TRISTAN DA CUNHA

It’s the start of a new day and Brodie goes upstairs to work out after shoveling snow. He feels the physical activity will stretch his body. After a brief time on the walker, he switches to the glider and works on his arms and shoulders. Concludes with a series of stretches while lying on the mat. Then he relaxes and rests, allowing his mind to clear. Takes a deep breath, holds it for ten seconds, slowly exhales, then repeats the process.

He lies motionless.

His wife approaches his motionless body, steps over it. “Are you asleep?” she asks.

“No, just meditating. Are you going to work out?”

“Yes, want to slim down before Christmas.”

His wife begins her own walking routine, and Brodie proceeds to his office.

He’s writing teaching units. In front of him is a lesson-plan order that needs proofing. Thinking this might be a good time, he checks each page for any errors or omissions. In the course of it, he pauses at one lesson and clicks on Google Earth. It loads. Next, he enters ‘Tristan da Cunha’ in the search bar and observes as the Earth rotates and focuses on the South Atlantic. He knows Tristan as a cluster of distant islands and the most secluded archipelago on the planet.

A double click on the yellow dot west of Cape Town brings the familiar volcanic cone into focus. Then a further double-click produces Edinburgh of the Seven Seas. A little patch of land materializes where 234 people, all farmers, dwell, propped up by the active 6765 foot high volcanic ‘Queen Mary’s Peak’.

He’s known of this isolated island for many years: He spotted a reference to it in an old geography textbook back in his classroom teaching days. He sensed an opportunity for a lesson on the effects of isolation on a group of people. To emphasize the region’s seclusion, he sent a registered letter in the school’s fall year to the bishop of the Anglican church since it was a British protectorate.

It was spring when he received a reply.

The response began with the location, Tristan da Cunha, South Atlantic Ocean, and got to the point.

“Dear Mr. Jones.

Thank you for your letter of 25th October which reached here 21st January, and that was the first mail we had received since October 13. The mail out before this was on 11th December and we cannot expect the next one until about 6th April. That may provide you with some idea of our isolation. Of course, we can receive BBC World News on our radios every day. I am mailing you a copy of Newsletter 23 which will interest you and give you a lot of the information you ask for. Also included is a copy of a newsletter which my wife and I prepared to send out to many friends and relations.

It sums up our impressions after just one year. Following my retirement from 40 years of parish life and work in England, I found myself bored with inactivity and lack of opportunity. When I learned this job was open, I offered my services. It pleased us we came and found plenty to do and very worthwhile experiences. Now we look forward to our return next year to England and to seeing something of our own dispersed relatives who at present are in India, Nigeria, Australia, and Cambridge, England.

It was signed: The Reverend E.D. Buxton.

The Reverend, in addition, explained how, over a one-year period, he’d become acquainted with the annual cycle that made up life on Tristan. He wrote:

We have survived this year, and we love our island home. It is a comfortable, modern bungalow set in a sheltered hollow, with added protection from tall, thick flax.

And looking out to sea, the view is the same but always different; restless, changing, variable sea and sky.

Behind us, like an impregnable fortress guarding the 2100 metre volcanic peak, and solid as the sea is liquid, is the massive 600 metre high base of the mountain, sometimes shrouded from view in a veil of mist, at other times daubed with bold drapery of light and shade on its craggy side by the sun early or late in the day.

So we live and move and have our being on this narrow shelf  33 metres above the sea, 12 kilometres long, east to west, inhabited by about 250 people in 100 houses, and with space to stretch our legs for a delightful walk.

The Reverend also penned his thoughts on worship on the island.

Our major act of worship every Sunday is the Eucharist at 8 a.m. with hymns and sermon, and fifty or more communicants. We have been using the new liturgy of the Church of South Africa for some time now and very good it is. But our older folk, some of them illiterate and very dependent upon memory, find it hard to adapt. We use the older service once a month for their sake.

Brodie is a geographer, so the next part of the newsletter particularly interested him:  

Before coming here and after reading several books on Tristan, one rather got the impression that the weather might be almost impossible and the people almost perfect. Neither is true! We are indeed glad that we brought our 2-piece foul-weather coverings, clad in which we can laugh at the worst that wind and rain can do, even ‘horizontal’ rain! And we have lovely days of blue sky and warm sun even in winter, and in summer the sun can be boiling. Wild, wet weather is not so very often, nor for long at a time.

The islanders have some delightful and attractive characteristics and a strong church tradition, but that does not add up to perfection. As in any other community, we have our social troubles and problems.

So, we have a policeman! And three young men received fines in a recent court case.

Asthma and chest complaints are common. Alcohol has invaded the island and has had too easy and flush an entry on account of their innate and generous hospitality. And there’s a lot of entertaining and celebrating, especially observing birthdays.

The litter bug is another menace and leaves many blots on the landscape. And there has been a lack of co-operation in solving the problem of too many cattle and sheep for the limited pasture.

Many islanders work for the government or the fishing factory, but they are most enthusiastic, industrious and efficient in doing their own thing: their precious potato patches, fishing, carding and spinning wool, knitting, housework, milking, ratting, dancing, sailing their longboats to Nightingale Island, boat building and making model boats, house building and decorating, doing alterations and extensions, etc.

Better than most, they know both how to be quiet and still and also up and about. Church support by many expatriates is not helpful and is disappointing, although we have a splendid exception to this in the regular attendance of the Administrator and his wife at the Sunday Eucharist. The Administrator reads a lesson.

We expect several new arrivals on the island soon to work in agriculture, radio, and school. In our situation, fresh faces are always interesting and very welcome.

Brodie knows Tristan resembles another volcanic island, Iceland, also part of the same mid-Atlantic Ridge. In fact, in 1961, a volcanic eruption forced a bulk of Tristan’s population to be evacuated to Britain. For one of Brodie’s lessons, he composed a story to make the concept of ‘plate tectonics’ more interesting to his students. This lesson is on file and he decides to bring up the document on his computer. He grins while reading the words:

“It’s Pangaea for sure,” says Captain Sima, as he looks down through a mass of swirling clouds. “I can see areas where it is breaking apart and drifting.”

Sima and his crew were traveling through space. He passes earth and spots a billowing cloud of volcanic ash spewing into the atmosphere, just off the edge of the North American Plate. And this activity on Pangea confirms rumours that the planet earth’s great plates are on the move. It would be many geologic periods later, however, before other space travelers would give reports about the happenings on earth.

“The Reykjanes Ridge is sure active,” Sima says. “Do you remember when that large island right below us was under water, and we’d only see steam?”

“Sure do”, says Sial, the navigator.