So I went out eva because I didn’t have anything else to do. As I was walking Kisaia, my neighbor asked if I wanted to go to the sea with her and her friend. This seemed intriguing, and I wanted to see if my ankle could handle the coral hill now, or if I needed more rest. We walked down and on the way Kisaia stopped and cut a coconut leaf and carried it down with us. It is a funny sight to walk down a path following a 7 foot coconut leaf as I couldn’t see her at all anymore. When we reached the beach I learned the reason for the leaf. Kisaia sat down and hacked up the leaf and wove two baskets in about 20 minutes. Impressive.

Then we walked out on the coral. It was low tide, the lowest I have ever seen and there was about 25 people walking around peering into tide pools and collecting creatures. I had no idea what we were looking for so I helped carry stuff. We found some shells about the size of my fist called kuku. There was obviously some creature in there and they assured me it was ‘ifo (delicious). We also found some small fish which they gutted and threw into the baskets. Occasionally they would cut the gutted fish into a few pieces and had a little snack, hey it’s fresher than sushi! I did enjoy watching saia walk up to a rock and stick a screwdriver (who doesn’t bring a screwdriver to the beach?) into it pulling out a little fleshy thing. Then she ripped off the toe and handed it to me saying ‘ota or raw. I was a little skeptical so she popped it into her mouth and got me another one. Not terrible, but not my favorite.

At one point she yelled feke, feke and ran to a rock and started poking under it with a knife and reaching for something. Feke means octopus and sure enough she pulled out an octopus from under that rock. It was not happy to be caught and wrapped all 8 legs around her hand and arm so she had to keep tearing it off while trying to stab it’s head. At one point she managed to free her hand and pulled the octopus off in an arcing motion which coincided perfectly with when it decided to ink. This sent a stream of ink all over the three of us and the fight continued. In the end she won and the octopus, now limp and motionless was dropped into my basket.