odysseyone

Whether a journey is a long or a short one depends on who you are asking. Rarotonga is about 32 kilometres around. As an Australian, living on the island can make me very claustrophobic at times. Sometimes on weekends we drive around the island, just to give ourselves the illusion of distance. But for many Kukis, this is unheard of. They might venture out into the ‘countryside’ (where we live) on special occasions or during Christmas holidays, but that’s about it. One person I know has lived here 25 years and told me she hasn’t drive around to the other side of the island in years.

May was mostly a month of settling into island life including water outages, tasting weird island fruit, learning to eyebrow read and discovering the legalities of piracy (not the pirate kind).

I’ve mentioned in previous blogs that there are few street names here and no house numbers, so explaining where you live can be a bit of a nightmare. We dubbed our house the Palace but apparently some of the neighbours call it the Muslim house because it looks like it should be in the Middle East, not in the tropics.

I could blame my busy life on taking another 2 months to write another blog, or I could admit that some of that ‘island time’ has rubbed off on me and maybe I’m taking a little longer to do things than I used to.

Week two….

Kia Orana means may you live long. If I can ever get my tongue around it, the local greeting seems much more of a personal, meaningful greeting than the no frills ‘Hello’ we say in English and other language translations. When perfect strangers say Kia Orana to you each day I think ‘yeah, thanks, I hope I live long too.’ It’s just a pity my tongue mangles it and I can’t say it back!