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Poques was coming my way now. I was standing in a clearing with a saw in hand and a less than glamorous task: fixing the bathroom, which had been built as a two-story structure with a wooden top level of three stalls and a cinder block lower level for waste collection. The steps to the top had been hurriedly constructed and the braces beneath them were too thin, so I was sawing new bolsters.
"You'll take the pieces of wood, right, and nail them under each of the stairs, right?" he said. "Gorgeous."
"Right," I said uncertainly.
"Brilliant." He walked off.
A few minutes later, Doug Holt, 59, a retiree from Arizona, walked up. Holt was a good-hearted guy but not gregarious like Poques; this was a man who spent a decade building an underground bunker home in the desert and who said that his dream job would be to work alone in a lighthouse. His version of the desert-island fantasy was the lonely one: not Swiss Family Robinson but Tom Hanks's Cast Away. He glared at the blocks. "Why, why?" he asked. "Those stairs aren't going anywhere. If you asked me, I wouldn't do anything at all." He shook his head and left.
Holt had run for chief, too, but finished second, and there was friction between him and Poques even though Holt had been awarded the title of deputy chief. Not knowing who was correct, I decided to stick with the original plan. The Vorovoro wood, however, was only slightly softer than titanium, and when I tried to hammer the nails, the material mocked me, either splitting or causing the nails to bend. By the end of the day, I had a couple of blisters, a smashed thumb, and a net accomplishment of: absolutely nothing.
I wondered how many of the other tribe members were similarly challenged. As a group, we were long on enthusiasm and short on practical know-how, and the annals of utopian history, I knew, were filled with tales of inept communities gone bust: hippie Valhallas that collapsed in piles of rotten timber and abandoned macramé; pioneer Promised Lands that became barren Starvation Camps. It was a good thing that here on Vorovoro we had the yavusa, who actually knew what they were doing, to provide a safety net.
That evening, tired and frustrated, I went down a short trail behind the village to the outdoor shower, which was complete with a rope and pulley for hoisting the water pail overhead. Standing in the moonlit jungle, I twisted the valve and a refreshing drizzle came down from the showerhead. It was a nifty piece of tribal tech, and I swelled with pioneer pride. I was just reaching for the coconut soap when the rigging holding the pail ripped loose and the heavy bucket plummeted, guillotine style, nearly taking off my head.
The primary attraction of desert island life, I came to believe, is not the sandy beaches or turquoise waters but rather the fact that the standard fantasy island is quite small. Like Vorovoro. The island was perfect and the island was ours—safe, familiar, and intimate in a way that the wider world never would be. It seemed possible to know every last coconut and grain of sand.
One morning midway through the first week, I set out to discover more of our territory. From camp I hiked up a broad, golden beach until I reached the island's wave-battered western tip. I had never before been past this point and rounded the corner to gaze down a wild, rocky coast backed by sheer bluffs. There were no people but abundant signs of life: Red crabs scuttled across the tidal flats; a black-and-white-striped sea snake wriggled up a nearby slab of rock. Looking at the serpent, I recalled our second day on the island, when Dan Keene, Ben's younger brother, led a safety briefing and had a troubling exchange with a tribe member that went something like this:
Tribe member: "Are there any dangerous animals on the island?"
Keene: "No, none, don't worry."
Tribe member: "Great, thanks."
Keene: "The only thing we have is sea snakes. Their bite is highly poisonous and there is no known antidote. Next?"
I steered wide of the snake. Before long I came to the first of several sea caves. Island lore holds that these were once hideouts for pirates, and I crawled up one of the winding tubes until I reached a dead end jammed with driftwood. At the eastern end of the island, I entered into a maze of mangroves. After blundering about for 30 minutes, I emerged on an unfamiliar coast, then rounded a toothy peninsula, and voilà, was back to the village in time for lunch. Such is the pleasure of small-island exploration.
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