Sunday, 2 April 2023 // Fiji Air / "Normalcy" / "Good Writer"
10:30 AM
81°
Yesterday I heard for the first time – and it’s as close to a confirmation as yet I have – the first commercial flight to this island, on Fiji Air, will be on 2 May.
The departure ticket I bought back in January, was for 3 May. It looks like I will be the first “tourist“ or “traveler“ to leave this island via plane since the pandemic shut Kiritimati down in March, 2020.
I know people here are looking forward to a degree of “normalcy.” When I first met Easter, daughter of Timei and Tima, proprietors of the Lagoon View Lodge, I was surprised at how good her English was. I asked what she did to keep busy, and she told me she was taking classes online, regarding computer coding. I asked if there was much call for that on Kiritimati? She said no, that she was planning on returning to Honolulu. I was chagrined, not realizing that’s where she lived, not on Kiritimati with her parents.
It seems that Easter had come to visit her family for the holidays in December 2019 and was bringing her 3-year-old to visit his grandparents for a spell. She then got stuck here, unable to leave as air travel shut down across much of the Pacific.
Now, almost six years old, Phillip has spent three years here, half of his life.
When my grandfather arrived in 1916, he was on the lowest rung of the management ladder. I can’t imagine he had a grand plan for advancement, but once the first manager, Malinowski, finally brought his wife and seven children to the island, they were destined to not last four months. John Bryden has told me that white women do not last long here. One hundred and five years ago if there were 70 or so men on the island, they were probably no more than a dozen women, and even less children. Really not the greatest environment for families.
Which I find ironic, in the clearest definition of irony. Family here among the I-Kiribati is paramount. Any function will find a variety of family members in attendance.
I also cannot help but think of how children seem to dominate this island. Parents look after children, not their own, as if they were. Children run together in packs. They are seen holding hands with their best friends, or roughhousing, and playing in every possible way. One cannot miss the kids going to or coming from school, walking down the main road, often barefoot, in their neat school uniforms, not just two abreast, but often a half-dozen stretched into the middle of the road.
Teen boys can be found playing soccer or a pick-up game of basketball, again, all barefoot, and on concrete. Teen girls look after younger siblings, or hold children of their own.
But back in my grandfather’s day, children were a rarity. And white women even more so. Malinowski leaves, and the assistant managers get promoted, which means my grandfather climbs up a rung. Eventually, he finds himself at the top of the managerial food chain, and then find himself managing an island devoid of workers, when the contract laborers’s time is up, and he is then promised even more workers that never arrive.
My grandfather never knew about the pandemic called the Spanish Flu. Not until it was over. He never knew about the millions of deaths, of the quarantines in every port, of the decimation of sailing crews, of ships not leaving ports around the world.
I find a bizarre parallel in a conversation I have with an I-Matang – a foreigner – who has lived here for 25 years (the “Frenchman”). He complains about the mask mandate on Kiritimati, here at the height of Covid, noting how few people got sick at all. In spite of his age and intelligence, he doesn’t see how the island’s isolation – and rapid shut down and quarantine orders going into effect – most likely prevented the kind of population loss and devastation that happened to the native population of Labrador, Canada, during the Spanish flu epidemic one hundred years ago, when missionaries would bring the plague with them. An entire native population was almost lost in that part of Canada.
The I-Matang, parroting popular right-wing American news sources, says something about the number of US deaths being equivalent to those who get the annual flu. I point out to him flu deaths in the US average about 50,000 a year. That would be 100,000 deaths in two years, whereas the United States had 1 million deaths due to this pandemic.
I can’t imagine what it was like here, when my grandfather was marooned, having no news on the outside world. In his mind the First World War, the Great War, was still wreaking havoc, even though it ended the year before his rescue. Up until the last batch of nine letters my grandfather received in August, 1918, he was used to an irregular arrival of ships carrying supplies, relieving the island of copra, the ship’s crew offering news that was more current than that found in what mail arrived, often several months after it was written.
