Communicating with Tristan

It’s been far, far too long since I’ve written – life has, for the most part, been a bit complicated over the last three years, and I have been living back in South Africa since early 2008.

Erik, however, has been travelling backward and forward between the island since then, leaving our now 5 year old daughter, Caitlin, with me.  I’m listening to them at the moment having the most bizarre conversation I’ve ever heard – Caitlin is telling her dad he needs a hearing aid because he cannot hear a thing she is saying.  They are talking over one another with Caitlin asking her dad how big a sheep’s ‘poops’ are, and him answering that the feet are not too big, or that the ears are big enough for the sheep to hear!  Erik is, of course, trying to convince us that the problems with his hearing are related to the quality of the phone line, but Caitlin and I are more and more convinced it’s more about his auditory abilities than bad phone lines.

Caitlin is very keen on the idea of going back to Tristan with Erik in September so she can go and see her birth place and get to know the amazing people who welcomed us into their homes.  Most of the discussions around the impeding move are around the sheep Erik has promised Caitlin she will get when she comes to Tristan – currently, they are discussing whether it would be possible to dye the sheep pink so she can easily identify it among the other sheep.  Sadly, Erik is actually serious about this and even suggests that I contact my cousin who is a vet in order to identify the best way to go about dying the poor animal.

While the conversation continues around ‘excuse me’ and ‘I must have a pig and you must have a sheep’ I’m going to end off and take  Caitlin to bed… we may be in South Africa, but we miss Tristan every day.