life in the big city

what a wild ride this last two weeks have been! we started training with one goal: fun. we reminded each other of this goal often and because of this, there were far more laughs than sighs. so many happy memories to bring back to site! already planning some future trips, too. not sure when ill be at a computer again, but ill have plenty of stories to share when the time comes. 

in august, a bunch of folks are coming to ambae to visit and climb the volcano! after that, ill be on malekula during august break for the gad kamp glow/bild. after camp, i'm going to hang around and travel to laura and kelsey's sites. in october a few of us are heading south to tanna and aneityum for dave's birthday and adventure time! two highlights are climbing mt. yasur on halloween in costume and camping out on mystery island. good times with good people. i really can't wait.

had a great time with my mama here for counterpart training. she got to relax at the hotel, meet my friends, and learn a few things, too! I had the honor of teaching her what a microwave and electric kettle were... that was a first time for me. I'd be mind blown, too, if someone told me that there were things out there that made boiling hot water and heating up food happen in significantly less time than starting a fire!

okay, rushing through this. running out of time to talk about life on this thing, so here are some blurbs and pictures to take you through the weeks. there are too many things that i've left out, but i promise that every hot shower, skype session, delicious meal, and dance party were soaked in and enjoyed.

this is the mama's market in downtown port vila. it is a gold mine. you can find the most delicious fruits and vegetables here every day of the week! there are mamas from all over and if you're lucky, you'll storian with someone from your island and you'll leave with a free bag of passion fruit and a big smile.

mama's market in vila

so much goodness

yam feet

god yam my feet are dirty!

laura, kelsey, and i made tacos with our mamas! laura is the tortilla master - a skill i am definitely returning to site with. it was a delicious meal indeed!

counterparts eating their first tacos

kelsey, laura, and i eating not our first tacos

!

we've been watching the world cup games in various places. this was at a bar called beef house. laura found her long lost twin on top of the cooler! reunited!

doppelgänger

we had a gudfala kakae (good food) cookoff at our new medical officer yael's house. she's been in vanuatu for 9 years and knows the ropes. her house was amazing! we had to draw island food ingredients out of a hat. our group got tin tuna. not the kind you're used to - its pretty gnarly stuff. somehow we won, but we're pretty sure they never actually tasted it.

some serious cooks

steve enjoying yael's house

bryan draining pawpaw

the winning team with our deep sea crumble

the end results

"the" deep sea crumble

laura's reaction to getting last place

kate, rob, and luccccyyy the biggest golden retriever ever

these photos just make me laugh. rob is a second time volunteer (he was in cambodia a few years ago) he's got a great sense of humor. and he loves coca cola.

rob's superlative

a man and his love

mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam..

be it ever so humble, there's no place like home! 

One of my favorite parts about my Peace Corps service is the opportunity to really indulge in reading. Man! I could read all day and all night. And there have been many times when that was the case.

 “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” 

― George R.R. Martin

This couldn't be more true. When I'm in my hammock, I've traveled to the jungles of the Amazon to Bombay, India and a dozen places in between. The Peace Corps resource room has a ridiculous amount of books to take to site and the ebook volunteer trading realm is pretty endless. I have a page on this journal that lists the books I’ve gone through. I haven’t come across a bad one yet! However some of my very favorites include Shantaram, American Pastoral, and Cutting for Stone. Pick them up if you get a chance!

puskat nap

I've always loved reading and I've been sharing this love with the kids at my school. I've been appointed (aka no one else wanted the gig) as the librarian and am working on projects for the library and reading corners in the classrooms. When I get back from training, we're starting DEAR (drop everything and read) which was one of my favorite classroom past times as a little kid. Laura has been doing book challenges with her kids, so I want to start that up, too. My school is very lucky to have a solid library filled by the Rotary, it just needs humans to make it complete. The push for human library interaction begins now. Here we go again, say-do gap. Ha!

 I’ve been having a great time working on house projects! The school has spare lumber lying around and I’m allowed to trial and error with it. The John Tari store in Lolowai also has wood for pretty cheap, so I supplement the scraps with soft wood every time I go in for pay day. My books needed a home, so a book shelf it is. I’m lucky because my house has built-in shelves everywhere, so building a book shelf wasn’t too difficult. After a couple of hours, it was complete and full of books, art supplies, and cards from friends at home. Bookshelf #2 coming to Qwatuneala soon! And screened doors… sunshine welcome, mosquitoes not so much!

hooked on the book

my swim house! bucket baths 4 life

Here are some pictures of my dishwashing and handwashing stations. The tippy tap hasn’t been properly set up, but it does the trick. Planning on building more to update the school’s handwashing station, too!

