Kosrae continued

Monday will be my first day ashore with the town awakened after its sleepy weekend. Or should I say long weekend. School finishes at 11am on Fridays and most businesses close then as well.

I am sitting in the beanbag at the back of the cockpit watching the town start to wake up. The roosters have been awake for hours and traffic is starting to pick up around town. Rather than clear blue sky a constant breeze is blowing in and there is a lot of high altitude cloud and general sea haze about. Perhaps a reflection of the low pressure system to our West. Luckily the fringing reef provides good protection from the sea swell. We can see the waves crashing across the reef from our anchorage and the constant roar in the distance provides lovely background noise.

Dean is downstairs changing the transmission fluid on the engine as a routine part of its service. Our cold tap broke on our shower and so he also has to take that apart to see if he can fix it, and if not get some kind of replacement from the local hardware.

I have a few aims today when I go ashore. Get data so I can be connected, some fresh food, see if it is possible to get a hire car, I also need some quarters (American 25 cents) so I can wash our linen. But most of all I have spotted the Magic School Bus, and I want to hunt it down and see it close up! This is the glimpse I got from the boat as it worked its way along the distant shore.

The Magic School Bus has come to Kosrae

So after a random choice of lunch, rabbit terrine, a French potted meat I bought in Vanuatu, with crackers, we headed ashore once we thought their siesta would be over. Since it is hard to get ham or luncheon meats, I was experimenting with some of the choices available in tin and jars. This was an unusual choice, but actually not too bad.

I can only say “wow” for the shops. There is a small selection of tinned goods and nearly everything is American including the “fresh food”. How can this be? We did get some frozen bread, American. Californian oranges, well we get them even in Australia. The rotting broccili in the fridge I didn’t go near but the smell permeated everywhere. The only other fresh vege’s I could bring myself to buy were carrots, potatoes and onions, yep all from the US.

I also purchased a carton of eggs, and it wasn’t until I got back to the boat and found out some were bad when I tried cooking them, did I realise that these too were from the US. From the outside they were all exactly the same size beautiful clean and white, looked perfect. They all went overboard. I have never experienced a rotten egg in my life, and now I am nearly vomiting even thinking about them. Dean sat on the back of the boat and broke them all open , out of a dozen, 3 were rotten. Oh yuck. However eggs are a part of our diet, so since researching on australianeggs.org.au we have bought another carton, and before using we place the egg in water. If it floats it is overboard, if not it gets broken onto a plate and if it passes the sight and smell test, it can be used. I have only used four of the eggs below so far, and one has been rotten.

I am stunned, I am lost for words, that on this fertile island, fresh local food isn’t abundant. I have yet to go to the smaller shop because they didn’t reopen after siesta but Dean said they had local fresh pineapples, bananas and chokoes. I also want to find a breadfruit because I have never tasted one.

Local shop I am trying to catch open

I did manage to get ant baits and ant poison from the hardware store though. A few ants are still lingering and I can’t rest until every last one is irradicated. When I put the poison down they showed themselves, and I am confident I have got them now.

After shopping our next priority was to go to the bank to get some money. Dean had got a travelex card from the airport and although we can use it at the supermarket, the only shop that takes card, we found we can’t withdraw money from the ATM or inside at the teller. This is a bit sad because we pay lots of fees on our normal credit card. In fact we are lucky there is even a working ATM. There are only two on the island and only one works, and apparently the other is only back working after not working for many months.

The bank then told us where Telecom was located, in Tofol, which is the only place we can get a local SIM card, and since it was quite a way, they kindly called us a cab. We waited ages, and finally a lady who works for social security came out of the bank and offered us a lift as she was going that way. So that was really nice. But one good thing to come out of the wait was that we were at a intersection, and it was school finishing time, and multiple “Magic School Buses” went by. None looked like they were being driven by Miss Frizzell though.

Tofol is a funny place. It is on the main island, it is the government centre and is called the Capital of Kosroe. I think there just wasn’t room on Lelu Island for it. While there are some houses in surrounding areas, Tofol itself is just a few service kind of departments and shops, so this is where we found ourselves. There aren’t any supermarket kind of shops here.

From the water, the main road going to Tofol is behind the line of mangrove trres. You can just see a telegraph pole that shows there is something there in that jungle.

