deds

Back in July, my grandmother's sister Bumbu Margaret died a day after we visited her. The visit was actually very pleasant considering the circumstances that the feeling of upcoming death brings to the air. Everyone was in good spirits and talked about the peaceful departure that was near. Old age deaths are still sad here, but I've noticed that they are accepted with the understanding that life and death both happen. There's still uncomfortable amounts of wailing and the 100 day ritual, but something is sacred about living to an old age here. 

Bumbu Margaret lived in Lolobui, about 30 minutes down the main road and up a small hill. Here's a fun fact to start your day with: Bui means bamboo in language and it has also come to mean knife. Bamboo was used as spears and knives long before the metal version came around. Maybe my sense of fun has changed, but I was delighted when I made that connection and had it confirmed!

Lolobui is home to about 30 people. They have an awesome swing made from an anchor's chain that my uncle salvaged after a shipwreck in Lolowai during a cyclone. Because i didn't know my place in this intimate situation, I spent most of the day on the swing reliving childhood happiness. Swings man! What a liberating feeling. And a view that made it that much better- Lolobui sits on a hill overlooking the saltwater. The occasional nakavika falling on my head was worth the daydream delight I was swinging in!

About a month later, my grandmother's other sister Bumbu Mata passed away. Although I only met Bumbu Mata a few times, I knew she was a cool lady. Her and her late husband lived on a coconut plantation by themselves, so when he passed away, it was her living in complete solitude. She looked after the land, animals, and herself for many years. 

Bumbu Margaret had a village to manage the 100 day ded ritual, but Bumbu Mata had no children, so my aunts and mama stepped in. Since the ded, Mami Green Thumb, Mami Corina and her husband (and others in and out) have been living at Mata's house in Lololiso and are helping with the traditions. 

What are these ded rituals I keep talking about? It's pretty amazing really. On one hand it's an exhausting, time consuming burden on the community, but on the other hand, it's a ancient tradition that honors the life of the deceased. 

For every 5 days until the 100 day anniversary of the dead, the community celebrates with food and kava. These gatherings are called bongis, the local word for "day" and in Vanuatu they're referred to as "deds." Every 5 days, lap lap is cooked, kava is grounded (ground? grinded? a grammar mystery), and people come together in the name of the person who died! The 10 day bongi is a big one where they reveal the grave, a really Big Deal. Graves here are above ground cement or rock structures. My mama explained that when her papa was dying, he told them to build his grave in a place where children could play on it and men could sit, drink kava, and storian. The graves become mini gathering places to connect with the one who died. A different way to think about a grave. Pretty interesting! 

In northeast Ambae, the 10, 25, 50, and 100 day anniversaries seem to be the more important bongis. The community kills extra cows, chickens, and pigs to cook with the laplap and the kava is more plentiful than usual, from what I've taken in. These take more mamas and more time to prepare for because the fresh buluk and strong ded kava brings people out of the wood work. I don't blame em! By the way, ded kava is the best. It's stronger (mixed with less water) and there's more than enough to go around if the person who passed was a kava head or a chief. But! every rose has its thorn... if you're drinking ded kava, you parcel up your food in banana leaves and eat it later because you aren't supposed to eat until you're finished drinking. So the steaming hot laplap doesn't get to be enjoyed until its lost its touch. You win some, you lose some!

We went up to Lololiso for a couple of the bongis, usually after school. Since being on Ambae, I've learned that, "Hey let's go to so-and-so's house for a few hours!" Really means "Let's hike for 30 minutes to an hour+ uphill and then come back when its pitch black! Don't forget your headlamp!" Some of the details are implied because they know that everywhere we go takes an uphill hike and we're always staying for longer than a few hours. Now I never leave the house without the travelin essentials-   a full water bottle, headlamp, and toilet paper!

On the 40th I decided to go early and help my Mami Green Thamb with the preparations. Here she is with her posse, including me. One of the toughest women I've met! 

woman Ambae! those are bag of kumala (sweet potatoes) on her back and her head

We hiked through the hills of plantations. Plantations are like land mines, but in the sky. Sky mines. When a coconut falls, it usually barely makes a sound. You don't want one of those falling on your head! For the most part, you forget about the chance of this happening, but when the wind starts to pick up, I become more strategic with my path. I don't think I'll ever have the sixth sense that comes with living in plantation nation!

