Computer says no

Garden, gossip & review

Saturday November 7 2020

Alien hibiscus in my garden

I asked Tim to take some pics this morning. I discovered a ground nest under the mango tree yesterday. It has one speckled egg about half the size of a chicken’s egg. Tim and Michel probably disturbed the mother bird when they cut the long grass a few weeks ago and the bird has fled leaving the egg. We needed to cut that grass because this mango tree actually has some fruit; the surrounding trees have none this year. Also, we are on a mission to clear the elephant grass from the southern edge near the house. Tim keeps talking about getting a JCB or similar vehicle in to remove the clumps by the roots, clearing that ground and also removing the hill of coral rock unhelpfully left behind by the builders on the northern side right next to the house. I want to plant a couple of citrus, frangipani and hibiscus in those areas.

The existing garden looks really good thanks to the frequent showers we’ve been getting every few days. The lawn is green and there are two or more bright splashes of colour on different hibiscus every day, they really catch the eye.

Tim is in the act of removing the Perspex panes from the three cyclone windows up high near the ceiling. The panes have been wonderful through winter, they kept the cold breeze out nicely but it feels hot and humid now so we’d welcome a stream of fresh breeze blowing through the house and I’m hoping that ‘let’s burn the jungle’ season is finished. Everything is damp so that seems to limit the number of fires that are lit. I’ve had all the louvres wide open, even throughout the night but a pocket of warm air sits under the ceiling with the Perspex in. He’s got the second one off now and I can feel the difference already, just lowered the temperature inside by a few degrees, nice!

The laplap bush is flowering. It’s like a zigzag flowering ginger spike, green with yellow tufts. I’ve never seen a laplap plant in flower before.

The basil plant that Willie gave us is also in flower, clumps of small purple ones. The bees love them so we’ll take cuttings and grow them in the corners of the vegie garden as we need to attract more bees to pollinate things.

We have watermelons and honeydew melons! They are still a while off being ripe but every visitor who sees them starts to salivate at the thought of what may come. Me too. I’m especially interested in the honeydew, if they could be as good as the ones we grew in Menindee, I’ll be a happy camper. At the moment they look like plastic toy fruit, shiny and perfect but small.

Garden Nov 2020 by Tim - turn up the sound for this clip

Okay, that was the gardening segment. I just love it all and I suppose that’s why I must go on about it.

Oh, one last thing, I stole a piece of the purple hibiscus that Elizabeth stole from Tanna the other day. Well, I did announce to onlookers that I was stealing it as I stood there cutting, unlike Elizabeth! The plant she grew has been severely taxed by passing bus drivers and pedestrians. It looks like it is at death’s door at the moment. I think it’s been planted in building rubble as it’s right next to the restaurant and I suspect not only is there limited soil and sun but that it is never watered. I’ve had my cutting in water in one of my antique glass bottles from Rosebank for nearly two weeks and it’s not showing any signs of roots budding as yet but it has six healthy leaves so I’ve put it out in the sun for a few hours to see if that might help it along. It is sitting next to another cutting of a large white hibiscus that I gleaned from the gas man.

The gas man delivers gas tanks once a month. On his last visit, Tim noticed that he had a number of leafy branches stuffed behind the seat in his truck. The gas man goes to many houses and walks through many gardens and has started to collect different hibiscus cuttings to plant around his house. I gave him two potted plants that I’d struck and didn’t have a need for as I already had several of the same kind planted. He left me with a piece of the large white and promises of a yellow one delivered on his next round. If I keep up my delighted reactions, who knows what he’ll hunt out for me?

I just read through my last email to check that I hadn’t told you about the gas man before but no, I hadn’t.

I did notice that I hadn’t given you the latest update on the hammer. Eventually, it was returned.

This week I have finished up my jobs at school. After analysing the reading data that I collected on one hundred targeted pikinini, my findings indicate that half of the students spanning three years of classes still have a very limited English sight word vocabulary and very limited understanding of simple sentence structure. Through my existing programs of reading and phonics, students have made some progress but I have a hunch that they could make more significant progress if I extend lessons by fifteen minutes and focus on developing increased knowledge of sight words and sentence structure. I’m working on developing resources to put this plan into action at two schools from the start of next year. I’ll test it out and gather data over the next year to evaluate if this triggers significant progress.

I’m very pleased with the evidence I have collected that shows students from Classes 3, 4 and 5 reading more complex texts with fluency and comprehension. At least a third of each class is working at independent reading levels.

Of course students would have probably made more progress if we hadn’t lost a term or more of teaching this year.

I noticed that in my last email I mentioned Edmonds latest news. When Michel was visiting the other day I thought Tim was accidentally going to let it slip; I wasn’t sure that any of The Family had been told. Next thing you know, Michel comes out and tells Tim that Edmond and Mrs Edmond are having a baby and that the baby is three months along. Last week, Edmond told us it was one month. At that rate of growth, this baby will be born before the end of this month.

Edmond is on a bit of a roll at the moment, he’s the talk of town and not just because of his reproductive talents.

He came out to Bethel last weekend with a load of kava from Epi (via his missus’s family in Epi) to sell to the locals. There’s a roaring trade done at the nakamals out here on every night of the week, even Sundays which I find surprising given the strong Christian beliefs of most of the population. Stall holders are happy to buy kava from other islands to do a squeeze and make a few vatu. A bar that sells alcohol usually has more than one type of booze on offer. Kava drinkers here enjoy a shell of kaka blong Malekula at this stall and a shell of kava blong Epi at the next, maybe Penetecost at the next and so on.

