Tipsy mosque and shipwreck

Better enlarged.

It is Friday I only mention it because it is the Muslim day of rest and some of the fishing boats didn't go out. Those that did brought in meagre hauls of fish and lots of jellyfish. I set off up the coast again to find a Mosque that was undermined by the tsunami in the summer and the wreck alongside it. Walking along the beach beside huge rocks that had been placed to stop erosion my eye caught sight of crabs climbing all over them. I sat and watched for a long time both coming and going back noticing how delicately they grazed with their large claws and how quickly they darted to catch something passing by like a large marine woodlouse. They were so agile climbing vertical and overhanging surfaces, they crept sideways with a rock behind and their major claws facing outwards but they could also elongate themselves and go backwards into a crevice. When they came up against another crab they sidled around one another but woe betide the little ones if a large one was there for I saw one attacked and carried off.

The tide got higher and I got cut off as it started crashing against the rocks so I climbed up and over to the track behind and that is when I noticed it was the local latrine which was waiting for its daily cleansing by the sea. The breeze had been lovely on the shore, over behind the rocks the heat hit but there were lots of coconut trees to hide under and a long lagoon to explore. Kingfishers like the one I photographed yesterday were flitting from perch to perch, there was a cormorant and another long billed bird and egrets. Dragon flies were emerging from their nymph skins (exuvia) and sat on perches unfolding themselves and darting off and returning to the same place while water boatmen skitted across the surface of the water.

Fisher men passed by with their bag of fish from the day's haul and one asked if I'd go to see the 'copra' factory. (Copra is the dried meat from a coconut and the fibres are called coir.) When I got there it wasn't working but I was able to watch a very tough old woman tearing coconut husks apart with her bare hands after she had hit the shiny skin of each piece a few times with a metal rod. She tore the shiny bits off and threw them to a heap one side and threw the remaining coir fibres onto 'her' pile. I believe they are paid by the size of their heap. Another woman invited me home to see how the fibres were dealt with away from the factory and attached some fibres, that she had fluffed up in her hands, to a wheel that her daughter rotated as mum moved backwards producing a string as she went. She took the far end and attached it to the wheel about quarter of the way round from the other end. As she held the center of the string outwards the wheel was rotated again and the two pieces were wound together so they didn't unravel. Inside her door were huge thick ropes neatly wound up ready to sell.

In the lagoon there were two long boats, each with men up to their necks in the water finding submerged coconuts husks and throwing them into their boats which were already pretty full. The husks are kept submerged for 6 months or more in nets secured to poles which have a name or number on them. This helps them to break down and allows everything to rot and fall away except the fibres. The men waved and pointed to the far bank where the sound of banging was going on - perhaps their wives were breaking open the husks there.

I was invited into one house by a woman with a little English – her husband was sleeping as he'd been fishing at 4 a.m. but her old toothless father-in-law Vishupara was there grinning away at me across the room. Sulapha showed me her two teenage son's chemistry books and ones written in a beautiful hand in Malayalam, Hindi and English. They no be fishermen she said wagging her hand and shaking her head! This first room had a tiled floor and one wooden bed and table in it and we three sat in plastic picnic chairs by the door. The window had bars right up against the outside wooden shutters so they acted as narrow shelves for a medicine bottle, bottles of oil, a comb and several rags. The breeze block walls had been plastered inside and were inscribed with children's drawings. I was given very, very weak black coffee which had been boiled on a gas ring. Sulapha poured it back and forth from bowl to glass until she considered it cool enough for me to drink and a neighbour came in to borrow an iron.
It was dreadfully sad but simply everyone male and female over the age of about 30 put their hand out and asked for money. I'm happy giving some if I've taken photos or been given a drink in a house of course but it is incredibly difficult to deal with. All the guide books say don't give as you just perpetuate the system. I have a Buddhist friend who keeps her pockets full of change and gives indiscriminately to everyone as she says if they've got so low where they have to beg then who am I not to give them something. Trouble is, how much, for both ladies I gave something to today were not very happy with the amount.