We had a wonderful Sunday we spent with family here on Tanna. We saw my Tanna nephew’s grandma when we arrived two days ago and then today at church. Yesterday, Nathaniel’s uncle Junior showed up at the boat paddling a little dugout canoe around 6:30 in the morning. He had heard from other people we had arrived and were looking for family members. I spent an hour speaking with him on the back deck and telling him that Kirsten already met the rest of the family.
This evening Grandma, Uncle Andrew, Antie Rota and Auntie Rosemarie came by the boat. We had invited them all over to a dinner on the sailboat. We had about 7 of the young children (all but one were between the ages of 1 and 8) on the boat as well. It was the youngest crowd of kids we have ever had on the boat. They were so excited as it was their first time on a yacht!
They were so kind and gracious and made us understand that we are family, in such a loving way. We do indeed feel a definite connection to them through our Tanna nephew/cousin. They presented us with a gift of a woven mat and some long feathers for putting in the hair.
We had gone through a number of our ship’s supplies before they came. Because we are leaving our boat in just 2 weeks we were able to pass over 4 large bins of items we will not have room to bring in our luggage back to Canada including winter jackets, blankets, baby clothes and photos of our nephew. I even printed out a few of the photos that we took while everyone was on the front of our sailboat at the beginning of the evening, and sent them home with them.
Another young boy named Jamie came by in the afternoon. His family of 7 children live in a nearby village. He is now 16 years old and living in this main city of Lenakel. I saw him earlier in the day at church. Apparently he sees his family every second week on the weekend when he has a long weekend break from school. After church I walked around town and then was returning to the boat. He was reading a book and waiting by the dock when he said, “Can I ask you a question?” I told him, “Sure go ahead.” not knowing what to expect (In Fiji this was usually followed by a request for money).
“Can I come over and visit your yacht?” he asked? So with no notice to the family and perhaps to Kirsten’s dismay (due to the messy boat, mostly due to all of the volcano ash that has collected on it) I showed up with an unannounced visitor.
I noticed his book and asked him what books he liked the best… he told me “I like lots of books including The Magic Treehouse.” By the time he left our boat he ended up carrying a large bag of books plus the entire Harry Potter book series. He must have felt like he really scored but I saw him reading a book so we hope all of these books we can’t bring back home will come to good use.
Tanna has been a beautiful place for us to visit and we feel at home. Tomorrow we will visit the volcano and banyan tree.
Uncle Andrew’s plan was to go on the freighter ship on Monday to Port Villa and then wait two weeks when he will be flying to New Zealand. He will be leaving his family for 6 months to work on the farms picking cherries and other produce in order to raise money for his kid’s school fees. It is sad to see that so many people of the islands need to leave their families for so long or make other large sacrifices in order to provide an education to their children. When he found out that we would be leaving for Port Villa in a couple of days he asked us if he could sail with us instead of take the freighter. It looks like we will have one extra passenger when we leave Tanna in a couple of days as it will save him on the money for the passage to the capital city.
