back on the island

The day finally came that I was able to go back to Ambae. Phil and Katie were my travel buddies- they have to fly to Ambae and then hop a boat over to their island Maewo. We spent the 4 hour layover on Santo eagerly preparing to reunite with families and transition back into island life, which is quite different from Sydney life. Needless to say, we were all more than ready for the simple, beautiful lives we longed for in Australia. Once on Ambae, I followed a truck to Lolowai to give Mami Amina a hug and I was presented with a birthday cake and lavalava (sarong) from her and Uncle Glen. Unbelievable! That was the last thing I expected, but their kindness was far from a surprise. We shared the cake and I took the second half back to my site to share with my family. It was so, so nice seeing my parents! We swapped stories and laughed and sat together until the sun went down, enjoying each other’s company. I was once again reminded how grateful I am to have such a great host family.

Minus this and that, life has returned to normal-ish (what is, by the way, normal? it was never normal in the first place!) Being back on the island has been such a pleasure.  Since being back its seems as though the stars shine a little brighter, the ocean a deeper blue, the bush greener and more lush than before. I’m pretty sure my family is sick of hearing me gasp at the beauty of the sunset or ramble on about the immensity of the sea. What the word “awesome” is intended for. I can’t decide if this is a real thing- did the post-cyclone weather shift the hues or is it due to my now-understanding that these precious things can so quickly go away? It might just be my year two blues, knowing that the end of service is around the corner or a combination of all three. Whatever the cause, my heightened appreciation is making this experience that much richer.  I thought I loved this place before, but man! You don’t know what ya got til its almost gone, or something like that. The same challenges here still exist, but I’ve found a new sense of contentment that subdues them. There are plenty of new adventures taking place here and I’m so glad to be back.

There is replanting and rebuilding to do on Ambae, but comparatively, she’s not looking half bad. They quickly cleared the big trees that fell on the main road and communities have been working together to rebuild water catchments that broke during the storm. Other than that, Ambae is in pretty good shape to help the other islands. My school has been collecting food and sending it down to families and boarding schools in Port Vila. The cargo ships agreed to carry these things for free from all the islands on their routes that were able to share. The Lolowai harbor is the main stop for the ships on Ambae, but if you make a big bonfire on the coast, the ship will send a small boat to you and collect your freight. Some of my favorite nights have been sitting down at the saltwater cheering on the boat as it arrives to shore.

sending off some veggies

getting ready to replant some island cabbage 

little stories

Right before I went to Vila for the GAD training, I devoured East of Eden and when I reached the end, I was tempted to start over and do it again. What a lovely book! Since returning from Australia, I’ve enjoyed a wide and wild variety of books: Into Thin Air, The Gold Finch, The Last Season, Born To Run, Miracle of Mindfulness, Choke, Unbroken, One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest, The Boys in the Boat, Michael J. Fox’s Autobiography Always Looking up, Omnivore’s Dilemma, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The ebook collection on my harddrive that Dave gave me has hundreds of books and it’s actually a little frightening acknowledging that soon I won’t have the time to indulge like I do now! But for now, it is really a treat.

I found a copy of the first Harry Potter in my school library and convinved my papa to try it out. He read it in two weeks! And loved it! My family and I watched the movie together and it was fun to watch him get a kick out of all the things he had just read. My real live dad at home has an old kindle which he’s sent out here for my papa to have. This is so wonderful because of the bigger fonts, the backlight, and the built in dictionary! And a daughter with a large ebook collection that has the rest of the Harry Potters and a bunch of other similarly-leveled books inside! The kindle will be here in a few weeks and I can’t wait to see how it transforms his relationship with reading. To live up to its ambitious name, that is. I prefer a paperback any day, but the kindle has found a little corner in my heart. For me, the backlight means no headlamp, the ultimate nighttime bug attracter, even under the net. And with Dave’s collection I’ve got a thousand books to choose from! It’s easy to travel with and I find myself learning new words (and worlds) all the time thanks to the dictionary inside and ability to highlight your favorite parts.

