Ignited

Talking with Ian's girlfriend Sarah over the weekend, I found myself harking back to 1972-1973  when I spent a year as a Voluntary Service Overseas teacher on the very remote island of Rotuma. It is situated  way north of the main islands of Fiji.

Sarah was interested and so memories and explanations tumbled out of me. I have referred to Rotuma  before in this blog but in everyday life I rarely have the opportunity to talk about it and the experiences I had there. I am not a boastful man and I tend to shun people who are always going on about where they have been and what they have done.

After twenty minutes of rambling, I showed Sarah and Ian the coconut palm fan I was given in the week before I left Rotuma. Previously, I blogged about it here. They appreciated the story of the fan and how no such fans were ever woven for sale to visitors - because there weren't any! In a rash moment I said that they could have the fan. It was like passing on a precious heirloom and I feel happy that they will cherish it. Ian even thought of putting it in a frame with a tropical green background. When I am dead they will look at it sometimes and perhaps think of me and that faraway island.

I told them tales of pigs swimming in the bay and of boys shinning up coconut palms. How a huge shark was captured from a headland and pulled in by several villagers with a thick rope. I told them about the scary night when a young pregnant woman came a-knocking at my door, saying that she loved me. She had left her husband and claimed that I was the father of the baby anyway even though I had never had any physical contact with her before. In the moonlight, I led her along the beach - not the main village road - and took her to the Roman Catholic mission where four nuns resided - one of whom spoke good English.

I told them about helping Mojito to make his first outrigger canoe so that he could go fishing above the reef at high tide. The main body of the canoe was a hollowed out coconut palm trunk. And of course I told them about Richard - my American Peace Corps housemate and about the October night when Hurricane Bebe swept down from The Ellice Islands. It caused  so much damage on Rotuma that a squadron of soldiers from New Zealand arrived three weeks later to aid the restoration process.

Sweet smelling flowers and ovens made from hot piles of rocks onto which the carcass of a pig would be cast ahead of a feast served on banana leaves Traditional dancing and nights in the grog house drinking yangona or kava from blackened coconut cups. And always the endless blue Pacific surrounding us. Not a single piece of plastic on the shore. It was a world in itself. What lay beyond the horizon didn't seem to matter very much. England was just a dream.

Zzzzzzzzzzz! No. Sarah and Ian did not fall asleep. And it's funny you know - our Little Phoebe finds it hard to say her own name. Instead she tends to say Bebe,  always reminding me of Hurricane Bebe and that wild night in October 1972 when Richard and I  prayed that our roof would stay on. The following morning we walked in the deathly quiet of that  hurricane's eye and witnessed the awful damage left behind.

Just below the surface these memories swirl and they will remain with me until my dying day.