Pay before the end of the month
Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Fri 12 Jul 2013 02:31
|
Or you will be posted outside the store... This is
a sign that meets the visitor to one of Le Magazines in the village. There
are two local stores in Manihi and a bakery. The stores have most canned goods
and some frozen. You can get onion, potatoes (pommes le terre) and cabbage (one
medium sized head cost 7Euros). The prices are horrendous, even the kids who
where keen on finding saturday candy (lördagsgodis) said no thank you when they
found out that one caramel cost 2,5 Euros. But strangely enought newly baked
baguettes at the Boulangerie cost only 0,8 Euros each.
The village of Manihi where almost everyone lives
in this atholl, has about 600 inhabitans. They live in small concrete houses and
everything is mostly neat and well taken care of.
As we went to the village yesterday (for us it is a
long dinghy ride = 20-25 minutes) we ended up on their football field where they
where preparing July feast. Lot's of women where sitting on the ground plaiting
palmtree leafes, the result being big sheets that where laid on frames, the same
way they built huts traditionally. But here they where building a big hall so
everybody can gather for this weekends party.Erika expressed her wish to help
and soon enought Lucienne a nice woman in the twenties was showing her how to do
it. Ellinor grabbed one of these big palmtree branches and started to plait. The
oldest woman, smiled and went over to show her how it was done. And soon enought
half of the family was involved in the job. I was taking pictures, they liked me
doing that, proud of what they where doing. Andreas fooled around with leftovers
from the palm tree branches.
It was great fun to be part of the preparation and
we plan on being there on Sunday celebrating with them.
This morning the kids and I went into town again
(they loved it), Ellinor stayed on board and painted.
We went to the baker, Fernando and he was a
talkative guy. I will go with him and his friends on friday night to hunt
lobster, sounds like fun. We where invited inside the bakery and the kids got
fresh bread right out of the oven.
After that we went down to the water and there was
a lot of fish to be cleaned and as a result sharks where swimming around in the
lagoon. Fun for the kids who finally got to see some (the only one seeing them
so far was me when Im kayaking).
This is the best part of staying put, you start to
know people that live here and as there are no other yachtes around we are
better at getting in touch.
Fernando told me that it used to be a lot of boats
coming here, mostly to see how the oysters where opened up and pearls harvested.
He said it was a big event and a lot of fun. But they runned out of oysters and
pearls so now very few yacths find their way to Manihi.
We also learned that the farming done in this
lagoon is done with people that fly in from Papete.So it does not create any
wealth for the local people. They rely mostly on copra and fishing.
Back to the boat, lunch with fresh baguettes and
tuna fish sallad. The afternoon today we spent snorkeling around some reefs
nearby. Lots and lots of fish!
Did I write that we fouled the anchor chain up? I
was in the water guiding and Ellinor handled Salsa, to see what was going on at
14-15 meters depth I had to go down and check, come up and give directions.
Ellinor had to handle 17 tons of boat half a meter in different directions,
suddenly we had unwrapped the coral head that was more like a hook than a head.
Now we have fenders on every 10 meter of chain, that makes it hang up from the
bottom and when the boat pulls down the chain it keeps it straight anyway. Looks
funny with a line of fenders sticking up in front of us.
|