Pippies
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| Fisherman |
When we went back to the bure we put the pippies on the table on the verandah and Lib took a photo of them. We then took the pippies to the kitchen, offered them to the cook or kitchen hand who accepted them gratefully but made no suggestion of cooking them so we went back to our bure for lunch and a read. The room staff made up our bure while we did this, they came in each day and made the beds and swept and filled the water filter. The power was off as it was every afternoon till about five, and we went for some afternoon exercise,walking to the summit. We were away for about an hour and we couldn't understand why all the lights in our bure were on and the ceiling fans were going, and the air conditioner. We hadn't used the aircon once till this point, the temperature always being warm but comfortable.
Our joint conclusion was that the man (usually it was a lady but this time it was a man) who cleaned the bure must have turned everything on as he cleaned without realizing it as the power was off and nothing would have turned on with the switch. I couldn't work out how someone would accidentally turn on every switch, but it seemed like nothing to worry about.
The next morning I woke fairly early and got up to enjoy a cup of tea and read in the front room. Lib was still asleep in the bedroom, I was wearing underpants and a singlet only, when about 7.30 Weiss was on the veranda and he knocked on the glass sliding door.
"Your early checking the water Weiss," I said, feeling a little odd in my underwear as I let him in. I had no clothes handy so I just acted normally as if it was not unusual to have someone knocking on your door unexpectedly while you weren't dressed.
"No, I haven't come to check the water, i just thought I'd pay you a visit and have a talk," he said.
I told him to sit down, and I did too, and we made small talk for a few minutes, then he said nervously, "Actually Carey, there's something I want to ask you."
"Go ahead Weiss."
"Would you be able to lend me ten dollars? I owe Heppy ten dollars, it's pay day tomorrow, but he wants his money back today, I'll pay you back tomorrow."
"Yeah no worries Weiss." I went to the bedroom to get wallet. I only had F$50 notes. "I've only got a $50."
"That's alright I have change." I gave him a fifty and he gave me two twenties. I told him he didn't have to pay me back.
"Oh no I must pay you back," he said. He thanked me and went on his way. After he left it occurred to me that it was strange he had forty dollars to give me change when he asked me for ten, but then he might have been ten short for what he owed Heppy. It seemed a bit odd though. Some days earlier at Lib's insistence I had given Weiss F$50. We liked Weiss, he impressed us with his politeness and assistance and how he made us feel so welcome. Lib had spent some time talking to him on our boat trip to Levuka the previous week. He was on the trip to go to the hospital to get medicine, he didn't say what for. He had a long term plan to go to Australia and do floral arranging, he said, and he was saving all the money he could for that purpose. Lib wanted to give him $50 for him to save to go to Australia one day. He may be 18 or 19 years old, I'm not a good judge.
After breakfast the tide was well out and it was overcast so we decided we'd go for a walk and gather more pippies. We looked for the camera and couldn't find it. We looked hi and lo and couldn't find it. We always left it on the table in the front room. We remembered the last photo we took was of the pippies at lunchtime yesterday. Lib said she put the camera on the table, as always.
It must have been stolen we concluded. We never locked the bure, in fact we didn't have a key, we weren't given one. My wallet was always with me, and I hid it if I went snorkelling. It didn't seem like a place for thieves.
We went to Heppy's office and reported the stolen camera. He said one was handed in yesterday, some kids had found it on the beach, he went to get it from lost property. Sure enough it was our camera. The kids had left with their family this morning.
We'll never know for sure how our camera got from the bure to the beach, or how everything in our bure was turned on when we went for a walk the previous day. The kids that found our camera on the beach were in the bure next door to ours the first day they arrived, but their parents asked for another one nearer the pool so they moved. We reckon the kids got in our bure and stole the camera and turned all our switches on, but when they found the screen was broken they handed it in saying they found it on the beach. The bure next to ours where the kids family had been, also had lights on in it even though it was vacant, when the generators worked, so the kids had probably been in there and turned things on too.
And it may explain Weiss turning up early to ask for ten dollars, to see if we'd had our money stolen too. He knew our camera had a broken screen, Lib told him about it on our trip to Levuka, so when it was handed in he would have recognized it as ours. Maybe the kids told their parents they found a camera or were seen with it and their parents made them take it to the office. They were young kids, under ten. The family was English, but had lived in Suva for 9 years. He had a diving business.
I hope this has not been too boring. I did want to write about this, and the whole Fiji holiday. It was a memorable and fantastic holiday. Weiss didn't give me the ten back.
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