Anyway, on Sunday morning, Edmond came up to charge up his phone, had a very quick chat to Tim and left. Tim said E looked like he was about to fall asleep. Maybe he’s gone to have a nap. I suggested.

He didn’t return until later that afternoon to collect his phone. Again, it was just a pop in. We didn’t think anything more about it.

The next day, Tim heard an interesting story about what E did on Sunday from a couple of ladies who called in for a glass of cold water when they were coming back from the gardens. He wasn’t sure if he’d interpreted the Bislama correctly when he was telling me what he thought he’d heard. It sounded quite bizarre.

That day after that Michel visited Tim. As they sat, chewing the fat, Michel told his version about what had happened on Sunday.

A group of relatives from Vila decided to visit Bethel on Sunday bringing chicken, bread and salads to have lunch with Mary, Michel, Janet and their family. They were going to travel in two trucks that were owned by the family and used as the mainstays of their transport business. The first truck was the same ute that we’d hired last year to tow our truck home when it broke down on the side of the road (no NRMA or similar here). People arrived in the ute, unloaded themselves, their mats and food then settled down under shady trees to enjoy the day.

Michel was chatting with the men when they saw E stroll past and jump into the ute which was parked at the front of the restaurant. As he drove away he yelled out of the window that he just needed to go down to the main village and wouldn’t be long. They were all quite surprised by this but what could they do? The ute had disappeared down the road.

Several hours later, the ute came limping back, with damaged hide and lame in one tyre. According to eye-witnesses the ute had wrestled with some coconut palms and other large objects when it dived off the track and weaved through uncharted jungle territory down near the church. Mechanical failure? That would appear more logical than driver stupidity.

Upon landing, E got out of the truck and walked away from the owners of the truck without a word. I think that may have been when he came to collect his phone from us.

Meanwhile the ute sits on the grass at Bethel. It’s now partly covered with a tarp, possibly to try and protect it from the rain. It has been parked so that you can see the front of it as you drive past but the damaged parts are out of view and there must be a fair amount of damage if it can’t be driven back to Vila. That vehicle would earn 13 000 vatu or more each day – that’s what we paid for the few hours that we hired it. Now, it’s earning nothing.

I stopped and picked up Elizabeth on the side of the road when I was on my way to collect Sophie from school on Thursday. No mention of any of the drama from Elizabeth, she was, in fact, unusually quiet. The conversation went like this:

“Hello Elizabeth, do you need a ride?”

“Yes thank you.”

“Where are you going?”

“To the (unintelligible).”

”Where?” (I need to know where to drop her and I’m hoping that it’s somewhere in Ekipe because this Uber is already booked to go to Epule).

“(unintelligible)”

“The church?”

“No.”

“Ekipe?”

“No.”

“Yu stap wea?”

“The board meeting.”

“The board meeting? Where is the board meeting?”

“At the church. Jo-Ann, what is the time?”

“Three o’clock.”

“Oh. I’m late.”

“What time is the meeting?”

“It start at one o’clock.”

“Yes. You’re late.”

And that was it. No mention of any other little things that may have been headlining on the front page of The Family Daily Times.

Now what I should have said to spark the conversation was this…

“Elizabeth! Has Edmond bought a new truck? The truck on the grass near the restaurant?”

But I’m not that mean. And I didn’t think of it until later.

Okay I’m nearly done for now but before I finish off, I have to tell you about the restaurant we went to on Sunday in between Edmond visits, probably while he was in the act of trying to enact a short-sighted rally car driver who has misplaced his glasses and his sanity.

We drove up to Emua to have a quick lunch at George’s place at Orovy Beach Restaurant while doing a rubbish run. We hadn’t been up there for three months. I know George has been battling since Covid put a stop to overseas tourists but he seemed to be doing a reasonable trade on the weekends. I had my mouth set for the fresh fish of the day. As we drove up, a car pulled away with a couple of expats inside. Oh good we thought. They’ve eaten and left so we’ll have the place to ourselves.

We parked, got out, walked to the entrance and then noticed the plank nailed across it. Closed. I’m very sorry for George. Luckily his wife just began permanent teaching this year so at least they have one income so they are luckier than many other business owners.

We drove away, our stomachs’ protesting. Bugga! Now what? Home to biscuits and cheese? We remembered that we’d noticed a new blackboard sign outside Bamboo Beach on the way to Emua. The sign had stated in wobbly painted print: Open for lunch. We decided to give it a go. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we discovered a gem closer to home? Maybe there would be fresh fish or even lobster? Perhaps the beach area would be perfect for swimming on subsequent visits? At the very least, we reasoned, we should be able to get a basic but decent meal which would probably consist of a piece of chicken, beef or fish, a scoop of rice or some chips and a scoop of Kentucky Fried style coleslaw which is a standard meal in most places.

A woman looked up with surprise and scurried away as we drove in. We didn’t spot her again until after we’d gone inside the undercover area, chosen a table, put our things down, walked to the front counter and stood there waiting for quite a few minutes. There was no signage at all so we had no idea of what might be on offer.

