Rain is pouring for the 4th full day. At first, the short showers would stop to let the sunshine in. But now it’s slowly turning into hours of uninterrupted fall… Sleeping made easy. Bugs made lively. Dives made murky. But this place is still heavenly beautiful. Million islands and islets all densely covered in trees, nested on by innumerable birds and flown over by more. 

I am staying with a lovely Marovo family on their island deep in the Marovo Lagoon: an hour and twenty minutes on a 60hp Yamaha boat from Seghe deep in the Lagoon. The end of the tail of the marble-ray that is the Gatokai island.  The family is a widow of a late Western Province minister, her 5 sons and a daughter. 3 sons with their families are living full time on the little island but each of the 5 sons has built themselves a house next to Mom’s. Still unclear on the story but it sounds like the late minister was able to get this island for his family in a deed from the Penjuku village chief (likely with the help of the provincial government). 

The dense forest of the island has several clearings for the family gardens: beans, squash, pumpkin, yams, potato, papaya, bananas… The houses are all raised on stilts. The kitchens have a wooden surface covered in part by small rocks on which they light a fire and plop a pot (last night it was a giant pot with pumpkin/yam stew) and in part by large rocks covered in banana leaves. The latter is an oven. Friday is the bake night to mark the beginning of Sabbath. I can’t wait to see how the hot stone baking indoors gets done. I have seen it done in French Poly but always outdoors. I don’t think the family owns a fire extinguisher so it must be pretty safe. 

My room in a stilted house with a dock. A large kitchen/dining room, a veranda, a split bathroom off of the veranda… No warm water but you can always boil water on the stove, mix it with cold in a bucket and luxuriate. The windows are big slabs of wood that open from the bottom by lodging a mullion between the frame and the wood slab. My mosquito net is far too small to cover the bed hence I’ve been feeding every kind of bug.

The main cook is my favorite person on the island: Esther. Gorgeous little Malaita lady who had met her future husband while she was working for a construction company and he was studying in the Teachers’ College.. Super diligent, mega hard-working  mom of 3 kids, Esther is a spectacular cook, a super-green-thumb gardner, sweetest mom and the best singer. Marovo Lagoon is a stronghold of the super zealous 7-day Adventists. Esther says they all pray first thing in the morning when they wake up. They do not do anything on Saturdays (akin to the Hebrew Sabbath tradition) but pray and attend church. Apparently, a lot of singing goes on in the church. 

The family lets a old 76-year old dive master from Hawaii stay here to help them organize the diving operation. The lady is more of a nuisance than a helper at this point but the family is kind to her (despite her endless biting remarks). The old lady has made us all sing xmas carols every evening. I have never known what’s in those songs that I try so hard to tune out all December! Wow! Loads of mangers, mean merchants and sweet-face babies mentioned. Sooooo many verses!!!!!! The old lady hands us the lyrics sheets then proceeds to exhibit her excellent mezzo soprano  (read: highpitch-screach) 

 voice that had been “lauded by many,” according to her. Esther, her daughter Linty and her brother in law Evan plus me are the captive choir. Esther has a divine voice and a great sense of harmonizing. Evan does great low baritone florishings. Linty and I just glance at each other and snicker as the old lady belts out her glass-shattering screaches. 

BTW, did you know that the little drummer boy is not just a cute song about a christmas ornament but a boy who played drums for Jesus? Wow! Radical!

Yesterday, Esther gave me this beautiful “smart-phone bag,” as she proclaimed it. A magnificent and intricate purse which she made from leaves of this really pretty tree (no idea what it is called). I was so touched! What a lovely gesture! Love Esther!!!!

Esther and Linty are both beyond excited to go to Malaita Island on the 30th and stay there for a month with Esther’s family. Linty will celebrate her 12th birthday with her favorite granny. They take a 12-hour ferry ride from here to Honiara then another 4-hour one to Malaita… Yup, the Malaita that has been asking for independence from the federal government of the Solomons. Malaita that had some horrible history of blackbirding imposed on its citizens.

The 5 brothers are all big talkers with big dreams and a charming messianic delivery. Two are teachers, one was an engineer on the famous live-aboard Bilkiki, Evan is a carpenter and then there is Nathaniel who would be an excellent car salesman. But in the lack of roads, used car lots or much buying power, he had used his talent convincing various government and international organizations to give him free money to develop eco-tourism and marine-research facilities in this area. The convincing was successful but Nate didn’t really bother to do much of what he was promising. In fact none of it. He has happily spent the grant money living the life of a Solomon Reileigh. I don’t think he belongs to the church as he smokes and drinks (SDA prohibits both strictly).

So there you have it! No family is perfect.

What’s the diving like? Really lovely! Noone dives here. Not much boat traffic. So you can see many things. Loads of rare fish, plethora of nudibranchs and flat worms the likes and/or quantity of which I and never seen, walls and walls of soft coral in every color, pipefish and translucent shrimp abound, we have seen a mobula, an eagle ray, a marble ray, a green turtle, and my favorite: 3 different octopuses, 2 of which were mating. No, the third one was on a different dive. He was not involved in any love triangle, you dirty mind!

Even though we are not horribly far from the Munda area and the Roviana Lagoon, here deep in the Marovo, you see far less pelagics. None of those huge schools of barracuda or travellies.

Speak of diving, the rain keeps pouring (all night and all morning already; I wonder if it will ever clear enough to go out diving?!)

I leave here on Saturday to go to Uepi Island (an hour boat ride from here). The scene there will be very different: a dive resort likely full of Americans indulged in the dive and travel one-upmanship. But I will stay there only 3 days and there is some kind of wedding going on so hopefully the inevitably depressing ratio of tourists to locals won’t affect me as hard.

***

A spectacular dive later. Wow, that was epic. Rain is back to pouring but it luckily gave us a 1.75-hour break to boat out to this beautiful dive site and to almost complete the dive. We boated back holding a big cooler lid in front of our faces not to get beaten by the harsh raindrops. Thunder. Lightening. The works. Then, amidst the downpour, we spotted spinners playing in the lagoon so we went to play with them, rain and all. Back at the house, Esther is grinding the insides of coconuts to make the coconut curry. Yumm

Why was that dive epic? Well lemme tell ya: A huge wall with a dense forest of giant fan corals on top of gorgeous yellow soft coral, mingled with toonicats and hovered over in layers of fish fish and more fish. Huge schools. My favorite: the biggest school of batfish I have ever seen. Usually you see solitary batfish. OR a couple. Maybe 4 but rarely more than that. Well, we just had some 20 of them swimming together and the color variations were fascinating: from pale beige to dark brown. And just before the bat parade, a lovely curious calm cool & collected eagle ray slowly glided right past us. So close that I could see the dings on her back. Likely from a close encounter with a shark. Eagle ray’s heads look like the fruit bats’ . Bats!

Anywho, the grandiosity of that wall was just so happiness-inducing majestic!

Off to another dive.