In Memoriam

On an expedition in the Endurance to circumnavigate Diitabiki Island, I noticed a giant bird of paradise flower near the water. The leaves of this plant looked like a banana’s, but in the center rose a stem about fifteen feet high with perhaps seven pods about a foot in length each. The color of the pods was a light green, and the flowers inside were a dark yellow. This morning I rose early to take a picture. I placed my camera and its case in a new Ziploc bag and started out. I took several pictures of the bird of paradise and a few of Kumalu Nyan-nyan for the article below. I also saw some huge brown seedpods on a tree and took a few pictures of them.

You may be wondering why this article does not have a picture of the giant bird of paradise. As I placed my camera on my lap to paddle to a better position to capture the tree with the brown seedpods, the string caught on something, and my camera flew out of the boat, sinking to the murky depths. At once I thought of diving for it, but this would have required that I leave my canoe. My paddle could not reach the bottom, and already the current had carried me so that I was no longer sure where my camera had fallen.

The camera was a little old, but it had served me well through college in Michigan, during ski trips in Montana, Idaho, and Colorado, studies abroad in Italy and Turkey, and travels through Bulgaria, Hawaii, China, Minnesota, California, Ethiopia, North Carolina, Trinidad, and Suriname. Several times crises occurred in the life of my camera. While skiing in Montana, my dad, a few days after he had given me the camera, dropped it in wet snow. It survived. In Suriname a little over a year ago, I lost it in its black case in the forest, during a long hike, but I was fortunate enough to find it again. This morning, however, I bid farewell to a faithful companion that I had accidentally sent to a watery grave.

Crabbing

The dry season has begun. As the river descends, food becomes easier to catch. Gideon, my neighbor’s eleven-year-old son and I sought crabs yesterday. We took the Endurance over to a large rock in the middle of the river, where we looked under the water plants in the shallows for hiding crustaceans. Gideon found the first one and taught me how to catch them by the pincers and break them off to render the creatures harmless. I found one too on the first rock, but it was too small to eat, so I told Gideon we would catch it another day. After about an hour Gideon and I had captured enough crabs to make a tasty snack.

On the Tapanahony, crabs like to crawl on rocks that have water plants for them to hide under. Kumalu nyan-nyan (Kumalu is a type of fish, and nyan-nyan is food) grows all over the place when rocks begin to rise above the water. Kumalu nyan-nyan has stiff leaves, sometimes with spines, which remain submerged. Purple flowers on stalks rise above the water. Gideon and I lifted up the leaves of these plants and found a few crabs. Holes in the rocks are also prime crab hideouts, though they are more difficult to extricate.