The Sea Voyager

I was sitting on the stump of an old palm tree near a dock on Weno and a middle-aged man shuffled over my way and stuck out his hand. He had a hardened face with a salt and pepper mustache above his lip. He was rather old, but looked like he was still strong and capable. One of his eyes was scared and his skin was weather beaten like wrinkled leather.

“Oh, sipwe kapwong”, he said in a scratchy voice. I shook his hand and introduced myself. We exchanged initial greetings, which always include questions about where you are from, who is your family and how you are doing. He informed me that he was from the northwest island of Murilo. This tiny atoll struck a chord with me for two reasons. It was the unfortunate place that was devastated by the poisonous turtle meat that killed 8 people and hospitalized hundreds last year. It is also the home island of my former host mother from Tonoas.

We talked for a while, and then he told me that he had to get going to get ready for his trip. “Ka no ia (where are you going)?” I asked him. He explained that he needed to buy some supplies because he was leaving that night to head back to Murilo on his boat. A few things surprised me about this. Murilo is about 100 miles away across a stretch of treacherous open ocean. His rickety motor boat had a puny 40 horsepower engine and the fiberglass hull looked like a crusty bucket. And he was planning on leaving at night time.

He happily answered all my questions about his journey and I was utterly impressed by the end of our conversation. He does this trip often to come into Weno to get rice, gas and other supplies for his family. It takes him about 6 hours of continuous driving. The waves and rain are often problems, but he is always safe in the end.

He has no compass, GPS or navigation equipment. He simply relies on intuition and a few ancient seafarer tricks. He prefers to leave around 3 or 4 am because it is still dark when he departs. The man uses the stars to chart his course and point his boat in the right direction. However, it is much scarier and more difficult to cross the open Pacific at night time, so he likes to do most of the driving in the sunlight. He only needs stars in the beginning.

His pathetic little boat safely brings him and his supplies through the gauntlet of the raging ocean and plops him on the microscopic sandspit that he calls home. His island is only a little bigger than a football field and sits in the largest body of water in the world. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack. Or more like finding a grain of sand in an Olympic sized swimming pool.

I wished him luck and chuckled to myself as we walked away thinking about how his trip to the grocery store is a little more of a trek than my 3 minute car ride to Ralph’s back home.