The dogs had a field day! Fighting over coconuts, sprinting through the footpaths, barking obnoxiously at the grazing cows, and finally passing the f out when we got to the house. I did the same about a few hours later!

lololiso plantation

mus man taking a break

fighting over the one out of 8230927 coconut husks lying around

When these women come together for a bongi or a wedding, they turn into a nonstop machine! It's amazing to watch. They were very grateful for my assistance even though I was more like a rusty hand crank trying to keep up with their years of finely tuned machine-like ways. 

riano and rialdo watching me take a nap

bumbu mata's house

there's a shit load of laplap under this!
covered in leaves and burlap and everything else to keep the earth oven hot

papa and o'brien

mami delila (pronounced da-lee-la) putting the milk on the laplap taro my favorite!!

After a day of preparations, it was time to eat! The spread was unbelievable. For laplaps: banana with coconut milk, two taro ones with milk (my favorite, locally called sala vatu) manioc with milk already mixed in (called waro quihi) manioc with island cabbage on top (lulu) kumala with milk, and manioc with cabbage and veggies cooked on top (waro sombe) That's a ridiculous amount of laplap! 

To top it off (literally) we had pig, flying fox, crab, chicken, and fish. This was a dream! I'd never seen such a wild variety of everything for our belly enjoyment! And that it was. 

you are what you eat

mouth-watering goodness

how do you spell bongi? Y-U-M

dates

September 16^th is Penama Day, or a day to celebrate my province! Penama province consists of Pentecost, Maewo, and Ambae islands. And when I say Penama Day, it actually means a weeklong celebration of all things football, kava, music, and food. I’m in! This year the celebrations took place in Saratamata. When I got to town, I ran into Sydney and her sister who was visiting! We watched a parade, swam in the ocean, had an embarrassing public pee session, and enjoyed some football. At one point, we got some green coconuts to drink and I offered to open the second hole in Sydney’s sister’s coconut to make the drinking more smooth. Well no surprise here, but I slice my finger in a bloody mess! This poor finger that has already fallen victim to the knife from clumsy encounters with a passionfruit, an avocado, and now the coconut. I also have a scar on this finger from a plastic sword fight with a middle school friend sawyer. I just realized that his name may have some connection to this digit’s unfortunate fate! Worth looking into.

shrooms by the bush kitchen
unedible, sadly, but fun to get down and look at!

gangs all here

October 6^th is is Teacher’s Day in Vanuatu, which means another reason to take off from school and celebrate! This one is pretty special considering I live at a school and am surrounded by teachers, plus I’m part-teacher these days. In fact, not only are my mama and papa wonderful school teachers, they are absolutely my best Vanuatu life teachers. By the time I got to Ambae after training, I was probably at the infant ni-Van level of learning. Now I am post-toddler, heading into the adolescence stage, all because of good ol mom and pops! The skills inherent to these kids or learned at remarkably young ages are just now coming around for Alison. For example, I’ve never seen a 4+ year old not crack open a coconut on their first hit with the bush knife. It’s unreal! I’m getting there! I felt the need to express my gratitude, so I rambled on their behalf for a lelebet and gave them some Mojo bars and Crystal Lite packets as an attempt to say thank you. They loved it!

We walked an hour or so down the big road to Lolopuepue, the place where the PISSA games were held. We, with all the other zone 5 teachers, met there for a la fet or party. We were salu-salu’d (leis put around your neck) and my papa gave a speech. He’s the ZCA or zone curriculum advisor and looks out for the all the schools in da zone. After that we all held each other’s shoulders and cut the cake (always a big to-do!) and ate some delicious kakae. When we had arrived, this white man showed up in a truck, which is always confusing. We met and I found out he was James Buluok, a volunteer from the UK living on Pentecost, an island to the southeast of us. For 4 years! My papa had talked to him on the phone, but upon meeting, he was dumfounded. James took the Pentecost family name Buluok and his Bislama is incredibly good. Like eerily good – his tones and pronunciation sound like a native speaker’s. Assuming that he was ni-Van and then finding out he was white man, my papa was blown away! It was pretty amusing to watch unfold.

