Your first thought was that some unlucky lady had lost her ring.

“You like?” said Stef as you surfaced with the ring.

At the end of last week’s email, Tim was going to take Elizabeth and crew up to the nabanga with all their food, mats, blankets and what-have-you needed for her food stall.

“What time do you want Tim to come and get you,” I’d asked Elizabeth that morning.

“Four o’clock.”

“So… four thirty, five-ish?”

“Yes, blakman time.”

Tim drove down at five o’clock. The sun sets early at this time of the year, its dark by six. There’s no electricity at the nabanga, everyone operates by torch light. The nabanga kava bars are open by five o’clock. You’d think it would be a good idea to get down there while it’s light so that you can set up and start trading.

Tim sat around Bethel waiting. Waiting, waiting waiting. Preparations had been underway since early that morning but people were still fluffing around. They weren’t ready to load the truck until seven o’clock.

Meanwhile, at seven o’clock, I was sitting at home waiting for Tim to come back for dinner. The steaks were defrosted, salad picked and assembled and I had potatoes in water in a pan ready to cook the moment he walked in the door.

Tim had told me that he planned on taking everyone down at five, having two shells of kava then coming home. He hadn’t planned on staying.

By nine o’clock I’d put the potatoes in the fridge and cooked some eggs for myself.

I was in bed reading by the time he got home at eleven.

This week has been fairly uneventful. I worked at the school on Monday and Wednesday but not Tuesday as a baby had died in Epau so school was closed which I didn’t find out until I had showered, dressed and arrived in Epule to pick up Sophie by seven thirty.

There’s little point in reminding Mr A or Sophie to message me with any news of school closures. There’s usually no Digicel reception in Epule so the people six kilometres up the road all use TVL, which has now been taken over by Vodaphone and vice versa at Ekipe. We often can’t get TVL reception so everyone in this village uses Digicel.

On Thursday I visited Ekonak school at Epau where I did get to work with the teacher on guided reading groups. She’s got a bit of an idea but there’s a lot of tightening up needed. She’s doing pretty well for an untrained teacher who is not even sure if she has work at the school next year. Her classroom management is firm but friendly and she thinks up her own exercises instead of copying great tracts from the textbook up onto the board which is usually too hard for the kids to complete independently. Her exercises are more realistic and she supports them throughout.

My main goal whilst at Epau was to locate the $2000 donation of Sunshine readers made to schools in Efate at the start of this year and get those books into classrooms.

As I greeted the Principal, I spotted the two large tubs of books just inside the office door, acting as impromptu shelving. I removed the pile of paperwork and opened the tubs to reveal the six hundred, brand new books inside, just waiting for someone to read them. They had been waiting all year. I opened a package of books to show the Principal the quality of the text. He teaches Years five and six so the higher levels would be perfect for his class. I volunteered to sort them into order by levels with the lower levels based in the Year four room and the higher ones based in his room. Half an hour later the job was done. The Year two and four teachers were overwhelmed by the books. I’m glad they saw them as an amazing gift. Now all I have to do is make sure they actually use them.

Ha! Joseph has just appeared at the door. No school today, he tells me. He’s trying the juice scam again. He’s just gone away with a bottle of water.

Boy it’s hot here today, a distinct change in the heat, that sweaty hot blanket heat that just gets more and more intense until it breaks in April next year. Time to take a blanket off the bed and to remove the three Perspex panels we use to cover the big openings in the wall near the ceiling which are there to keep the house cool and to equalise the pressure on the roof in times of cyclone.

Cyclone season is just around the corner. We’re well stocked and the vegie garden is a boon.

We have an increasing supply of tomatoes now but the cucumbers are finished. The second lot of lettuce that we planted has turned out to be rocket so those plants will be pulled out as we did with the first batch. Tim did find some butter lettuce seeds the other day so we need to get them in. We’ll be picking our first capsicum today; the plants are loaded with fruit and flowers. The melons have been slow to grow; Tim says he might replant them. And the carrots, well, how many would you like? We have so many, there must have been a one hundred percent strike rate. They aren’t fully grown but I’ve been thinning them by pulling up the bigger ones as I need them.

It is wonderful to be able to pick your own salad

Breadfruit are back in season. Sea worms too. Eeewwww. We saw a photo of a big sea worm cook-up on FB the other day. They looked truly repulsive. Brave as I can be when presented with many new foods, I just wouldn’t be able to put one of those things in my mouth without retching.

Last week I found three new hibiscus at a road stall, dark orange, white and a fluffy light orange one with a pompom of orange coming from the centre.

I’d put some feelers out for coloured frangipani and not in a very subtle way. The other day as I was driving through Epule with Mr A in the car I saw a magnificent frangipani in full flower.

“Oh, isn’t that tree just beautiful!” I said to Mr A. “Mr Aleck, I have a job for you to do. I want you to get me a piece of that tree!”

On Wednesday, Mr A presented me with a chunky piece of that tree. On Monday, a student had given me a smaller piece from a different tree of the same colour. Now I have three special frangipani trees named Le-tap, Florina and Mr Aleck.

Mr Aleck's flowers

The Cats of the Damned have put themselves to sleep already this morning. Did you ever see the movie “Village of the Damned? Or ‘Children of the Damned? These cats could star in those movies. It’s freaky how they glide along like furry vampires, coming to a stop in a perfect equilateral triangle formation and swivel their faces towards you in perfect synchronicity. They do that a lot. Cue laser beams shooting from eyes.

Tim has just returned from a quick trip to the school to see Mr D about a letter for the visa. Apparently school is on today, kids and teachers all doing their thing. Hmm, was young Joseph telling the truth or was his teacher absent? I’ll follow it up with his father when I see him. Joseph can’t afford to miss one day of school.

Okay well it’s time to go get off this chair, maybe I’ll happen to walk past the fridge and get another peanut butter biscuit. Food continues to be excellent in this resort. Last night I made corn tortillas from scratch, well, from scratch using masa flour not the whole maize to masa procedure as we saw at midnight that night in Costa Rica!

Have a great day and give the others (Stef & Suki) a big hug. x x x x x

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