My bigfala project is my vegetable and herb garden. Very humble beginnings, but it’s quickly growing! I’ve got peppers, chilies, Chinese cabbage, tomatoes, oregano, and basil growing now. I’ve already started eating the bok choy and the tomatoes have begun blooming, too. Can’t wait to continue expanding! Everyone in Vanuatu (this isn’t a dramatic exaggeration, just true) has a garden.

Their gardens are deeper in the bush and are full of primarily root crops. I’ve hiked the 1-3 hours to my parent’s various gardens and have helped clear, sow, weed, and pick kumala, taro, kava, corn – the list goes on. Everything grows here! That’s one of the best parts of life here, there’s no lack and scramble for food. One day we hiked up to my family’s village and weeded out the kava garden. Kava grows for over 3 years before it’s ready to pick, clean, ground, and drink. Smart investments.

preparing the kumala (sweet potato) garden

humble beginnings

growing! and check out the awesome designs my siblings painted

visitors and the big apples of ambae

Training part 2 for the health volunteers fell right before ours. The folks on Maewo are all health vols, minus Steve, and they came through Ambae on their way to Vila town. I went into Saratamata for the day to hang out with everyone and spent the night with Jessie Rae and Nathan. 

They shared stories from Maewo and their category 4 sites. Maewo is very bush so all of the sites are cat 4, meaning remote and without access to many resources.  My site falls between 2 and 3 because I don't have running water or electricity, but I am only an hour truck ride from Saratamata and Lolowai. Maewo doesn't have its own airport and only a couple of trucks that brave its unkept road. I am hoping to visit Maewo later on in the year! And eventually make it to Alexis and Steve's site in Naviso - hours away from everything else. <- just found out that end of January, some of the staff are traveling to Ambae and Maewo and I was invited to come along for the ride to Maewo for a week! Naviso, here I come!

It was fun trading stories and meeting their counterparts. We cooked a big spaghetti dinner with fresh meat and garlic bread for everyone, it was delicious! It was the first time the counterparts tried spaghetti and their reactions were hard to read. Ours were easy to read – if you could make them out between bites. Everyone stayed at the guesthouse in Saratamata and I went back with Jessie Rae and Nathan to their home. I love their company and am always finding myself learning new things from them.

When I was in Vila, I saw in the Daily Post that there was a double suicide on Maewo. The newspaper reported that a man and a woman were caught in an affair and the village came together to decide the punishment. The next day the two bodies were found at the bottom of a cliff - the man and the woman couldn't deal with the guilt and jumped. Both of them had families they left behind. We were shocked to hear about it because suicides aren't too common here, or atleast not commonly made public. 

Katie, one of the Maewo vols, lives in the village where this happened and her counterpart was the man who died. She told us more about the situation and how it spooked the community. "Deds," as funerals and mourning rituals are called here, are very intense and last a long time. 

For the past couple of weeks, Katie's diet switched from primarily taro and manioc to basically only meat at every meal - the community sacrifices many cows and pigs at deds. Because of the nature of the deaths, the community used many kastoms to rid the village of the bad spirits. No one would go with Katie as her counterpart to the training because they believed that the devil would follow her there in place of Williamson, the man who passed away. They chose an olfala (a village elder) to accompany her to ward off the demons. Amos is a sweet old man who loved his first taste of spaghetti, and the three helpings afterwards. I hope that when she returns, things are a bit easier for her at site. I really can't imagine losing a counterpart or dealing with the situations that inevitably occur when black magic and kastom are involved.

