Aground in the Abode of Love 4

 


   “Letting the days go by, letting the days go by, letting the days go by,
     once in a lifetime
     Letting the days go by, letting the days go by, letting the days go by,  
     once in a lifetime...”
                                                       Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime 1981


The crush on Queen Salote wharf was crushing. I suppose Robyn and I could have flown to Vava'u, but at this stage in our lives, we had more time than money, I was letting the days go by, and a trip like this was a unique once in a lifetime cultural experience.
You could barely see the red and white hull of the inter-island ferry, for the boat traffic and human commotion surrounding her. When the boarding ‘process’ was almost over, her name emerged from behind the cargo nets and shouting. Olavaha. She was slow, uncomfortable and ‘bobbed like a cork,’ but she had made the weekly northern trip through the Ha'apai group, and further on to the Port of Refuge, in Vava'u’s principal village of Neiafu, for the previous eight years, in a mostly dependable manner. And she was cheap.
Her replacement nine years later, the MV Princess Ashika, would sink in Ha'apai on August 5, 2009, with the loss of at least a hundred passengers. No one really knew how many were crowded below decks went she went down, before midnight, but they would have had no chance. Cargo had shifted in high seas. The only survivors had been sleeping on deck, as we were.
The Olavahu made several outer island stops, to more crushes of boats five deep, passing cargo and commotion and children, and gigantic upside down coir rope-bound sea turtles, from hand to hand, to upper deck. We stopped in Lifuka, the main island of Ha'apai, for half a day, to unload and reload. It was a garden of glades under a blinding sun, less than a mile wide, and less than ten long, facing west and east, steeped in sunrise and sunset, perfectly flat, and hemmed round with white sands. Lifuka had one little street, bordered with breadfruit and mangoes and coconut palms and feathery iron-bark trees, and a handful of brightly painted shops, all closed on Sunday. Robyn and I encountered an old woman, smiling a Southern Sea smile.
“Ma lo laa.” She said. It is good to be alive. And it was, as it would have been for our castaway as well, in 1806.
Half past us, she turned, and smiled again.
“Afa atu.” She said. Love to you- health.
The sun set to our port side, and rose on our starboard. The night on deck had been cool, almost cold. But Robyn and I had our sleeping bags, and each other, and the ship’s funnels, and two hundred Tongans to keep us warm. We awoke to new islands, with four hundred foot cliffs sprinkled with red soil, and green vegetation where it had managed to find a foothold, above the deep black caves and hollows below. They were like chains of tall cakes, freshly turned out of their tins. We steered through the narrow strips of blue and white spray between them, and the clouds of sea birds about the base of every precipice. In some Asiatic languages, green and blue are one color, and should have been that way here. It was a brilliant day.
“Let’s live here.” I said to Robyn. But of course, we couldn’t.
The cliffs gave way to clumps of trees, running down to the Neiafu’s harbor, the whitewashed church at the top, and a quay thronged with lava-lavas and anticipation. We watched a ghostly white muslin-wrapped body float off the lower deck of the Olavahu, hardly touching the hundreds of swaying arms above which it was suspended in space. The were large numbers of large women crying on the wharf, and it made a hurried retreat into the covered bed of a lorry, to escape their grief.
“What does your shirt mean?” Asked a voice to my right. I turned to find a young Swiss fellow, pointing to my chest.
“AMFYOYO.” I said. “It’s an acronym.”
“What does it stand for?” He asked. I told him it was the parting message that every Critical Care physician had for his replacement, at the end of every shift. “Adios. You’re on your own.”
He started to ask about the other letters, and thought better of it. Which began our association.
Jean Pierre and his wife, Maria, were from Montreux, taking the long way home, like Robyn and I. They knew of a place to stay, with big fresh rooms and ocean views, on the hillside. There were no cars to be seen in Neiafu. We hoisted our packs, and walked it. The thin, nervous middle-aged German who greeted us, had come to paradise to unwind, but it hadn’t seemed to be working out that well for him. He was too hardwired to use the software. Just reading the list of rules on the back of our door would have consumed the entire diversion. There were forces outside his control, however, that would make our stay more interesting. Not the mosquitoes, which we expected, although not in the numbers that filled our dusks and dawns.
Maria’s scream announced the first molokau, writhing on her mosquito net. It was a foot long, the size of a small snake, and jet-black. His head rose off the mesh, before vanishing under their cupboards, like the evil alien he was. He was fast.
“Giant South Pacific centipede.” I said. “They like to hide in dark, wet places.”
“Are they dangerous?” Asked Jean Pierre.
“Very painful bite.” I said. “Leaves two holes. Can cause temporary paralysis. Plus, they eat the geckos that eat the mosquitoes.” Everyone was careful how and where we walked from then on, particularly at night.
It was not the only poison in paradise. Some had been moored in the Port of Refuge for months, avoiding the hurricanes in the Southern Sea; others for years, avoiding the ones in their lives. Bandana’d and barefoot Boat People, on Beneteaus rather than barges, bobbed within the offshore refugee camp at the end of the world, Rolling Stones and rolling cigarettes.
Yachties wanted to be apart and together at the same time, losing speed and social connectivity with each tacking manoeuvre, and futilely beating against the winds of their inevitable extinction. They had set out to become their own Robinson Crusoe, but stopped short of making the commitment, shipwrecked on their fears of becoming shipwrecked. Instead of landing, coveting, claiming, conquering, converting, they stayed in their in their confined cabins in their crossings in their cyclones, counting coins, avoiding the end of the world, which they had gambled would occur somewhere they were not. But there was no neutral ground on or off the water. They would either have to contend with the natives they had fooled themselves into thinking they were seeking, or their own culture, which they had fooled themselves into thinking they were escaping. When they battened down, they were only locking their demons inside. Very painful bite. Leaves two holes. Can cause temporary paralysis.
Still, if there was going to be an end to the world, there would be no more perfect place to meet it, than the Port of Refuge in Vava'u.
Our second day in Neiafu, Jean Pierre and Maria and Robyn and I rented a red Isuzu jeep. We drove out past the refrozen rethawed imported provisioners of Burns Philip and Morris Hedstrom, to beautiful beaches, a church that could have been a Spanish mission except for the Koelaro Holulaumalie koe sirsi o tanga 1929 over the lintel, and a small cove, where we met a Vanilla farmer, and helped push out his small boat, loaded to the gunnels with drums of diesel, out towards his plantation island. And we ultimately came, right on course, to two young boys peeling the shavings of long yams lengthwise with big knives, which led to another kava ceremony, an old man seated in the shade, in shades and frayed pandanus taʻovala cummerbund, who indicated with his loaded cigarette holder, to where the roast suckling pig would come. Same as it ever was. Much later, we performed an impromptu concert on the village wooden slit gong in appreciation, and waved to the pigtailed girls in our rearview mirror, on the way back to our hilltop refuge.


 “If a boat ends up on a reef you don't blame the reef;
 you don't blame
  the boat;
 you don't blame the wind;
 you don't blame the waves;
 you
  blame the captain.”
                                                                                Tongan Proverb