September 10, 2008

Paradise
This is it. This is the paradise I’ve been looking for since we started sailing 17 years ago. We’ve been here almost a week and we’re really starting to become part of the community now. Have met a good portion of the people and I’ve made friends with lots of children with balloons and blowing bubbles. We visited the kindergarten today and had a good time teaching the kids their colors in English. They all know how to say “Goodmorning” and “My name is ……”
Ted gathers a crowd whenever he does a repair on a boat or looks at a generator or patches a hole in a teakettle. We’re learning a few words of Marshallese too. I’m bubu (grandmother) and Ted is jimma (grandfather). The most important sentence we know is “I jab melele.” (I don’t understand.)
We brought in 2 large tarps today to make sails for their canoes. We picked out the principal of the school to make one sail for and Tempo (the elder of the village who speaks VERY good English) will pick another person to receive the other sail. They will lay out the shape of the sails and I will do the sewing. The master sailor here is Rice, who won the big canoe races at Ailinglaplap this year. He will probably be the one to lay out the sail shapes. We also brought them a used sail from Wiikirri to make a sail for a small canoe or to repair larger sails, and gave them a bag of used rope from different boats with some blocks to use on their canoes.
We brought in our picture albums today to show them how we built Sequester and showed them a lot of the boats Ted built for Gold Coast Yachts. There were quite a few people gathered around the pictures. Everyone is welcoming and very grateful for everything we do. They keep us loaded up with drinking coconuts, fish and breadfruit chips (yum!)
We’ve been swimming everyday in the gorgeous, warm blue-green water. There are lots of coral heads with beautiful fish.
By the way, we are still in touch with Zac, the 16-year old sailing around the world. He is a few days out of Darwin, Australia and Ted is talking to him now on the radio while I write this. Ted is passing messages from Zac’s parents, who are emailing the yachts in Majuro. They are also on the frequency, but we have better reception with Zac, probably because we are out here away from the city. All is good. Karen