Here are some shots of the big city on Ambae!

saratamata

the place where your letters go! and my finger

lemus, the main store in saratamata

and here are some from the other big city, Lolowai!

lolowai bay

cargo ship comes in

instant entertainment!

vuvu tambe 2, the family store!

my aunt, mami amina at our family store!

the lovely shop fronts of lolowai

my uncle's kava bar in lolowai

there he is, uncle glen!

woo hoo!

hello!

back in Vila for training and able to post some pictures and stories. sorry for the jumbled mess of posts. my computer decided to finish its service early and some posts were lost. i recovered one and tried to recreate a few, but the second time around isn't always the same. training is coming to an end - can't believe this two weeks have flown by so quickly! maybe its due to the lack of computer (my roommate and great friend laura also had terminal laptop malfunction) or maybe ill just chalk it up to the grand reunion with friends and the explosions of joy that came with that.. but i haven't really felt like sitting inside and doing important things on a computer. so, next time around these posts will be better (and hopefully by then my new computer will arrive to Vanuatu) but until then.. enjoy!

So there's this term I kept hearing my family say in language so I eventually asked what it was. That's the funny thing about hearing only local language during the day and staring aimlessly as it goes on around you. You hear words repeatedly and find yourself trying to piece together this perceived gibberish. My local language (called Hatie) learning is coming along slowly.. my goal is to have enough random vocabulary and conversational skills to seem as though I know more. It's working, they're impressed!

Anyways, guqwe (goo-kway) what is it? Pretty interesting actually. Guqwe is the energy a person gives off when he or she leaves or returns from where you are. Most guqwe goes unnoticed, but when a man or woman has rubbish guqwe, you know. Your guqwe comes from your character and the closest thing I can connect it to is a person's karma. Because we live on the school grounds, the other teachers will leave for the weekend or different family members will crash for a night or two. If someone has heavy guqwe, you will be tired or weak all day. You'll feel funny and have a hard time sleeping. One of my cousins has rubbish guqwe so when we comes to stay with my aunt and uncle, we all feel it. It's funny because before I knew about guqwe, there were nights when I felt these symptoms but no one wanted me to know how strong guqwe can be. Now that I know, I'm sold on it. I'm also pretty sure that guqwe, like witchcraft, is only real to those who believe in it, so I recognize that, too. But its funny the way the world works here and what's Ambae life without guqwe? I'll take it over black magic any day.

Some more guqwe rules: guqwe affects people mainly on the day you come and the day you leave. if there is more than one person coming/leaving, the guqwe has stronger effects, even if all parties have good guqwe. if babies or young children have rubbish guqwe, they will most likely have rubbish fashion (that sounds funny in English, but it's what it's called) when they're adults. And finally, people know who has good or bad guqwe. It isn't bad etiquette to discuss it, and its a great conversation starter in the morning when you're breaking through local language barrier!

Dorina: my adorable baby cousin, but possessor of very rubbish guqwe

Most ni-Vans love eating flying fox. The little bears with wings are at their fattest right now and my dad is having a field day shooting them down whenever he’s hungry. He had a pet gwaratu (flying fox in language) for 3 years, but he died a month or so ago because the family dog got a taste. Gwaratus have a very distinct smell. This, paired with the visuals of my family slicing them open and eating every part, has deterred me from trying them. However, on Easter I agreed to have a taste. Glad I did it, not planning on doing it again, but glad I did it. The taste matches the smell, only intensified with chewiness and fried hair in my mouth. We made a deal that next Easter, I will try it bakagen. My first Easter tradition!

the family gwaratu, rip

cooking gwaratu, unrelated to the one pictured above

Speaking of pivotal dates, may 29^th marked the day that my puskats successfully hunted food larger than the small lizards that roam around. Lava ran to my porch with a mui in her mouth, paying no mind to the blue paint she ran across. Muis are these leathery skittish big black lizards that stare at you and then sprint away. Very harmless, but that doesn’t take away their creepiness. It was a great Lava victory indeed.

feelin blue

Just 15 minutes later, Kwen brought a small rat into my house to torture and eat. I had to get my brother Ogrant to remove the growling kwen who was aggressively guarding his first big kill. Don’t need those guts on my fancy concrete floor, that’s for sure. 

So there’s this concept I was introduced to when I did a summer trail work project with SCA. Our group leader Nat always talked about the “say – do gap” and it has stuck with me ever since. It’s easy to say we are going to do things, but difficult to follow through. I’m speaking for myself here. I love ideas! Ideas rock. But making them a reality has always been a challenge for me. So I’ve decided that my #1 goal here in Vanuatu is to reduce my say – do gap. There are endless possibilities for projects here and it’s easy to dismiss them with excuses about lack of resources, motivation, infrastructure, etc. And many times, that is absolutely true. But! That doesn’t include all of the very realistic things that get tossed to the side. That being said, alison levin say-do gap reduction campaign has officially started with teaching my papa to type. He already has a computer and is able to find his way to the movie section, but he’s mentioned a few times how much he’d like to make word documents.

