King Joe 1916-2023

Monday, 20 March 2023 // Paris

6:33 am

73° rains

Paris

It’s been raining most of the night. And of course, the ever-present easterly trade winds blow at 15 or more miles an hour.

I wasn’t prepared for rain. I have not been able to check the weather, considering I have no Internet. And I did not ask anybody either.

We shall see how the day plays out.

We arrived from London yesterday. I was told it would be a two hour ride, though it turned into a four hour adventure. The most fun I’ve had in the last month. That, because it was via motorcycle and exploring areas unknown to me, except via map and my imagination. And, of course, my imagination could not live up to reality. The story of that epic ride, and the variety of landscapes will have to wait for another time.

Were I to have tried this route, not the main road, but via, the sandy, coral roads, that skirt and weave through and around the many lagoons and lakes, I would have been utterly lost, and most likely never found my way out or have anybody find me. There are no buzzards here to tip off someone about a carcass anywhere.

We left London at 3:09 on Sunday afternoon, and a glorious blue sky, with high clouds, and not a hint of rain. I followed Iou (pronounce YOW) and his wife, Teriabwebwe, who were planning the ride back to Poland, where they live, in Paris, where he works. I had only learned of this the day before, when I was asking Iou how he gets back and forth between London and Paris.

On Saturday, Rodney Edwards had volunteered to take me by boat from London to Paris, that I may investigate and walk the land that my grandfather did, when he worked for Fr. Emmanuel Rougier. Iou, 54, is caretaker of this end of Paris, the long-gone home site of Rougier, where the priest would stay with his nieces and their governess. Iou knows the land. And when I ask if he takes a boat Paris, he says no, he takes his motorcycle, with his wife Teraibwebwe on the back.

When I ask how long it is, I’m told anywhere between one and a half and three hours, depending on the road. But let’s be clear right now: there is time and there is Kiribati time. I’m told the boat, 25 hp will take 15 minutes to get from London to Paris, but it takes 45 minutes. So I have no idea how long it will really take.

When my grandfather first came here in the summer of 1916, Rougier had recently taken possession of the island, with a 99 year lease bought from the Lever brothers, of England. At that time he owned both Fanning and Washington islands now called Taburean and Teraina, had a going concern and thriving businesses on each, selling copra.

Rougier had stores for goods and trading, and sold his copra to the outside world. He even had his own coins minted that he could use them to pay workers or traders on the island, and not have to worry about someone running off with a box full of Australian dollars. By using his own coin, he could manage figures, and then, at the end of a workers contract could trade in the mint for actual cash.

Rougier sold Washington and Fanning that he could buy the larger Christmas Island and further pursue his corporate expansion. Joe came on board, low man on the management pole, with manager, and two assistant managers above him. But according to the journals, his work crews were the most content, got the most done.

By the time my grandfather was eventually rescued, my grandfather was far from content. On this actual date in 1918, he has been down to rations of rice and whatever fish they could find. Coconuts to drink. He was barefoot and naked.

He wrote about days like today, of rain. Of the temperature being just as it is now, a mild 73°. But he also wrote of it raining 21 out of 31 days that month, March, 1918 and the rain and the winds and the chill getting to him. I spite of this, most days he would still try to get out and actually work, even though he’d been marooned for half a year at that point. There were days he suffered from “neuralgia“ and would just lie on his cot.

Then, when in better spirits, would get up and get back to his day-to-day existence.

I know what that’s like. The part about feeling hopeless and tired. And now I know what it feels like to lie under a leaking roof, pounded by rain, all but naked, and feel that wind on me. No neuralgia, but instead “frozen shoulder,” and the steroid pack an orthopedic surgeon issued more than a month ago has started to have some positive effect.

The night before was the first in more than a month I slept without pain. I’m now twice the age Joe was when he lived here, and while I want to experience as much of what he did as I can, I’m not a glutton for punishment. But no more steroids after these run out in a few days.

Joe lived in the manager’s house by then, a bona fide, clapboard home, with doors and windows in a tin roof. I’m in one of Iou’s three “houses.”

I put that word in quotation marks not to be disrespectful, but because that word means something different where I come from. I would call this a home.

But the home is essentially like camping. As I love camping, this is wonderful. But I lay on that lie upon the sand. This is a tent. At each end, the uprights are made of 5 foot lengths of heliotrope branches. They support crossbeams of coconut palm split in quarters. The tent is about 10 feet long. The roof is several layers of a heavy plastic tarp

Just outside the door there is a Heliotrope tree, under which a rude table has been constructed using available branches. Above that an awning woven from the coconut palm to block out the sun. And beyond that, another tent, though in fact, it is constructed from woven coconut fronds.

We arrived just as the sunset, after four hours. A half an hour earlier we had finally reached Poland, a community of about 300 people, living as close to the land as one can. children as they see us, others wave. Pigs are spotted at random. Iou shows me his home before we push on to Paris. It is a rough camp, and back in the states most people would think that homeless people lived here. Or houseless as they are now referred. There are no houseless or homeless on Christmas island. And to a person, the Kiribati people are full of laughter and joy. There are no complaints, except maybe missing relatives on far away Tarawa, Fiji, Honolulu.

There is one store, the trading store. Which means that while you can pay for the goods,they have on their sparse shelves with money, one can also trade copra for goods. copra is cash and copra is King.

Iou and Teraibwebwe prefer Paris – who wouldn’t? – to Poland, named in deference to “Malinowski,” Rougier’s first manager, a 42-year-old Pole and former policeman that was the island’s first manager. When he finally brought his wife and seven children here, in 1917, the family did not last six months and left. That left one more rung for my grandfather to climb up, working his way to manager.

So now it is camp at Paris. And I’m surprised they can charge my phone, into which I now dictate. There is a battery arrangement, and some sort of gizmo from the Chinese, who have tried to find ways to ingratiate themselves with the Kiribati. The Chinese gizmo, a combination, light, battery, radio does not work. But they have small battery powered lights in here, and it makes everything comfy.

I have imagined I would be slinging my hammock, but not this arrangement. Any camper would love it.

We settled in for conversation and dinner of rice and a bucket full of hermit crabs. I would like to think the three I ate was polite enough, for giving it a go. I did not feign liking them. Sandy, and tasted like the guts they were, not “meat” in any way.

Iou and Teraibwebwe sleep on a thin foam mattress. I pulled out my thin air mattress. They asked if I had a mosquito net and I told him I did, but would not use it because they were not enough mosquitoes to trouble me. They told me I would need one to keep the rats from running over me.

I was told in preparation, I might need a mosquito net. No one told me I would need a rat net.

Teraibwebwe finds a new, large mosquito net, and she and her husband deftly install it, place my gear in it.

I’m pleased to say that while I was greeted with rain, I met no rats. And yet at this very moment, I look up and see two tiny rat turds on the net above me.

When I finally stepped from the tent, the rain has passed, there were still clouds about, I can see the sun working its way through about two hands rising. Frigate birds and turns and boobies fly everywhere. Teraibwebwe has swept around camp. Iou has set off, wife behind him, on his bike. He is off to catch octopus.

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