This was our back yard earlier this the week in the middle of a tropical rain-storm. Not that you can even see it is raining in this shot. Tropical rain like this is really quite spectacular - it is so heavy, and goes on for so long. It literally thundered down for about two days... so noisy, and no one has gutters so you can imagine the sheets of water falling off the roof. There was quite a bit of flooding around the island, and not a small amount of damage in the hydroponics gardens where I work. C loves rainy days so thought it was fantastic, got herself a rug (even though it was still 25 degrees or so), a pile of books, and a spot on the couch and declared it was "cosy." The lower temperatures and big drop in humidity was a lovely change. I think I might even have used a cotton blanket for a couple of hours in bed this past week. Brrrrr. :-) Of course all the wind meant the back yard ended up covered in palm fronds and junk... so lots of tidying and raking is still required. See earlier post re the joys of raking. Today, cleaning up, I managed to get some red ant bites on my arm - very itchy.
I felt sorry for The Peeper during the storm so let him roost in his favourite spot: on top of the washing machine on the back porch. Yes, The Peeper is alive and well, thank you to those who have inquired. He came back from the chicksitter a few weeks ago, into a makeshift and fairly unsatisfactory coop. We then decided it looked like he IS a he, and not a she.. and so I let him out of the coop to wander around, thinking that if he disappeared it wouldn't be a bad thing, given that we want eggs and not cock-a-doodle-do's. But he loves us and has stayed. He follows us around outside, jumps on your knee if you're eating outside, comes when he is called. Normally every evening we lift him gently off the washing machine and put him back in his coop for the night... but since the rainstorm, hmm. I really should get tougher. One of those days he is going to leave the adolescent stage and start crowing. At which point we might have to send him on a very long holiday to the other side of the island. For now, at any rate, he is a total character and makes us laugh. C adores him, and all the other animals who roam around the property night and day.
A brief catch-up on the last while:
* we were extras in a TV series! Called Paradise Cafe, it is a children's programme funded jointly by the BBC and a NZ production house. Lots of 'papa'as" (Europeans) were required as extras for the market and hotel scenes, as tourists. We did a predictably long and arduous 11-hour day in the sun, but it was good fun and C thought her $100 pay for the day was fabulous.
* went to an 'international food night' where the different ethnic communities on the island had stalls...eg the Fijian Indians, the Philippinos, the Seventh Day Adventist vegetarians (this was the best one.) And lots of island entertainment. A great night.
* went to see our neighbours over the road perform in their cultural group.. was so good, so powerful, it made me cry. * have made a couple of new girlfriends...Nancy, a colourful Canadian, who runs C's drama class, and Marina, a lovely Cook Islander with a two-year-old daughter. Went out for dinner with Marina last night, a rare treat, and talked solidly for four hours. Girlfriends are so important. Helped Nancy clean up her house last week prior to her going back to Canada for a Christmas visit, and she has loaned us her car for two months while she is away. So we now have four wheels available to us. We still use the scooter most of the time though, as it is so much cheaper (and not as hot, and more fun).
* C found a bottle of maple syrup this week in the supermarket. Just the one. I don't think there are any more ships till Christmas now, so we grabbed it. You never know if something you see will ever be on the shelves again, so best to nab things, or six of them, when they appear.
* an old lady at the petrol station has taken to giving me impromptu Maori lessons whenever she sees me. "Sit down," she orders, and then proceeds to tell me why what I just said was wrong:-) Everyone speaks English so well and so commonly, there's no need to speak the language and few papa'as bother. It's also hard to learn because they automatically address non-islanders in English, so there is no immersion factor, and no classes or lessons available. But I'm slowly learning a bit, and love the way the locals light up whenever I try out a phrase.
* Mangoes are dripping off the trees everywhere, and are of course free, you just have to be able to reach them. A long stick or piece of bamboo with a loop of wire attached to the end comes in handy. Yummo.
* my swimming is getting better. I had one lesson with C's swimming teacher and one with a rather eccentric international German swim coach who comes to the Cooks once a year and offers free lessons to anyone who is interested while he is here. (At his first lesson for children, 92 kids turned up.) It was interesting to have a lesson with someone who really knows what he is talking about re technique. I swallowed a lot of water trying to remember everything. We were supposed to have a series of lessons with him, but in typical island fashion (things come and go) he left unexpectedly and that was that.
We often go swimming just before bedtime, to cool down, and to catch the sunset (a friend of mine in NZ told me to 'catch every sunset you can,' and so we do.) The other night we took our plates down to the beach to have dinner there, not intending to swim...but saw our neighbour Aunty Te'ei, who is coming up 80 or so, going in for a dip. "Come on in," she said. So we jumped in, with our clothes on, which is how most of the islanders swim anyway. We sat in the shallows for about an hour, chatting with her, and with some others who turned up after harvesting octopus and sea-slug innards. I wished I had had a camera... the sky turning pink and the light shining on Aunty Te'ei's lovely wrinkled beautiful face, up to her neck in the still water, grinning away and telling us about island life in the 50s. It was just one of those moments.
Off to bed I go. The days start very early here, around 5:30am on a good day, 4am or so on a not-so-good one, and I am getting quite tired, it's hard to go to bed early enough to make up for it, especially when it's hot and humid.
*****