Sometimes you just don’t feel like swimming. Okay, here’s an important note! Ni-Vanuatu (and now all of us exposed to it) call bathing “swimming.” The place where I take my bucket baths? My swimhouse. It’s just the way it is. Ni-Vanuatu pretty much swim every day ritually, usually because their hours are filled with building, bushwhacking, and being outdoors. If I don’t sleep well, my parents either chalk it up to guqwe (the karma/energy-force I’ve talked about in here before) or if that’s not the case, than it’s definitely because I didn’t swim the night before. I get a little wag of the finger, a “tsk tsk,” and a “you know better than to skip a swim” (or atleast I know better than to tell them about it.) Big swimmers, these people. But there are days that even my parents don’t feel like swimming. They scrub their feet and wash their hands and faces and call it a day. One evening as I was mockingly chastising them for this, I told them how we call it a bird bath and it’s more common than you’d think (and we all sleep fine afterwards.) After a laugh, my papa told me that they call it a nambilak, which is the name of a chicken-like bird here! A tasty one at that! Same name, same meaning, same reasoning. I really love this little overlap in cultural observation and just wanted to share our a-ha moment with our realization.

One Sunday I dug out my tie dye kit and I introduced my family to one of my favorite activities. The best part about tie dye is that it’s pretty hard to mess it up. Every design is funky and colorful and all your own!  Of course, this time it was no different. One of the best parts about the day after tie dye is pulling off the rubber bands and checking out your new shirt. Everyone loved their finished products and rock their masterpieces all the time!

tie-dyed shamila with a stumpa of kava

Shamila, my 20 year old neighbor/cousin/coworker, has been begging me to corn row my hair basically since I arrived on Ambae. You can imagine how upset she was when I cut it off during in-service training. After the emotional rollercoaster of Pam and the realization that my time here is not permanent (deep-ish), I agreed to let Shamila work her magic. So we spent the morning with her braiding my head and me enjoying the relaxing sensation of someone actually touching me. Haha, as funny as that sounds when I type it out, it’s true. Having my hair corn rowed is the most physically intimate experience I’ve had in Vanuatu! Other than people offering to check my head for lice (or how they singularly call it here, “louse”) which is basically the only physical interaction most people in Vanuatu partake in. Other than the strange but endearing way men and boys hold hands, twiddling with each other’s fingers and walking together and not letting go.

Anyways, a nice head massage was just what I needed. After a few hours, her work was complete and I got to check a mirror. The only photo evidence I have are some shots I’m giving to Shoshana as self-blackmail to ensure I never screw up my life in the future and because she made me promise to take them for her own sister enjoyment. Here’s a visual for you: if Dumbo and White Trash Barbie had a lovechild, I would be it. I think it’s safe to say that Corn Row Alison isn’t my best look. But here I was! At this moment in time, as I stood in confusion and amusement at the stranger in the mirror, Shamila sang out to me telling me we’d be leaving soon to head into town. Wait a second….. I didn’t know anything about going to town?!

So I got ready, laughing at my situation, left any sense of ego within the comforts of the school grounds and embarked on the walk to town, corn rowed up! The best part of this humbling afternoon is that half the people I encountered thought I looked taf tumas “ah, yu woman Ambae now!” But the other half didn’t seem to notice that my hair was twisted tightly to my scalp with the scraggly ends dangling down my neck. (but you need not worry, the scraggly stragglers were consolidated when someone advised me to tie them all up in a bun. Now we’re talkin style!) I left the corn rows in for two days, otherwise known as the maximum limit that I should ever leave corn rows in. I explained that the strain was giving me headaches (the half-truth of their removal) and my mom reassured me that this happens the first time – next time, I wouldn’t be bothered as much! I couldn’t break it to her that there’s a good chance we aren’t going to test that “next time” theory out.

One full moon, my parents and I had bonfire on the beach. We brought down a plastic bottle of kava and roasted some corn (and the fruit bat my papa shot) while my Uncle Dylan went diving. He brought up a dozen or so fish and we had ourselves a lovely fish fry under the big torch in the sky.

fire master mama

my favorite people

fruit bat

There are a precious couple of months when avocados and tomatoes overlap and you can make guacamole and salsa. I had a packet of the long term Kraft cheese that I bought back in Vila a while back. And I sadly learned that even things that last disturbingly long periods on the shelf have expiration dates. This particular packet was past due by a few months. I opened it up and bugs crawled out. Not really the experience I was expecting, but cheese is gold here, so I cut off the gross parts and shredded the rest for my cinco de mayo meal, black been tacos!

