27/4/1993,
I am renting a small house in Kinoya while teaching at Pacific Regional Seminary. I can participate in the local parish sector and help in the parish by celebrating Sunday Mass. A catechist who lives a couple of houses away planted dalo (a root crop) for me in the space behind the house.
I invited my near neighbours for a yaqona session one Saturday night – a kind of house warming. The catechist was my mata ni vanua (spokesman). Early on, I regretted my choice of evening because I hadn’t completed my homily for the early Sunday Mass. Around mid-night the catechist, without checking with me, mixed another full basin of yaqona while I was talking to someone. There were only a few of us left to finish it. To make matters worse he left long gaps between each round. As my sleep time got increasingly shorter I was getting more anxious. “Talo!” (serve it) – the words escaped from my lips. I noticed the catechist making a startled jump. Later he explained to me that if I wanted the drinking to be speeded up I only had to mention it to him, and not overcall him.
One of my neighbors, a non-Catholic teacher, has an irritating habit. He regularly wakes me up before 6.00 a.m. by calling from outside my window to ask for his bus fare. I used to give it with bad grace wondering why, since he has a good job, he hadn’t his own bus fare. He always returned the borrowed money a few days later.
Last Saturday morning he approached me explaining that he needed about $300 to buy mats to take to a reguregu (funeral gathering) of a close relative who had died suddenly. The bank was closed for the weekend but he promised to repay me on Monday. I happened to have that much money with me but I needed some money myself that day. So I reluctantly handed over $200.00.
Yesterday was Monday but there was no sign of my friend. I’m afraid I can wave goodbye to that money. I see now how carefully he groomed me. But, at least, I won’t be disturbed early in the morning anymore!
by Fr. Frank Hoare
