Installment 12; The phone man

Suddenly the markets are full. Many types of vegetable are available. Yesterday I bought tomatoes, beans, capsicum, and spring onions. It must be the season. Vanuatu is full of food, fruit trees and vegetables, but it is small and vulnerable, if crops are wiped out, if the weather isn’t good, if there are too many natural disasters, then there is no backup. Everybody eats what is available, and in season. I have also found wholemeal flour, chickpeas and a lighter. With these ingredients I could make falafel, hummus and wholemeal pita bread. Making this meal from scratch I found an immensely enjoyable experience. I can also light the stove anytime I please.

 

The phone man came to my house with the apprentice phone man. He put a machine on my floor that made a loud high pitched noise, then walked out the door and off into the distance. I sat wondering where he was, listening to the high pitched noise for an hour before he returned, with a spanking new telephone. I was pleased to see he had a student to teach all these phone man habits too. When he got home that day he rang me to ask me how my new telephone was. The following day he returned to connect a second line. I told him I didn’t need a second line and that one would be fine. He was determined I needed another telephone and line, and pointed to a suitable place for it on the other side of my living room. I insisted that one line and phone would do. He showed me the piece of paper he had in his hand. It was a line order for Jack (who lived in my apartment a year before me). He had apparently ordered a phone line, but unlike me had not visited the phone man (shocking I know).

 

He never got his line, and only now, a year later had the phone man decided to connect it. The fact that Jack had moved out, I had moved in, and that he had connected my line in the same apartment the day before didn’t seem to be relevant to the situation.  There was two orders for this apartment, and both would be put in… next to each other. Part of the problem might be that there are no street addresses; you just have to say “I live in that white place, down the road no good”. There are quite a few ‘road no goods’, any road that can no longer be driven on is one. I’m sure the phone man isn’t exactly sure of where all the places are that have made requests. Anyway, I do hope that the phone man stresses to his apprentice, the importance of the customers making regular and lengthy phone man visits.