The Siren's Code

Even the kitchen sink

(2 years later)

As he waited for the weekly ferry to bank up to the jetty, Remi saw a blond boy amongst the week's supplies – a young replica of his father. Stepping his good foot down and using the jetty post as balance he offered his hand to help pull the boy off the boat.

"Jason I presume?" Remi looked into the boy's green eyes as he glanced up to respond, and as his father had said, there was a depth to those eyes way deeper than any eighteen year old should harbour. Remi got a nod as he pulled Jason up onto the dock.

"Help me load this lot into the truck? Then I'll show you to your new home."

The ferry was a long, low open boat with a tarp slung over a frame to keep off the sun. It was loaded each week on the mainland with as much stuff as it could physically carry, which pushed the slim Panga so deep into the turquoise water you could only see the very top of the green, red and yellow flaking paintwork. The arrival time of the ferry depended on how long it took to fill up, so could vary by a few hours, and brought everything from food and rum supplies, to livestock, tools, building and cleaning equipment, school books, animal feed, island residents, workmen, and a few intrepid backpackers looking to get off the beaten track, and today, besides Jason, it even had a kitchen sink.

There was always a small crowd of locals waiting for their goods, which had been rung through earlier in the week and added to their accounts in each different shop, which were then settled up on a monthly visit to the mainland, an hour from the Island on fair seas. It often got pushy as everyone wanted their goods at the same time and had better things to do than wait in the rising heat.

For the last two years, Remi's orders had taken up a large proportion of the cargo. Little surplus food was available on the island for Remi and his building team at first, so that all had to come across, plus extensive and sophisticated hardware orders from a slow but highly resourceful store in town. Getting the steel and concrete across had been more of a headache, and required either a generous bribe to the captain of the monthly car ferry, which currently was his best bet, or using smaller cargo carriers that were in high demand and often didn't answer his calls. He put forward the idea that perhaps the car ferry could be persuaded to come fortnightly; his wasn't the only growth business on the island, but talks were ongoing.

Remi had to admit that in all his dreams and drawings he hadn't factored in the fact that he was not just taking on an Island but its inhabitants too. He wasn't sure if Armi had known about them either, but there was a thriving community, which he felt responsible for, which was fast growing partly due to the trend of 'off the beaten track' tourism, and he wanted to make sure it grew sustainably.

So one of his first ventures was setting up a farming project in the uninhabited central belt of the island, self sufficiency key to feeding the newcomers and locals alike, and safeguard the natural habitat from over-'thriving' humans. He had nearly a hectare so far, producing quantities of native fruit and vegetables, and with ingenious moveable pens in which livestock could forage naturally. He had designed watering systems, based on wind driven boreholes and an intricate system of closed canals which could be opened as needed to minimise waste and safeguard the island's clean water supply. Nothing was wasted in fact, composting systems, animal fertiliser and naturally fertile volcanic soil meant he didn't need any chemical inputs except for a few pesticides, which he hoped would soon be replaced by local plant extracts, and his thoughts were also on harvesting solar energy to support this self reliance.

The farming project had been a great way to get to know the locals, a mixture of Hispanic and Indigenous Nicaraguans whose ancestors had probably been on the island for centuries, all of them growing food and a few pigs on small family plots. At first intrigued and amused by Remi's early back breaking efforts at larger scale farming, they quickly embraced the project, and five were now employed full time on the farm. The Indigenous in particular appreciated Remi's insistence on respecting and giving back to the land, and it had been they who first suggested using local plant pesticides rather than poison the land.