Tuesday, December 2

Yesterday afternoon, I went down to Margaret Rasol's house to finish up transcribing  "Daughter of the King", but she had gone to the garden.  I'm used to making appointments, only to find something else more important has come up, it's the Melanesian way and part of the culture here.
Sarah, my fabulous baker, made another batch of banana muffins today, so we began the second round of distributing the muffins to every house in the village.  It's our little way of saying thank you to our Marulaon neighbors who allow our strange family to live in this lovely place.

Our village is made up of two lines of houses, one line on the beach and one line where the land plateaus about 30 feet above sea level.  My friend Ofoaen's house is the third house on the upper level, so I dropped off banana muffins for her and her family.  I found her making square parcels of lelenga for her daughter, Foamela, to take on the ship back to Honiara tomorrow.  Sitting, visiting, and waving off flies while she worked gave me some sweet time with her.  This family is so precious, all of Ofoaen's kids and grandkids are humble, kind, quick to help, and generous.  Soima is the only one of the kids or grandkids in school right now.  Doesn't she have beautiful eyes?  Only one in school helps with school fees, since every child has to pay at least a little bit to attend school.