A LESSON LEARNED IN PARADISE |
| One of the striking sites as part of Turama - the celebration of All Saints Day in Rarotonga. |
I'm typing this blog from a new location. Not work, not my iPad and not from the usual internet cafe I come to vent and express my scattered thoughts.
I found a new internet cafe not far from the airport, complete with air conditioning and fast internet, which are always two key positives to a business of this sort.
But those two factors didn't catch my eye - it's the location.
I'm looking out across the road to a splendour of cleaned gravestones sprinkled with flower necklaces (eis), small solar lights, and freshly picked flowers. None of the 80-or-so graves have been left out.
The site overlooking the Pacific Ocean looks more like a botanical garden than a resting place for the dead as the visually fragrant spectacular catches the eyes of the curious. The efforts were a part of Turama, which acknowledges All Saints Day on November 1.
Families gather and pick flowers to string into eis, or bouquets, and place them on the graves of their loved ones as a reminder of their contribution to society.
It's an event steeped in tradition, with perhaps the most visually striking note happening at night. The freshly adorned graves sparkle at night thanks to the small portable solar lights scattered around each stone.
The end result is a striking reflection of the night sky, a twinkling of gravestones showcasing the honour of the families who have come after them.
Turama isn't just about honouring those who have passed on before us - it's about acknowledging their contributions and ensuring we take time to really remember them once a year. That's awesome.
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The weather here in Rarotonga is really starting to pick up now. Cyclone season started on November 1 and runs through until around March-April, so it'll be four-five months of heat, humidity and hammering the air conditioning at work.
For example, on Tuesday October 30 - two days before the start of the cyclone season - the temperature got as high as 36 degrees. On Thursday November 1, it reached 28 degrees before 10am.
As a guy who probably prefers the cool to the heat, it will certainly be an interesting time.
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Sometimes I forget I live here in the Cooks or that I have done for over four months now. Some days I wake up and feel like I'm on my wya to my first day of work again.
It's a strange feeling and one I haven't completely understood but I don't mind - just got to keep on keeping on and keep tracking on with life here in the Cooks.
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Finally, a surreal moment.
If you've got Twitter you've probably seen this already, but I thought I'd just share an encounter I had last Saturday after the Titikaveka Titans cricket team (the side I play for) defeated the Muri Creeps.
We were all sitting down and having a beer back at our clubrooms when I sat next to a drunken man. He asked me for my name, and I duly replied.
What followed was nothing short of strange.
He told me he had felt sick because he knew who I was. He had seen my name not from the newspaper, but from my Cook Islands drivers license from the wallet I had dropped in my second week of being in the country.
Alongside the Cooks license was a NZ drivers license, but even that failed to prompt the man that it was probably worth handing in to police.
There was also a sum of money in there that I won't go into, but suffice to say it wasn't just $20.
By this stage I had given up all hope of seeing my wallet again, and subsequently purchased a new NZ drivers license and a Cooks equivalent.
The drunken man revealed he had found the wallet in Tupapa, where I lost it buying bread on the second Sunday of my time here on Raro.
He confessed to keeping it and spending the money in it.
In what was a strange moment, I felt a sense of peace over the whole incident and that, despite me losing my wallet and the items inside of it, it didn't matter.
It reasserted a newfound principle I've found out since I've been living here. Money, while obviously incredibly important, isn't the only thing we should live for. Why should we attach ourselves to it?
Instead of taking the line of "Now I have only x ammount of dollars left," I decided to take a different tack - "What can I do with the x ammount I have now".
I say this in most posts and will continue to say so, I'm very privileged to be here not just to live, but to earn a living. Why should I feel angry about money when I have the chance to make some of that up?
I never intended to give the man that money, that wallet and all those things, but who knows what has since come from it. Maybe he sees it as a lucky shot, a chance to buy some alcohol, whatever.
To me it was a useful lesson - don't rely on something that can hinder you.
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That's it for this week, take care my friends and family and remember, I always love hearing from you and hope you're all keeping safe and well.
