2007-07-11

Things at Thawaro have been quite unsettled since just before we arrived. When we visited 4 years ago, one of the most helpful of the locals was Apesai, a Fijian man whose age I would estimate at late sixties. He has some farm land, and grows a large crop of cassava, as well as some sugar cane, and he loaned Jim the boat that we were brought up from Labasa in. He also worked on the village boat and the new shop deck some with me, and was good company and a translator for us. We've been counting on seeing Apesai again on this visit. His wife's sister died last week in Suva, and she went down for the funeral. Immediately after the funeral, Apesai's wife had a heart attack and died there in Suva. He has been down there since we arrived, and the whole village has been busy preparing to bury a popular and prominent member. They have brought her home to Thawaro, and we will all be at her funeral tomorrow. As a result, we were here a couple of days before we could arrange to do sevusevu with Isei, the village chief. That is generally not good manners, to be in his territory for more than a day without doing the presentation of kava, so I'm hoping he wasn't offended, and will try to arrange for another meeting and sevusevu soon. In spite of the mess, another village elder and friend, Leoni, is arranging for a group of the village men to come to Also Island on Friday at high tide, and they will literally lift and push Sequester up on the beach, where we can jack her up to repair and repaint the bottom. Meanwhile we continue to do jobs on the boat, try to help Jim and Kyoko keep Also Island moving along, and learn our way around. If we succeed in drying Sequester out on Friday, next week will be a long, hard one, but we'll feel a lot better with the bottom all sealed and painted again. We'll let you know how it goes. Ted