Fona
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Mon 20 Sep 2010 23:24
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Tuesday 21 September 0704 Local 2004 UTC (Monday
20th)
16:06.84S 168:07.65E
We have now been anchored off the black sand beach
at Fona since Saturday and would expect to move today.
We had a visit from Johnson Koran who is the chief
of the village. He arrived in his dugout canoe and he is a very friendly man. We
arranged to go to the village the next day just to walk around and get the lay
of the land.
We were guided around the village by a family of
kids who were very friendly and one of whom, Enid, had
excellent English. Mostly they were taken
with Trish and loved walking and talking with her.
It is sometimes difficult to know what to have
aboard to gift to people. For the kids it is easy, and we have had a lot of
Rhiann Marie polo shirts all of which have been very well received. More
practical things we have had have been rice and cooking oil but one of the
things Trish brought was a load of glasses - reading glasses. It has been
wonderful to be able to give these to someone, after deternining
what strength they need, and watching their faces illuminate as they see
clearly for the first time in many years! We have been able to distribute many
pairs of these and will now havre to re-stock on our visit home.
We had also stocked up with school things for the
small school north of Ambrym - enough of everything for thirty kids and we
arranged to visit the school on Monday.
Before then however Johnson and a few other men
from the village asked me to drink Kava with them late afternoon Sunday. This
was not your Tonga of Fiji Kava and I had already seen in Port Vila that this
Vanuatu stuff was quite strong. This Ambrym stuff however was very
powerful. One shell was imbibed and its effects were mellow and
relaxing. After a while the second shell was passed to me ....... Oh good
grief! My senses were swamped. My vision was gone and I could not focus. I
literally could only see double and had to close one eye to prevent myself from
becoming completely disorientated. My brain was swimming. There was no way I
could have stood up and I just sat quietly and hung onto the log I was sitting
on - or was it - flying on. This was actually scary. When I eventually
thought it may be safe to stand up I did and hung onto Trish to carefully
stagger down the path to the beach to get back to the boat. Aboard i started to
feel nauseous so I decided to feed the fish with it all. Whew! That will be the
last time I will have Kava in Vanuatu - or anywhere for that
matter!
On Monday we visited the old Chief who is 103 and
just seems to be waitning to die in a small hut with a dirt floor and nothing
inside it but a very basic old bed with no matress. We brought him a blanket and
althogh they were very grateful it seems so little.
Later we hiked the 1 hour to the school with a
woman from the village and her three children. One kid had flip flops the
others were barefoot and the mother wore one flip flop!
The school visit was well timed because they were
just having lessons about places around the world. The head teacher was
very happy to recieve us and we showed the class on the world charts we had
where our travels had taken us. We were then able to show them images on a slide
show on our lap top, from all through our travels which they were very happy
with.
On our travels, including the school visit we were
able to take photos then print them out in colour for people which tyhey always
enjoy receiving.
That afternoon Chief Johnson and his family
prepared a beautiful meal for us which we all ate spread out on pandannis mats
under a tree over looking Rhiann Marie and looking west to the sunset. It was
really a beautiful setting and perhaps typical of the simple happy
lifestyle they seem to live in the villages in Vanuatu.
Today we will move across to Pentecost Island, home
of the Land Divers.
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