Aloha Friday

The Friday clean-up really takes it all in, move big messes, collect all tools, get something doneish looking so it can be enjoyed all weekend and then…Claude brings out the Hinano beers, the ones labeled with the Tahitian woman who has an arm amputated at the elbow and missing her baby toe. I guess all of the beer advertisers figure that she is in some sort of lusty, subservient pose, maybe I will have to be the one to draw the logo from a front view where it is easier to see how severely challenged she is. That drawing could even be used as an anti-beer campaign telling about the high rate of abuse among families here and fatal car accidents on the beautiful little ring road. As mentioned earlier, there are few laws around here and those that do exist are seldomly enforced, that is part of the charm.

Sitting around at our aloha Friday circle after work was little America expatriateville Moorea, I hear there are actually a few expats missing who have been here a long time and live the Tahitian way, i.e. Paradise Mike. We six hailed from California, Washington, Missouri, Florida, and New Jersey, nobody was your regular American, but amazingly, all of us being close in age, could remember scores of old TV shows that used to be on, the characters and theme songs too. When you get this far away from the crowd, off of the interstate, in a hard to reach place, in a hard to stay place (short, strict visa regs) everyone automatically becomes a character. The island keeps the group penned in so that moving slow with anything is fast enough, backlash time is short, that is, the characters are pretty well set and any personality peculiarities must be respectfully ignored or confronted clearly head-on.

Beers get opened in the heat of the late afternoon, as always the first slack is the best. As much as the second bottle seems necessary to keep floating, that spells the turning of the corner. Things go into a special group haze zone and conversation seriously loosens up, memories of specifics are rare although knowing that you are sitting drinking cold beers and soon leaving the worksite are enough to celebrate. When you see the boys stumbling into their third beer you begin to see the door opening on another aspect of island life. Combine this with cigarettes and the crazed intensity of these voluntary-isolation-in-a-seeming-paradise characters becomes quite clear. This sloppiness is not limited to the expats, it is island-wide. Consumption of beer and cigarettes are a pandemic here, among French, Tahitians, and anyone else visiting this place. The high accident rate and road related death rate speaks for this indulgence, not to mention the alcohol abuse related trickle-down personality and family relationship disorders. I keep hearing that so and so is stoned (on pot) but have not seen any weed floating around as of yet, just mellow so-and-sos.