How to say goodbye

by Alma Deckert (United States of America)

Making a local connection Tahiti

They say that when you arrive in a Polynesian home as a guest they give you a fresh flower lei, as welcome. They give you a new lei every day, renewing your welcome every morning. But when you leave, they give you something different - a shell necklace. Something more durable than a flower lei. Something to take away with you, something in which the memory of your visit resides. I met a young man in Tahiti, working as a security guard in the hotel I was staying at. Most of the rest of the guests looked straight through him - but I tried a little of my French with him, and he became an enthusiastic friend who would hail me if he saw me on his bicycle rounds around the premises, and who would tell me all kinds of wonderful things (partly in English, partly with me attempting that execrable schoolgirl French which seemed to amuse him and delight him). He told me about himself - about how he was doing this job to save money, so he could maybe go to law school eventually. He told me about the place we were in, and how I should not walk barefoot along the water's edge because there were fish with poisonous back spines which could damage me, quite a lot (he himself had an encounter with one and it put him in hospital for weeks). He showed me a camouflaged octopus. He told me about the coconut crabs which came out and thundered across the wooden bridges spanning the hotel's lagoons at night sounding like an invading army (they are huge but they are quite shy and I never actually caught a glimpse of one). He took photos of me and for me when I asked, because I was there by myself and there are times you need a second pair of hands for the camera. He told me about a place where a local sculptor was creating an underwater wonderland, populating the ocean floor with statues which you had to don diving equipment to go visit. He became a welcome sight, the wiry young man on his bicycle, round Harry Potter glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, his knobbly knees poking out of the shorts of his uniform. On the day I left, it was together with several other guests - and the hotel, true to Tahitian tradition, took shell necklaces off a rack near reception and dutifully handed us all one as we left. But just as we were about to board our taxi for the ferry, he came running, my friend, shouting for us to wait. He came to me and presented me... with a shell necklace. A guest gift of his own. And it was bigger and brighter and shinier than the regular hotel ones. "Merci," I said, moved. And then, in his own language, "Mahalo." "De rien," he said. "Don't forget us." I never have. The shell necklace is a treasured thing, carefully cherished, and every time I look at it... I see a bright smile, shining eyes, a lanky young man on a bicycle who lived in paradise and had big dreams about his future. The rest of the tourists got exactly what they expected - a mass-produced and meaningless gesture. I got a farewell from Tahiti, from its people, from its heart. I made a connection, and a human being from another land made sure that I would do precisely as he asked. I would never forget him.