for sixty summers, I...

My foot sunk deeper- the cold clutch of the mud enveloping my ankle…shin…knee, the sensation of falling in slow motion, all the more terrifying. The rain had poured down incessantly over the past week. Solid ground and brown, gluggy pools looked no different to one another. With great effort, I yanked my leg out. At the same moment, the straps of my sandals ripped clean off. The sole dropped limply to the ground.

Barefoot in the misty forest, the wildly romantic liberation I had entertained vanished in an instant.
Shivering, I wondered how I ended up here.

A two hour ute ride with eighteen others in the tray and two plane trips ago, I had left Sydney armed with no knowledge of Vanuatu. But here I was, slipping every two or three steps, my face streaked with brown, branches slicing mercilessly at my arms. After six gruelling hours, we arrived.

Where? Matai-Pevu. Well and truly unmarked on Googlemaps, I was a mere speck floating somewhere in the universe, my existence untraceable. Yet, on an island called Espiritu Santo, the name itself held a promise of unlocking something deep within my spirit. Though a speck, I felt alive, and not insignificant.

The pikinini (children) dressed in rags - six, seven year olds perhaps, beckoned for us to give them our belongings, tugging at my water bag. A sudden suspicion gripped me. Surely, I was being robbed. What did I expect, thousands of miles away from civilisation? Helpless and in exhaustion, I surrendered our team’s empty water bag. The two boys disappeared down the steep valley. My heart sunk.

Then I saw them. Their tiny, bare feet slipped and slid on the jagged rocks. Step by step, they were climbing down to the river. One wrong move, and they would hurtle down to be washed away in the relentless current. My stomach clenched anxiously. Filling up the bag, they ventured back up, equally as precariously.

As they both appeared over the edge again, struggling with the weight of the bag, they broke into an excited run. Laughing and dragging each other along, they approached. They laid the water bag down at my feet.
Grinning, the boy said, “Drink. We carry.”

Shame, undeserved grace, beauty and a thousand emotions brimmed and burst in me, overflowing in streams of tears; my thanks choked amidst violent sobs, my petty walls of materialism crumbled pathetically.

Beyond the realm of Googlemaps, I had found an unmarked Heaven on Earth.