Eventually the woman came out from the closed in kitchen and looked at us. No hellos or smiles; stunned mullet mode.

I was starving so I got straight to the point.

“I’d like some fish if you have fish. Maybe you should tell us what you’ve got?”

“Fish,” she said.

“Two fish,” said Tim. “Drinks?” he added

“Lime juice,” she said.

“Good. Two lime juices please.”

“Eight hundred and fifty vatu every man,” she said.

She scurried off. We went back to the table and waited, somewhat hopefully.

The surroundings were pretty dismal up close. Four newish bungalows made of coral stood side by side on an outcrop of hard sand, far from the water’s edge but close to the road. They baked under the hot sun, no trees and no green and soothing vegetation.

We’d visited this place very briefly before Cyclone Pam. Tim had bought a beer but we’d passed on the curry offered for lunch. At that time they seemed to do a reasonable trade with tour buses and they’d started constructing two swimming pools.

Six or more years later the pools remain unfinished and the place looks like a construction site. There’s rubbish all around. The least you could do if you were operating bungalows and a restaurant would be to pick up the beer cans, wine bottles and sheets of rusted corrugated iron.

There was a lot of banging coming from the kitchen. This sounded promising.

We continued to wait. I wandered around trying to get a closer look at the coast and the sea. It was geographically close to the restaurant but a bit of a mission to actually reach it due to piles of sand and gravel and a curious number of half built concrete walls and slabs at various levels which made navigation tricky. Added to all that mess was all the scrubby and unattractive regrowth growing out of and over the mess. Eventually I found a small sandy beach that would be okay for swimming at low tide and there looked like an even better option a little further along but I couldn’t attempt to get there without having to climb up and over obstacles.

We waited. Still no juice. I wandered around trying not to look at the rubbish and thinking that with a bit of effort, the place could be cleaned up and the beach capitalised upon. I’d fill in the swimming pools and plant a shady garden in them.

After the woman had hatched the fingerlings, grown them on for a few years, caught them, cleaned and scaled then cooked them, she arrived with a tray bearing two tepid glasses of lemon, sugar and water and two plates of food. On each plate were soggy chips leaking copious amounts of oil and one small strip of fish which I would say was basa. And that was it. Interestingly enough, the fish must have been frozen and lived in the solar freezer where the non-existent ice for lime juices should have lived. The banging noises hadn’t been the sound of salad being chopped or fish being beheaded, no the woman must have been banging away at a clump of frozen chips or a lump of fish.

I was so hungry by then that I ate all the fish and half of the chips hoping that I wouldn’t ‘pay’ for it later. It was terrible. So disappointing.

Tim tried to take a photo but the camera refused to cooperate, saying “No photo! No photo!”

Now we threaten each other with going to Bamboo Beach when we want a laugh. Needless to say we won’t be going back there again.

Okay, I’m starving now, all that talk about food, even abysmal food has woken my stomach. It’s good old bacon, eggs and a hash brown for lunch with some home-made salsa. Maybe a mango for dessert. Mmmmm mmmm!

Friday the 13th

And Covid finally got here. Was only a matter of time and now, time is up.

The two possible outcomes are A) they’ll contain the case and we’ll be clear again when this person eventually tests negative or B) they won’t.

As a result of this one carrier who had arrived from the US five days before and was asymptomatic, twenty close contacts have been put into Q and two hundred more are being monitored but don’t appear to have had restrictions placed on them in terms of movement. Incidentally, Fiji had exactly the same thing happen with an active carrier arriving from America via Australia and NZ last week. This begs the question – why are countries allowing entry to people from the US which is experiencing a major outbreak of the disease thanks to that idiot and the other idiots in charge of that idiot?

Now we are in Scenario 2A. As from yesterday, Efate is isolated from all other islands with inter-island travel banned even though that technically wasn’t part of 2A but was meant to happen if Scenario 2B, community transmission, occurred. A couple of hours after the ban on domestic and international travel to Efate was announced, a plane bearing repats from NZ arrived in Vila and unloaded so it was like, oh, except for that planeload. And the other one from China. Sheesh!

On the upside, Silas is now stuck in Malekula with his wife!

Oh, BTW, it took a couple of days to send a phone message to the population to advise them of the identified Corona case: ‘i kat fes konfem keis blo Covid19 lo kwarantin.’ Up until then they’d only announced it in the one local newspaper, the newspaper that you could only get hold of if you happened to be in Port Vila and if you could afford to part with one hundred vatu; that would be less than one percent of the population of this single island. Of course the goss was rife on Facebook.

My confidence is so high that I’m preparing for lock down.

We’ve got less than 2kg of plain flour which is a problem. We’re pretty well right for everything else though I maintain that you can never have enough loo paper, chocolate and brandy. If Tim wants to make one more dash into Vila, just in case, he’d better do it in the next few days. After the clinic trip on Tuesday, I’ll be withdrawing from public life for a few weeks to watch and wait.

He’s just told me he’ll go to Vila later next week. We’ve had a chat about that. I’m recommending sooner rather than later. Now he says he might go in today. It’s Good Friday so every teacher and his dog will be in Vila no doubt.

Which brings me to the subject of school and there’s not too many more days left.

