DAY 52 - Queen Facts

As Cameron had shown us yesterday, our main task for today was to ‘re-claim the border’ meaning that we had to go along the entire northern side of the coffee area and rid the area of weeds and the like. At Judy’s, ‘weeds’ had meant little bushes of grass and other vegetation growing in the greenhouse whereas here, ‘weeds’ were in most cases fully developed trees that had to be sawn off and thrown over the border which was marked by some pipes running down it on the ground (what the neighbour thought of that I do not know) We started from opposite ends of the fence and worked our way towards the middle, where I suddenly noticed that Sarah was in the process of mutilating a tree that most definitely wasn’t a weed but one of the prized coffee plants, as well as seeing an ominously large number of similarly treated stumps in her wake. We’d done our day’s work anyway and went up to our room, where we soon enough noticed Cameron walking through the coffee and looking most displeased at our work (even his rounded eyebrows could not mask his disapproval). Sarah got a bit worried and so we went to explain the mistake to him – he was luckily very nonchalant about it which was a huge relief.

We’d been told that on Wednesdays there was an event down at Ho’okena beach that Cameron and Lori slightly disapprove of (‘It’s more like a gathering for homeless people’) and so we told ourselves that it must be good. We hitchhiked down and soon realized that these were EXACTLY our kinds of people that we’d been missing on this side of the island so far. Free food was being cooked, dogs were running about, dreads and long hair and tattoos could be seen everywhere and a bunch of people were gathered under a tree jamming with their various instruments.

Almost as good as Kahena.

We quickly got talking to a couple of guys, like freckly Adam or ginger-dreadlocked Brayton, but the main character we saw here was an old Polynesian man called Koa (or something) with an insane tan, tattoos everywhere and an incredibly tacky shell/gold necklace, who was constantly spouting some utterly hilarious stuff in an insane accent while accompanying it with eyebrow gymnastics that Emma Watson would be proud of.

You can't really see it here but at moments I was convinced that he was Robin Williams in a stupid disguise doing an absolutely over-the-top impression.

As we were trying to talk to him someone suddenly spotted a whale not too far from the coast and it remained there for quite a while, waving its tail at us and blowing out water while the Polynesian guy provided us with a constant stream of utterly nonsensical commentary.

 We talked to the people there for a bit longer (Brayton was regaling us for a long while with facts about Queen Elizabeth) and I drew this lovely guy:

But soon the sun was setting and we decided to try to find a ride before it was dark. We said goodbye to everyone, which provided some old man with the opportunity to very creepily smell and feel up Sarah, and Koa suddenly revealed that he had taken quite an unsettling liking to me (‘Did you know that I am a lion?’ [eyebrow wiggle] ‘Yeeees I am a lion…. I’m gonna eat you!’)

We were soon picked up by an old guy in a small truck. Remembering our predicament from last night we asked him to stop by at the store and bought a huge variety of chocolate-based food even though we’d eaten quite a lot at the potluck. The old guy dropped us off, and I, complete noob that I am, clutching the bag of chocolate to my chest and not caring about anything else, did not realize that I left my bag that holds everything that is dear to me in the back of his truck until it was too late. Hoping to God he’d find it and find my sketchbook with my email address inside it I decided not to let it get to me too early and we decided to distract ourselves with a movie and all the snack foods we’d gotten. We put on ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ (after discovering that we seem to be the only people in our Maidstone friendship group who actually like musicals) and it was a pretty funny night.