‘Receiving impromptu canoe visits from excited and curious strangers has been something we’ve been used to’ When you come from a world of shops, fixed prices and hard currency it’s hard to imagine how you’d go about trading goods or swapping skills in exchange for your family’s food. It sounds daunting, risky, an uncertain way of putting dinner on the saloon table. But, when we started sailing through the islands of Melanesia, it became a way of life.
It started back in New Zealand, where we filled up on supplies. We set off prepared, having taken advice before leaving about the best things to stock up on in places where they were cheap and readily available. Items like rice, sugar, flour, fishhooks, matches, soap, tinned fish and corned beef, crackers,…