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1981/1999 |
Page 1 of 3 |
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1981/1999 |
Page 1 of 3 |
Nauru was called the Pleasant Island by the Whalers during the earlier days of whaling in the Pacific. This name may have been a result of the friendly reception given by the Nauruans to expatriates during the earlier contacts with "white" sailors. Obviously the experience of meeting other people must not have been that pleasant for the "isolated" Nauruans because now when you arrive in Nauru you get neither smiling faces nor "lays" placed on your neck as many Pacific Islands do. |
Frigate bird table in Nauru |
Nauruans are a very reserved race and from what I saw not very quick to make friends with expatriates. If you live there you get most of the time an uncomfortable feeling that you are not welcome My experience during the five years we lived on Nauru confirmed this fact but to prove that it is dangerous to generalize when dealing with human beings Joey Dabwido has proved to us to be one of the exceptions to this rule. I met Joey Dabwido on my first working day in Nauru. I started with Nauru Phosphate Corporation as a Power Station Oversees and Joey was a trainee on my shift. Joey was doing his boiler attendant certificate and I was supposed to help with his training. Our friendship started during the long night shifts and Joey soon brought me to his house, introduced me to his family and took me for my first dive on Nauru. Joey enjoyed talking to me and was very interested to know about the countries where we come from and lived in. Joey had been a sailor in one of the Nauruan ships and therefore had some exposure to the outside world. |
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I am going to dedicate this section of my website to our friendship. The relationship between the two families, Dabwido and the Costa’s, is a very special one and by describing some of the highlights of the last 16 years you will understand why it is so special to us. With the time our friendship grew stronger and extended to our families. Joey and his wife Seravina were regular visits to our house and Joey’s many nephews where "clients" of our swimming pool and good friends with Rita and Erica. |
Joey, Seravina and Valda in our house on Nauru |
| Three months after I started in the boiler house I was promoted to Assistant Services Superintendent and became responsible for all the mechanical areas of the Services department, which included the two power stations and all the workshops. I stopped working directly with Joey but our friendship continued to blossom. | |
| I was appointed "honorary" member of the Dabwido family
and played in the family’s volleyball team and spent some fantastic nights catching
noddy birds at the Top Side with Joey and his relatives.
During all this time the two families became closer and Joey’s interest for Portugal grew to a point that he decided to come with us during one of our holidays. |
Catching Noddy Birds at Nauru Topside |
| Joey, like all Nauruans, is
a very lay back person and never in a hurry to go anywhere. When the time came to leave
Nauru… guess what? Joey had not organized the passport or the visas to come to Europe
with us let alone booking any flights. Our plans where to stay for a couple of weeks in Macau before heading off to Europe and therefore I told Joey that we would meet with him in Hong Kong as soon as he would receive his passport with the respective Portuguese visa. |
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| Well… Joey was not very happy and
most likely thought we would leave without him and therefore decided that he would solve
the problem Nauruan way... We left Nauru for Macau and we were there a few days when we received a phone call in the middle of the night from a very disturbed Joey Dabwido. Joey was "under arrest" in Hong Kong after arriving at the airport without a valid passport and armed only with a "letter" stating that he was Mr. Dabwido on the way to Portugal for holidays with Mr. Costa. We spent the next few hours franticly trying to locate the Nauru Consul and save Joey from spending some unpleasant time on a "South East Asian dungeon". |
Filu, Seravina and Anna Paula in Nauru |
Seravina after Anna Paula's birth |
Next morning Filu and I went to Hong
Kong to find a very frightened Nauruan in a hotel in Nathan Road. We also met a very upset Nauru Consul "spitting chips" because of the constant stream of troubles caused by the casual Nauruan travellers. He could not believe that Joey was going to Europe all alone. The time came for us to leave to Europe and Joey’s passport and visa was still not ready. Again we left a very concerned Joey on a strange country all on his own. We gave him the address of our friends Manuela and Adelino in Macau and told him to let them know when he would depart to Portugal so that we would pick him up from the airport in Lisbon. Several days later and already in Lisbon we received the news that our Nauruan friend was finally on the way to Portugal. |
