Day One

Tavanipupu Diaries
Tavanipupu Island Resort now has a website. Check:
www.tavanipupu.com
My dog was happy. Deliriously happy. Oh, I too was happy, to be sure, but Chance was happy with every fiber of her slender little body. Since the day that Rosemary the cleaner, found her washed up from the sea in the rocks in front of our compound in Honiara, she had been imprisoned, not by me of course, but by circumstances. In truth she could walk out any time she wanted and on one occasion early on, she had. She received such a severe beating she had never done it again. We lived in the heart of a society in which the general populace absolutely hated dogs and would stone any dog brazen or stupid enough to be found in their midst. Chancy, as we fondly called her, was not stupid but she was the most timid dog I had ever known, a sensitive little creature than must have been raised by an expat and then somehow abandoned. She was the most ill equipped dog in the universe to handle abuse. So for three long years for her and five for me, both of us had been forced to hunker down in our little compound by the sea, with security guards 24 seven, and now our freedom was at hand. We were going to live on our own little island in the South Pacific. The morning of our departure dawned a calm as beautiful as could be hoped for. Dead calm and flat as a she ever gets, glassy even. Chance could see the suitcases and packing boxes and was completely certain I was leaving her, yet again. No, I kept telling her, you’re coming with me, but her sad eyes remained uncomprehending as I described our new idyllic life on our own island. I wasn’t precisely certain what dreams she fostered in her little head but I knew exactly what mine were. To live on Tavanipupu Island in Marau Sound, surrounded by the most beautiful, crystal clear water on earth, teeming with aquatic life of a seeming infinite number of colors. I wanted to get up every morning and swim in this warm and tranquil water and just spend time floating over coral heads discovering life forms I had never seen and didn’t understand. To write, to read, to have a few intellectually stimulating guests that came, enjoyed themselves profoundly and then left me once more to that thing I had cherished all of my life, solitude. This was not just any old solitude mind you, but solitude surrounded by nature at her finest. John, a shareholder and truly the only person who could possibly have made it happen, had arranged a spectacular handover ceremony. After so many years of putting his hand in his own pocket and using his considerable intellect to keep the place from falling into ruins, he had finally reached the point where he knew it had to have a transfusion of new blood, money and someone who shared the same vision or it would die a certain death and even more profound would be the death of dreams by all of the people who had devoted years to maintaining and producing one of the most beautiful little resort in the Solomon Islands. I had gotten to know John, unquestionably the best attorney in the Solomon Islands and by some accounts one of the best in Australia as well, by hiring him to fight off the usual scumbags who try to get something for nothing out of expats who are brave enough or stupid enough to try to make a living in Honiara, capital city of the Solomon Islands, which are comprised of 992 different islands. These islands are totally diverse except for one common denominator; most of the people inhabiting them are trying to get something out of someone. The easiest pickings by far are the ignorant white people who arrive thinking they are smarter than the poor, dumb, natives. The arrogance of these interlopers seems to know no bounds. Each newcomer seeming more intent than the last one who just left penniless and bitter, of perpetuating the idea that the locals can easily, with a bit of double talk and flattery, weasel out huge sums of money, often those sums seem small to the giver and large to the getter. It would be far harder to take candy from a baby, these white fools who more often than not have been a total failure in their other lives, practically beg to part with their money, scant as it usually is! I, sadly, was not among the few exceptions to this scenario. The only difference with me was that I excel at tenacity and luck. I was now the luckiest woman on the planet, and clearly, I had the luckiest dog.