Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Mary Poppins, Tongan Style

3 August. Vaka 0800 Position 18-42S 174-08W. At anchor in the Hunga lagoon, Vava'u, Tonga

Late yesterday morning an elderly local guy in a dugout canoe came by for a visit. "Vaka" was very friendly, spoke English well, and his canoe was a piece of art work. It was built the way the Tongans built canoes 500 years ago, except he probably shaped it with a chain saw instead of an adz. After chatting for a while he said "Do you like fruit?" and he produced a bag of passion fruit and what he said was an apple from his backpack. Rob agreed to buy them. "How about papayas? You like papayas?" We said we did, and he agreed to return later with some.

The boys went ashore for a hike in the early afternoon. There is a narrow trail up the steep hillside to the top of the hill where a four wheel drive track runs the length of the island. We walked along the road to the south end of the island where there is a nice beach exposed to the open ocean to the south. I've hiked there half a dozen times always hoping to find a glass ball on the rarely visited beach. No luck again, but it is a beautiful place.

Late in the afternoon Vaka showed up again in his canoe. Rob invited him aboard and he sat down in the cockpit to visit. He opened his backpack and produced a couple of papaya and three coconuts. "How much do I owe you for all the fruit?" Rob asked.

"You help my family. There is no price. You decide how much you want to help my family and give me" Vaka said. Hmmm, guilt trip. This guy was good.

Rob paid him for the fruit and we chatted some more. Vaka was born on Hunga as were his parents and grandparents. His grandfather had started a pearl farm in the lagoon. "You like pearls?" Vaka asked.

"Well, sure!" somebody replied.

Vaka's backpack was the equivalent of Mary Poppin's carpet bag. He had a department store's worth of stuff to sell in there and from it he produced a plastic bag full of baroque pearls, black, white, and pink. "All these pearls I grow" Vaka told us.

He had necklaces, earings, and single pearls. He laid them all out and after much examination, discussion, and bargaining, a couple of black pearl necklaces were purchased. Vaka threw in a pair of black pearl earings as "a present".

Vaka said he was going fishing after dark last night outside the lagoon for wahoo and mahi mahi. He agreed to stop by this morning to sell some fish to us if they caught anything. He departed Van Diemen lighter and richer and everybody was happy.

The anchorage here is very quiet. When the trades are strong we can hear the wind in the trees on top of the ridge behind us. It almost sounds like surf on a barrier reef. There are no other sounds except the occasional bird song or the splash of a fish jumping. Every evening at exactly twenty minutes after sunset it seems like a switch gets flipped and the quiet turns to chaos as the island behind us comes alive with the sound of cicadas. Millions of the insects start making a deafening noise at exactly the same time. Twenty minutes later the noise stops just as abruptly. Weird.

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