HAO

HAO Part 1 - A necklace of pearls

A wee bit of the string of motus looking like black pearls in the early morning.

A close up of one of the 100's of motu that make up Hao.

Hao is the first atoll of the Tuamuto Archipelago that we are going to visit. An atoll, btw, is a ring of coral reef in the ocean marking the place where an island, most likely a volcano, was, many millions of years ago. The island itself has eroded away completely, there is no land left at all, but there is a reef which started growing when the island existed and continued on long after it was gone and along this reef there are motus, or lumps of dead coral that have clumped together and washed up onto the reef above the waterline so as to form islets, which might or might not have coconut trees on them. These motu may be one continuous ring, like a bracelet, or a series of individual jewels, like a necklace of pears. Hao is a necklace of pearls.

I envisage myself going all the way round one day, skipping across the motus and swimming between them, but this, I see, will not be possible here. Hao is huge. It is 50 km long! We sail beside it for hours - heading north to where the pass into the interior lagoon is – and countless motus, each like a pearl, appear before us, pass by, then disappear behind.

Once inside the lagoon the colour turquoise dominates. It is shallow here, the whole lagoon is shallow, and the beauty is, I know already, beyond my capability to capture with a camera. Even from the boat we can see the multitude of fish that populate the calm warm waters and can tell we have arrived in paradise. We dock, free, at the abandoned military marina, and so can live on the boat, swim in the lagoon, and, also, anytime we like, walk off onto shore, explore, visit the wee village, buy an ice cream at the tiny store, whatever. It’s heaven.

I clean the stainless steel our first morning at dock and do a laundry in the afternoon. These are jobs I can do by myself. Our alternator has broken, which is a big deal, and Sven is busy troubleshooting. The next couple days as he continues to work on finding a solution to this newest problem there is nothing I can do for him so I am free to swim among the amazing coral heads with the zillions of reef fish and wander the island at my leisure.

Everything is perfect.

I am totally happy here.

And this is just the first of many atolls we will visit along the way to Tahiti.

HAO – part 2 – Blindsided by Lisa

One day I return to the boat after a very interesting walk to the high school where I spent much of the afternoon talking to a couple of girls who, like the majority of the students, live on other, smaller, atolls, and board here for the school year.

When I get back Lisa shows me a small, no tiny, brown dot on her towel and accuses me of making it. I try to anticipate her endless complaints, perhaps even avoid them, but hadn’t seen this one coming. ‘Sorry, not me,’ I say, ‘I didn’t touch your towel.’ (Man, was that the wrong reaction. If I had been in super duck mode, or realized what the consequences of my mild, yes, mild, response, were to be I might, perhaps, have said something else like, ‘Sorry. I must have used it by mistake at night. Let me clean it for you right away.’ But, unfortunately, that is not what I said. I knew I hadn’t touched her towel and her accusatory tone of voice grated on my nerves and I hadn’t been prepared for this complaint and I just politely repeated that I wasn’t responsible.) Well, nah, nah, nah… totally livid, totally disbelieving, she goes on and on and on at me. 

Yick.

The next day, on a walk into town with Sven, I suggest to him that I leave when we get to Tahiti. I have known for a while that I will do this but have not said so before. He agrees that this would be for the best.  

HAO – part 3 – Blindsided by Sven

The next morning Sven tells me he has considered what I said yesterday and, that if I’m going to leave anyway, he’d prefer I go now instead.

‘Here?’ I question unbelievingly - we are in the middle of fucking nowhere - ‘in Hao?’

‘Yes,’ he confirms, ‘I think there are weekly flights out.’

I am flabbergasted. I am dumbstruck. I do not think fast, in general, on my feet, and had NOT seen this coming. I tell him I’d prefer to continue on to Tahiti with him. I promise to be on my best behaviour. I swear I didn’t touch Lisa’s towel. Eventually I plead with him. But his mind is made up. He is sick of the drama. He feels caught in the middle. He finds it stressful. He wants me to go.

‘But I don’t create the drama,’ I say. ‘I don’t put you in the middle.’

‘I know,’ he says, ‘You are not the one at fault here. I like you. I have enjoyed having you on board. But it is a three part equation, and if you are going to leave anyway, it’s best you go now.’