Telegraph pole only indication there is something behind all of the trees

Getting our SIM cards was easy, but the connection is agonisingly slow. We only have H+ and you have no hope of getting much kind of reception at peak times. And we have no hope of watching videos online, no matter how short. It is very sad! I am hoping Pohnpei will be a bit more connected.

We then had to get back to the causeway where we had left our dinghy. It was a long walk, but it wasn’t the distance that was the problem, but the narrow road with no verge, and lots of cars. People drive very cautiously here, but it was still a dangerous road to walk. But now we were connected we could call a cab.

Dean called the cab company in Tofol and spoke to someone, and he said I have no idea if they are sending a car, they can’t help us, or what. So we waited for about about 20 minutes, until a man pulled over in a government car from the education department and asked what we were doing. When we explained he said I’ll drive you. That would have been lovely but we felt bad standing up a cab for the second time in only one afternoon. He said I’ll call them and after that he said they’ll be here in a few minutes. He kept chatting to us, but still no cab. He said get in, I’ll drive you to the cab depot. Then after speaking rapidly in Kosraean a lady was able to take us and she gave us her personal number so we could call direct in future when we needed a cab. So now Ruth is our personal cab driver. It costs US$4 to travel by taxi from Tofol to Lelu.

Alcohol is legal here, but there is definitely a taboo around it. Anyway Ruth told Dean where he could buy some beer. When he got there the lady was asleep, but when she awoke she was happy to sell Dean his beer. Choice of Budweiser, Bud light or Heineken. He got me a bottle of red. There were two bottles of wine to choose from, Cabernet or Merlot with the “T” pronounced. When Dean said “Cabernay”, she said we call it CaberneT! Haha funny.

The lucky thing about Dean discovering the beer shop, was it is also the place where you can hire a car, though the lady couldn’t help with that, not sure who can, we’ll try again om Friday after the public holidays this week- Presidents Day on Wednesday and Thanksgiving Thursday. The cars are all still wrapped in plastic, getting ready for Covid opening I would guess. Well here we are so hopefully they will unwrap one for us.

One of the things we noticed about many cars here is that they have a large yellow sticker on the windscreen. I finally got close enough to read one, and it is some kind of scheme where they can buy used cars from Japan. The Japanese don’t keep their cars for long because they have to go through very expensive inspection processes every 2 years after the car is 3 years old and annually after it is 10 years old- I think keeping low emissions is part of that which in a way makes sense in a crowded country like Japan. So these near perfect cars are then being sold onto to places like this.

My struggle with such movements are, “it isn’t good enough for us but it is good enough for you” concept. I am glad the islanders are getting the opportunity to own a car but I still come back to this same point over and over. It was good enough for Australia to reach its “recycling goals”. We patted our backs on such a great percentage of waste we recycled. But hang on, much of it was just going to Asia to be dumped and burned or straight into landfill. But never mind about that, we could tick off our great work. Or lets go solar. We’ll let China wear the brunt of emissions making the panels and someone else can dispose of the toxic waste when their use expires, but we will pat ourselves on the back for a great job in utilising alternate energy. Maybe I am being unfair but arrghhhh it drives me nuts.

But in the meantime, the Kosraeans love their cars and drive them into the ground! Some are so bad you can hear them coming miles before you see them. And then once they die forever, I think they are towed to any spare space to be reincorporated back into the jungle. If people don’t own a car, they use a taxi though there aren’t a lot of these. While the school children have buses, there is no other public transport. The only people you see walking anywhere are only going very short distances. And I don’t blame them. It is so very very hot and humid.

I thought this car was interesting with its DIY windscreen wiper set up!

I am suprised that there isn’t a local bus. The way the island it set out it lends itself to having one or two buses on a loop. I am not sure if no-one has thought of it, or they just don’t have enough money to set one up. Shame.

Each village has a primary school, and there are about 6 with one private (Jehovah witness I think), then one high school with about 500 children caters for the whole of Kosrae. The children can go onto university in many places including Fiji, Guam and US. The local school here on Lelu looks like it has been upgraded with a new building, but the old one still remains. I am not sure if it is just too hard to remove the reinforced concrete or too expensive. Maybe they will become historical ruins.

Lelu School