Commodore
July 28, 2024

Monday 29 July – a visit from Ba and her sister Salote

We are very sheltered from the wind but judging from the Wing Foilers out and Kite surfers about there is plenty of wind. Luckily enough with it being so protected, it was calm enough to do endless loads of washing in the morning, which was not so popular as it depleted both the water and the battery charge on the boat! But with the sun out and good wind it was a very good day for hanging out the laundry. I had a general tidy up as Rowan got endless work stuff sorted.

Our host lady Ba and her sister had said they would come to the boat at 3pm to visit us, so I quickly made a banana loaf, from our many Susui bananas. We had our last 2 eggs at breakfast, crossing fingers that Ba’s promise to bring eggs, veg and fruit would materialise. My Banana bread was made with loads of coconut oil and bicarb of soda as I have no baking powder. I added loads of walnuts and sunflower seeds hoping to make it more interesting. By half past three Rowan and I gave up and had a cup of tea with the banana bread, which turned out ok. Just after 4pm we saw a long boat coming over and with great enthuiastic waving they were heading towards us, a bit too enthusiastically as they crashed straight into PolePole. Ba’s husband is on the mainland, so she came with her sister Salote and her husband called Mini, (he looked anything but Mini!), he sat in front of us at Church and was one of the few men wearing a jacket and tie over their Sulu. Clearly a little superior or higher up the ranks. We had such a laugh with them on board, Salote’s English was amazing and had us all in hysterics. I had noticed Ba had my size feet, I gave her an old pair of my plastic birkenstocks that I thought would fit her. She was thrilled and kept them on her feet as Salote (much bigger lady with bigger feet) was green with envy, and would have had them off her in a jiffy. We tried to console Salote with a pair of reading glasses, which she was pretty happy about but would definitely have preferred some bright pink shoes! Salote asked if she could use our wifi, Rowan logged here on, but she could not see a thing. So I produced 2.5 reading glasses, she said she needed level 5, but suddenly she was all over her phone passing it over to her husband with the glasses and then Ba got a turn looking at the phone with the glasses. We have brought loads of reading glasses to hand out and in fact we had put a pair in Ba’s thank you present for lunch, she just had not brought them with her. They brought us an enormous bag filled with, pumpkin, spinach, papaya, limes, bananas and 12 precious eggs! They loved looking around the boat. They opted for juice and coke rather than tea with their banana bread, but they loved it and all had an enormous second helping. The wind was picking up and it was soon going to be dark, so they departed around 5:30pm, refusing any payment for the eggs and produce which was so sweet of them. We insisted we pay them something, which they finally accepted ….. fuel is $5 a litre. we really enjoyed having them over, they are so friendly and so full of laughter, quite extraordinary how remotely they live out here. One fridge in the village hall and on the odd occasion it appears that some of them can get TV!