I gave Tim, the IT volunteer close to me, a call and we set up a time for my papa and me to visit his school’s computer lab. Tim is a Masters International volunteer, meaning he gets to complete part 2 of his masters in the Peace Corps! Pretty neat. Anyways, we hiked our way over to St. Patricks College, the secondary school that Time works at. SPC is a beautiful school heavily funded by the Anglican Church. Both my parents and my oldest brother went there and my two other siblings are enrolled there now! We hiked to St. Patrick's and Tim sat with my papa and gave him a typing lesson. I got some software from him and now my dad is on the path towards quick fingers. Take that, say – do gap!

papa on the walk to spc

to spc we go

And finally - an observation I have made is how my clothing standards have changed. There are the clean clothes and the dirty clothes, per usual. But I now live with a distinct third pile that I affectionately refer to as "clean enough." These clothes could easily be confused with the dirty pile, but are given a last chance (or 3) before I put them in the bag. Doing wash isn’t the worst thing in the world, but sometimes it feels like it is. The woes of washing usually pair with laziness. But! One volunteer bought a plunger and has made a make shift washing machine, so as you can imagine, I was intrigued and looked into it. This is the next project on my list. The ultimate lazy fix. 

one soul thought

One night I was talking with my parents about their career paths as teachers. They've spent many years teaching at others school antap and in West Ambae, but both started here at Qwatuneala. They both went here as kids, came here as assistant teachers, and started here as their first jobs after Teacher's College. Now, because of my papa's job as ZCA, they returned here two years ago. They explained that they'd most likely be somewhere else teaching if the zca job hadn't been presented at the time that it was. We would just be strangers passing each other in town on pay day or maybe, oddly, not even that.

It is an undeniable act of fate or luck or destiny or whatever force explains The Way Things Are that our paths crossed. My mama and papa are two smart, driven, carefree, and generous people that will forever leave a mark on me. I knew that from the time I met them. Their warm smiles and contagious laughs make them easy to be around and I am happy to call them family. The conversation ended with a shared appreciation of the beauty of the world's workings. And a good night's sleep.

This idea always brings me back to one of my favorite poems, Desiderata by Max Ehrmann. I keep a printed copy of it and of If by Rudyard Kipling (my other favorite poem) with me and read them often. The whole of Desiderata is fantastic, but one part always hits me and I've referred back to it many times in my own self reflection.

"You are a child of the Universe, no less than the trees and the stars - you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the Universe is unfolding as it should."

Wow. There it goes again, hitting me. The talk with my parents about how [insert word that means the same thing as awesome or amazing, but not as cheesy] the world is to make us meet in Lotahimamavi, East Ambae, Republic of Vanuatu led me to think about my own path here. How precise and intricate and many times unclear my journey was to lead me to this place and give me the most impactful experience of my life thus far. And only for this step, and all the smaller steps and lessons within it, to influence the next one and the next one as I continue to learn and connect and grow.

life is good.

what's goin on

written at the start of june

It was really nice to get back to Ambae after my trip to Vila. I missed my simple life and was excited to get back to some house projects and teaching. It's June now, which is just as unbelievable as it was when May rolled around. I feel as though this sensation of time moving at light speed while simultaneously inching along will never stop blowing my mind. That's okay - you can't really complain about an occasional mind blowing.

I leave for Vila again in a couple of weeks for pre service training part 2. Soon I will re enter the world of ice cream and speaking English in person! I'll be there with all of the other g26 education vols and our counterparts. Everyone gets to invite a counterpart from his or her community for the first half of training. My mama is coming with me! She is my primary counterpart and I know that I'll be coming to her for advice and assistance on all my future secondary projects. She is a wonderful teacher and I have already learned so much from her. I can't wait for her to meet my friends in Vila and enjoy a well-deserved  weeklong holiday and workshop. Also I just realized that when I skype with my #1 mom, the two of them will have a chance to meet! A global mama-to-mama communication exchange! Awesome.

