Saturday’s a busy day in the village, everywhere food is prepared in advance for Sunday, as the strict Christians here don’t light fires on the Lord’s day. We strolled through the village last Saturday, watched the proceedings and were in invited by the chief to join them for dinner. So we went home and started cooking ourselves to be able to contribute to the feast.
Just as we were getting ready to go ashore, the wind picked up during a squall from the west, we quickly started pitching on a leeshore on the eastern side of the atoll. A quick check on windy: they had changed the forecast to NW squalls during the night–impossible to spend the night on the mooring off the village in such conditions. So we quickly wrote an apologetic message to the chief, used the last light to motor to the protected northern corner–and ended up eating the food we had prepared for shore over the next three days while it was raining and blowing.
That’s the cruising life, our schedule is dictated by the wind 
Verona, one of the teachers, gave us some grilled fish and breadfruit as we were walking past
At the chief’s house the family was preparing coconut milk
Grating taro
and preparing buns from wheat flour
The bread oven looks simple
but is actually quite sophisticated with lower and upper heat!
Pigs are tied up everywhere, but they have another few weeks to live–until Christmas…
