February 24th, 2020 – Lakatoro

Today was a day full of promise, but it started going wrong pretty much as I woke up and headed to the shower, only to find the largest cockroach I have ever seen crawling along the wall at head height. So large, I thought it was a mouse at first. A giant among cockroaches. He wasn’t hanging around either, so no photo, but I was able to grab the bug spray and get him with a direct sustained hit. Didn’t do a thing, apart from make him seem a bit more agitated, and dash between my legs in an attempt to escape. So I found the best use for the bug spray was to try to squash him with the base of the can, which at first just seemed to tick him off a little, and he kept right on going the moment I lifted the can. After a few squashes, however, he lost whatever demon was in him, and finally yielded.

Now I figured that a possible source of this cockroach (although there are many possibilities) could well be the uncovered shower drain, a 10cm brown hole in the floor which does wonders for water conservation on Malekula, as it makes a shower a thoroughly unpleasant experience which the sooner ended, the better. I would definitely buy a drain cover for this repulsive hole given the chance, only this being Malekula, there aren’t any.

Cockroach eliminated, I headed up the hill to my office. We were supposed to have had an important meeting with some potential investors today, but apparently one of their team couldn’t make it, so they postponed till tomorrow. Kevin still had to prepare paperwork for them to sign tomorrow, though, and was busy doing that, and couldn’t really spend time looking at the investment policy with me. Fair enough, I figured I’d use the morning to investigate the library that I’d heard from other volunteers existed on the island, and rumour is that it is surprisingly plentiful for a library on a remote island in Vanuatu, even though nobody seems to know of its existence. I eventually found the building that houses it, only to find it locked. Asking at province HQ, they said the cleaning ladies might have a key, but nobody had seen the cleaning ladies today, and there was no way of contacting them.

So giving up on that idea, I headed to market. There is often a portion problem with the market produce, in that you cannot buy say one single avocado, you must buy them by the dozen. Or not a handful of limes, you need to buy 30. If you ask the market sellers if you can just have a few, they stare at you with blank incomprehension. Well today, the only kumala (the Bislama name for sweet potato) was being sold wrapped in a woven coconut basket weighing about 5kg. I like sweet potato, but I’m not sure I like it that much. I bought it anyway, and have hung it from the rafters on the verandah in the hope that the rats won’t be able to get to it there.

Then in the afternoon, I had mentioned to Kevin that I needed to go and meet the airplane from Santo, as it was hopefully going to be bringing my final dose of Hep-B vaccination, and from the airport I could cross the road to the clinic and have it injected into me. This plan was going to work out nicely, as the Secretary General (SG) needed to get the same plane off the island, so I was able to travel in the official province truck with the government driver. Arrived at the airfield, and as I was waiting for the plane to arrive, I received a message from Brigitte saying she wasn’t going to be able to get my jab onto the plane after all, as it was locked in the VSA office, and she didn’t have a key at the moment. So I wished the SG a safe onward voyage, and headed back to the province office with the driver. When we got there, though, Kevin had finished his paperwork for tomorrow, and wanted to get the SG’s signature on it before he left. So we raced back to the airport only to find the plane had already left.

All was not lost, however. On the way back, I asked the driver to leave me at one of the island shops, as I had had enough of sitting in the sweltering truck and needed to pick up some eggs for dinner. As I was buying my eggs, I had a peek at some of the goods for sale, and my gaze alighted on something in the hardware section. There, tucked under some old plumbing bits and bobs, for the bargain price of 1,860 vatu, was a cellophane wrapped, stainless steel, 10cm-diameter SHOWER DRAIN COVER! It was the only one in the shop, and I pounced on it like Gollum on his ring. I carefully carried it home, feeling much more protective of it than of the eggs I had bought. Once home, I unwrapped it with awe and hope, not daring to get too excited in case it didn’t fit and my hopes were dashed. And indeed, when I tried to fit it at first, it seemed just too wide by a couple of millimetres. I went and had my supper, staring at it dejectedly, wondering if I could knock the extra millimetres in with a hammer or something, and noticed that it was actually comprised of two pieces, an inner ring and an outer ring. Excitedly, I unscrewed the outer ring, and was left with a drain cover just a bit smaller than the original – I went to the shower and tried it, and it fitted absolutely perfectly!

Very chuffed with that, I had a shower and retired for the evening on a high.