Yesterday while taking Sophie and Mr A to school, I tried to pin Mr A down about what was happening with school next week. Are exams finished? No. One teacher told her class not to come to school today so she could write their exam! When exams are finished, what happens next? Are there any further lessons for the kids? If not, what do the kids do? Do you tell them not to come to school anymore? I tried all these questions and left long wait times in between. Eventually he told me that there would be a meeting. Okay, maybe there will be a meeting but I’ve decided that I’m going to make an executive decision on this one. I’ve decided that Monday will be my last Epule run. Tuesday will be the last clinic run for at least one month and after the clinic run, I’ll be conserving fuel and limiting any risk of infection by stopping at home.

I’m pretty sure that Sophie will be relieved. I think she’s been waiting for someone to make the call. On Thursday she told me that she felt ready to stop now and rest, the baby is due in a few weeks. She was waiting for Leikarie to finish the Class 1 exams. Well, we might as well be waiting for the Rapture, I thought. The old gal took Monday off this week to go to Vila so she’s obviously not too worried about exams. If she hasn’t done what she should have done by next Monday, bad luck, I’m making the call.

This time last year when I arrived back from Australia, every room was packed and stacked and not a teacher was in sight. That was at the start of the second last week of term, exactly this time last year.

Tuesday was an interesting day.

Last week, last Tuesday in fact, I told Janet and Michel that I wouldn’t be at school this week. I told this to both of them both separately and they both appeared to understand that I wouldn’t be available to pick up Annieline and Navit from Kindy at 12 o’clock and bring them home in the truck. I told them that I would be transporting Sophie to school in the morning as usual but then I would be coming home to work. I was very specific.

This Tuesday morning I picked up Janet and her bundles of food from Bethel on my way to Epule as I have done for the past few weeks while Class 8 has been boarding at school. Tuesday is Janet and Michel’s turn to cook. They share Tuesday’s cooking and security duties with people from the side-road. Normally I would take Janet to school and people would cook on an open fire under a rough shelter however it was absolutely pouring and the roof of the shelter was not waterproof so Janet asked me to drop her at the side-road where they could cook under a dry shelter but she said nothing about how they were going to get the food down the muddy track to the school. It’s not far from the side-road to the school. I assumed they’d use a wheelbarrow.

I’d seen and talked to Michel when I picked Janet up from Bethel. We’d exchanged greetings but nothing else was mentioned.

I dropped Janet at the side-road, collected Sophie and the Epulites, delivered them at school then navigated my way back home through enormous muddy puddles and driving sheets of rain.

An hour later I was working on vocabulary posters when my phone rang. It was the Year 2 teacher asking if I could come to school to take Sophie back home. I drove straight down hoping that Sophie wasn’t sick. No, she wasn’t sick but she wanted to take her daughter and a group of kids, all in Class 1, back to Epule as their teacher was absent and they were running wild and making noise. I agreed that they should go home and pointed out that you couldn’t expect a class of six year olds to sit quietly in a room without a teacher. Was the teacher sick? No, she’d gone to Vila.

I returned home and got back to work. I wouldn’t need to do any more running around after dropping Soph back at Epule I thought.

The phone rang at ten past eleven. It was Michel.

Him: Are you at school?

Me: No I’m at home. I told you and Janet that I wasn’t going to be at school this week.

Him: We are cooking at the side-road today because it is raining.

Me: Yes, I know.

Him: We need to take the food to the school.

Me: Hmmm. I’m busy at home. (I was in the middle of making a self-saucing chocolate cake from scratch at that moment.)

Him: Maybe Tim?

Me: I’ll ask him when I see him. He’s in the shed at the moment.

I find it interesting, and always do, that people can organise themselves to cook a mass of food; rice, soup, chicken, laplap, whatever – giant pots of it, and yet there is often no thought about how they might transport that food to wherever it needs to be transported which could be as far away as half way round the island. They just seem to blithely chop and slice and boil away without the slightest inkling as to what might come after that.

Fifty minutes before serving time, the chefs at the side-road had suddenly had the thought that we’d love to drop anything that we’d been doing and run around to pick up and deliver their food.

It was curious that Michel and Janet had spoken to me a couple of hours beforehand and hadn’t thought to mention anything about the possibility of this food run. They’d seen me drive several times past the side-road where they were cooking and hadn’t thought to come out and flag me down as I slowed for the speed hump.

Luckily for them I had my phone turned on and it was also lucky that Tim hadn’t gone anywhere else in the truck. He said he’d do the run. No hurry, I said to him. By then I was annoyed. I know that the lack of organisation and communication is not done on purpose but it irks my westernised soul.

Good old Apu Tim went down to the side-road to load up food and people.

While he was there, he noticed that John the chief had a large sore on his leg. He’d been bitten by a dog when he was in Vila but hadn’t gone to get any medical attention for the bite which broke the skin so now it’s on the way to infection. I’m really hoping that John isn’t waiting for a full blown infection before deciding to do anything about the wound. He’s an adult, he should be able to do what it takes to keep his body healthy as well as modeling positive health behaviors to the people around him. Tim also noticed that John’s wife had a black and swollen eye, it looked very painful. Infection? Accident? Violence? Magic?

When Tim arrived at the school he went to check in with Mr D and John the secretary.

After a bit of chit chat, Mr D wanders off and John says to Tim, “I have to ask you something.”

Tim said his defense shields went BING! BING! BING! BING! as they started to rise.

