…With Deb and her family gone back to N.Z, we swapped the 6 seater car for a scooter and moved into my families home.
When planning this part of the trip, I had rung to confirm it was a good time to come and stay with the family, down the phone I heard “Sure Cous, Uncle says its fine, you can come and paint the house. He says you can paint it any colour you want, as long as you buy the paint”…sounds like a deal! When we were planning this trip originally we did look into doing some VSO work of some sort, but didn’t find what we were looking for – so this turned out to be something close to that, and it felt good.
In February this year, Cyclone Pat hit Aitutaki, damaging or destroying 90% of homes, demolishing all crops, with damages estimated at 15 Million NZD. There was no loss of life, but life is still on the mend in Aitutaki ever since, and although out of the news, it became quite apparent from the outset of arriving and driving round, that this is very much still effecting everyone that lives here. 9 months on, and some people are still sleeping in the Red Cross tents that were erected straight after the disaster in wait for rebuilds. Going down to the market is not the same as my two other trips home, namely – no fruit, and limited vege’s, hard to comprehend when its usually so abundant.
So its now complete! For the last 2 1/2 weeks we’ve worked on project “House Paint”, painting only in the morning until mid day before the heat takes a hold, and the sea starts to call.
If anyone out there wants to go to Aitutaki to do more of the same, I can hook you up pretty easily, and remember…”you can paint it any colour you want, as long as you buy the paint”.
WheresRu 