Monday, 20 March 2023 // Poland
7:09 PM
Iou was back with three octopus before noon. I know people love octopus, but I’ve never liked it. I didn’t grow up eating a lot of seafood. Back in those days we had fish sticks every once in a while. Typical middle-class American. Was only as an adult when I learned to appreciate a good fillet, scallops, oysters, shrimp, lobster. Here, of course, in the middle of the Pacific, fish is a way of life. Lunch was rice, spicy Ramen, and two kinds of giant clam. One cooked with coconut water, and the other raw and marinated in a vinegar made from toddy. Both were chewy, like eating rubber bands. Except rubber bands that taste like the guts of a hermit crab. Iou promised me he would make me a hermit crab that I would love. But I don’t believe him.
I knocked out a watercolor, a view of London from Paris, but it’s actually three palm trees with a horizon line of water and the minuscule silhouette of London.
I have not dedicated any time to sketching, let alone painting. Both are acts that require isolation, and one would think I would have plenty of it, but I’ve been pretty tied up seems.
I headed into Poland just after 2 o’clock. Found myself at the trading store and then learned owner Tabare Takeakea is also the main copra trader. I inspected the racks drying copra, and before I knew it, with no prompting Tabare invited me to join him in his car far a village tour, suggesting, I take photographs or shoot film, as earlier I had shown him when I was doing on the island. Very kind of him.
It was not a lengthy tour. Down the sandy track of a road, passed the new cinder block primary school, past Saint Stanislaus Catholic Church, past the mwaneaba where people slept, past dozens and dozens of people living in harmony with the land, air, and water.
Ubiquitous clothes lines. Corrugated tin walls and roofs put together in a way a punk architect would appreciate. Pigs tied, chickens and cockerels wandering. Older siblings playing with, caring for youngsters. We stopped so I could get a phot of a kid wearing a Boston Celtics T-shirt. He had no clue as to why I’d stopped him. But game as ever.
We skirted puddles, got hit by low lying palm fronds. Kids in groups of all numbers. All shoeless. Babies naked. Little girls shirtless. But not boys, unless they are naked.
After the tour I wondered what I should sketch, or paint, and realized, focusing on the pyramids of coconuts, ready for copra, the copra racks, were essentially at the heart of the story. No copra, no story.
Copra making in Poland. Pick coconuts that are ready. If still green, allow a month to dry. Split in half, scoop out the flesh. Allow to dry in sun for a week. Cover, if rainy. After a week, fill sacks. Sacks will eventually be shipped to Tahiti, Fiji, and in the old days, Honolulu, where dried meats will be compressed for oil. Coconut oil, to be found in many things, from soap to beauty products.
Octopus is caught by hand, using a metal hook, about 18” long, attached to a wooden handle, maybe a foot long. They are found hiding under rocks.
Teraibwebwe, 33, is Iou’s third wife. At 54 the third marriage is he proverbial charm, as the cute pair do everything together. Teraibwebwe is related to his first wife, the marriage ending in divorce. Widowed after his second marriage, Teraibwebwe is related to his first wife. Relationships are complicated here, at least to me. With a morning’s catch of octopi in the background. FYI, Iou is pronounced YOW.
London from Paris. Back in the day — 100 years ago — fires would be lit to communicate across the channel, three miles wide.
St Stanislas church. Fr. Emmanuel Rougier’s brother was Paul-Stanislas Rougier, himself a man of the cloth. Manny named the lagoon bay at Poland after his brother’s patron saint. This church was built in 1995.
Of course he had no idea what the Boston Celtics are, or a word of what I was saying. The way to talk to children is not down to them, but on their own level.