Freedom and Paradise are in the Mind

Looking back at Tahiti over the Moorea lagoon while on the windy little island road to our special part of the island. We swim in this lagoon frequently, it’s sort of like an extremely large swimming pool with all desirable depths, beautiful sandy bottom, little islands, calm times, wavy times, and always refreshing times. Near our place is Les Tipaniers with the Polynesian lounge, outrigger, kayak, scuba, and boat rental, not to mention the swooping palms overhanging the water, the topless Parisiennes, guys in string bikinis, and well-tattooed French and Tahitian locals.

Yesterday Claude and Barbara went to Papeete for basic supplies and to look at possible materials for this project. They found a few things and a few things weren’t available and again saw the endemic high prices. While they were away les boys had a hot and sweaty day of regular forward-backwards remodeling b.s. The converse while you work lamp was lit and we found out a bit more of who we are, what we (think we) stand for, and of course topics and lingo drifted into the little bit more dirty being that the bosses were away. How can you ever know a person if you can’t be out doing a sweaty remodel with him, working your butt off with potentially frustrating conditions and just letting the curtain rise on whatever is crossing your mind. Of course some people might be a little disturbed with some of the seeming extremes in thoughts as real problems, others just consider them a different worldview that doesn’t really change the nature of the sweaty dirty stage of this remodel.

Charlie and I got into a pretty big conversation about 9/11, Muslims, Israel, news sources, etc. for starters. It wasn’t until round two when he elaborated on his apocalyptical evangelical religious views that the real nature of the conversation took hold. The Catholic Church has lost (or never actually had) much ground to the evangelicals across these inlands (in South America too); Tahitians are heavily locked in to this way of thinking. Being that Charlie was “rescued”, adopted, and married into a large Tahitian family it is no wonder he is spouting this stuff out. Yet other aspects of his life style would absolutely knock the socks off of a tried and true Seventh Day Adventist, once again it is a pick an choose religious commitment, par for the course worldwide. I let it go and only tried to get the point across to him that his CNN news sources might be laced with propaganda that he is not picking up on because it fits so well into his apocalyptical view.

Even with the ease and abundance of internet and wi-fi service here, I can pretty much vouch that most locals, as these guys are, do not use it much or at all. All three of them, Roger (Tahitian wife and 5 kids, here 25 plus years), Steve (Tahitian wife and ex-wife with kids, here 15+ years), and Charlie (Tahitian wife and 2 kids and wanting 2 or 3 more, here 7+years) all say they love America and don’t even have great problems with the “American way”, in fact, they love the American way, so they say. All I said was if they loved America so much why the heck aren’t they there? So we all agreed that the next day’s topics would be focused on myths and fairytales (that might be a better venue for discussing the American way and the popular media’s depiction of world events).

Lots of the conversations that I only could hear as I crawled up in the rafters trying to get this ceiling closed-in was the three American island boys yammering and whining and warning each other about their Tahitian wives and how it is a loosing battle to get a handle on that, especially with the large extended Tahitian family system that comes with it. The Polynesian transvestite tradition was also discussed, some pretty funny stories of encounters were told. In Hawaii too transvestites are completely accepted and integrated into the local society, I remember seeing a couple of comfortable looking “wahoos” (Moorea term) at the Honolulu airport, not a big deal.

Faraway Places

Even though the American black-golden touch of development and hectic use has not hit this archipelago (as in Hawaii), the cyber touch has. The little restaurants, the pearl shops, the bungalow rentals, the equipment rentals, all have their web addresses painted right onto their signage. Wi-Fi is not hard to find which means that I can do e-mail or news checking as quickly as if in Port Townsend or Santa Barbara (although not having my own computer limits the range of those activities). Like in South America, the most isolated little place can feel closer to communication.

This ease of communication only seems to whet the appetites of all concerned, it doesn’t make it any cheaper. Anything but the most basic life here is outrageously expensive, other than my daily visit to the wi-fi place down the road our lives here remain most basic. Tomorrow Claude and Barbara will go to the mountain spring to refill the water bottles. Most of the cars around here are very small, not the types seen in the USA, lots of scooters too, no three wheelers though as in South America. Yet, the big status SUV is creeping in, they roll down the narrow little road squeezing everyone out of their way, very scary for the bicycle rider. Many of the SUVs are owned by Tahitians.


Approaching Moorea on the Ferry from Papeete, Tahiti

(I finally figured a way to move photos from iPhoto to this document, there will be a couple more, but that’s it until I have a PC, Macs are overrated.

Working in Paradise

Charlie is the name of the helper from New Jersey, although you would never know he came from there. He has been here seven years, Australia and New Zealand before this. Now he is married to a Tahitian and has a French passport. His accent is heavy and vocabulary strange as he has been speaking Tahitian and French while living deep in the bowels of the backside of this island, the dark half that is not lit up at night when flying over it. In this area you will see the Tahitian flags, blue and white, the Free Tahiti, i.e. no French control.