“Can you take me and Mr D to Port Vila to get the money for the school,” says John.

By ‘the money’, John is referring to this year’s school funding of which only forty percent of forty percent has been paid to date. I can’t even do the maths on that, I actually quite like the amount as it is described.

“Is the money waiting for you at Port Vila?” asks Tim.

“No. We need to ask for it.”

BING! BING! BING! went Tim’s defense shields, locking down securely. Meanwhile, the rain increased its tempo on the iron roof overhead.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No.”

“The person you want to see probably won’t be there,” said Tim confidently, basing his opinion on his own previous experiences with this sort of thing. He suggested a number of sensible steps that could be taken to try and claim the funding, none of which included a five hour return trip to Port Vila through flooding rain.

He made his escape and arrived home shortly after, defense shields retracted.

His shields go up and down faster than a hooker’s G-string.

Here’s one last story involving shields and food and yes, a total lack of organisation.

Late the following afternoon Tim’s phone rings. Shields go to automatic amber alert whenever the phone rings.

The number ID came up as Donald. Donald who? Trump? Duck? We pondered as it rang. Turned out it was Donald Firiam, husband of Leikarie but neither of them was on the other end of the line. Tim attempted identification of the young lady speaking but was unsuccessful. There followed a long and probably meant to be heartrending story about someone who’d just bought a boat in Vila who was sailing it to the wharf at Emua and who wanted to get some food to take across to Pele Island so that they could spend the night there. The food had been cooked and was sitting in pots at Ekipe; twenty kilometres south of Emua wharf. Maybe Apu Tim could take everyone (Fruedian slip meaning food plus multiple passengers) to Emua?

Many things crossed my mind when I heard the story from Tim but the main points were: 1) Why didn’t the boat owner purchase some food while they were in Vila? 2) Why wouldn’t you be able to get food on Pele? 3) Who are you people? and 4) WTF were you thinking when you agreed to cook food for someone that is twenty kilometres away from you?

Computer says no. That’s been a regular catchphrase lately. You’ll have to find another way.

Bring on a little bit of self-imposed isolation, we could do with a smol spel.

Okay, that’s enough for now. I could go on with another few pages of silliness but I need to go and think about something else for a little while now.

Monday 23rd November

Monday here, I’m stopping the stuff I’ve been preparing for next year, I’ve made 45 posters and a very carefully stepped program which I want to try with three classes first before expanding on it and taking it elsewhere. I’ll try a skeleton/modified version at Epau if I can find some volunteers and I think that’ll be no problem. I only have so many of those posters to recycle and I want to make sure that I’m on the right track before I use the rest of them.

Last week was mostly spent on the program development. Monday was my last Epule run with Sophie. When I rang her the day before to advise her of this, she said oh good, I’m getting tired now. Well of course she is, she’ll be having her baby in a few weeks if not before.

The clinic trip was scheduled for Tuesday. This was to be my last public event before a few weeks spent at home in self-imposed isolation while we sat back and watched what happened with the Covid case imported by the repat who arrived from America via Australia and New Zealand.

Last Saturday, I’d driven Joylcy down to the school to collect the clothes and bedding that she’d left there after ‘boarding’ at school for the month long cram-a-thon. When I stopped to unload Joylcy at Bethel I thought I’d quickly pop in to see Sila and remind her that Tuesday was the day for the clinic visit. The clinic schedules one day each month for attendance by different groups. The whole year’s schedule is displayed on the wall so you can easily see each month’s date which has been allocated for people from Ekipe or Epau, Takara, Paunangisu, Emua and even Pele and Nguna Islands. The system has worked well for us and everyone knows when the next trip will be. If you turn up on a day allocated for another place, you have to wait until after they have all been seen unless it’s an emergency, for example your finger/hand/arm has been amputated.

“Anyone home?” I called out through the open side door to the restaurant.

Young Michael and two other small boys came out of the bedroom, closing the door behind them.

“Is Sila here? Elizabeth, is she here?” I asked.

“Hemi go long garden,” replied Michael.

“Oh, Okay, I’ll find someone else,” I said and turned away to start walking up the hill towards a woman washing in a tub on the ground. I wasn’t sure who it was but I was hoping to leave a message with her or someone else who might remember to pass it onto Sila. I had no hope with Michael.

I’d taken a few steps when I heard my name being called from somewhere inside the restaurant. It sounded like Eliizabeth. I walked back. Elizabeth poked her head around the internal door between the restaurant and the kitchen. She beckoned me in.

It was hot and dark inside the restaurant. The wooden louvres were open but the double doors at the front and the rear door were closed. A selection of roots, mostly kava but I also spotted some yams and kumala, covered a good quarter of the floor of that huge room.

A single mattress lay on the floor in the back far corner. It was covered by a mesh tent that looked like one of those pop-out food covers, like an umbrella of mosquito netting, but this one was huge. And pink. And this is where I found Sila and the baby.

“It’s too hot in here,” I said, the sweat rolling down my face. “Take JoJo outside and sit under a shady tree, it’s much cooler outside. You could sit in the hammock. Where is the hammock?”

“What?” said E.

“The hammock. The big net.”

Blank look.

“The big fishing net. Net blong fishing.” I should have said ‘blong huk’ as hook means fishing.