wai maito spilling into the sea

wai maito, or black water

group cake cutting, the only way to do it

James came to Vanuatu 4 years ago with a small volunteer group and basically never left. He lives on Pentecost and has created a summer school program for top 6^th grade students preparing to enter secondary school. There just isn’t enough emphasis on good students here. No chance to excel or be rewarded, so this program would give those students an opportunity to build confidence and skills at a  one month summer school/camp. He’s run the camp 2 times on Pentecost, including more regions in the second year. This January will be year 3 for all of Pentecost, and next year they’re expanding it to include Ambae! So by this point, James had been on Ambae for 28 days going school-to-school spreading the word and gauging interest. All positive thus far! His last stop was my school to fill us in on the plans and then he’d hop a ship back to Pentecost. He came to our school a couple of days later. We chatted for a while and he told me about his story. He also told me about his trek around Ambae. He didn’t even bring a towel with him. Man-Ambae just took care of him at every stop with a place to sleep and food to eat, totally appreciating the work he’s doing. I love this place!

Halloweeeeeen! By far the most ridiculous thing I’ve had to explain cross-culturally since being in Vanuatu. Dressing up, jack-o-lanterns, trick or treating, candy galore… it’s all a mess! It probably didn’t help that I dressed up as something as abstract as, say, the ocean. My puskats were catfish and my dog was a shark. It was really all just to entertain myself, but that’s what life is for! It was Friday so I had class with kindy. We decorated masks and ears and all jumped around the classrooms like mad men. A typical Friday kindy day, but a little more festive!

class crafts

the crew

goin wild!

garai

sweet little lawence

my favorite lavenda! 

julina and those chompers

girlz

braunia and tari in the back with the seduction

mus and alison, halloween 2014

My mama and I walked into town in the hot sun. At one point she said that Halloween sounds like “hot wind” (or the way it’s pronounced here – hot weend) so we kept saying Happy Hot Wind instead. By the grace of the Halloween gods, the huge public works camion truck scooped us up and we rode the monster into town, singing out, “Happy Halloween!” because the wind was no longer hot when you’re riding that high. When I tried climbing in the truck, I flashed some thigh to make the leap up. It got quite the laugh from everyone around, considering it was my thighs’ debut in the outside world of Vanuatu. Yes, after 9 months of hiding under skirts, my thighs saw daylight! And they happened to be dressed up as ghosts, because they were white as hell. Haha, everyone cracked up at bright surprise, especially me. White man wan taem!

Sydney and Michelle’s services were coming to a close, so they invited us to their last kakaes, or farewell feasts. I followed a truck up to Sydney’s village Nanigama for the weekend for her toilet project opening and her last kakae. This was my first time staying in East, so I was looking forward to a flood of new faces. First stop was Lovuinvili, Sydney’s first village and the location of the toilet opening. Sydney is a health volunteer and her community’s focus was sanitation. Lovuinvili and the surrounding villages are all clustered together and overpopulated and there was beginning to be a problem with toilets – the old ones were full and no place to put new ones that wouldn’t spoil gardens or the water supply. The vol before Sydney, Cara, helped the village get water pipes to pump water from springs in the mountains, so to build on this, Sydney helped them build 11 flush toilets with septic tank setups.

sydney's great chinese shop notebook
it says "This is the most comfortable notebook you have ever run into.
You will feel like writing with it all the time." Classic!

So why move sites when you’ve got a mega project going? It’s a weird story, but after Sydney’s first year at site, she was able to move to a village half an hour up the road that actually wanted her there and appreciated her presence. Nanigama is a special place and ended up being the perfect home for her.

I arrived when all the food was being cooked. A feast celebrating toilets! We helped her first host mama cut the watermelon. They told me about this woman’s green thumb – she grew a 25 kg watermelon! She married a local seed with a kind from another island and boom! Watermelon monster! They sent it to Port Vila and it sold for $70 US. Pretty impressive!

