Flying higher

We've just finished a grueling and extremely satisfying, week of full-house february school-holidays. The poor grandparents exiled down the road at Meme's, along with the girls and Iro, who was here for the break. It's always a bit of a challenge to deal with a full guesthouse, but juggling visiting family and the girls (who really don't like being palmed off on anyone other than mummy and daddy) has been quite an effort, for all involved. Anyway we're all still surviving and grateful for a moment to rest and recover, before heading off on our own holidays in Tahiti next week.

Among the last of our guests was none other than the ex-PSG coach and well-known footballer Antoine Kombouare, who just happens to be married to one of Viriamu's second cousins !!! I didn't recognize him immediately, I'm more of a rugby girl myself (good one Wales for this weekend!), but the local French footie fans were all of a quiver, upon spotting him running on the beach! He was rather enjoying a bit of time being relatively incognito, before heading on to New Caledonia, where he is very much the local boy made good, and hence a bit of a superstar. It's always interesting to meet more of our huge family......

Hotting up for Christmas

Matotea's had her Christmas party at school and is on holiday and Tuati's back with us now too. But I always find it a little tough to get into the festive spirit in the summer heat. I did managed to motivate myself, and got the Tropical Christmas pud made last week, using my home-made glacéed tropical fruits (papaya, pineapple and lychee, yum!) and some freshly dried mango. I'm hoping the pud will be as tasty as the tropical Christmas cake I made last year, though doused in brandy sauce pretty much anything tastes alright. We're going more for a Rurutu style feast this year, (i.e. we decided to forget about the turkey this time) with a Tahitian oven planned for the 25th, though I have got some mussels on order, that I should be about to collect from the plane this morning, at extortionate cost!!! The champers should arrive tomorrow, though the cargo boat has had a couple of difficult trips recently, and has lost several days on its schedule, so the boat due in on the 19th, is now in on the 24th!!!! Fingers-crossed that our beer will have time enough to chill before the big day!

Family Photo

 

Thanks Eliane for this lovely family photo

Flowers from my Garden

This week has been difficult for us all, Viriamu lost his father on
monday morning, he had been fighting lung-cancer, and succumbed to
liver failure as a result of the chemotherapy. It's a sad story, but
fortunately, Viriamu's mum is surrounded by supportive family and
friends. Her children and grandchildren are all there at home with
her.

January

It's the end of the month and now that the New Caledonia family have gone back to Tahiti, for the end of their holidays, everything seems incredibly peaceful! Here we are back to just us, and the grandparents on skype for entertainement.

 

We even have a few days peace and quiet, before the next trick, the salon du tourisme in Tahiti over the St. Valentine weekend. I've just managed to get a huge shipment of jams and monois onto the boat for sale at the salon, so I hope it's going to go well. I've also been spending a lot of time experimenting with my soaps, I'm nearly there....but not quite!

 

Heimana is coming on a storm, she's full of babble, if only you could understand the half of it! She's also getting to be quite the little menace, pinching and hitting her big sister, every time she doesn't get her way, Matotea dissolves into tears - a strange role-reversal!! So she's growing up in some ways, but not all........I'd heard about kids that breastfed 'til they were four, but I didn't think I'd have one of 'em, however, more than18 months on, Heimana still hasn't kicked the habit and seems more than a little reluctant to. She hardly fits on my lap any more and frankly, after 18 months, I'm feeling a bit tired of the whole lark, not to say leached of nutrients! Roll on february......

The elusive kagu and other New Caledonian memories

I've just been reminiscing about our trip to New Caledonia, back in 2004. I don't actually remember a great deal about it all, things get blurry when I go back beyond the last few years, maybe I'm getting older faster than I think!
New Caledonia lies between Australia and Fiji in The Pacific. I was there for a French science conference, held at the rather magnificent Tchibaou cultural center (left). But we also did make a quick dash to visit the southern forests. New Caledonia is a rather remarkable place in terms of biodiversity, there are extremely high levels of endemism. Having been sheared off the coast of Australia over 65 Mya, it retains many relictual lineages of plants and animals that have subsequently diversified and are mostly now extinct in Australia. An example is the kagu, a rather odd, endangered, quasi-flightless, ground-nesting bird that I did not manage to see in the wild, despite a very quick stop odd at the Riviere Bleue National Park. It's nearest living relative is thought to occur in South America.

 

New Caledonia also harbours the world's largest remaining nickel deposits, lots of tahitians left French Polynesia to work in the mines or in the logging business, there are also large tracts of relatively intact primary forest, with some BIG ol' trees. There is also a thriving tahitian community die by side with the indigenous melanesian kanak population and the caledoche (the name for the first french colonists, who are now several generations Caledonian). Viriamu's uncle worked as a lumberjack, now he is retired and makes 'mitihue' and 'ma'a tahiti' for sale at the weekend market.

New Caledonian family

 

Arrivals, the famil at Rurutu airport

The past couple of weeks the guesthouse has been taken over by the descending hordes of family from Nouméa (New Caledonia)! Viriamu and I had visited New Caledonia back in 2004 (way back when before the guesthouse and kids!!!), and now it was their turn to come and discover their roots.

 Viriamu's uncle came with his wife and seven children, with their significant others and grandkids, most of whom had never seen Rurutu.

