A Rurutu yokel in Tahiti!

I made a quick dash to Tahiti last week, to get Amaiterai's passport application in, unfortunately children's passports can't be done here in Rurutu. The idea even of getting a two month old baby a passport seems slightly ridiculous, particularly as eye color and height are obligatory. 

It's now been nine months since I was last in Tahiti, and I'm definitely losing the knack of  city life. The traffic jams and heat have lost their attraction, even supermarket shopping wasn't that exciting - even though we did find some craisins - one of the funny little things that I really miss from CA, and it looks like I'm not the only one to appreciate them.

 

Poor Amaiterai's eyes were like saucers the whole time we were in Tahiti, he clearly didn't quite know what to make of it all, and was all smiles when he got back home to his sisters, though fortunately he was good as gold on the flights.

 

Navigating a hot sweaty smelly city single-handed with a baby wasn't much fun, and running to and fro from the passport office was a real drag, though I was treated preferentially in the post office and supermarket line, which was a small and rather unexpected comfort. It was all a bit of a rush, but I did enjoy a quick stroll through Papeete market, it's such a vibrant place and always full of beautiful flowers, fruits and veg and an array of great characters.

 

I also enjoyed the views of Tahiti's majestic peaks, even from a school car park! I also enjoyed catching up with my wonderful friend Tracey and family, living the high life in Mahina!

Think global act local

Today we headed up into the mountains here in Rurutu, with the committee members of our new society, 'Association Te Aru Ora' which aims to protect and promote respect for our environment. Getting this society going has probably been one of the most satisfying achievements of my time in Rurutu, so far. So many people were sitting around voicing their concerns about many issues on the island, but without actually doing anything about it, it was just a question of getting everybody to sit down together and agree that something needs to be done. So, in July we had our first 'unofficial' meeting and since then we've been working on getting registered and official! Now we can start planning our first fund-raising and outreach projects. We have A LOT of work to do here in Rurutu, the islands' population is growing, as is the appetite that the community has for imported foods and electrical goods - but we don't have any good way to deal with our waste. At the moment we are using landfills, but on small island like ours landfills are not a solution, we seriously risk contaminating our drinking water supply, and quite simply there is not enough room. Burning is also a possibility, though again hardly environmentally sound. Increasingly we've been seeing bags of rubbish and broken cars or washing-machines dumped by the side of the road or off the edge of steep cliffs, which is really sad, as the inhabitants of Rurutu have always been so very proud of how clean and tidy their island is. In the past the to'itu (committee of elders) regulated these kinds of things, but as we've become more developed and westernized the committee holds less and less sway with the community. One of our big projects is to get a recycling program going - part of our problem is that it's really not that easy to figure out the best thing to do with all of our rubbish, we can't recycle paper, plastic, glass or aluminium, which accounts for a huge proportion of the waste in our landfills, or at least not at the moment. While it will never be economically viable for us to recycle here in Rurutu, it's probably worth the expense not to be swimming in our own garbage! The great thing about living in a small close-knit community on a small island is that it's actually very easy to change things (for better or worse!), so I'm hoping that with a bit of support from the mayor we can get things moving. Once we've started to recycle the obvious bits and pieces the next step would be to reuse our organic waste, by starting a composting program, at the same time to also try and reduce the needless use of chemical fertilizers, which again risks polluting our drinking water and lagoon.....
Anyway today we went up into the mountains, to discuss the possibilities of establishing a managed natural area, around our highest mountain ridge - including Manureva (below far left), the highest peak in Rurutu, a whopping 384m high! It's beautiful up there, and we were all buoyed up by our great intentions to get things moving......only time will tell.......