Yup, I’ve had a bad case of intestinal disorder. It didn’t respond to bland diet (BRAT) or huge quantities of Immodium, so we finally realized it as a bug of some sort, probably from the water in the village since there has been something going around. Anyway, once it was clear that simple measures wouldn’t suffice, we bombed it last night with Ciprofloxen. 12 hours later I’m finally on the mend. Not too much fun, but a couple days of rest.

Today we stayed on Charisma. Ann made bread and did some clean up, I pretty much just read and laid in the cockpit. Tomorrow though we’ll go back in the village. Ann to do some more weaving and sewing and me hopefully to do some carving under the tutelage of one of the village carvers.

JHAM posed a question yesterday that I thought I’d respond to. He asked; “Is there just no strife, anger, sickness, or negativity”? I would answer to that; “Yes. There is”. This is paradise through our eyes as it’s a simple way of life that’s so uncomplicated that it’s a delight. The strife, anger and negativity that exists is not distorted by politicians and interest groups and then all blown out of all proportion by the media and turned into entertainment and profit making. It’s a simple human condition. We all argue, get angry and such, but the nice thing here is it doesn’t go anywhere or get taken to extremes. People get over it.

Sickness is an exception. Life is great here until you are sick. Then it becomes misery since there is very little in the way of infrastructure to support medical care. There is one nurse who takes care of everything and they didn’t even have a nurse last year. He has access to the mainland for consultation, but not a lot of tools to handle pain, infection or an acute accident. Dental care is non-existent. If you have a tooth go bad, it’s going to come out. Very few folks here have a full set of teeth and some have only a few left. For major illness you wait for a boat to Suva (maybe once a month, but there’s no fixed schedule). Once in Suva you rely on extended family for a place to stay because this is a subsistence economy and Suva takes money. Two different worlds.

But despite the hardships (including having to gather food every day in order to eat) these are very happy people and we are enjoying being accepted as friends in their world even though they know we can leave at will and go back to ours. The goodbyes are emotional. The bonds formed are unique.