Читать книгу Wanderlust: A Solitary Island in the South Pacific - Nina Hoffmann - Страница 9

When I wake up on the Alo'ofa, five hours later, I notice that we have entered calmer waters. I'm hardly queasy anymore. The hum of the diesel engine drowned out the sea, the waves flattened out. Sione has folded up the plastic tarpaulin on the railing. The night is still black, but the sky clears. A ferryman throws a bucket into the sea and pulls it back up on a rope filled with water. He tilts it over the places where passengers did not make it to the railing in time.

In the distance I see a dark outline: the first island on the zigzag route through the many archipelagos. The boy on the floor, who has put up my backpack as a pillow, sees that I have woken up and looks at the horizon.

"I live on this island," he says, pointing to the outlines of the first palm trees that emerge at night, and then to Venus in the sky, which shines almost as brightly as the full moon.

"Do you know this star?" he asks. "We call him Daystar."

On the boy's island I will try to persuade a fisherman to take me to the desert island and spend the night there with me. The next morning he can take me back to the church ferry, which is on its way back to Nuku'alofa.

As the sun rises in the east, I recognize further details of the island I'm visiting: a hill on the left, a hill on the right, the middle is flat. The sea is calmer here in the shelter of the islands. After the heavy rain of the night there are only a few clouds left in the sky, the blue will prevail.

One of my neighbors asks me where I'm going. It was rare for a Palangi to sail with the church ferry. I tell him about Nina’s and my dream and that I am on my way to our new place.

"Do you know anyone here?" he wants to know. When I demur and am a little sobered myself that I am going to an island with a few dozen inhabitants, of whom I don't know a single one, he says: "You can stay overnight with my family in the house."

Secretly I had wished to experience hospitality, although appearing unannounced as I am in a place from where one does not progress so easily. I had to sort of take it for granted. But the fact that I am even invited to stay before my arrival makes me very happy and I agree. Seizing the unexpected opportunity by the lapels - I'm slowly getting used to it.

My neighbour's name is Salesi. He is about thirty years old and overweight, like almost all islanders. In the South Seas, fullness of body gave gravitas and prestige for a long time, partly this is still the case today. The former king weighed more than two hundred kilos at his best.

Salesi only weighs a good half and is completely untypically dressed for the area. He wears a Jamaica cap and a Los Angeles Lakers basketball jersey, wide rapper shorts up to his knees and bright white Nike sports shoes with bright white socks inside. Salesi lived in the States for a while, that's obvious.

"In Los Angeles," he says proudly, in the Inglewood neighborhood. I'm alarmed because Inglewood is known as the ghetto. I hear Salesi's wife and daughter will be returning to L.A. in February. It's hard to imagine that anyone would want to trade the South Sea paradise for a gang-controlled city. But of course my view of Tonga is that of a naive tourist.

"I'll stay here myself," mumbles Salesi, "and I'll find out why. "I'm not allowed to enter."

I don't have the guts to ask why. Since Nina and I have been in Tonga, we've heard some stories about Tongans looking for happiness in California. Most people want to get out of here. How extreme this development is can be seen from the population of Tonga. One hundred thousand people still live in the kingdom, more than two thirds on the main island. One hundred thousand Tongans live "oversea", where everything should be better and where everything is better, as those who return say. Maybe it's the phenomenon of the grass that's always greener on the other side. The Tongan rural exodus remains a mystery to me. A small wooden boat comes from the beach and swings next to the Alo'ofa in the water. Luggage is loaded, the little boat goes back, then it returns. The first passengers transfer. Because of the reef the Alo'ofa can't get closer to the island.

I say goodbye to Sione and climb with Salesi on the flat wooden roof of a second boat that came to pick up the passengers.

A short time later I jump ashore, and it feels so good to finally have sand under my feet again. Relieved, I drop on the beach to cure my seasickness. It's amazing how beautiful it is to just lie there and feel the sun on your skin.

A shadow falls on my face. Salesi stands next to me and bends down to me.

"Don't talk to anyone," he whispers before he turns around and runs to greet his family. I look after him in amazement. What does he mean?

The village is in turmoil and it seems that half of the population has gone to the beach to receive guests and food. Men carry rice sacks, women carry flour bags, fishermen take small cool boxes from which they move ice blocks into large, empty freezers standing between the palm trees. This is the storage place for the fish intended for resale, which are delivered by ferry to the market in Nuku'alofa.

Around the island there are some small islands to see, with wide beaches and many palm trees, beautiful places, and I long for Nina and our new home.

After half an hour Salesi picks me up and takes me to his family's pretty little wooden house. He has already announced me, and his mother is preparing a meal for me. On a table there is a plate with steaming lobster, two small snappers and a boiled breadfruit. Salesi's mother pushes me a chair, gives me a cup full of salt, wishes me good appetite and disappears into the garden.

I am alone in the room, the living room of the family, which is completely empty except for a sitting sofa and the table at which I sit. The lobster in front of me. How am I supposed to eat this thing without cutlery? I start with the breadfruit and wait until the hot red skin of the lobster has cooled down a bit before breaking it open and pulling the tender white meat out of the tail. What a breakfast! Although seasickness still gives me a hard time, I eat as much as I can.

As a good Tongan I would now have to take a nap on the woven mats that are spread out on the floor, instead I am drawn into the garden. Salesi has announced to me a boatman who can take me further. That's the most important thing right now! In the last few months I've learned to hide everything that has nothing to do with our goal, the island, and now I'm so damn close.

In the garden Salesi's father, a smiling man with few teeth and a round face, is barbecuing his second breakfast, an albacore tuna, on a corrugated iron over the fireplace and wants to entertain me again. I refuse to thank you, although Albacore is also called "chicken of the sea" and every bite is a pleasure.

From my backpack I take out two large cans of corned beef, which I dragged here especially to thank the hospitable islanders. Red meat is always in demand on the islands, because normally only prisoners from the sea lie here on the grill. Salesi's father's face is radiated as he receives the cans.

Suddenly the boy from the ferry who showed me Venus appears in the garden, and Salesi's father sends him to a coconut palm, which he climbs nimbly like a lizard. With his feet he kicks down a few green nuts, climbs down and skilfully strikes me with a machete.

"Do you climb the palm trees too?" I ask Salesi's father, who laughs deep and loud through his few teeth.

"That's why we have children," he says.

Finally the boatman arrives, his name is Ulu, he is 26 years old, has thick eyebrows, short shorn hair and a five-day beard. He barely speaks English, and Salesi translates for him. When he sees my two petrol cans - three times the amount of fuel required - he nods happily and is ready to go within twenty minutes.

Then what I feared happens, because Nina and I have had to experience it too often: Salesi wants money.

"The trip will cost you something," he says. The travel guide had already warned us: one could get the impression that some Tongans would prefer to have their money in their hands and fly back where they came from without even leaving the airport.

Salesi calls his claim an "agency fee", and I realize why I shouldn't talk to others - how easily my money could have ended up in another pocket.

I grind my teeth, but bend over to Salesi's will not to have to drive back to Tongatapu with the Alo'ofa on the next day of unfinished business. But I won't let him pull all the aces out of my sleeve.

"I won't pay until after," I make clear.