Helen: Still not feeling 100% and now C has joined in too. In fact the whole boat is awash with snotty tissues - we arrived back to find the rest of the crew had got ill too. Yuk. What I really need now is my Virgin Atlantic pyjamas (for lounging about in when I'm sick) and my Asterix tapes (yup, TAPES - remember them?). Ever since I was a little girl whenever I felt ill my mummy used to put on tapes of Willie Rushton reading Asterix adventures. Wonderful stuff - Asterix rescuing Getafix from the Circus in Rome or Julius Cesar beating the Brits because they refused to fight after 5pm or at the weekends, and kept stopping for 'hot water' breaks as they hadn't discovered tea yet.... Only problem was, I usually fell asleep before the end of a side, so I only know the first parts of each tape - never the endings!
But, never ones for sitting still we've still been out exploring. There's a great web site called www.geocaching.com where you can look up hidden treasure. People hide treasure and then enter the 7 figure GPS coordinates so you can go and find it. You take something along and swap it for some of the hidden goodies. Did it with the kids yesterday - ended up in a lady's garden digging with her, her son, her sister and, finally the gardener (who had found the treasure and moved it!!) Lots of fun - very Indiana Jones :)
Two other noteworthy things have happened - I dragged C along to 'Bollywood Night' at the yacht club - I thought it would be lots of Indian music, food and dance, with lots of locals and cruisers. Oh no. Got there (wearing my fantastic new trousers, that C says make me look like a genie) and didn't recognise a single person. Felt a bit like being back at work and turning up at a conference. Took a couple of deep breaths and then just launched myself into a few conversations. What a wierd bunch of people! It turns out they are all the ex pats who own all the resorts on the island. You never see them in town, but they have their own seperate community. None of them are sailors, but they seem to congregate around the Yacht Club. None of them were very friendly either so we didn't stay long - but it was interesting to see this whole other culture that we didn't know existed here. Made us wonder if we could ever really live anywhere other than the UK (or somewhere similar in culture) - if we did would we end up gravitating towards the same ex pat community? Hope not...
The other thing that happened was that we met a man who really challenged my thoughts about him. He is a white South African, and has seen some horrific things in his life - rape, torture, war, family members murdered, that sort of thing. In the course of talking to him about these things he uttered the words 'I hate all Blacks. The only good Black is a dead one'. I didn't really know what to say or do after that. My middle class upbringing didn't really have an answer. C challenged him on it by saying he didn't like to be judged by the colour of his skin and so didn't like doing that to others, but we soon steered the conversation onto less controversial topics. But it made me think. In other respects the man was pleasant enough. I could have spent an evening chatting to him. But, knowing what I know now about his unrepentent attitudes, I'm not sure I could just gloss over that part of his character and carry on as normal. C and the rest of the Yamana crew said 'oh, well, it's understandable after what's happened to him' - maybe it is. And maybe I'd've turned out the same way if that had happened to me. But, surely, that doesn't excuse his attitudes? Hope I'm making myself clear - it's really got me thinking....
Right, time to go. We're off to a few little anchorages and should be in Suva by the end of the month in time for Diwali (when we're going to set off some of our out of date flares - hope they won't be noticed among the other fireworks for the Festival of Light!)
Bye for now
Hxx
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