WHAT THE FUCK HAVE I DONE?

My pleading descends into begging but all to no avail.

‘You chose to leave,’ he says, ‘I am just choosing the timing.’

I feel this is not a fair statement. ‘If I’d kept my mouth shut would you have kept me to New Zealand?’ I ask. He doesn’t answer. 

Eventually I agree to go into town and try to find out if flights from here exist. What else am I to do?

And, later that afternoon, despite the lack of a plan, I go back to the boat, pack up my stuff, and leave. (I wondered later if I ought have just stayed, declared that I had no other option, waited to see if he’d physically put me off, but, at the time, I was simply too shocked to behave rationally, and, having left, was just too stubborn, and embarrassed, to go back.)

Perhaps, had I realized what was coming, I might have been able to marshal some better arguments, or, at least, not have started the ball rolling by saying I would leave in Tahiti.

Ouch!

I can’t believe that I am getting kicked off the boat here, just as we have arrived at the beginning of the best part.

I can’t believe that the straw was Lisa’s towel about which I still proclaim total innocence. (‘Yes. You’re always innocent. It’s never your fault…’ I hear the echo of my ex-husband’s voice in my mind and it causes me to pause.)

I can’t believe I have, yet again, fucked up so royally.

I can’t believe this is how I am starting off my new decade.

I can’t believe I didn’t see it coming.

I can’t believe it at all.

HAO – part 4 - Noeline

Noeline and her family.

My first step is to ask each of the other three boats here on the island if there is any chance they will take me on. (Nope.) My second step is to look for a supply boat to go with. (Nope.) So I try to find out about flights. There is an Air Tahiti office in town (closed for the summer) and there is no internet (of course). I am stumped. Also, Sven has not returned my passport yet and I am stressed about the possibility of not getting it back at all. I am so out of sorts that I no longer know which way is up.

All too fast the day flies by and soon I will need somewhere to sleep. I have a tent, of course, so I go to the town hall and ask the mayor’s secretary where I can set it up for a few days. (The answer is nowhere.) Is there a hotel? (Also no.) I explain my situation - which is complicated by the fact that I have no cash with me and no way of procuring any, short of having it wired to me which takes 3 business days, and, of course, assumes I have some way of contacting someone to do so, and what does wired even mean - and she, the secretary, says that I will just have to spend the night with her. I repeat that I am without cash to reimburse her. ‘Come back at 5 pm when I get off work,’ she says. ‘We will figure something out.’

My situation wrt the boat decided and a place to spend the night found I go and sit in the shade beneath the internet tower and finally manage to figure out how to buy time. Letting a couple of friends and family in on my disastrous situation calms me a bit but still I worry about the short term (given the poverty all around me what will my lodgings be like tonight?) and the middle term (what on earth does one do when stranded on Hao?) and the long term (since I am obviously far more dysfunctional than even I had realized is there any hope for me at all?).

My life has been a mess forever it seems and I wonder if perhaps now I have finally reached rock bottom, in, ironically, a country that doesn’t have even a single rock.

I meet Noeline after work and we walk together to her house. I had not realized when she said that I would have to spend the night with her she meant in her bed with her. I had assumed she meant on a couch or something. But her house has nothing resembling a couch. And the only chairs are plastic garden ones that are brought inside for meals. And the floor is not an option. There is a large screen TV but no running water. Two rooms. Everyone, Noeline, her sister, her 84 year old mother, and her adopted 9 year old son, all sleep in the same room. Rainwater runs from the roof into barrels and each evening everyone showers all together, naked, outside, in view of the road, by scooping jugfuls of water from the barrels onto each other. Supper is watery rice soup. I get the impression that that is supper every night. Noeline has a job. She has worked for the town for 35 years. I have no idea what her salary is but I know that unemployment on the island is high and I cannot imagine how families without jobs live. Snuggled beside her in bed that evening we chat for quite a while after everyone else has fallen asleep and I marvel at how welcome I really do feel here, with this total stranger, who has so little, and contrast this with how I felt on Sven’s 3 million dollar boat.

I remain shocked that he asked me to leave.

And that I left.

And I just do not know, at all, what I will do next.