  

 It was a total of 16 people squeezed into the pension, which was, how can I put it, intense. Of course Matotea and Heimana enjoyed the opportunity to spend lots of time at the beach, and while it wasn't always easy to share (particularly the swing-set) they enjoyed having friends to play with on hand 24/7.

The family were here during our annual 'Tere' festivities, the communal round-the-island tour complete with stone-lifting, decorated cars and dinner-dance......

 

 

Snap Happy!

 Yes, the camera has finally arrived, along with a shipment of curtains and an espresso machine (Yippee I can make lattes now!). So here are a few of the first pictures, hot off the press.....
 Matotea's into bubble mix and modelling clay at the moment, and we're currently pretending to be at school, I'm the 'maitresse' and Matotea is her cousin ' Meisi'! 

Heimana action shots - yep, she really is up and about and into everything

Bilan - Oli's aftermath

The cyclone has past, and is now starting to dissipate, it is now just a severe tropical storm. Rapa was not badly effected and the red alert has been lifted. Tubuai sustained the worst damage. 150 homes were totally or partially destroyed by the cyclone, over 600 of the 2000 odd inhabitants are homeless. The electricity, fresh water and telecommunications infrastructures have been very badly damaged, the government and army are mobilizing to assist with the clean-up, and restore normality. At least 23 houses were destroyed in Raivavae as well, but there was not the same magnitude of destruction as in Tubuai, the cyclone passed about 100km from Raivavae, so they also got off lightly. In Tahiti there are collections of food and clothing to be sent to Tubuai and Raivavae by boat. Our whole island is mobilized today, busy cleaning up the debris, (Viriamu's busy in the garden hauling coconut fronds around) and getting back to life as normal. But I still have this dull feeling of dread in my stomach, I've spent the morning answering e-mails and blogging, still listening in to the radio. I just can't believe how lucky we were. I think that the fact that we have a young fringing reef, with a very shallow lagoon must have protected us from the worst of the sea. The waves broke onto the reef and were dissipated in the lagoon. The areas worst effected on our island were the areas where the reef is broken or absent, the waves break almost onto the coast. In Raivavae and Tubuai there is a well developed lagoon, sufficiently deep to carry the waves, people live on the motus, or at the waters' edge, inside the lagoon, and so would have been much more vulnerable to the sea. And what can you do with 200km/h winds........

(precariously placed homes, at the water's edge, opposite the quay in Mataura, Tubuai)

We have, as yet, no news of my brother-in-law and his family, I'm sure they are alive, but not sure how their home will have held up...........Oli is not over yet, for them.

Exodus

Matotea's fanclub has been shrinking rapidly since Tuati and Iro left last weekend (as well as Apera, who left for Tahiti and Matai who went back to Tubuai, so Meisi and Simei also returned to their home on the south coast).
The blow was cushioned slightly by the return to school on monday, but on friday grandmere and grandpere left us....back to chilly Wales, on the avion bleu.
The Christmas/New Year holidays are finally over! Now we need to get back to our old rhythmn.....

The Christmas Tree Saga

A few days before Christmas, we headed up into the mountains to pick out our tree (and have picnic too), we don't have much choice here, so we usually use a Caribbean pine, though people often also use ironwood saplings too. Tuati, Viriamu's son, who's here for the holidays, was keen to prove his strength by cutting down the tree with his machete....

Viriamu trimmed it down to size and got it into the truck....

Matotea and grandpere decorated the tree with all the decorations that we had bought in New Zealand...including the Christmas angel for the top of the tree....

Heimana and grandmere watched.....

The wind blew the tree over in the night and we started all over again. Finally the tree was moved inside and the boys decorated it, at least everyone got a turn! It stayed put there until we pulled it down yesterday...........and ate our gallette du Roi (the 'king' for the day, is the one who finds the little figure baked into the marzipan tart......but Matotea had other ideas!).

NZ holiday - family

The holiday was also a brief opportunity for Matotea to meet some of her kiwi ohana. Her second cousins Bobby and Bryn came to visit us in Raglan with their mum Trish and Pineapple the duck - a highlight for Matotea.....

We also made it to Aunty Norma's birthday celebrations, nice restaurants lose their appeal a bit when you have to small kids to juggle, but nevertheless it was a nice chance to catch up with the relies.

Just keep smiling!

Over the past month or so Heimana's first weak smiles have blossomed into all out grins, yesterday we even had our first belly laugh! She is really such a cheerful little baby, it's quite delightful - she'll smile at almost anyone and even in the most unlikely situations. The poor little mite had a really bad cold a week or so ago, she was having trouble breathing and coughing up the mucus in her lungs, so she was prescribed physio sessions. If you've never experienced this it's quite something, the physio gives her chest a really good pummeling, kind of squishing her like an accordion, then half strangling her to get her to cough-up what's down there on her lungs, before squirting saline up her nose. Being woken up like this might be a bit traumatic for you or I, but Heimana broke into a radiant smile for several moments, before her eyes grew big and her lip started to quiver. The physio was astonished, even more astonishing was that she repeated the same radiant smiles in the following sessions! I know for a fact the three month old Matotea would not have let the same indignities be acted out on her, without considerably greater protestations......

Heimana continues to grow: 5.3kg now and 55cm. She's itching to get on her feet and is following a vigorous lower body exercise program, she loves to stand up on our laps and even though we haven't reached the stage of proper head-control, we clearly want to get fully upright post-haste.

Sitting up on the sofa with dad and big sis' is also OK.