Betrayal in Sandy Bay – nickel mine upset – vilej school – comparisons with NC – move to marina

Sunday 7th August

Yesterday I got an email from Teresa, the poor beleaguered woman from Knight Frank who has been trying to find a tenant for my dear little Hobart House for the past three and a half months. Apparently she had been showing some people around for the SECOND time (so they must have been just a bit keen) when one of the ‘residents,’ ie. a neighbour (sadly, I thought the neighbors were my friends!!), popped up and started asking Teresa about a broken pipe in the garage and what was she going to DO about it. I am totally shocked by this. There are only nine of us ‘residents’ and we all know that the Body Corporate has a property manager, Armina, who is ready, willing and able to deal with this sort of issue. The prospective tenants probably won’t go ahead, having been alarmed both by the broken pipe issue and by the speedy proximity of whichever neighbour it was felt the need to pester Teresa, and I feel like lying on the floor and drumming my heels on the ground in frustration. Pete says, “If it makes you feel better,” in kindly tones… Oh deary me…

Betty, one of the women who works in Island Princess (the shop not the ute) owns property up the coast, where we went for our tour the other day. It is a beautiful bit of land, if overrun with the noxious strangly US vine. They are bravely battling this vine with machetes and, says Monique, are making progress. The land used to be the site of a big nickel mine, owned and run by a French company. There were houses, a little school, the mine itself. When Vanuatu claimed its independent 31 years ago, the French had to clear out. They were on excellent terms with the locals, especially Betty’s family, who owned the land. But…they were ordered to destroy everything. They bulldozed the houses, mine, school, and buried all of the trucks and equipment. Nobody here can afford to get it all up and running again; such a waste and a sadness.

Dara has told us lots of stories about her six week prac at the village school in Mélé. She had children in her class aged from about six to eleven; they don’t get to move up to the next class till they have passed certain tests. Lessons are supposed to be in English but for lots of the children, who come from many different islands, English is their umpteenth language. They speak their local village dialect, that of the neighbouring villages, the dominant language of the island, whatever variety of Pidgin English is around in their area. Oh and a lot of them speak some sort of French as well… The children all bring their big long bush knives (machetes) to school and they go off to sharpen their pencils through the day. None of them seem to slice off their fingers, or bits of each other, with these very sharp implements, but Dara decided to give each of them their very own pencil sharpener. Oh the joy! They loved their sharpeners so much they sat in class, riveted, sharpening their pencils right away to a long thin spiral… The school couldn’t afford to keep replacing pencils, so Dara had to confiscate sharpeners and let them go back to their lethal weapons in the corner…

The people here (Nivans) are amazingly vigorous and fit, especially compared to the people in New Caledonia. We hardly saw anyone swimming in NC; nobody other than Les Français or Les Touristes in a boat; nobody running other than Les Gendarmes on a training mission. It was also surprisingly – in fact astoundingly – rare to see children playing with a ball. Everywhere I have travelled in the world, children are playing some sort of football, generally soccer with a round ball, on any patch of land – boggy, rocky, sandy, slope-y. But here, happily, in Vanuatu – there are children splishy-splashing in the water, throwing balls, kicking balls, riding bikes in the villages, and, as soon as they are big enough, zipping around on any stretch of water in a tinny with an outboard.

People swim all around the harbour, right around 2XS, in fact. Every morning three very fit swimmers in speedos power across the bay, impressing me very much. The first time I saw them I thought, “Oh good; the lovely sparkly blue (warm!) water looks so inviting; these people are swimming, it must be safe!” I had visions of dipping off the back of the boat several times of day for a bit of exercise and coolness… Anyway, I watched these swimmers as they re-grouped around our anchor chain and swam off again. And then…RIGHT where they had been chatting, I saw, floating happily around, someone’s VERY big plump morning poo… Oh NO…. And yes I have swum in Ha Long Bay (Vietnam), which is, essentially, a large warm sewer… But I never actually set eyes on a floating poo so I could pretend I didn’t know. So now do I hop off the back of the boat? Well no, I sit with my legs dangling in the sea, peering suspiciously at the water through my polaroid glasses…

Another difference is – thank goodness – it is possible to find books. In Noumea there were two lovely bookshops, one selling very up-market children’s books as well as textbooks. But all of the books are in French – translations of English bestsellers, and I really don’t enjoy reading translations. One of the larger shops did have ten books in English – they were all vampire-type books, plus Keith Richard’s autobiography, which I was very keen to read except it was in big heavy hardback and cost nearly $100… And…no book exchange shops for travellers! Oh yes I forgot…I did find three (Jeffrey Archer and Patricia Cornwall, yuckety-yuck,) at the cathedral fete; I remember writing about this. But here there are several shops selling books; even Au Bon Marché (supermarket) has a reasonable selection. So…if you are thinking of going to live in New Caledonia, I guarantee a big money-spinner would be – a second hand book shop!
We were waiting to see the Vanuatu family yesterday, because it was Monique and Dara (and fast-growing baby Justin)’s last day. But they were all too busy so we just had a quick phone call. And we had a very lazy day… Pete worked on his accounts and I…read another book or two!

Monday 8th August
This morning we moored from our anchorage to the marina. Well it’s not really a marina; we are backed up to a wharf, tied on at the front to a big buoy and at the back to two ropes, port and starboard. And to get ashore we have to…walk the plank! But I love it; at our doorstep is a lovely shady café which sells delicious fresh lime juice full of crushed ice and access to two shady little showers, with warm-ish water. Bliss! And – connection to electricity! Just across a small stretch of water is Iririki, a resort with burés built out over the water. I might even swim over there this afternoon, if there aren’t too many people sitting at the café watching me clamber in and out of the water – never a dignified matter…(Oh dear…Egills just came for a chat and warned against a swim right here…too many boats discharging too much…ummm…crap…)

We had been given instructions on how to back the boat into the (very small) allocated space – go over the buoy, pick it up, thread it through two ropes, get two more ropes tied off at the stern, all while avoiding a collision with the boats on either side (very close by…) We were just a teensy bit nervous about this procedure…so much room for error, so many people sitting at the café right alongside the wharf, watching with idle fascination. Pete hailed Egills, who just happened to cruise past on Panache IV as we were approaching our goal, and his new crew mate, Harry, came running to help us. But as it turned out…we were just backing up to the wharf when a little tinny zoomed up, with three large, competent black men on it. They took charge – tied off the ropes, hooked up the buoy, whisked a plank into place – all part of the service!