Tribewanted: Vorovoro

Being a huge fan of the project to turn the empty beer bottles on Vorovoro into drinking glasses, (or cups for paint/ paint brushes, or candle holders), I had to laugh out loud when I saw the attached CocaCola sawed off glass for sale in a drugstore! They sell for one dollar each.

For those of you who didn’t have the pleasure of witnessing PuPu Epeli’s “cocktail hour” demonstration on how to evenly lop off the top of a beer bottle, here’s a brief explanation. Last year, I was a bit determined to try and figure out a way to turn beer bottles into glasses (like in the picture). We tried everything from nail etching, to putting them on a stick and heating them in an open fire. No luck.

Then the Internet provided some insight and I experimented at home. You tie string or yarn around the bottle where you want the top off. Put kerosene on the string, light it with a match, let it burn out and then hold it by its base and dump it into water and VOILA the top cracks off! Or so they said. After five lopsided or totally cracked bottles, I gave up.

Eleven months later, I returned home to Vorovoro. Plenty of beer bottles around. The challenge was back. Someone told me they thought PuPu had a glasscutter. He was sitting by the tool shed around 5 p.m. I told him what I wanted to do. I barely started to explain what I had read, when PuPu meticulously and tightly twisted the string three times around the bottle, needing no knot to hold it. (One of my mistakes. The kerosene drips down from the knot and cracks the bottle when lit.)

Like any professional engineer, he took a ruler, measured the distance of the string evenly from the top and wet the string with a q-tip doused in kerosene. With the patience of an artist, he wet the string three times around. (I had been dunking the string in the kerosene and then wrapping, causing more dripping.) Before he lit the string with a lighter, PuPu asked me to get a bucket of water. After the string burnt all around, he quickly dunked the bottle in the water up to the string and “Snap, crackle, pop!” the top fell into the water! By now a crowd had gathered and a roar went up regaling PuPu’s success! The surface of the remaining bottle was almost perfectly smooth. PuPu sanded it down just a little bit so no one would cut their lip on it and now, VINAKA! We had Tribewanted’s first beer bottle to glass! Lizzie from Oz and June Chief Tom and I made some more. Lizzie painted her glass for PuPu Epeli, the Master. I painted one for Te and Sila for their home, and one for Marau for his toolshed nuts and bolts.

I had visions of everyone being able to make their own glass and painting their name or design on a bottle/glass and possibly a new shelf being built in the kitchen to hold them when not in use. I also thought it might be a fun idea for the creative Tribbies who wanted to participate to have one waiting for each new arrival made by Tribbies already on the island as a welcome gesture. Could be colorful and healthy to use you own glass for water/juice each time. Unfortunately, time ran out.

Recently, there was a mention of Jim in charge of the bottle inventory and PuPu bargaining for some in Adam’s mossie potion article. Could it be Jim the Magnificent Map Maker is contemplating bottles to glasses, too?

So if any one wants to continue the project, PuPu’s the Man to ask – again!!! PS I brilliantly did not take a picture of Te or PuPu’s glasses so you can see what I’m talking about. Sorry!