Crazy Crossing (5/31/11)

 I was on Ambae for a gender and development workshop the past week. It was busy and a nice change of pace, but Sunday came around and I was ready to get back to the island and my pace of life. The day started off with a fantastic downpour that continued while me and the Ni-Van participants climbed into the truck to return to Lolowai before climbing in one of the small boats to travel back to Maewo. The truck ride back was wet and uneventful. Once we arrived in Lolowai we quickly threw all of our stuff onto the boat hoping to keep it from getting as wet as we already were from the rain. After a short wait of about an hour for the driver of the boat to come back from the store, that is about a minute walk away from the shore, we all climbed in ready to go home. The boat started up and I looked over the luggage one last time making sure we had everything. Naturally we'd forgotten something, but the something we'd forgotten was a foam mattress about as big as me. How this girl forgot her mattress I do not know, but that mean that we had to add a little extra time to the trip to go pick up her bed. So setting out at 9:30am, I was anticipating getting to Maewo at about 11am because of the extra little trip to get the mattress. We pulled up to the beach by the school and me and one of the other boys hopped out and ran to grab the mattress and brought it back soaking wet thanks to the rain. By the time we got back to the boat the rain had gotten more intense. It was coming down so thick you couldn't see Maewo or Pentecost at all in the distance like usual. It was nothing but grey spreading out before us. The driver cranked up the engine and we started heading towards Maewo. By this point my skin was starting to get wrinkled like I'd been sitting in a bath too long because of how wet we were from the rain. Undaunted by the downpour we bravely drove straight into the rain cloud on our way to Maewo. About halfway across we managed to catch a fairly large Wahoo (king fish is what they called it in bislama I think). Once we'd dragged the fish into the boat and toss the hook back out, we could no longer see any of the islands. We kept driving on looking for Maewo through the haze of the rain. After about an hour of driving we were approaching 11am and close to the time i'd expected to be home and we still hadn't seen any sign of Maewo. We were running a bit slower than normal because the water was pretty rough and we couldn't run as fast through the large swells so I just reasoned to myself that it would probably take longer than normal due to the rough water. After another hour went by I started getting nervous. We'd now been in the little wooden speedboat for two and a half hours without seeing any sign of Maewo, and for the past two hours we hadn't been able to see Ambae as well. One of the Ni-Vans joked around that Maewo didnt want us to come back so it moved. This apparently upset one of the girls who's first time it was away from Maewo, and she said we weren't going to make it back because we were lost. I asked if anyone had a compass hoping the boat driver might have kept one with him, but of course none of us had a compass. Another half an hour went by with all of us brooding in silence as we approached our 3^rd hour of driving around in the crossing that should have taken us all of 45 minutes. Finally, the barest outline of land broke through the rain. “That's Maewo!” called out our driver. I was still dubious about his proclamation as we'd been driving in circles so thoroughly I was unsure if the driver even could tell up from down let alone east from west. Sure enough, as it became more clear, it turned out to be Lolowai. We'd driven around for 3 and a half hours only to come out turned around and right back where we first entered the cloud. As luck would have it, the same time we saw the island, our gasoline ran out. The driver had a small reserve tank, so I held an umbrella and funnel while the driver and one of the other men poured gasoline into the tank as the boat swayed in the ocean swells. About a quarter of the gasoline missed the funnel and went all over my hand and the deck of the boat as the boat rocked too hard repeatedly. Fueled back up and with an island in sight we were all starting to feel a little better when the driver told us we had to go back to Lolowai to get more gasoline if we wanted to cross to Maewo. So after refueling and getting back into the boat it was now 2pm and we were just leaving Lolowai, again. As we came out to the middle the rain cloud still sad over Maewo. The driver killed the engine not wanting to try to run it again until it cleared. So we all gloomily stared at the rain as we floated for another hour waiting for it to clear. Finally becoming worried about it getting dark before the rain cleared we angled far south almost aiming for Pentecost which you could barely see south of Maewo now. Luckily it worked, allowing us to find the southern end of Maewo through the rain, by watching Pentecost. Finally, they unloaded me and all of my bags at the beach by my village. Looking at my watch it was now almost half past five, in the distance I could see slight color of sunset on some of the clouds past the storm that was finally clearing up. Worn out, I grabbed my bags and hiked back up the hill to my house in the light rain.