When the custom officer was on board of MaRe for inbound clearance, he gave us his name with “Junior Andrew”. So we call him like this.

As we changed our departure date with an extension of one day, we asked Junior Andrew, when we should do the outbound clearance. “Come Saturday”, was his answer. For us from Germany and Japan this is a very precise answer. Precise down to the minute.

On Friday Alex told us where Junior Andrew’s house is and we walked there to find out more about Saturday’s appointment. When we reached the house, a group of kids approached us. One of them, the oldest, is outspoken open-minded; she did the talking. The others were younger and just curious about what’s going on.

We asked for their father and learned that only the mother is in the house. She also asked us to come around the house. There, behind partially open wooden blinders, we saw a female face looking older than the girls and assumed that the face we could partially recognize is Junior Andrew’s wife. Wrong, it was, is I recall it right, a niece of Junior Andrew’s wife, who lives with them. A common Polynesian way to strengthen family connections.

Somehow Junior Andrew’s wife came and invited us is to come in.

We asked what we wanted to ask but I forgot her answer because we had a very interesting talk about the Wednesday’s fund raising event. I recognized the niece as one of the dancers. She was happy about that.

It turned out that Junior Andrew’s wife was one of the ladies that sang on Wednesday evening. It was a canon song of male and female voices. Asking her for the lyrics she asked one of the kids to please bring the song book. It was a book of hymns of the Ziona Church.

We didn’t come to talk about the translation when Junior Andrew came home. “What time on Saturday? It’s 10 o’clock convenient for you?”, we asked. “Come at 0800”, he said. “Perfect”, I replied, “we’ll be here at 0800”.

On Saturday we were there with passports and boat papers at 0810 to give just a little bit more time to somehow interrupt his family Saturday morning. The kids already asked us to come in. There we saw beautifully hand woven hats. The niece explained that Junior Andrew’s wife makes them. She, the niece, only made one – it was a multicolored well made hat. The others, made by Junior Andrew’s wife, had on top a part of pearl shell woven in. Simply skillfully made and beautiful.

“I got something to do with the children. Can you come again at 1000?”
“Sure we can. See you at 1000.”

It was then that we decided to go to the airport. We met Puna and the airport story is “241002_03 Puna and the airport – catching up again”. At the airport we also saw Junior Andrew being busy with some matters. As he also saw us, thus he knows that the 1000 meeting is delayed. Until when? We are still thinking too much in our German and Japanese way.

When we got off of Puna’s car, we went straight to his house. “Not here. Let’s go to my office”, he said and walked to his 50 cm3 motor bike. “Get on”, he continued and pointed to the little trailer attached to his motor bike. This way we went a few hundred meets to his office, just across the street of the new administration build
Keep in mind, he did all for us on Saturday! Don’t expect something like this in Germany or Japan or other so called highly developed countries.

He gave us all the papers we needed to fill in. Especially I, as the skipper, had to fill in really a lot. Nitty gritty details of MaRe and equipment on board. Suddenly I understood what these details are good for. They want to know details for the case they need to identify a boat. “They” means the Cook Islands.

At a certain point in time, his boss passed by and Junior Andrew gave him some documents.

When all was ready, I asked Junior Andrew for a copy of my departure certificate from French Polynesia. He asked us to wait a moment because the needed certification was in the documents he gave to his boss minutes before. He just left us in his office to get the paper he needs. Imagine something like this in Germany or Japan or other so called highly developed countries.

We were cleared out and could leave on Monday morning.

Where is the story about the fishes? I decided to write it in part 2. All the fishing events are interwoven with what’s written here.