Island hopping

I've had a quiet few days since I last wrote, pottering around near home and making trips into the capital. I managed to gain entrance to the National Museum - on my fourth attempt (it was closed the first 3 times I tried, in defiance of the opening times listed on the gate). The most interesting things were seeing pictures of the capital from around 100 years ago, and money that looked more like hair clips!

I've had a couple of outings with L near home - we went down to the beach one day to swim and make sandcastles. On another occasion I got off the ferry on the way home to find Mickey Mouse, Barney the Dinosaur and the red Tellytubby (what's his name??) being mobbed by a crowd of children! It was a promo by a local mobile phone company, so I dashed home to get L and bring him down to meet them, which made his day! He also got his face painted with a blue dragon. I was tempted to get a hibiscus on my cheek but resisted in deference to the dozen or so children pressing in around me to get their faces (hands, arms, etc) painted. They were using stencils, which made quite a production- line of it and they looked really good - we'll have to look into that for the RPC fete next year!!

This morning I'm setting off on another journey - I've arranged to go to a village island for 2 nights. This is not the simplest thing to do as a local has to get a permit for you from the Atolls Administration to go to an "inhabited island" (as opposed to a resort island), and most of them have no commercial guesthouses, although there is generally at least one or two families who have guest rooms that they rent out. I enlisted the help of the owner of the guesthouse where I spent my first night, as he had mentioned that he sometimes arranges such trips for foreign friends. So I'm meeting up with a friend of his at the guesthouse, who will escort me to his island. I'm not even sure which island it is! I just know it's "about an hour" away by boat. The plan is to stay there for two nights to get an idea of village life, before returning to home base.

I've been having mixed feelings over the past few days. I've had several chats with my hosts about what it's like working here, what the local people are like, etc. Sometimes I feel quite positive after these discussions, and sometimes downright frightened. They told me about one fairly recent incident which was quite alarming, when a foreign worker was threatened by two guys he'd known and been surfing with for a long time - for some reason they came to suspect his real motive for being here, and threatened to kill him if they found out it was true. He has since left the country. It seems that it's not just the government that is opposed to the word here, there's a lot of grassroots opposition as well - although it seems to be on the basis of nationalistic fervour rather than spiritually motivated. I'm hoping to meet another worker on the weekend, who is a friend of my hosts and has recently set up a business here. I think getting as many different perspectives as I can would be helpful.

One encouraging thing that my hosts told me is that they've seen things like VegeTales and Hillsong videos in shops in the capital, and books by a well-known American teacher. The presence of these is a complete mystery, given how strict the scensorship laws can be - e.g. another family had their Sleeping Beauty video confiscated when they came through customs because of the scene where the prince kisses Sleeping Beauty (presumably this rendered it "pornographic material", which is banned), and apparently a couple of years ago when a newsagent displayed the front page of a newspaper in their window which had a picture of the Pope, security forces came and surrounded the shop and confiscated their entire stock of that newspaper. So the presence of VegeTales et al can only be because somebody didn't realise what they were. But I'm glad they're there and I hope they fall into the hands of someone who will understand their message and believe.