Pigs, Planes and Parties

So it dawned on me that I’m not giving you all much of a real-life picture of things here in Tuvalu and as a result I will rectify that will the next few posts hopefully!

Firstly plane days are the highlight of our working week here at the TANGO office – and actually they are exciting days for the whole community! The planes are supposed to come on a Tuesday and a Thursday although sometimes they don’t! The “air traffic control tower” is next to my office and the reason for the quote marks will be clear from the picture below! As you can see that is a lady standing on a corrugated roof with a walkie talkie and that is right next to my office!

As you can see we have literally a front row seat every time the planes come in! A siren sounds a little before the plane arrives to let us know its coming and then another one right before which means we’re not allowed to cross the runway… until it lands after that its fine!  We normally wander over to the community hall next to the “airport” to watch who is coming and going! It’s a big deal here!! A couple of weeks ago there was no Thursday plane (insert dum dum dum, tension building sound effect) so we had a replacement one come the following Wednesday – and a special Australian Royal Air Force plane came on the same day, bringing the Prime Minister back from Fiji! That was a good day!  Mainly because we happened to be having dinner out and the crew from the Air Force plane were staying at the same place and they gave us cheese and fruit platters! You may all think I’ve gone mental but the food situation here is tricky! You can rarely get fresh fruit and it’s always expensive and cheese is like gold dust!  The Air Force aussies fast became our best friends!   The funniest part was that they started to say how wasn’t it so cute that all the locals had turned out on the runway to welcome the Prime Minister back… We had to tell them that actually they were interrupting prime sport playing time and the locals were just waiting for them to land so they could get back on the runway for volleyball, rugby, football or basketball!!

As well as an infatuation with planes the people of Tuvalu also place a high value on their pigs.  That’s right pigs!  During the consultation I’ve been working on I’ve heard the same story three or four times and it goes like this:

When the royal visit reconnaissance team (I like to imagine them in camo gear but it was probably a very dull man with a clipboard) arrived they were worried about the smell of the pig sties that run pretty much all the way along the side of the runway (behind my office, on the ocean side of the island).  The discussed it with some local officials and expressed that weren’t they worried that the smell of the pigs (which isn’t even noticeable from my office) would put off tourists?!  When the officials told them that if you asked local Tuvaluans whether they want more tourists or their pigs… they would all say “PIGS” I think the British were suitably stunned!

But its true the Tuvaluans love their pigs! And some of them are being moved in preparation for the Royal Visit – heaven forbid they could just see Tuvalu as it is!  Most families have pigs, the one I’m staying with had 13 when I got here but there was a feast and one had to be donated so now there are 12. Yesterday I went to a funeral of a young Tuvaluan boy that died in a gas explosion in a house he was staying in, in Fiji and there were 7 pigs roasted in pits as part of the feast!

The picture below is some pigs foraging in one of the islands “Borrow Pits”.  These holes are what remained after the Americans (in their infinite wisdom) dug up the island and used what they removed from the pits to build the runway!! Geniuses! So now there are approximately 8-10 of these pits at the northern and southern ends of the island.  The poorest members of the community live around them, rubbish gets dumped in them, pigs walk about it them, mostly there are ignored by the government because it’s a case of out-of-sight out-of-mind, and the people that live there, on the whole don’t have the capacity to force them to do anything about it! So they live pretty much in squalor and in shanty town looking properties over dirty water pools!  They are pretty depressing to see.  I will go with Masi (my Tuvaluan sister) and get pictures at some point to better show the problem.

As I’ve said Tuvaluans make the most of any space available to them for any number of events – i.e. runway = sports arena! So I wasn’t massively surprised when Masi invited me to a concert that was for Children Day and that had representatives from the youth groups of all the 9 islands, at the tennis courts!

It was ace lots of traditional dancing and singing even if the venue was unconventional!  The dancing and singing is a common occurrence they will use any excuse to have a feast!  Then there is lots of drumming, chanting and dancing after eating fish and pig (not together!)  I tried to video it to include here but it didn’t turn out so good will try again and upload when I’m able. 

Finally we went out on the boat last week to go diving, snorkelling and surfing (not all of those relate to me!) but the other guys we went with also were fishing and they caught a huge Sailfish!!

 

Can’t help but feel a big insignificant with my relatively tiny fish I caught my first weekend, which by the way was beginners luck because I’ve caught nothing since!

On that bomb shell I shall sign off! Laters ;) xxxx