In the morning I didn’t do my workout because i had some urgent mails to write. Additionally my sports clothes were still wet, what a nice excuse.<\/p>\n
We did what’s needed since a while: boat cleaning. Starting at the bow, the gangway, the cockpit and the cockpit cushion.<\/p>\n
Tobi worked on adding a rubber damper at his speargun and I could help him.<\/p>\n
Then we went ashore. The pier we wanted to go to turned out as good dinghy dock but it was pretty much destroyed by a cyclone with huge waves. Beside tying up a tender or do some fishing, or cannot be used anymore for docking supply boats. We learned later that the supply boats are build like landing boats which go just at the beach to exchange freight, which includes even cars.<\/p>\n
Walking up the beach to the first house, we saw a young lady cleaning the yard. We approached her and asked her for the chief of the village to give him a present of yaquona roots for kava. Here in Vanuatu these roots are more presents from men to men to enjoy driving kava together.<\/p>\n
In the yard, I was surprised to see it covered with a layer of dead corals, which are always found in the vicinity of coral reefs. Even inside the house I could see these dead corals functioning from my foreign point of view as small pebbles. The covered floor looks very nice and clean.<\/p>\n
Then the lady took the present for the chief and started walking us down the road. However, the chief was already back to village and welcomed us in conversation just at road side. H introduced him as Terry, a d speaks pretty good English. It urns out that he works during the season in Australia , harvesting vegetables and fruits. A way for 4 of the island of Vanuatu to make money for items they need cash for. Food for daily life grows plenty on the island and their is the sea which provides fish and shells. Thus daily life doesn’t require much cash.<\/p>\n
Terry encouraged us to walk down the road until the tiny airport. When we arrived there I saw it’s only a small grass covers airstrip. The airport building only had open doors and windows. No wood, no glass, no need for such things. At the side of the building there were a few cows grazing. Later we learned that people don’t really rely on the airline. The airline is said to cancle flights very often. I’m curious if on Wednesday the scheduled flight arrives.<\/p>\n
When we walked into the village we met again Terry and had another friendly and open chat about life on the island.<\/p>\n
We then continued walking only to stop soon again. We met William. He works in NZ during the kiwi harvesting season. Talking about fruits he got a bowl of mangos for us of which we took only six. But then we got additional 3 Papayas. Gosh, what a rich present. It was also William who invited us to a feast on Lamen Island an Friday. Food is supposed to be prepared in an earth oven.<\/p>\n
As soon as we started walking further down the road, a young girl came a bit shy to Tobi to bring him two pamplemousses she promised to get for him. What a gesture of this girl! Despite the fact that all kind of vegetables and fruits are growing in abondance at islands like Epi Island, I’m always feeling ashamed when I receiving so much fruits or vegetables just as presents.<\/p>\n
Finally we walked again towards the other village. The first village we entered is called “Lamarou” the second is called “Vaemali”. In between is a very big school and the concrete street to the other side of the island. The school of the Epi Island has 300 student and also a dormitory for those students who can’t commute every day.<\/p>\n
After the school, we passed a small football field with a sandy ground. Boys played football; some had football shoes with studs the others played barefoot. A bit a risky combination. They had great fun and seems nobody gets hurt by the studs.<\/p>\n
The kids of the island seem to be very sportive. A group of girls played volleyball. Only one man played with them. Most likely the coach. Most of the were playing in one pieces or skirts; only 2 girls played in shorts. Later, Tobi joined them playing volley ball. So I had a bit of time to watch the game. I was surprised about the intensity with which they played. It was ongoing power-play.<\/p>\n
We walked on and there was group of girls playing with glass marbles it was played so fast that from watching I could not really recognize the rules of this game.<\/p>\n
A bit further down the road, I saw an interesting looking buildings. Walls are made of split bamboo walling. Bamboo is splitted, and woven into a lattice pattern and fixed an wooden frames to built up the walls. Roofs are thatched with coconuts tree leaves.<\/p>\n
A nice emerald blue paint is used for a geometrical pattern. A few houses, obviously belonging to the same owner, have the same patterns. It turned out that one of houses is for selling fruits and vegetables mostly the buyer just leaves the money. Another one is the coffee shop \/ restaurant. The rest of the houses are the “private quarters”.<\/p>\n
Then Miriam came out of one of these “private quarters”. She introduced herself as the chef of the “Sanda Cafe”. She offers dinners for sailors and other tourist coming to this corner of Epi Island. We agreed for a dinner on Wednesday evening.<\/p>\n
When we continued walking a lady with a styrofoam box approached us “fresh bread” was written on it. When she opened the box in front of us, the wonderful smell of freshly baked bread sneaked into our noses. We bought a bread. When I asked for her oven, she showed it to us. It was not an earth-oven like the one Christine has in
\nPenrhyn Island, Cook Islands. It was a construction of stones and concrete. The wood fire is made in the oven, and when the stones are hot, the wood or better the ash is removed and the dough in the bread pans are put on the oven and the opening is closed with an old coconuts husk sack.<\/p>\n
Benny, the baking lady offered us coconuts jam. During my long sail along islands with coconuts, I never heard about coconuts jam. So we were curious and wanted to buy one next day.<\/p>\n
At the end we walked with Benny and saw that she sells her bread at the little shop of the village.<\/p>\n
Filled up to the top with things we saw, heard, experienced, we went back.<\/p>\n
What a day!<\/p>\n
And what will be coming up?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the morning I didn’t do my workout because i had some urgent mails to write. Additionally my sports clothes were still wet, what a nice excuse. We did what’s needed since a while: boat cleaning. Starting at the bow, the gangway, the cockpit and the cockpit cushion. Tobi worked on adding a rubber damper […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-16"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}