Charlie wants to learn as many trades as he can, he works hard and clean. He has two children, half Tahitian, and wants to introduce baseball to their school. He has a large and beautiful tattoo on his whole chest depicting his life story with all of its struggles and rewards. In addition to Charlie we have two other former Americans on the work crew, Steve and Roger. They too have been here a long time and have gotten French passports, they are builders, doing new construction and remodels. Unlike Charlie they speak less French and Tahitian, but do have superior handles on the island ways and functional lingo.

We are in demolition mode right now, getting rid of the ugly stuff and planning on what will replace it. As much of the material is saved as possible as the prices of everything here are rather high, old 2x4s are like big cumbersome chunks of money, coveted by neighbors and carefully stacked. There is a small building supply store on this island, but the big ones are in Papeete, a ferry ride away.

The weather is generally warm, really and truly don’t need much clothes, ever, so forget much packing when coming here. The rainsqualls we had on Monday didn’t stop work, just felt like what a shower is supposed to feel like, warm and wet. Just before dawn the calls and clucks of various birds start chiming in, dawn comes in gently from the east, doors and window flaps open, the chickens are busy plucking up any insects. We will begin day three. Pier holes dug, concrete, hopefully agreement with the neighbors son whose deck seems to sneak into our zone, hmm, an as-is situation.

Claude and Barbara were speaking of looking for their house and comparing prices from Hawaii and other places. Here, one speaks in millions, just like in Santa Barbara, but it is in millions of Pacific Francs which in a simple conversion would be a million US pennies which means a house costing CPF 27,000,000. is costing US$ 270,000. So a fishburger down at Freddie’s local mobile diner (called a Roulotte) costs CPF 850, or US$ 8.50. Food is expensive here as very little is grown here, not that it couldn’t be, but other than some of the regular tropical stuff much food in imported from all corners of the world.

Charlie, Steve (former carpenter and foreman, Southern California surfer married to a Tahitian and here for a long time), and Roger (here for a really long time, also married to a Tahitian) all worked their butts off today in the gentle but sufficiently warm sun. The backdrop is the next-door Tiare Tahiti flower (Cape Jasmine, Gardenia) farm and the dropping down mountains of Moorea. This is Claude and Barbara’s back yard which will have a new deck and veranda with an outdoor covered kitchen, also an out door shower, a new Tahiti style extra room and more. Very few Americans live here as Claude is French (with a lot of American experience) he can live here as a regular resident, work (if he wants), own property, gets full medical insurance, and has one heck of a fun time speaking with all of the French people around here.

At noon and in the evening after work we make sure to walk (100 feet) to the beach and go for a quick swim, do the “bon jours” and walk out on the dock. Right there in this water are big sea cucumbers, very long skinny transparent needlefish, bright fluorescent blue and black and yellow angle fish, puffer fish, and manta rays. One of these days we’ll rent a couple of kayaks and paddle over to the motu, the lagoon island of which there are several. I met a 70+-year-old French guy who was telling me about his triathlon training (this is NOT me) but we did have a nice talk about the nice bike ride circumnavigating the island, it is basically all flat with one big hill.

Doing a remodel here is quite interesting, a different world of construction, mainly 2 x 3’s and 3 x 6’s and stuff like that. The stores use a combination of inches and meters; materials come from the USA, China, Australia, France, and everywhere else. We don’t have a car so deliveries come in small Japanese trucks with Tahitian drivers smiling as they check out the new gringo’s project. Tonight, after dinner, after sunset at the beach, I did my 6.5-minute cruiser ride to the neighborhood mini shopping center and wi-fi zone. It was a long and interesting day like all the rest, unpredictable, hard-working, full of little energies and dramas, amazing backdrop and a good therapeutic swim.

Photos will Never do!

I promise to get some photos up on this site very soon, but the incredible laid back beauty of this place can never really be photographed. It almost feels like I have travelled back in time to the early nineteenth century South Pacific. Working hard, my best regards to all.
Bilito

Night Sky on Moorea

Just walked back from the long little pier/dock stretching out over
the lagoon on our tip of the bend of the heart shaped coast of Moorea.
It's night and the air and water are warm, a bit breezy, needlefish
flipping around in the water, bright gobs of stars, the Milky Way, and
big constellations that I do not know, again, the Southern Cross.
Claude and Barbara are brave and creative as they reinvent a home on
this quiet part of the archipelago; we talked a lot about design and
material possibilities, about the French, about putting together
futures in a world with a consumer culture that shows little respect
for the past, or for that matter the present or the future.

My flight from Seattle to Hawaii was regular I guess, big 767, full,
lots of Asians, islanders, tourists. We were instructed to close the
windows so we could watch a movie the guy in the window seat
immediately did and then went to sleep, I told the flight attendant I
had to be next to an open window or I would get sick, that is sort of
true, impossible for me to travel over 3000 miles of ocean without
looking at it. So, they found an open seat for me toward the front
and I got to look at the Washington coast and hundreds of miles of
clouds on our way to Honolulu. Then floating in the mix of
atmospheres way up ahead to the left was a big bump, then some more
bumps, then we started descending, this was our approach to Hawaii.

