On the flight from
Hao to Tahiti I am allowed a 10 kg bag. There is a whole brochure explaining
why; fuel is expensive, runways are short, Tahitians tend to weigh a
lot... Any luggage over 10 kg is
charged, a lot, per kg. I don’t know what my hockey bag of stuff weighs but I think
it is probably at least a gazillion kg.
I decide that I am
willing to pay for 10 maybe 15 kg of overweight luggage but not more.
Noeline allows me
to use the conference room in the town hall to sort my stuff out and I spend several
hours doing so. I go through everything very thoroughly. I decide to keep
things which are expensive, light weight, and precious and toss everything
cheap, heavy, and of no sentimental value.
Unfortunately I
have several big things I cannot bear to leave behind; the hockey bag itself is
my husband’s, and my foul weather gear, large and bulky as a snowsuit, partly
borrowed from my mother, then there is my 1-person tent, of course, and my hiking
boots, I have my laptop, my phone, two cameras, and my kindle, which is, though
small, hefty, and, of course, all the cables to go with each of them… After
that, though it is not easy, I am ruthless; I keep my toothbrush but not my
toothpaste, I keep my mask and snorkel but not my flippers or wetsuit, I keep
my two pairs of purple undies but toss both my black ones and my white ones, I
throw out most of my clothes, and toiletries, and my towel, all but one of the
rocks I have collected along the way, my sketch book and pencils, many ziplock
bags, even the good ones, my new sleeping bag and packsack…
Noeline comes to
check on me and is horrified both with how heavy my hockey bag still is and
with the amount of stuff in my to-be-left-behind pile. I ask her to keep
anything she might find useful and give the rest away. We look over what I have
tossed. ‘I guess I should throw out my used underwear,’ I say, reaching for it,
‘Nobody would want that.’ ‘You might be surprized,’ she replies, laying her
hand on mine, ‘what people on this island would be happy to have.’ So I pack it
along with my other rejected clothes into my packsack and leave it with stuff
she will have to deal with.
When I finally get
to the airport and they weigh my bag – I am, oddly, the only one who has chosen
to pack their stuff in a hockey bag – it is only 10 kg! What? Really?
Unbelievable! Wait, I want to say, let me just run back to the town to get my
wetsuit… But it’s too late for that.
And, I realize,
though this may be TMI, I will be wearing purple undies every day!