Finally she interpreted my words and mimed actions. I was describing the huge black fishing net that can hold a dozen kids or three to six adults depending on ass size. The net that they’d sat on for at least eight years. Took a while before the vatu dropped.

“Oh, yes, the net, yes the net is next to Sila’s house.”

“Go and sit there. It’s hot here,” I reiterated. “And she doesn’t need a blanket,” I added as E started to swaddle the baby in one. Everyone does that here. Have baby so must wrap tightly in thick blanket no matter the heat conditions.

“Anyway, I’ve just called in quickly to remind Sila that the clinic trip is on Tuesday so I’ll come and pick you up at half past eight.”

“Sila he no want to go on Tuesday. He want to go Wednesday.”

“No it must be Tuesday. Baby Tim needs his needle. He was meant to have his needle two weeks ago but I said no, wait small…”

“So we all go together, one trip!” E finished off my sentence.

I was impressed that she’d made the connection that it was more convenient (for me) if we all went to the clinic once a month rather than once a fortnight, apart from emergency runs of course. Baby Tim’s appointments had, for some reason, not coincided with the regular clinic days up until that point and I had decided to merge the trips into one.

“But Sila he not want to go Tuesday. He want to go Wednesday,” was the next thing out of E’s mouth and it was almost as if she hadn’t got the point of her previous comment; that we all go together.

“Why not Tuesday?” I had to ask. “Sila, why can’t you go to the clinic on Tuesday? Many other people need to go to the clinic on Tuesday.”

“What other people?” asked E, both answering for Sila and deflecting my questioning, I now suspect.

“Baby Tim, his mum and all the other mummies and babies at the side-road,” I replied.

Upon later reflection I recalled that E had been along on many of these trips and had collected money from these people to pay for the trip before I made her cease and desist that behavior. She knew the names of every person who came on the clinic run.

“No. They go Wednesday. They no go Tuesday,” announced E.

I blame my shields for my next response. Obviously they had malfunctioned and left me, momentarily, without defenses.

“Well if we go on Wednesday, you will need to tell everyone that the day has changed. I’m not going to run around and do that.”

I left then, overheated and bothered. They’d made vague promises to pass the word on the change of date. All I wanted to do was get home, strip off and shower.

By the time I walked through the front door, I was fuming. The bastard shields had failed but the back-up alarm was now announcing loudly and clearly that I had been royally dicked around. I wondered when they thought they might have let me know that my services were not required on Tuesday? Would I have made that discovery on Tuesday morning after I’d dressed and driven down? And why did they want to change the day? Why didn’t they tell me the reason?

I unloaded on Tim who advised me to phone them and tell them that the trip had to go ahead on Tuesday as planned. It was my car, I was the driver and I was the one who made the decisions about where the car went and when. Also, we were concerned about the Covid case and didn’t want to be coming into close contact with anyone who had been in Vila so I didn’t want to have Sila in the car after she’d spent the day at the market which would be one of the most likely places to pick up any old virus.

When I picked up my phone I discovered a message from Sophie at Epule asking if I could give her a ride to the clinic on Tuesday. I messaged her back with a yes and then phoned Joel’s number as I don’t have one for E or Sila.

Joel answered, I don’t think he’d been asleep but he was somewhere with no background noise which is unusual so I’d say he was in the bedroom at the restaurant and I would go further to suggest that E and Sila were close by as it was only a matter of minutes since I’d left them.

“Hi Joel. Is Elizabeth there?” I didn’t ask for Sila as she’s not good with English even when face-to-face and with mimed actions.

“No, she is in the garden,” said Joel. In the garden again? Wow, that was quick, I thought. She must have sprinted up the path, dress hiked up around her hips and dashed across our driveway before I’d driven up it in the truck.

“I need to give Sila a message about the clinic.”

“Oh, Sila can’t go to the clinic on Tuesday. She is going to market with Elizabeth,” he said blithely.

MARKET? Market! Ohhhhhh! So that’s the word that they couldn’t seem to find in their spoken vocabulary when I asked the question, why can’t you go to the clinic on Tuesday? Market can happen five and a half days a week, thirty days of the month but if you want to get that free trip to the clinic then you’ll need to fit in with the driver. This whole paragraph was a nanosecond’s thought.

I was cranky in capitals after Joel said the magic word – market. KER-AN-KEE! I chose my words carefully, not saying the things that I really wanted to say about limos and chauffeurs and princesses …

“Tell Sila that I am going to the clinic on Tuesday, not Wednesday. If she wants to come to the clinic with me, she must come on Tuesday. If she doesn’t come with me she will need to find another way.”

“Find another transport?”

“Yes. She will need to find another transport. I am going to the clinic on Tuesday as planned. Please tell Sila this message.”

After I hung up I felt pretty damn sure that the message would be a hot and immediate topic of conversation between Joel, E and Sila. I suspected that Joel would at least get a verbal whack for mentioning the word, market. BTW, it wouldn’t be difficult for Sila to find another way, her brother has a bus at Bethel and there are plenty of clinics in Vila.

Tuesday morning came, Joel wandered up bright and early to ask for Tim’s help with the solar freezer. The cable had been chewed in half by rats. (When Tim went down and they pulled the freezer away from the wall, there was a fully operational rat’s nest which included stores of manioc etc under the freezer. After Joel cleaned the mess, Tim spliced the cable, came home and decontaminated.) Anyway, while Joel was asking Tim for help, I checked with Joel as to whether Sila would be coming along to the clinic. No, she went to market. Well okay then, at least I knew.