As you near the airport you see the huge military installations, Air
Force, Navy, and probably a heck of a lot more. We land, debark,
5-hour layover, so I jump on a hotel shuttle to Waikiki. Find the
Moana Hotel, the old one, and walk out onto the beach with my carry-on
luggage, barefoot with my pant legs rolled up, Waikiki, with Diamond
Head beautifully in the background. Warm coral sand on my feet feels
so good, so does my stomach after I get a 12" Subway sandwich right
there at the beach. Made some phone calls and head backed to the
airport on a bus.

I arrive one and a half hours early to find out that there is a
mechanical problem on the plane and we won't be leaving until 10 pm.
Oh well, we get a $12 food voucher. I go and eat and have a beer in
the nice grill restaurant overlooking the tarmac. Had to do an
education thing with the restaurant manager and Hawaiian Airlines
manager regarding my bill and voucher payment, they probably won't
have that problem again. Back at the check-in counter all passengers
also got a $200 travel voucher, wow. Anyway the very European,
Polynesian, and actually Argentinean looking crowd boards and we
take-off.

5+ hours later, after getting a little bit of sleep, I see the lights
of Tahiti off in the distance, then I realize we are actually flying
over Moorea, I can see the outline of the island faintly with its
shoreline lights, the darker area just below us is the part of the
island where I'm going. Papeete is just over the on the other side,
much brighter lights and much bigger island. We land, we're down, and
it is very different already from Hawaii. I see many big broad-leafed
trees, low island style buildings, there seem to be no high rises, all
of the cars are smaller and very clean. There is a live band (at 4 in
the morning!) wearing green and yellow playing beautiful Tahitian
acoustic music as we enter the customs area, I am handed a lei.

I get through the line, get a 30 day visa, lots of Europeans, there
are the bags, there are mine, full of tools, heavy as sacks of
concrete, no one checks them, I roll out. Barbara and Claude have a
French speaking Polynesian woman taxi driver with my name on a sign
waiting there for me, all is well. Good, we now have a nice set of
tools for making a few changes on their house.

We drive on the clean little freeway shortly into Papeete, up a few
streets and into the hotel. I can't help noticing how everything here
is finer, delicately designed and looking quite different than Hawaii.
Our hotel feels very European, small and practical yet very handsome
and comfortable. After a short and joyous rendezvous at the room we
all try to get a bit of sleep.

Later that morning we approach the ferry, only a couple of blocks
away, stop and have a great coffee and croissant at a sidewalk café
typical of those in the Mediterranean. The catamaran ferry is big and
sleek, tourists, residents, and mainly Tahitians are lined up and
boarding, cars too. The green covered peaks of Tahiti with the gentle
trees mixed in with the low buildings of Papeete are behind us as we
pull out into the bright clear green lagoon and on to the blue water
heading toward Moorea.

Moorea has an unforgettable shape on the horizon, the ocean is gently
rolling, breeze is warm, everyone is speaking French. Gradually we
approach the harbor, back inside a lagoon again, this surrounds the
island like a ring, lined by the white breakers of the open ocean.
Fruit stands await the debarking passengers, little shuttle busses and
mini-vans and pick-ups too. We get in a small van, same Japanese ones
used in Bolivia, and begin our loop on the alley-sized tree packed
little road around to the far side of the island where Claude and
Barbara live, the northwest shore, a great location a hundred feet
back from the lagoon.

Actually a night has passed since all of this and I wake up this
morning, Monday, to a very breezy but warm day. They say this much
breeze is a bit unusual this time of year, it is supposed to be dry
and clear now, the rains are unusual, but pleasant because it feels so
good, just makes the lagoon choppier. The wind is great for the score
of kite boarders at the beach. Last night, Sunday, we talked about
designs and work processes, we are all excited about getting this deck
and veranda project going, along with a ceiling removal inside too. A
young American guy with a Tahitian wife will be helping me today on
demolition; we'll do as much of that now as possible. I'm still
working on the plans too, but there are clearly some elements of this
place we want removed.

All in all, this is not a big place, but its location is perfect.
Nice mountain view within earshot of the waves, no roads or cars in
sight. Claude and Barbara don't need a car here and can walk to Le
Petit Village, the name of the little town a few hundred feet down the
little road. So, this is the beginning. Today will be planning, some
demolition, connecting with another builder guy, also and American,
who will probably do some of the work. The goal is to have this done
by the time I leave on August 13, in fact, done before that so we can
all have some vacation. We will all be working on this as a team. By
the way, you don't need much clothing around here, day or night,
sleeping with nothing more than a sheet is adaquate. Lots of the
French tourists at the beach are topless, big deal, we are behind the
scenes doing a remodel.