Teaching has been going good! I've been co-teaching with class 1 and 2 during English class, but am planning on returning with a different approach. The teaching world calls it the pull out method, which never gets old or less funny, and many volunteers finding it to be an effective use of their skills. I would work with small groups of students with similar learning levels to try and bring everyone to the same level. This can be done with phonics and phonemic awareness games, group reading, and even just communicating in a safe learning environment. I've found that my strength isn't teaching in front of a large group, but working with a more individualized focus. Plus, my mama and aunt have both been teaching for over 20 years and have a good system down. I'm hoping that my work outside of the classroom will help them enhance theirs inside of it.

Being in the classroom has helped me recognize my deep gratitude for the teachers I've had in my life. Teaching is hard, man! And frustrating and challenging and energy-sucking. I am extremely lucky to have had passionate teachers who believed in my growth. I'm very happy to be working with kids and helping them learn, especially with smaller groups, but I am eternally grateful for the true teachers of the world that really get it. And on that note, being a native English speaker is a privilege. English is confusing, has endless rules, and breaks most of them regularly. The world feels as though it's necessary for all of us to have some level of understanding of English,  and whether or not I agree with that idea, I still find that being on this end of learning/teaching English is something I will never take for granted. 

On Fridays I have been working with Kindy. It is my favorite part of the week! The teacher Miss Qwinnett says that she'd like me to help teach songs from my childhood. The kids don't know Bislama yet, so when I'm in the classroom, we are in constant translation with Miss Qwinnett's help. It's giving me a great opportunity to learn some language and be a kindy student myself! The kids are adorable and are so excited to teach me. Feelings mutual. We have started with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and it was a hit! We made a dance and decorated stars with our names on them. Another volunteer Laura has some good kindy ideas she's going to share with me back in Vila. 

I've joined the worldwise schools correspondence program. It's a peace corps program that helps you become pen pals with a classroom in the states! Laura's mom is the director of a montessori school on Martha's Vineyard where she grew up. Her mom helped pair me with a teacher named Irene, who I'll be working with when the school year starts back! 

Peace Corps Vanuatu has a newspaper that goes out every quarter called the VanAm. It's full of stories, recipes, workouts, and anything else a volunteer living in a remote village could think of. One of my favorite articles was the guide to mastering the game snake. Us lucky folks have the nokias with snake still on them! The article talks about different strategies and the benefits of playing the game after drinking kava. I'd be lying if I said I haven't been indulging in some evening games of snake after a few shells after reading the article! Funny stuff. 

Laura and I are writing the Failure Report. We got the idea from a video Nik (former volunteer who is now on staff) showed us during training called Admitting Failure. We've reached out to all of the volunteers and asked about their cultural and work screw-ups and got some great responses! Sometimes it's good to share what didn't work and find comfort (and comical relief) with a network of people that understands the context. Laura and I ended the article with our own failure offering, the Missed the Pit Club, and open enrollment to all those qualified to join! Our slogan? Never underestimate the value of double checking your alignment. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I'm in charge of writing an article I've titled Oh My Gad where I share submitted success stories with gad-based programs. These range from planning water projects to cleanup campaigns to reproductive health workshops. It gives me a chance to dig into my cheesy phrases archive for my own shits and giggles.  And to spread good ideas at the same time. You're h2o-kay in our book, Kelly. Thanks for talkin' trash, Katelyn. That's a wrap!

As far as secondary projects go, I am hoping to work with the mamas on a road market they want to start up. Representatives from the 9 nakamal councils of northeast Ambae were having a meeting at my school, and I happened to stumble across it - I actually tripped on the way back from the water tank with my buckets, so "stumbled" is as accurate as it gets. Their  laughs welcomed me to join the talk. They are hoping to build a permanent structure along the road to sell food and crafts. Their goals are to contribute their time and skills to the contribute and have a source of their own income. I think it's a wonderful idea and my clumsiness paid off!  They were working on a grant application to New Zealand aid and asked for my help. This was quite ambitious, considering the application was due in a few days time, but we did have a great discussion on an action plan. When I go to Vila for PST2, I am going to look into some other grants to help these mamas create a sustainable project!

That's it for business. Learning as I go and enjoying every part of the challenge!