view of the harbor, with several dozen sailboats anchored in the safety between town and nearby Iririki Island, a green-domed isle that in colonial times served as the home of the British high commissioner and now held a high-end resort. Since we were now in the summer months—a relative term, of course, in the South Pacific—the sailboats were riding out the cyclone season in the splendid shelter of Vila Harbor before moving on in their rambling journeys to who knows where. Graybeards, I called their captains, for nearly to a man they sported proud whiskers. There must have been a rule about it, I figured, one decreeing that men sailing the South Seas are required to look like dissolute buccaneers. One Frenchman, who was refurbishing his two-master for the entertainment of the diners at the Waterfront Bar and Grill—or so it seemed to me—wore a resplendent white beard, a braided ponytail, and a golden loop in his ear (to pay for his funeral, of course), and spent his days ambling up and down his gangplank, flexing his tattoos, wondering how he might be able to say
Argh, matey
in French. During the sailing season, the harbor was dense with boats from New Caledonia, a French colony about a three-day sail away, and the colonists from New Caledonia would spend their days pretending to be colonists from Vanuatu, barking orders at waitresses and maids.
It wasn’t long before I began to envy the yachties. The ones who had crossed an ocean or two invariably had boats notable not only for their size but for their homeyness. And well they might, since for many of the yachties their boats were the only home they had. It had taken us the better part of a month to find a house to rent. This is because Port Vila is an astonishingly expensive place to live. We had thought, foolishly perhaps, that as Westerners with Western money, we would be able to afford a relatively sumptuous abode, a house with a view and a garden, we hoped. Vanuatu, after all, is one of the poorest countries on earth, with a per capita income of about $700 per year. Surely, we thought, the cost of living would reflect that. And so when Madame Poiret, a real-estate agent and property manager, began to show us the homes available for rent, we sputtered in disbelief as we contemplated paying the equivalent of our rent in Washington for a derelict cinder-block structure just one small earthquake away from collapsing down a steep cliff.
“Le paradis est cher,” said Madame Poiret, dragging on a cigarette. I hadn’t been in Port Vila long enough to determine whether this was paradise. But it was certainly expensive. We were trying, uncharacteristically, to be fiscally prudent. I had invested the money I’d saved from my time at the World Bank, and being a savvy investor, I had put most of it in tech stocks. I had one year, one last year, to write a book that someone would buy, and in the meantime, we planned to live off Sylvia’s salary. Eventually, we swallowed hard and moved into a small bungalow that offered a sweeping view of Vila Harbor. Of course, between the house and the view there stood a three-story apartment building. We couldn’t afford the million-dollar view, but if we stood on chairs, which we did daily, we’d just manage to see the waters of Mele Bay and the verdant hillsides that stretched toward Devil’s Point. It was a modest house, nicely furnished, with the notable exception of the bed, which had a mattress that looked as if it had been the scene of a horrifically bloody crime in a brothel. We turned it over and concluded that there had been at least two crimes committed on it.
“Do you think six sheets are enough?” Sylvia wondered. She had divested a Chinese shop of its stock of sheets, and if one looked closely, one could see the overlapping contours of a Buddhist temple, a wooden bridge spanning a waterfall, a panda grazing on bamboo shoots, a pagoda, and a strutting peacock, a jumble of Chinese shadows.
Once moved in, we soon
Argh, matey
in French. During the sailing season, the harbor was dense with boats from New Caledonia, a French colony about a three-day sail away, and the colonists from New Caledonia would spend their days pretending to be colonists from Vanuatu, barking orders at waitresses and maids.
It wasn’t long before I began to envy the yachties. The ones who had crossed an ocean or two invariably had boats notable not only for their size but for their homeyness. And well they might, since for many of the yachties their boats were the only home they had. It had taken us the better part of a month to find a house to rent. This is because Port Vila is an astonishingly expensive place to live. We had thought, foolishly perhaps, that as Westerners with Western money, we would be able to afford a relatively sumptuous abode, a house with a view and a garden, we hoped. Vanuatu, after all, is one of the poorest countries on earth, with a per capita income of about $700 per year. Surely, we thought, the cost of living would reflect that. And so when Madame Poiret, a real-estate agent and property manager, began to show us the homes available for rent, we sputtered in disbelief as we contemplated paying the equivalent of our rent in Washington for a derelict cinder-block structure just one small earthquake away from collapsing down a steep cliff.
“Le paradis est cher,” said Madame Poiret, dragging on a cigarette. I hadn’t been in Port Vila long enough to determine whether this was paradise. But it was certainly expensive. We were trying, uncharacteristically, to be fiscally prudent. I had invested the money I’d saved from my time at the World Bank, and being a savvy investor, I had put most of it in tech stocks. I had one year, one last year, to write a book that someone would buy, and in the meantime, we planned to live off Sylvia’s salary. Eventually, we swallowed hard and moved into a small bungalow that offered a sweeping view of Vila Harbor. Of course, between the house and the view there stood a three-story apartment building. We couldn’t afford the million-dollar view, but if we stood on chairs, which we did daily, we’d just manage to see the waters of Mele Bay and the verdant hillsides that stretched toward Devil’s Point. It was a modest house, nicely furnished, with the notable exception of the bed, which had a mattress that looked as if it had been the scene of a horrifically bloody crime in a brothel. We turned it over and concluded that there had been at least two crimes committed on it.
“Do you think six sheets are enough?” Sylvia wondered. She had divested a Chinese shop of its stock of sheets, and if one looked closely, one could see the overlapping contours of a Buddhist temple, a wooden bridge spanning a waterfall, a panda grazing on bamboo shoots, a pagoda, and a strutting peacock, a jumble of Chinese shadows.
Once moved in, we soon
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