For myself, it’s now been six weeks with little access to news of the rest of the world, or home. In truth, I find myself not seeking it. Coincidentally, I do see a post asking us to remember where we were when we heard that a former United States president had been indicted on criminal charges, a first in history. I’m certain I’ll very clearly remember where I was. Just as I remember where I was when JFK was shot – in kindergarten.
I’ve probably had a handful of phone calls, as reception here is spotty. Maybe a dozen text messages, or messages via Instagram or Facebook. It should be noted that Facebook is very, very popular on this island. It’s influence is enormous across the Pacific, with so many family members from this island alone living elsewhere, whether Australia, Fiji, Honolulu, or even Houston, Texas. One doesn’t find the hostility to the social media application that one does in the United States. Here, Facebook is a very real communication method.
Which reminds me of the fact my grandfather wrote a letter to a woman in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, from London, Christmas Island, asking her to marry him. That’s a story for another day, but I’d like to point out this was long before Tinder, Match.com, or even classified ads in newspapers seeking companions. Two things I learn about my grandfather in this regard is, first, he had patience, and second, he was a good writer.
His patience finally played out, being naked for a year, eating only fish and rice and coconuts. That kind of subsistence diet is eaten by many here. But I’ll wager he eventually longed for a steak or an ear of corn or a potato. I am certain he longed for conversation.
Regarding the bit about Joe being a “good writer,” that comes via a letter sent to him from Mary, the woman he’d asked to marry him. She notes his ability with the written word. For myself, I cannot recall one word my grandfather and I ever spoke together, that time being so long ago, and me being so young.
It’s when I am on the other side of the island from here, in what was once Paris, that I realize I am the first English to ever travel this island on a motorcycle. Motorbikes were advocated by the British after they took control of the coconut plantations here, in the 1950s and ‘60s. I don’t realize this while I am on my motorcycle though. I realize this when I am in the backseat of a car driving from Paris to Poland, to help my friend Iou repair his broken motorcycle chain.
I realize that I am now the second English to have driven that same sandy road from Paris to Poland, propelled by a four-wheeled vehicle, and it thrills me. I picture my grandfather in one of the two 1916 Model-T Fords which Fr. Rougier bought for use on the island, along with an inordinate supply of gasoline that lasted until Joe’s rescue.
I imagine my grandfather on one of his joy rides from one end of the island to another, over bumpy coral roads, roads hugged tight with thick salt bush, open roads with vistas of uncounted ponds and lakes and lagoons, huge puddles caused by rains or high tides, crabs so thick they cover the road, and doing the drive naked, his clothes, long gone.
In spite of his loneliness and isolation and desire to again hold long conversations and fill his belly to his heart’s content, I’ve got to believe there were times when he was driving along, naked, and still appreciating the beauty of this place. When he took that final drive from Paris back to London, he had no idea it would be his last trip around the island, just as so many of us never realize what may be our final visit to a beloved spot, or even a final conversation with a loved one or friend.
I purposely arrived by sea, as that’s how Joe arrived to Christmas Island. I felt compelled sailing was the only way to understand what it would’ve felt like for him to arrive here for the first time. Point of fact, there has been no other way to arrive here over the last three years.
Our vessel, the Sea Dragon, was unable to allow passengers and crew to come ashore for four days, due to quarantine issues which “management” had unresolved. By the third day of staring at the land – so close, so beautiful – I told the skipper I was prepared to be dropped ashore via the RIB, the rigid inflatable boat. But international protocol dictated otherwise.
The captain telling me my worst-case scenario would be the ship would need to continue on to Tahiti, and I would have to go to with them, had me in a bit of a state. Waiting decades to get here, being 400 yards offshore, and not being allowed on shore was a test in patience. I understand that “Plan B” of continuing to Tahiti would be Plan A for any number of people, but I’m not any number of people and I have not looked at this as a vacation, as sailing was only a means to an end.
Only a week ago, I was told to not count on being able to depart according to my scheduled flight, as so much is still in flux. I have hope a degree of “normalcy” is back.
When I depart by air I will look down and see a view my grandfather could only imagine.
Next time I come here, I’m flying.
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