A final quick post before I leave Luganville! A group of volunteers are coming to visit me in a couple of weeks and we'll be doing a world map project at my school! My school piggy bank has pretty much run dry, so I had to figure out a way to raise some doll hairs to fund the project - paint and supplies are expensive out here! My garden has been coming along nicely, so I thought I'd try my hand at selling veggies at the market on pay day!
Here's a chicken that just finished laying the day's egg! It's a jungle in there!
Because the Chinese cabbage has been growing so aggressively, I decided to pluck the healthy ones and bring them to Lolowai! We started off with the ones in the garden in front of my house. Before we harvested the goods, my mama snapped a photo of me in my garden jungle. It happened to be July 4th, so I had to get into character. 'Merica!
I bundled up the greens in threes and tied them up with an "enjoy" tag and a hibiscus flower. I marked each bundle at 100 vatu, or about a buck, and loaded them up! I sold all 8 bundles within 15 minutes and promised the mamas to bring another load in two weeks! 800 (8 bucks) vatu down, just about 8200 (a lot) vatu to go! Oh boy..
We had one more pay day Friday before I headed to Santo. On that Thursday we hiked up to one of my family's big gardens where we had transplanted some more of my Chinese cabbage. These things were huge! I munched on their crispy goodness as I chose the batch that was ready for market. We admired my little sister's corn blooming to the left and snacked on my jumbo cucumbers. We sang songs, especially Hercules soundtrack songs because of the picture below - we checked it and it oddly looks like my chest belongs to Hulk or Hercules! We strapped the bundles onto our backs and followed the 45 minute path back down to site. My uncle stopped us along the way and snapped a picture without stopping to catch his breath between shock and laughter.
In the morning we pulled the cabbage out of the water, cut off the roots, and fancied them up for market. I sold these quickly, making my current cabbage fundraising total 1750 vatu, which is not too shabby (the 50 is due to giving my Mami Amina a half price deal because she insists on not letting me give it to her for free)
1750 vatu may not be enough to fund my world map project, but it's a good start! My principal suggested that I hold a "tick a box" fundraiser - each student has a page with 10 vatu (10 cents) boxes and they mark the boxes as they collect money from the village members. I decided to spice it up and make a "color-a-box" fundraiser! When the community member gives the student the 10 vatu, he or she gets to choose which area of the world that the student colors. Woo hoo!
The drawing of the map was a rough estimate in some places - the only map at our school is pretty faded. Which is one of many reasons why we need a big ol' earth painting in the dining hall as a reminder of our beautiful and enormous home. The blurb at the bottom talks about another important point - during the World Cup, I was clueless to where some of the countries playing are in the world. I think that the three maps (Ambae, Vanuatu, and the world) will inspire conversation and help to keep us curious. The fundraiser is in the works right now so hopefully it's getting the job done. We'll see soon!
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