More in the saga from the home front ...

We had our meeting with C & R just before Jane and Lanny arrived, and it went very well ... I think.

Communication is everything to me, and trying to establish an easily available and comfortable route for keeping things clear seems to be a good start.

Mark and I laid out the rules ... occupancy of the house is contingent on Catherina's employment, mutual respect and consideration between neighbors is expected, responsibility for electric bills, upkeep, etc ... and voiced our hopes for a positive experience for all of us.

C & R avoided eye contact, nodded agreement and had no questions or comments.

It's taken me years to get used to the Seychellois way, and I'm still put off by the no-eye-contact-thing that is really big here. It's not ceased to seem shifty to me, although I do understand that there's nothing personal about it. The tendency begins almost in infancy, as even new mothers don't look their children in the eye ... unless there's something stuck there that needs cleaning out.

Children as young as one year develop a blank, expressionless look that, to me, makes many of them appear to be a case of 'the lights are barely on and there's nobody home'. This continues through childhood, and by the time the kids are teens the vacant face is a scowl.

Catherina and Richard, being of their environment, do this blank-look-cum-scowl about as well as anyone. I'm choosing to interpret the other day's countenance du jour as shyness with a touch of nervous we-really-want-this-to-work-out nervousness.

In a show of good faith, Richard spent the morning cleaning up the mess the last people we helped out left in the little house, and he did a good job. At least now he understands what we don't want the place to look like.

(The last people ... Tony and Maria. Mark has known Tony since his birth, as they were neighbors and are related in distant ways that almost everyone in Seychelles is related to everyone else ... Mark's auntie's daughter was fathered by Tony's mother's sister's son. Tony had been living with Maria and her mother and sister in what's called 'emergency housing' -- rent-free accommodation that is supposed to be short-term, but usually ends up a lifetime placement. In this case, the government sold the shack out from under the family. The mother and sister went one direction, but Tony and Maria had no place to go. We agreed to let them stay for a few weeks while they sorted things out. They were here for more than a year, and left the place filthy and covered in ants.)

Continued as it comes ...