September 5

During our stay in the Maskalyne Islands, I had a little accident. I was tickling Jonah and he lurched back with his head into my right eye hitting me mostly on the eyebrow bone. My eye swelled and I felt not great but by the evening I was in serious pain, unable to stop throwing up and very miserable. Jordan was ready to have me airlifted out. It lasted around 36 hours during which I took a lot of Percocet and anti-emetics. We talked to our Medical service via the satellite phone to ensure proper treatment. It seemed that I had a minor concussion which triggered the mother of all migraine headaches. In addition, I suffered from post concussive symptoms for almost a week now. Yesterday I was so dizzy I spent the day in bed. Today I got exhausted from a five minute walk. Apparently these symptoms can last for several weeks although I know I am getting better daily. All this from tickling Jonah! Talk about weird accidents.

We left the Meskalyne Islands thinking I was ok and headed for Pentecost Island - a 48 mile trip. We sailed past Ambrym Island which has two volcanoes but decided not to stop as we heard the sulfur can cause the stainless steel on boats to get very funky. I could smell it in the air as we sailed past. We anchored in Homo bay on the southern tip of Pentecost with a view of Ambrym 8 miles away. At night we were treated to amazing displays of red fire plumes of the volcanoes. It was very cool. The village at Homo Bay was very sweet with very nice people. We met some guys who were inventorying a bunch of dried kava they import to Fiji. The village even had two tiny stores. Fairly sophisticated for Vanuatu. We visited the school to donate some unused Jonah school supplies. The teacher was very nice and talked to us while the kids gathered around Jonah to gawk and giggle. They don't see a lot of little white boys so he is very interesting to them. It makes Jonah all embarrassed to be stared at though and he runs away and hides. He soon got over that though as there were many chickens to chase ("Jonah for gods sake don't chase the chickens!"), dogs to chase ("Jonah for gods sake don't chase the dogs!") and little giggling children ("Jonah for gods sake don't chase the kids!"). We had a good time.

We spent two nights there and then decided to move on to Lomo Bay in the north.

It took us a couple of hours to get there during which time Jordan and I both got baked in the sun. It was a bit tough entry as we couldn't find the navigational markers on shore. Finally someone on shore flashed a mirror and we saw where the markers were and made a safe entrance. It is a lovely bay teeming with turtles and the clearest water I have seen here. We went to shore to say hello and met lots of the nice people in the village including a Peace Corps worker from Montana!! Jonah did the running around thing although he restrained from chasing chickens. He had a lot of fun goofing around with the kids who giggle non-stop at everything he does. Typical Ni-Vanuatu children carry large machetes from 4 years old and here I am telling Jonah not to poke sticks at people because he might put out someone's eye. Different cultures.