We went to the ceremony and some community members gave speeches. Sadly her first host papa called her Cara the whole time, which sucked, but what can ya do? Sydney gave her report and it immediately reminded me of a picture we had hanging in our bathroom growing up: “No job is finished until the paperwork is done.” Ha! I love that. We went down to one of the completed toilets for the ribbon cutting. These guys love ribbon/cake cutting – anything to make something official. I support! The bathroom was all flas’d out (fancy-fied) and looked like a party instead of a potty. More speeches, some test flushes, and back to the community hall for gifts and food.

toilet talk

laplap galore

the fanciest of potties

syd and her counterpart and the throne

gifts

They passed out the laplaps to all those involved and showered Sydney in baby powder, calico, salu salus, and baskets. She got 12 baskets! One had “Mr. Bowman Sydney” woven into it while another had “Sydney Do man” Both are timeless. I was called up and both Sydney and I had to stand and shake everyone’s hand before we ate. It was a funny thing to include me, considering I knew about 2% of these folks, had never been to the village, was not leaving Ambae, and did not provide them with access to better sanitation. Yet I was a “distinguished guest” they kept telling me, so I had to “seik han” with everyone. Picture all the oldfala giving heartfelt goodbye hugs and shedding tears with Sydney and then arriving at my handshake, confused at who the hell I am, shaking my hand anyway, and then going to grab food. I wasn’t even the warm up handshake! I was post-Sydney. Very odd, but such is life. The two of us got plenty of sideways glances and laughs in with this line of encounters, so all is well.

After stuffing our faces, we headed up to her home in the beautiful Nanigama. We got settled, passed out some laplap, stored away the whole chicken (what! such a good surprise!) that was cooked with the laplap, and got to burger making. I brought up a half kilo of mince from town and we had the most delicious baby burgers! About 8 total. Gobbled em all up, tailor-style on her floor, laughing about the events of the day. Fell asleep happy.

We started Saturday with Sydney pulling apart the chicken and me reading to her about Chile, her future 5 month home after a coupla months in the states. She’ll be volunteering with the UN and Chilean Government teaching English in a primary school! The world is full of the coolest opportunities. Reading this guide book made me seriously want to check out South America for a bit. Definitely a place you gotta commit some time to! As all continents and countries and places should be treated, I suppose. Gotta brush up on that Spanish, who knows what’s next!

Tim Jessie Rae and Lynda Mae came and we all ate the chicken noodle soup that was cookin all morning. It was delicious! We hung out, played nostalgia games with Sydney, and asked about her two year takeaways. Jessie and Lynda Mae split before dark because Nathan was coming home from Vila and they were walkin to meet him at home, so they had to miss out on the last kakae.

That night was the last kakae. Sydney was covered in salusalus, kalicos, baskets, flowers, and love. Many hugs and tears and speeches and other things that make up goodbyes. I was glad to be there to see her off! The food was delicious and of course we ate too much of everything. A wonderful visit indeed.

trabel the mama

sydney in all of her glory!

Oh! But I must mention that her puskat Trabel (yes, Trouble) has a cute 7 week old kitten! We spent a good part of the weekend playing with these two! A funny story about the birth – Sydney was going to sleep and Trabel was being extra cuddly, so she let her shack up under the mosquito net. When Sydney went to the toilet in the night and returned, she found a baby kitten in her sheets! Along with the afterbirth and all the other good stuff, of course. So she flipped the mattress and passed back out after sticking the cats on the floor. Anything can happen! Now little ginger hair is a sweet puskat and going to live at Tim’s site to chase away/munch on his absurd rat population.

A night at Jessie Rae and Nathan’s and then back to site. Always, always good to arrive back home after a weekend away.

malekula visits

The TOT was over, but my adventures were not. First stop, Laura’s site in Northwest Malekula! Laura is one of my best friends here in Vanuatu. She’s one of those people you just enjoy being around. Whenever we go to Vila, we’re hotel roommates, and we think in terms of both of us for meals and activities and errands and whatnots. Usually always on the same page, so everything works out, making the best times ever. I was excited to check out her site, which I had already heard plenty about. Being able to see each other’s sites, meet host families, and see everyone’s groove in action is one of the coolest opportunities we get here!

love this billboard

lakatoro, malekula's big apple

kickass mama's market!

