Saturday 14th July

QUATORZE JUILLET…

Bastille Day! 

This time last year we were in New Caledonia, watching a street parade in Noumea where every single person in uniform came out, on foot, on a bike, on a horse, in a tank.

This year our lone sailor friend, Greg is there, anchored happily in the Baie de Prony with his little cat Ede.  I shouldn’t think he will be involved in any festivities, bobbing about on the sea…

Katy and I have been watching a program on SBS (Monday 8.30) called Tribal Wives.  Very much…Anthropology Lite…

So far we have seen two episodes.  The premise of the program is to send out various pleasant, slightly unhappy British women to live in remote tribes for a month.  The first one we saw could have been anywhere in Central or South America.  I have just looked it up and it was in fact in a remote part of northern Mexico, “on the rim of the spectacular Copper Canyon.”

This week Our Girl Becky was in Kitava – I have googled Kitava:

Kitava is an island in the Trobriand Islands group of Papua New Guinea. The inhabitants of this island and their diet and lifestyle have been the subject of special study …due to their reported excellent health and traditional diet.

So there you go!  It was a lovely island and the people made Our Becky very welcome.  The headline, when I googled this episode, said, in breathless tones: Never before seen make-up!!  Well golly and gosh!  (I told you it is Anthropology Lite…)  Not quite true, mind you…they had lots of elaborate face-paint and were very much into ceremonial costumes.

Poor Becky arrived the day before one of the yam festivals.  She was expected to dress like a tribal wife ie grass skirt, a rudimentary wreath or two, face-paint…and bare breasts.  The poor girl did try, but she chickened out.  “I can’t do it!” she cried.  “I am English!”  So they let her make a most ludicrous bra out of coconut shells, and very silly and self-conscious she looked.  On her last day there was another even bigger yam festival.  Her tribal “father” nominated her to be the VIP of the event and this time, yes!  She went without her coconut shells.  But…she did have a LOT of wreathage around her neck…