Highs, lows and more highs
February 28th, 2020 – Lakatoro
So the last few days have been a bit bipolar. Either everything is going terrifically well, or everything is going disastrously. Tonight, all is terrific, and I’ll explain why in a moment. Firstly, let me go back to Tuesday; a French company had been in touch with the province, as they are hoping to commence a petroleum storage operation on the South side of the island. With tales and dreams of untold wealth, the province had decided to assist these investors in every way possible, and had managed to negotiate with three tribal landowners to sign a contract effectively granting the investors’ company eternal use of their land (according to the Vanuatu constitution, all land of Vanuatu belongs to the people of Vanuatu, so an outright sale isn’t possible). They were to fly in on a charter plane on Tuesday, sign a memorandum of understanding with the province officials and then fly out again, flying down to the South side of the island the following day to sign the contract with the tribal landowners and then fly out again. Their arrival and signing on Tuesday went swimmingly.
After the investors departed, the landowners and the province officials wanted to celebrate with a kava session, so we all went to a nakamal (kava bar), and started consuming the stuff in a big way. For those who aren’t aware, kava is an intoxicating drink made from stewing a locally-grown root of some sort. It is the colour of grey clay, and tastes a bit like liquorice boiled in mud and then watered down. Its effect is somewhere between marijuana and alcohol. It is an anti-stress analgesic, and makes your mouth go a bit numb after drinking. All in all, I don’t enjoy the feeling so much, but it does get you very intoxicated for not much money (as opposed to beer, which is relatively expensive). The norm is to have around 3 shells (traditionally half coconut shells, now Chinese melamine noodle bowls for reasons unknown) in an evening, but that night everyone was celebrating the first appearance of the French investors, so we had more than 5 and I started to lose count, as well as the ability to use my tongue. You will have seen my blog post from that night.
The following day, we were supposed to depart very early indeed to drive down to the South for the contract signing with the landowners. Apparently it’s a 3-4 hour drive, depending on the roads, so I was told to be ready at 4am, and a truck would come and pick me up. 3:45, I awoke, still slightly under a kava haze, and got dressed and ready to depart at 4. By 4:30, I was still waiting, and trying to figure out a way to top up the credit on my phone so that I could call Kevin. By 5:30, I figured they weren’t going to come, and gave up using the top-up system (it involves scratching codes off scraps of paper), and tried ringing Kevin using my Skype account instead. Got through, but was instantly cut off. By 6:30, I went back to bed, pretty hacked off.
Spent most of the day recovering from lack of sleep, and still pretty upset that they hadn’t picked me up. To make matters worse, it was Hunter’s Birthday, and I experienced a full-on bout of homesickness. Rather than celebrating my boy’s fifth birthday, I was sweltering in a cockroach infested dive where the people I’m supposed to be helping couldn’t even be bothered to pick me up in a truck. I was not happy at all. The following day, still no contact with Kevin, he was nowhere to be found, although I did find another councilman who explained that they realised about 2 hours into the drive that they had forgotten to pick me up. Not cool.
I was told once again that my Hep B jab would be put on a plane in the afternoon, so I hitched a ride to the airstrip, and was excited to see 2 planes arrive at the same time! Both flying the same route apparently, within 5 minutes of each other, which seems pretty nonsensical. After a few hours faff, it was determined that my vaccination was not on either plane.
So, forgotten about, uncontacted, and once again defeated by the logistics of getting my vaccination, Thursday was also a pretty poor day for me. Started wondering whether I should just throw the towel and fly to be with Jen and Hunter. A call with the VSA programme manager, Trevor, put me in a slightly better frame of mind, but I was still pretty miserable.
Then this morning, I’d be damned if I was going to traipse up the hill just to find Kevin not in his office again, so I started to plan a hike as something for me to do during the day. Just as I was about to depart, I got a call from the council President (Kevin was previously the only one who knew my number, so he must have been too embarrassed to call me directly, and asked the president to do it) asking my whereabouts. When I told him I was at home, he said not to move, he was coming with Kevin to see me. Kevin showed up at my front door deeply apologetic, and even gave me half an orange to say sorry (sharing food is a ni-Van expression of friendship). He said we should sit down that afternoon and make a schedule so mishaps like forgetting me don’t reoccur. Apology accepted, I went to the office in the afternoon, and we actually achieved a decent bit of work together on the investment policy. I’m not certain the momentum will last, but while he was apologetic today, he was at his most willing to please, which helped cooperation greatly. It was a good day, and as I headed back to my house in the afternoon, I figured I needed to make some more friends here, so ventured to a local nakamal. They were nice people, but it was pretty hard work trying to strike up a friendship with my shaky Bislama. Just as I was attempting to ask one of the locals how many children they had (a decent cross-culture conversation point), the council President drove past and asked me if I’d like to join him for a shell at his preferred nakamal. I went along, and had a good conversation with the nakamal owner who is standing for election next month. He was frankly pretty lame on policy, repeating over and over how honest he was and not much else, but honesty being the big issue in Vanuatu politics right now (the exiting prime minister and 5 cronies have just received a jail sentence for criminal behaviour while in office, although they are intending to appeal and stand for election again anyway), maybe this guy was on to something.