I arrived at the side-road at eight thirty. No one was waiting. Usually there’d be ten to twenty ladies, babies and kids dressed up to the nines for their big trip to the clinic. Today - nobody. Well that’s very strange, I thought as I parked and went to find out what was happening.

I wandered into the settlement sighting John Miller with a dirty rag tied around his leg, probably the dog bite from a few weeks ago hadn’t healed. He’d be coming to the clinic, I thought.

“Maybe I will come to the clinic,” he said when I came closer, peeling the cloth away from to reveal a large septic ulcer.

“Yes, you must come,” I agreed and then we spoke about not leaving sores untreated until they become so bad that they needed antibiotics, about taking some action such as seeking medical treatment at the time of a wound that breaks the skin, buying and using the medicated soap that we had given him before and so on.

Baby Tim’s father, Edwin saw me talking with John and came over.

“Is Janet ready for the clinic? Where is everyone?” I asked him.

“No, we go to the clinic tomorrow,” he said,

“No, we go today,” I said.

“Sila phone Janet early this morning and tell us we no go to the clinic today. We go tomorrow. Everybody else they get another truck because they no want to go tomorrow.”

“Did she now? Well Edwin, Sila is not the driver of this truck. I am the driver. I am going to the clinic today. I am not going tomorrow. If Janet wants to go to the clinic today, I will take her. I am picking up more people at Epule and then I am going to see my friend in Paunangisu.”

So I ended up with only a couple of people on the ride to the clinic. Sophie had also jumped on the service truck that unexpectedly went north but at least she sent me a message telling me that she was already there. I’m very happy for people to find alternative transport, I wish they would do it all the time but trucks are an erratic occurrence and people end up sitting in the hot sun by the side of the road for hours waiting, waiting, usually in vain.

I’m still wondering about the sensibility (is that the right word?) about taking a two month old baby to sit on the floor at the dirty markets at Vila all day, on such a hot day and particularly with an active Covid case just up the road. Is that just crazy? (Yes) Do you have to? (No)

I’d been fuming on and off for days about the whole Clinic debacle. By Wednesday morning I was starting to move on but I honestly expected a messenger to appear on my doorstep at about nine o’clock to ask when I was coming to pick Sila up to go to the clinic. Computer says no. That much was definite. By nine thirty, it appeared that it had been understood that I was not going to the clinic that day.

After lunch I lay down for a read (so much choice now thanks to your present). I was dozing a little when my phone rang at one thirty.

“Don’t answer it,” I instructed Tim. “I’ll have a look later. It can wait.”

Five minutes later, it ran again.

“Shit! Can you get that just in case it’s an emergency?” I asked Tim.

He took the call, said, “Hello, who is this? a couple of times then hung up.

“It’s Joel’s phone number,” he said, “But it’s some girl on the phone and they aren’t talking, they’re just giggling, so I hung up.

“Probably wrong number,” I said, starting to doze off again.

It rang again. I got up and you can imagine how pleased I was about this.

“Who is this?” I demanded.

It took a few tries but eventually I established that it was Mevis on the other end of the line and she’d toned down the giggling somewhat, probably due to the frost in my voice and the icicles forming on her handset.

“What do you want Mevis?” I sounded cranky because I was.

“Sila say, you go to the clinic now?”

“I went to the clinic yesterday. Sila knows that. My next trip to the clinic will be December 15. If Sila wants to go to the clinic she will need to find another way. Goodbye Mevis.”

Afterwards, I had to wonder, had they been sitting there for five hours all dressed up and waiting for me? Or had this turned into some weird practical joke for them?

It’s a week later and I’m still annoyed.

Well hopefully telling you the story will get it out of my system. Next week I’ll tell you the Silas story from yesterday :l

Silas’s story & other silly stuff

Friday 27 November

It’s very hot and humid here and has been since 5am. It’s now 8am and most unpleasant to move around outside. I’ve got one more load of washing to hang later when it’s done. Clean sheets on the bed, nice!

Just found out that baby Jo is at the markets again today. If it feels yuck here, it will be yuck by a magnitude of ten thousand in the markets at Vila!

Haven’t done much mingling this week.

We were mostly left alone apart from Wednesday at 2pm when Mr D rang Tim’s phone four times, then rang mine three times in a row. We were outside in the garden. I came inside and picked up on the next set of rings thinking it may have been an emergency (gotta stop thinking that). No emergency, Mr D just wanted Tim to donate some fuel for the school generator so that they could run the photocopier, probably to start writing the reports that were due to go home this week. Tim went down with fuel.

It had been absolutely bucketing down for an hour by 4pm when Elisa, a teacher from the school, rang wanting Tim to come back down to the school through the driving rain and flooding roads to pick Mr D up and take him home to Epau. Computer says no. Should have thought about how you were getting home when Tim came down two hours before. We ended up with over 80mL or three inches of rain from that storm.

Our tanks overflowing from the heavy rain

Presentation Day should have happened at school today, the last day of term. It did last year. This year there must be something holding the process because it is rumoured that the assembly might be next Tuesday. Can’t be Monday as it is Unity Day, a public holiday.