friends

We went into Lakatoro and bought some goodies for the week- primarily a jug of wine and some meat. When I say meat, I mean fresh, delicious, local filet steak and mince. Man, is that stuff good! We grabbed some veggies from the mama’s market and waited to hop on a truck up to Laura’s site. It takes about 2.5-3 hours to get to Laura’s village Matanvat, which is quite the ride! In the truck bed with 10 others and a pile of food and bags, you figure out how to get comfortable, and you enjoy the long, winding road. Malekula is huge! And shaped like a sitting dog, if you’re willing to use your imagination. Matanvat is on the head of the dog, so we had a nice journey along the back. We stopped at a few road markets to pick up more fruits and vegetables. Drank a green coconut or two, dreamed out loud about the cheese-stuffed burgers we were going to devour for dinner, and before I knew it, we had arrived.

roadside markets = fast food!

copra warehouse - malekula aint kiddin about its copra industry

drying some copra

I’d say it is pretty much fact that nothing ever happens smoothly in the Peace Corps, which is just The Way It Is and that’s okay. We hopped out and Laura sliced her finger on a knife tucked in the bed of the truck. She went down to the saltwater to wash it off, and we unloaded our cargo. One of her brothers came down to help us carry our stuff to her house, but we couldn’t grab all of it. Not thinking twice (or maybe not thinking at all) we didn’t grab the basket of yams… that had the 2 kilos of meat in it. By the time we got back down to the road, the dogs had filled up on that fresh, delicious, local steak and mince I mentioned earlier. Damn! We were pretty bummed. The reality of oozing burgers of cheesy happiness was gone and we were standing there, at the village entrance, with 4 lip-licking pups and frowns on our faces. We snapped out of this pretty quickly, because that’s what you gotta do! After a few minutes, we remembered how insignificant meat was to our enjoyment of this week of gudfala friendship, and we made new plans: ultimate grilled cheeses with yam fries. Plus some mulled wine! The overwhelmingly satisfying meal made us forget about our recent sad 5 minute episode by the road. Food will play tricks on ya, sometimes for the best.

the ultimate grilled cheese with a side of yam fries

cheeeeeeeese

Laura’s house has a natangura thatched roof like mine and she’s got bamboo woven walls. It’s a big place! She’s the fourth volunteer to live there, so it’s pretty worked in. She lives on her family compound and about a 5 minute walk from school grounds. She’s got a kickass kitchen and a pit toilet that reminds me of home.

matanvat plantation

the kitchen sanctuary, home of all things tasty

shaki, the mysterious 8 month never-growing puskat

heading down to the sea

scrub those pots girl!

Laura woke up early to the sound of a passing truck and ran out to give him some vatu to bring us back some meat in the afternoon. Nice work Laura! We made coffee (Lynn gave us the leftover Tanna coffee from the workshop!) and a granola and banana breakfast. We went to the library where Laura teaches and the students told us about their 2 week holiday. After classes, we went home, did some bikram, and a visitor arrived: Tim! Tim, a volunteer on my island, was site hopping around Malekula before heading back to Ambae and asked to crash at Laura’s for the night. Get this – he brought meat, too! A delicious meal was on the horizon and we were all excited to start the preparations. We storied, went down to the sea for a little, and came back to cook after the colorful sunset.

By the time we finished our half pound cheese stuffed burgers (you’ve gotta be kidding! Wow!) and cajun yam fries, we couldn’t move. It was one of those absurdly good meals that you can’t stop eating just cuz you’re full. You finish that thing! And we did.

The next day, Tim hopped a truck, and Laura and I taught for a little bit, did some more bikram, and headed over to her tawi’s house (tawi means in-law in Vanuatu) to make some laplap sorsor! I tasted sorsor for the first time at the TOT, but didn’t get to help with the prep or get to devour it properly.

Sorsor is basically laplap on steroids. It is top notch, numbawan, scrum-dilly-umptious, and that’s not really doing it justice. It’s a Malekula tradition and it’s all you hear about it from the Malekula volunteers. As much as I’ve rolled my eyes at the words “laplap sor sor,” I now understand what the hubub’s all about. 

We rash-rashed the wild yam (grated it into mush) and cut up the green onion, susut, tomatoes, and local greens. We put our recently purchased round two of filet steak right in the middle as we wrapped up the sorsor (which is an art form and skill in itself) and put it over the fire to bake.

laura and her tawi on yam duty

scratching the coconut

coconut milking the stone! deliciousness

wrapped up like a present!

