A divided life

Our life is curiously compartmentalised at the moment, we live in two separate sphere's.

The boundary line

Up the ladder, we live in a confused space. It is at once a workshop, living room, workplace, kitchen, and bedroom. We live with moving chaos. We eat our cereal mixed with sawdust from the headliner renovations. We pull random tools from beneath our buttocks to sit down. We are careful that the cup we are about to drink from does not contain thinners from the varnish job.

Our afternoon ritual is to sit on the foredeck and have a sundowner while admiring the view. Occasionally, wealthy neighbours drop in! We watched a jet helicopter flit over to this mega-yacht moored over in the middle of the bay. Wonder who was on board?

A wealthy neighbour drops by!

Down the ladder, we are immersed in an industrialised landscape. We are living in a dusty or muddy (depending on the amount of rain that day) landscape filled with yachts and gulets in all states of repair. Heavey bulldozers drag gulets out on the hard, impossible balancing acts are accomplished with a few sticks and a prayer. (And there's always Inshallah if anything goes wrong!).

A local wedding, in the gravelled soccer field.

So we are always appreciative of chances to 'get off the boat'! We were invited to a wedding in Orhaniye. We managed to hitch there after we missed the bus, that had randomly decided to take a different route, even though we were waiting at the recommended bus stop.

Megan and Christina at the wedding.

We were invited by Hasan Yuksel, a shipwright we've spent a lot of time with in Orhaniye. The wedding was held at the local soccer field, the gravel (the field is not grassed) swept into a pile for the wedding.

Hasan Arbey

 Everyone (at least the whole village, plus as many as can travel from surrounding villages) is fed, then the band strikes up and the dancing begins.... and goes on for hours and hours!

Dancing around the goal posts

Dancers must have spectators!

Since we don't have easily available transport, we have to shop at the local markets. Both Megan and I love the markets, they are cheap and have wonderful fresh vegetables, fruit and local produce.

The local travelling supermarket.

We badly need to buy new clothes, life on the boat is hard on fabrics. In little over 16 months, every piece of clothing that I own is falling apart. However, the local clothes don't last long. Reclothing ourselves may be an Australian mission

The clothing stall

Megan samples the baklava at the Pastenasi

Our favourite, village bread.

The women sell all sorts of home-made produce

Exiting the market

After escaping for as long as possible, its time to head back to the battlefield. We ride our bikes back through the muddy roads, passing beached skeletons of boats being birthed or dying. Mounting our ladder, we're back in our insular little tree-house, next job being planned.

Only another week, and we'll be on the plane to Australia. What on earth will that be like? We have no idea.