Our Simple Unvalued Pleasures
It was a very simple suggestion. And expectedly the number
to turn up would be small. There wasn’t
much planning. It was an idea someone
threw into the pond. Everyone or at least, those who were told knew that
something was to happen. The days went by one by one. Each one who knew about the
plan remembered it at the back of their minds. And continued to work on their
everyday plans, oblivious to what the man picked as the host was planning or
intended on doing.
When the day approached, a single call came to us by mobile
phone. ‘You’ll be picked up in a fibre glass canoe. Not OBM. It’s a small
paddling one. The canoe which belongs to Godwin’ was all it was.
On Christmas Day, we headed to where we’d been told to wait.
Soon, the blue paddling fibre glass boat approached, paddled by one man, Esau
Masu and two young boys, his nephews. They came and came. Soon they landed and
the three of us boarded. As the paddlers kept paddling us towards a thick
mangrove forest, we could see single dugout canoes paddling ahead of us. One
contained a single family. Another - slightly ahead of the one with the single
family – perhaps with three or four people but we couldn’t tell as the dugout
was too far ahead for us to properly make out. However, we kept going and soon,
the nose of the boat touched mangrove branches that blocked the entrance of the
river or stream we were heading into.
“Watch the twigs of the mangroves,” skipper Masu warned. We
ducked. They kept paddling. We kept moving up what turned out to be a stream, bordering
between stream and river.
“It’s not very big. But it seems so because of the high tide
that’s coming on,” said Masu.
There was silence, the only sounds the paddles digging the
river and spreading droplets backwards and driving us forward. The three of us, who sat in front of the
paddlers, could only imagine them getting wet from their hard paddling!
Our eyes peered ahead. There was still no sign of the eco
lodge, Tagauraha.
“We’re nearly there,” our skipper assured.
Although the sun was really hot in the open sea, it was very
cool because we were under tall thick mangroves trees that towered above us and
extended for kilometers up and around the stream. The stream was silver slick
and no waves so it was smooth sailing, as it were. They paddled. Each of us in
the front seat was lost in our own thoughts. I marveled at the tall straight
mangrove trees that kept going my eyes couldn’t reach their last line. I didn’t
know what my other two family members were thinking, but perhaps they too were
consumed by the natural smell and beauty of the place.
Someone told me some years back red snappers could be caught
in the stream during high tides. I imagined someone catching one such snapper
and dropping it into the canoe then pressing it down with a heavy paddle or
whatever to whimper shake jump and then eventually die, much to the joy of the
catcher.
“Some silly buggers cut trees into the river but don’t
bother to clean them up so the paddling is is always disturbed,” commented one
of the young boys behind us. The skipper and the second boy chorused in
support. Then they continued paddling and paddling.
Soon, our eyes - always darting ahead - sighted the entrance
to the eco lodge. It was a small opening and a dugout was tied or may be partly
pulled up the shore.
“Here we are,” Masu said excitedly. “We are home. The others
might already be there,” he said.
No sooner had he said this than we landed and disembarked
slowly as our granddaughter was with us. And this was her very first ride on a paddled
canoe. She’s used to outboard motors.
It was when we set foot ashore that it dawned on us. There
were more people than expected. Luckily, they were all family, so it was all
good.
David Masu, the eco lodger owner, told us gladly that the
other family members were going to celebrate Christmas with us too.
Not long after that, he announced that the barbecuing should
proceed immediately and then went to the house and asked for support to carry
the fish he’d prepared for the BBQ. It was obvious he’d dropped a net the
previous night or in the early morning.
It was a large dish full of fish already prepared for the
fire. My family and I gave him a bottle of cooking oil, garlic and onions and
rice then opted to take a walk around the compound. Built on a small patch of
land between the stream and the sea less than 20km wide, the Tagauraha Lodge is
surrounded by long lines of big fruit pawpaw trees, coconuts and mangroves.
It was obvious Mr Masu had cut down a few mangrove trees to
build his lodge. To the north he chopped down a few more to create a footpath
to lead to a sprawling wide reef that almost continued into the horizon!
“There’s no rough sea here,” he explained. “You see the
small islets out there to the north, the waves break some metres away from
there and then come ashore to fill up the dry land when the tide is high,” he
added. “You’ll see it when the tide is up.”
In the kitchen, the women, men and youths worked to see that
all the food was ready on time.
Some young boys who completed their assigned tasks jumped
into the dark murky stream and competed swimming up and down like Olympians.
Slightly after 3pm, all the cooking was done and lodge owner
David Masu led the way in dividing the food for us.
He started by opening a hot stone oven in which baked taro,
fish and cabbage in coconut milk lay since early morning. After that, he left
the work to the women as the boys continued to chase each other in the murky stream
which had expanded wider because of a fledgling high tide.
Soon, Masu called everyone to attention and then invited us
all to eat.
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| Early morning sun out at sea |
That was our 2015 Christmas celebration at the Tagauraha
Lodge of Tawaroga, east Makira.
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| BBQ Fish |
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