BTW, next Friday has just been gazetted a public holiday too, to celebrate the recent upgrading in Vanuatu’s status from being a very poor country to a poor country. Something in the order of 40 million vatu - half a million Aussie $, is being splashed around to celebrate; 30 mil for Port Vila and 1 mil for each of nine other islands. Can’t help thinking how many solar bore pumps and tanks that kind of money would buy; things like that would help out a whole bunch of poor people for a very long time. We won’t be going anywhere near Vila or hordes of people as we are still a tiny bit concerned about Covid and will remain that way so long as plane loads of people, packed shoulder to shoulder with masks dangling somewhere around their faces but not always covering mouths or noses, keep arriving from NZ and Australia.

Speaking of Vila and Covid brings me to the story of Silas, as I promised last week.

Silas has recently returned from his month long sojourn around Santo and Malekula where he attended two weddings and managed to see his wife for a fortnight after his one year’s absence.

He stepped back into the driving job that he’d been doing before his trip, runs between Ekipe and Vila transporting people and produce.

The day after last week’s clinic trip, before Tim had put the chain across the driveway to discourage vehicles while we stayed quietly at home to see what happened with the Covid case that was, at that time, still testing as positive, Silas sped up the drive in the market truck.

“Stop right there!” Tim bellowed to Silas, trying to stop him before he reached our front steps. The cats were all out plus we didn’t want to get close to Silas as he is in Vila and mingling with a lot of people every day.

Silas got the message and stopped down near the shed. He gets out and comes walking up the hill towards Tim who is inside the fenced vegie garden, watering.

“Stop there, don’t come closer,” says Tim. He went on to explain why… Covid/Port Vila/social distancing – blah blah blah, in one ear and straight out the other.

“We no gat Covid,” Silas announces to Tim.

In the last hour, it had been announced that the man who had Covid, was now testing negative. So, everything’s hunky dory and we can forget about Covid, kiss kiss, shake shake (hands) and scull that kava.

We are a little more suspicious about Covid being over and done with in this country. Our choice is to stay home and avoid people where possible for the next few months until school resumes. We don’t have to go anywhere and it’s getting too hot to move around anyway.

Tim carefully explained our plan to Silas. He asked Silas very respectfully to stay away for a while. It wasn’t a long or complex message.

Silas gave me the freshly cooked lobster that he’d brought up for me, said goodbye quite happily and drove away. I felt bad that we weren’t inviting him up onto the verandah for a yarn as we would usually do but we didn’t want to take the risk and we do want to stick to our guns on this and have a trial run if nothing else. We learned a lot earlier this year when the country went into lockdown for a month.

Tim drove down the track a short while later and locked the chain in place.

That all happened last Wednesday.

Sunday afternoon, about four thirty, Silas comes walking up the driveway (because he couldn’t drive through the chain) with four strange men in tow. It turns out that Silas is conducting a guided walking tour with some visitors from Port Vila who’ve come up for a funeral next door and today’s attraction is us and our house!

They were obviously expecting to come inside and have a good gander, perhaps even a beer on the verandah. Tim blocked them from coming up the stairs but they wandered around the front and sides, peering up and in at me as I sat at the table inside. It felt creepy.

Tim got them moving off pretty quickly and pleasantly but after they’d left, we got pretty burned up about Silas’s little tour. He was not only asked to stay away for a few weeks but he should have remembered pretty clearly how annoyed we were with all the drop-ins for after we moved in last year, especially during Jimmy’s wedding. As one group walked down the hill after having a tour through the house, I swear they’d tag team with the next group who must have been waiting below the garage because another crowd would come wandering up the hill minutes after the last lot had left. Tim started telling people that the tour cost 100 vatu per person in a sort of joking manner. After a few months of this, we’d had several conversations with Silas about how invasive these visits felt to us. We’d discovered that Silas transmitted our messages to the community quite well; I guess that’s a polite way of saying that he’s a terrible gossip but talking with him did reduced the swarms of spectators. And after all that, here was Silas heading up his own swarm.

Another concern that we have is that we didn’t know the people who were with Silas. He didn’t introduce them when he arrived at our doorstep so I have to wonder, did he even know them? Long story short, we don’t want strangers wandering around or inside our house. It’s much safer if people aren’t ‘talking it up big’ about who we are, where we are and what they think we might have. We’ve had to stop Edmond from doing the same thing; it took a couple of tellings, almost to the point of rudeness before he complied.

After a few beers that night, Tim sent Silas a message that went something like this: ‘Mate, don’t ever, ever bring people here again. Ever!’

I had to laugh. My only suggestion for improvement on that message was to add a couple more ‘evers’.

Had no response to it as yet. Wonder if he even read it?

Okay well that’s about enough for the day.

Edmond just came up to tell Tim that there’s no water at Bethel. Everyone’s been in Vila all week so water usage would have been minimal. Tim’s been down and come back to report that the pump isn’t working and there’s a red light flashing – might have been the result of the lightning we had the other night. He’s just gone back down, hope it’s nothing too major & that they can reset it easily.

PS

Visa update: after 2 months, MOET advised us that they wrote the letter asking Immigration for a visa to be issued and that the girl from MOET would take it to Immigration on Thursday. Now Imm has 2 months to get their end of the paperwork done. I imagine they might call us a week before the visa runs out to get our passports re-stamped. Hopefully it all goes according to plan... x x x

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