In conversation with the council President earlier in the week, I had mentioned I hadn’t yet had a chance to eat a coconut crab (local delicacy, similar to lobster). Apparently today, he had tracked down a huge one and given he wasn’t returning to his home on the other side of the island till tomorrow, he was looking for someone with whom to share it. He wanted to know if he could come round to my place, and we could cook it on my hob. I was very willing, and it was a pretty amazing experience to sit down with the provincial council President, and get stuck into kitchen duty together.
All in all, it was a great evening, and it was a unique experience. Can’t even do the washing up tonight, as the water is off until the morning. Filled with delicious crab and quite content. Goodnight all.
9 thoughts on “Highs, lows and more highs”
‘Bother’ to the neglect of duty by important provincial officials in leaving important ‘imatang’ out of important document signing ceremony.-it could still all go horribly wrong!!!
p.s. Cheer up. It could be worse. Swajiit- is holed up in London with ‘flu’ after flying in from Hong Kong!!!
Dear , dear Poggle,
If you are still feeling low remember that it was God who blew breath over the ocean and put the blue in the sky – not Kevin.
Hunter is being well cared for- you must get back on board. With love- your Mother X
Thanks Mother, am all aboard today! Worry not. X
So how was the crab? Was the flesh to meat ratio all it’s cracked up to be?
I meant flesh to shell. Obviously.
Yup, I rate it highly. More meat on it than even the largest lobster I’ve ever had, the two of us were only able to finish half of it, and he took the rest home. There was also a bit in the tail or head (I’m not sure which), which I think was roe or brains or something, which tasted pretty special, like crab flavoured butter cream. The president told me that was his favourite part, and he said you only get that on the fresh ones, not the frozen ones. It wasn’t cheap – pres told me he paid 3000 vatu for it (approx $30 USD), so in restaurants you would be looking at 50+ bucks easily. They are endangered, so their export is prohibited and even their domestic consumption is tightly controlled. I think your plan of farming them is decent, and apparently somewhere on the island there are abandoned tilapia farming tanks (the tilapia project crashed and burned for reasons unknown) which would be ideal.
Wow. If they have more meat than a lobster there is definitely going to be an international market for them. They eat virtually anything right? Even each other. So the crab farmer could collect people’s bio waste and just toss it into the crab pit.
Yeah. There’s already a really big demand for them, especially from the Chinese. The big problem is that they have a rather long lifespan, taking 5-7 years to hit reproductive age, and this happens to be the time they hit edible size too, hence the drastically declining numbers. Left to its own devices, it would keep on going for 15-20 years or so. The other big problem is keeping them in tanks would be possible (and even quite easy, you just feed them coconuts and bio waste, as you say), but breeding them needs the female to go and release her babies out in the ocean, and for them to come swimming back safely. That’s not going to happen if they’re in tanks. Another reason numbers are declining rapidly is they are very easy to catch. Apparently you split a coconut in half, tying the halves to a stake in your garden. They are nocturnal, and can smell the coconut from miles away – when they come and get it, they try to drag it back to their nest for safe eating, but because the coconut is tied, they struggle. If you hear something struggling on your lawn, you take your torch and go and pick up the nice coconut crab, easy as that. Recommended aquafarming technique by the powers that be is to try to fence off a coconut plantation that fronts onto the ocean, and maintain it as a ‘coconut crab sanctuary’, and if numbers start to get too big for the sanctuary, then harvest the excess. But nobody’s actually done it yet, because it would take a fair few years to see any results, and raising cattle on a coconut plantation is just easier.
‘I was sweltering in a cockroach infested dive’ This is the stuff of nightmare, not even mentioning the rat. Well done Cameron!