Wednesday, January 28

Market this morning was wonderful.  My neighbors kept telling me how happy they were that I was back so they could make a little bit of money, and I kept telling them how happy I was that they brought fruits and veggies to market! 
Nobody brought green beans to market, so I took a quick walk out to my garden to see if any green beans had survived the cyclones.  The poles had all fallen down, but I found a small handful of beans.  When I returned to the house, Eta met me with two very ripe breadfruit which she said needed to be motued with four coconuts worth of coconut cream.  Immediately.

Then she grinned at me and said, "There's your kalimeta!"  I turned around, and sure enough, another friend was standing there with a little boy in one arm and a HUGE bowl of kalimeta critters in the other arm.  Sammy, her little boy, had sores thickly clustered all over his diaper area and scattered across his shoulders, too.  She was coming to ask me to treat him, just like I treated his sister in November.  I repeated my "fancy" treatment - gave them a bar of soap and some laundry detergent to make sure the boy and all of his bedding and clothes were clean.  I also gave him a dose of Benadryl to help with the itching so he wouldn't scratch and spread the sores.  The best medicine?  I prayed with him and his mama before I sent them home.

Aaron's list of things to tackle included replacing our worn out rain tank on the front of the house.  This tank is specifically for the neighbors to use, but over the last six years, it has rusted and developed several leaks.  We drew a crowd as Benjamin and Aaron banged around, and thankfully, the crowd helped move the small rain tank up on the platform.  They also help bring the 1000 gallon tank up from the beach.

The new rain tank was taller than the old one, so Benjamin had to saw the pipe to fit.  Ofoaen helped every step of the way.  She held the pipe still while Benjamin sawed, she held the empty rain tank steady while Benjamin leaned on it to reattach the pipe to the gutter.  She noticed that the the place where Aaron wanted to put the bigger rain tank was underneath a coconut tree, not a wise place to be when coconuts could fall and damage the tank.  I just love her!
The kids started back to school today, and they were willing workers when faced with the huge bowl of sea creatures to extract and coconuts to scrape.  Our lunch of bread fruit smothered in coconut cream and motued accompanied by kalimeta and slippery cabbage reminded me of how much I like living here - the food and the people are both wonderful!