Sunday, August 22, 2010

Mi Krae From Mama

I had a plan for Friday to meet up with Pakoa at the Department of Health and head to Islanders Nakamal.  I had heard the night before, though, that Mama Lydiano had passed away.  So I purchased rice and calico and decided I would drink kava with Pakoa and then go cry for mama at her house in Seaside.


Islanders is pretty decent at its new location.  Lots of space, it's clean, and they have good food to wash the stink of kava from your breath.  That said, the places to sit suck (speaking from a crippled point-of-view anyway) and they are constantly playing something not so quietly on a little television on their counter which can be irritating.  Pakoa I knew from my days on the CODEX committee in 2007 and he is a very interesting guy.  Man Tongoa, started out wanting to go into agriculture but then his community decided he should go into health, since the Department was actively recruiting from the islands and he was the only one in his community who was educated enough to join.  He did his training in Fiji and New Caledonia for 3 or 4 years before starting out in the Department in Port Vila.  He was one of the civil servants to strike in 19?? (80 something?) and then did a series of small health projects with Save the Children and a couple of other organizations.  Now he is back in the government working on environmental health, vector born disease stuff, and whatever else they throw on his pile of work to do.  He's always smiling, great sense of humor, always relaxed.

I headed down to Mama's family's house in Seaside to cry and give them the rice and stuff, but then found that all that crying drove my kava away.  So....back to 24 Haoa and met up with Apu Willie once again, where we talked about different leaves we eat on Paama.  Had to call a brother to find the name of one leaf that is the first eaten after a natural disaster on the island.  It's "feak" for those of you also wondering...

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