Baked and ready to go, we joined the whole family in Laura’s parents’ house two hours later. Laura’s community is SDA, Seventh Day Adventist. Her family is pretty religious and is a challenge she deals with weekly. Some Saturdays, she’s clockin 6-8 hours of church! Don’t worry, most of that was for integration – she’s now feeling comfortable enough to stay in and enjoy herself on the Sabbath instead of church marathoning. So before sorsor, we had an hour of worship. We sang songs (they sang songs, I didn’t know any of them) and her papa asked me what I plan to do when Jesus comes down to Earth. All very strange, but anything can happen here, so not really that shocking. It totally reminded me of some families I knew growing up in Sweet Home Alabama that would push an unhealthy serving of religion onto your plate, expecting you to not only take a bite, but eat the whole pie. No wonder the obesity rate is so high down there!

Worship finished! Time for a proper laplap sor sor meal. Everyone sits around the laplap in a circle, criss cross apple sauce, and with a knife, starts slicing her to pieces. In the middle of the laplap, there’s a hot stone from the fire that’s keeping the coconut milk hot and tasty. You take your sliver of laplap, pile on some of the toppings, and dip it right in the middle. Next stop, down in your belly, followed by about 72381 more where that came from! Another stuffed evening. We went back, played cards, and passed out!

We woke up with a mission – coconut jam. But before we could start all of that, we relaxed with our books and snoozed until lunchtime in our hammocks. Woke up revived and got started. We gathered coconuts (an easy task considering Laura’s village is in a plantation) dehusked them, scratched the shavings out, squeezed and strained the strong milk, and put it on the fire with brown sugar for 2 hours, stirring occasionally until… wa-la! Coconut jam. A wonderful success. We made 3 jars, one was a thank you gift to her parents for having me in the compound. After that, we relaxed.

Susut tacos for dinner and coconut jam & nutella rollups for dessert. We drank some wine, played cards, and storian’d for the evening. Such an terrific visit with a great friend! As usual with good times, it went far too quickly, but that just means I’ve gotta go back!

the last supper... tacos and yam fries!

I woke up early and Laura had packed me up some coconut jam, banana, nutella rollups for the truck ride! I hopped the first truck and enjoyed the sunrise cruise to Kelsey’s site. It seems that only in a 5 am truck ride on a random island shaped like a dog in the South Pacific will you find 2 out of the 13 passengers sporting Alabama State College hats. I’m not even sure if Alabama State College is real, but the hats were! We all laughed as I explained that I am from Alabama and the wildness of encountering 2 alumni. Haha, but really, it’s a small world after all.

beautiful malekula

sunrise drive-by kava sales

early morning truck rides

now would ya look at that!

I hopped off at Kelsey’s school and took a nap while she taught class. At lunch we walked 30 minutes to a great road market and picked up some veggies for the weekend. Kelsey had just been at my site for the Manaro hike and world map painting. Bryan, Kate, Jen, and she went to Maewo after Ambae, so she caught me up on all the fun they had! Most of the weekend was spent hanging out and catching up. Kelsey is another great friend of mine in Vanuatu. She was in the sub-village Nangus with Jen and me during training part 2, so we had a chance to become close friends. Kelsey lives on school grounds in a triplex. Her house is bright and welcoming and she’s got a killer view of the sea you couldn’t get sick of even if you climbed the backyard tree with your book and stared out all day! That is a confirmed fact, by the way.

hello kelsey! please disregard the bleach towel... its mine

typical peace corps sleeping arrangements

One night we made a delicious red curry meal and the next night she taught me how to make teriyaki! Another series of ridiculously tasty dinners! On Saturday we went across the street to a kava bar for a few shells. We drank a few too many and woke up with some bigfala kava hangovers – this lazy, heavy feeling that makes you want to do nothing but lounge. Which would have been perfect for a typical Sunday, but we had asked her auntie to take us to the small island across the way! On the back on Malekula dog, there are 4 small islands – Wala, Rano, Achen, and Vau. We joined her auntie and paddled over to Rano for the day. This day included church, which wasn’t too bad minus our desire to not be in church because of the kava lazies. It happened to be the Presbyterian Church’s father’s day, so we had a big meal on the island. One of the chiefs walked us around Rano, which took close to an hour. It’s a beautiful place! We swam for a bit and headed back home in the afternoon. The next morning I followed a truck to the airport and zoomed back home to reality. Extended break over, but what a blast it was!