As soon as the Radio Net is finished we head back into the beach to say a last farewell to Aisem & Lucy and Benington & Kenneth, managing to get some of Bennington’s excellent bread rolls to take with us as head off towards Paama, an island we havent visited before. The population of this island is somewhere between 1500 and 2000, depending on who you are talking to. Its only about 6nm and we are there before 10am. Unable to contact Sam, the contact we have here to show us around we take the dinghy into Nehili, which hosts a French Primary school and the southern medical dispensary. We are met by James the Chairman of the School Board and he proudly shows us the school and introduces us to the staff. What is amazing about this place is that on the 24th October last year the school was hit by a giant landslide that actually buried one of the classrooms, luckily in the middle of the night so no one was hurt. But today you wouldn’t even know such an event occurred, the whole community worked together and removed the massive amounts of debris and mud that nearly destroyed the school. They showed us photos taken, with classrooms full of mud and huge trees scattered around the play area. There is no heavy machinery here to remove the mess, just good old hands. Everyone kicked in to help, even the former prime minister came along and got involved. It would have been a massive job.
After a quick lunch we take the dinghy down to the southern end of the island to Vutekai where Sam lives. Here we finally meet him and his wife Ruth, who teaches at yet another French school. Sam is going to take us on a tour tomorrow, hopefully to see a kastom dance and various other activities that we can help promote here on Paama. His wife Ruth is lovely and at the end of our visit I am blown away when she gives us a beautiful woven mat, a huge stash of avocados and bananas. They insist we take these and we leave feeling quite humbled by their generosity.
Paama is proving to be a great place to visit, with beautiful sheltered anchorages, complete with dugongs, dolphins and turtles, seldom visited by yachts which seems like such a shame. The community here seems very keen to provide services and activities but have no way of promoting their beautiful island. Hopefully we can help in a small way at least.