During 2 week school break, my siblings and cousin Edrian came home from secondary school and stayed with us. It was great! Lots of fishing and swimming and hermit crab catching. Edrian is a great diver and one night, got lucky and caught us an octopus and a lobster. I helped my papa tenderize the octopus arms (legs? tentacles?) to make them more tender. We mixed them into the green curry I made and had an unusual but delicious spicy seafood feast.

Maybe it’s because of the constantly changing weather lately, but I keep getting sick. Usually it’s just a case of “the flu” - endless sneezes and a nose on the run, nothing too serious, just obnoxious. The real tissue is that it causes problems with my toilet paper supply, a real treasure on the island, so I’ve resorted to learning a proper snot rocket. When I was little, Shoshana affectionately called me “Snot.” I wish this name gave me a leg up in the snot rocket game, but unfortunately it was just a big sister teasing her little shadow. The name Snot does, however, finally resonate with me as an appropriate nickname, which is worth something right? I’m attempting to teach myself this invaluable skill and I get jealous when I see a ni-Vanuatu showing off his or her ability with ease. It’s official, they are professional snot rocketeers. There is even a language word for the action, suru. One of these days I’ll stop missing my shirt and I’ll hit the ground instead. Or just stop being sick!

One a more serious note, I recently had to rub shoulders with two situations that were and still are unsettling for me. Domestic violence and child abuse are very real things in this country, but I’ve been fortunate enough so far to not have anything occur in my immediate community, at least nothing brought to my attention. It’s a tricky situation, too, because I am not in a position to do anything about it. I am an outsider who doesn’t quite grasp the workings of kastom and taboo around things like this and it’s incredibly hard to accept this fact.  One of my neighbors told my mama and me that her partner hits her often and did so when she was pregnant. She is 20 and he has a child that is her age with a woman who apparently left him for the same fashion. She is from Santo and has no ties on Ambae, so leaving seems like an obvious choice if it were me. A-ha… “if it were me” changes everything and I am slowly learning to respect her decisions to stay while still encouraging her to go. Only my mama and I know what’s going on and I have to work with her husband, one of the school teachers, once a week. I told them I refused to ever work with him again, but then they explained to me how dangerous it would be if he knew that anyone knew.

A few weekends later, one of my students came up to the school with deep knife cuts on his hand. I helped him dress the wounds while he told me and my mama that his mom had done this to him because he was being naughty. He bent over to rinse the cut at the water tank and my mom pointed to the several scars on his back from previous cuts. Another really difficult situation. Child abuse is not publicly tolerated here and, for the record, these situations do not properly represent the majority of people here. But unfortunately things like this happen and no one really knows what to do, which saddens me. My papa called the police, but they didn’t pick up (oh boy!) and my headmaster agreed to go down to the station in Saratamata next pay day. This has been tough to deal with, but I'm definitely learning alot from these tricky situations - about my own standards and how I can be supportive and understanding that other people have their own.

but, only a lighter note, dorina!

knives in trees!

dorina and her mandarin

 

three's compawny too

As fur my children, Lava the orange puskat ran away and has apparently been spotted a few times living life as a wild woman in the bush. Teenagers! I’m cool with it. Sometimes you’ve gotta just let em go figure out the world. My sweet but egg-stealing pup Mus Man got on somebody’s nerves a bit too many times and was killed back in December. Now it’s just Quinn and me. Quinn is still a badass puskat with warrior-like hunting skills. One evening I was at my parent’s house and my papa heard some rat movement in their bush kitchen. We decided to test out Quinn’s skills. We stuck him in the kitchen and it was less than 30 seconds before he came out growling with his teeth sunken into a rat. You’ve not seen nothing like the mighty Quinn!

mus and lava

when quinn the eskimo gets here

naps

 
 My uncle Dik whose been working on the kindy playground decided to bring me a new puskat. She’s a tiny little grey furball with an orange face and other splashes of orange on her legs and bel, little reminders of Lava. I named her Fule Biti which means little moon. Since Lava decided to try out the wild life and become a bush cat, Quinn and I have been without a third. Fule fits in perfectly: she likes to climb and sleep and eat avocados. The down side to having a new lady kitten around the house is that Quinn is a bit too interested and isn’t heeding to my warning that, at 2 months old and the size of his left nut, she’s not really looking for a relationship with him right now. She’s gotten pretty good at fending him off and when all else fails, I let her sleep at the bottom of my bed under the net. <-An update! Since I wrote this, they have really become lovers. They curl up together for nice long cat naps and Quinn even shared an extra rat with Fule when he was too fulap to enjoy his catch!

