Surviving... or Just About`

Breakfast was tea and cold cereal with warm milk. Lindsay and I talked about how disappointed we were. I said let's tell him. Lindsay said she didn't want to let him down and leave him without someone to look after the place. We decided to let him know that we would see how things went, but we weren't happy with the living conditions.

We met Mike at the dive shop. He was bright eyed and bushy tailed and asked how we were. I told him that actually, not so good, and why, and that we would walk away from his job, but we would have to see how things went before we decided if we wanted to stay or not. He seemed to understand and got right into the orientation of things as they came into his mind. He mentioned how we would have to cook in the kitchen and just ask politely to come in to do so. I looked in there and wondered why it was so dirty and dark. The cold reality of a completely different set of standards was setting in. I mean, I've eaten from ramshackle kitchens in cheap street restaurants in Central America, but this look worse than any of them and this is a resort, isn't it?

Then we were given a tour of the shower facilities. The women's side is on the right, and men's on the left. Both of which were surrounded by a palm-frond fench that had definitely seen better days and didn't exactly offer much privacy anymore. Mike said the locals were used to living in close quarters and generally diverted their eyes from one another in these situations and suggested we follow suit. I noticed right away there was to hot water tap. No big deal, we thought, it's hot out normally, so who needs hot water. We were told that a new shower room was under construction and we could expect an upgrade in the facilities soon. Unfortunately, the shower room also has toilets and the well is about 40 meters away from the septic tank....

Mike warned us not to drink the well water. There was a rainwater collection system that we could use for drinking next to the office. We were shown the nearest toilet and after I used it, I realized that there was no sink for washing my hands, or soap for that matter. So do I just run the tap and rinse my hands then? Good grief.

It was then that we met Barbara. She is from Germany and had been temporarily running the dive shop until our arrival. She apologized for not making sure the boat driver knew we were coming. The boat driver came and apologized to Mike for not knowing we were coming. Barbara took about 45 minutes to run through the forms and their locations with us. Mike was somewhere else, looking at the compressor and tanks, I think. Some of the forms were in books, some where in a suitcase. Others were missing.

She thought she did pretty good considering nobody gave her a handover or orientation when she arrived. We thought this was unfair and empathized with her. She complained about Jioti's stuff hanging all over and on the shop's desk when she got there. She seemed a little off kilter, we just couldn't put our finger on why.

Mike met back up with us when we were finished. Lindsay and I thought about living in the dive shop, instead of the bure. We had to consider the pros and cons of it. Jioti used to live in the bure with Sharon, now he has moved out and into the dive shop. It was a weird situation, and we hadn't even met him yet. I noticed his Boatmaster license on the diveshop door. He was dark with dreadlocks and had a wide face. He was about six months younger than me....