On the deck of the schooner Kwai
I catch myself dreaming about a trip, the kind that seems outdated; not a trip that starts once you arrive at the destination, but one of those epic voyages where going from Point A to Point B is the adventure in itself. By boat is obviously the best way to have such an experience. What would happen if you boarded an old sailing cargo boat that ventures where no one wants to go?
Pukapuka, Tabuaeran, Starbuck, Rakahanga, Teraina, Manihiki, Tauhunu, Tukao, Kiritimati, so many mysterious and exotic names for the confetti sprinkled on the surface of the largest ocean on earth. These atolls make up the Line Islands, stretching in a northwest line for 2,350km.
The Kwai brings staple commodities from Honolulu roughly every two months and exports the copra (coconut flesh) and seaweed (greatly prized by the cosmetic industry). But beyond the transport of goods and permitting foot passengers (often exceeding its capacity) the Kwai has become the guarantor of social links in this part of the world.
Without it, most of the islanders would lose contact with friends and relatives on other islands. There is no airline nor shipping service and the lack of electricity on most islands precludes modern communication.
On many islands time has given up, unable to keep up with the erratic rhythm imposed by the “connected” lands. However, each morning they start the day a little earlier than the rest of the world, since the time zone given to them is just past the date line. As if someone wanted to compensate for geographic isolation and technological backwardness, making it so that over there it would always be tomorrow.
Sense of time on those islands is a bit like Salvador Dali’s melting clocks. More than anywhere else, time seems totally abstract; trying to monitor it would be useless. Such a timelessness feeling may have possessed Bruno thirty years ago to throw his watch in at the same time his anchor. But we are not there yet. For now Carine, Shadé, Lou, Pierre (the photographer), Greg (the camera man) and I, are part of the group of nearly a hundred passengers waiting to board the Kwai. We’re crammed together under a roof sheeting that barely protects us against the bleaching equatorial sun.