fule biti

exploring

having an engaging conversation

There’s a baby on school grounds named Anaeda. Anaeda, Mr. Allan’s child, is a cute baby girl that hasn’t reached the age of being afraid of me yet, so I play with her pretty often. After 7 months, I have just found out that Anaeda is in fact a boy. I actually found out mid-being corn rowed, which only made the whole scenario stranger. This falls in line with when Jessie Rae and Nathan, after a year with their two female puskats, felt something peculiar under Pistol’s tail – two balls. The night of the shocking Anaeda’s true sex identity revelation, I had a dream about Quinn, my own puskat. Quinn was tittying a litter of kittens, his own! This is funny because in real life, people here are frequently confused as to why my cat “Queen” is a boy. It’s Quinn! Oh well. What makes this all the more weirder (and makes me question if this is all just a bizarre dream??) is that Fule thinks Quinn is her mom, I think. She tries to titty on Quinn’s belly all the time. What’s next, I simply don’t know.

anaeda the.... boy?

 Here are a few pictures of my mama and her pet parrot, sivi. Siviru means parrot in local language, so she has named all past sivirus “Sivi,” too. This follows my parents’ usual pattern of same naming: Wala the pigs, Livu the dogs, and Sivi the parrots. Sivi eats papaya and sugar cane and does birdlike things like climb on things and whistle.

sivi

his good angle

always boared

livu, the family pup

slothin

school daze

One project I’m working on with the classes is eco-bricks. We’ve got a lot of litter around here and it’s mainly due to “white man kakae” or non-island food. Someone opens up a packet of noodles or crackers and either throws the wrapper in the ples blo dirty (trash pit) or burns it – both options aren’t helping keep this beautiful place as it is. The worst part is the batteries littering the ground. The first day class 6 went collecting, they all came back with full bottles. Unfortunately, this speaks as much to their interest and productivity as it does to the trash surrounding the school. I learned about bottle bricks when I lived at Place, a co-op in Oakland, the summer before Peace Corps. I recently found some great manuals made by a group who led projects in the Philippines and since introducing it to the teachers and students, it’s been a hit! It forces everyone to see trash in a new light and it’s giving us an opportunity to transform trash into treasure. We’re in the middle of a school wide competition between classrooms this term (I’m treating the winners to popcorn and a movie) and next term, the building begins! We’ve got plans to build benches around some big trees on campus and make an outdoor classroom seating area. I can’t wait to see what’s next with this one!

The big project happening at school right now is the kindy playground. The ministry of education is really pushing for effective kindies as a foundation for education. Play to learn! So the country’s kindy program has been revamped with structured curriculum, classroom layout guides, and requirements for an outdoor learning center. In reality, this whole country is an outdoor learning center, but I think they’re picturing something a little more consolidated. So a crew of papas got to work and a few weeks later, we’ve got ourselves a badass kindy playground. Yeah, I’ll say it. It’s the coolest one I’ve seen yet! Monkey bars, sand pit, swings, all the good stuff. But the best part is that it’s covered with a nice, shady natangura roof. Many families here struggle to pay school fees, so the thatched roof (540 panels of it, natangura leaves woven together by expert hands) served as barter for 15 or so families’ outstanding fees. Every term the school office is filled with woven mats and chickens in exchange for school fees. I really like this system, especially when I get to buy a foul for a couple bucks and make fresh chicken fajitas for dinner! 

On Kindy Day, June 12, we had a big opening for the playground. This day was gonna be a long one because the SCA (School Community Association) meeting was planned for the afternoon. So much run around isn’t the norm, but my headmaster forgot that the June 12 is always day blo kindy, so cramming it all in would have to happen. I woke up early to a rainy day, but luckily that stopped around 7:30. The kindy celebration was supposed to start at 7:30, but this wouldn’t be Vanuatu if not for a delay! Island time comes with plenty of perks, but I knew that this time it was just going to make our double header even longer. Oh well, laef i olsem! I helped decorate the kindy playground, but I’m not embarrassed to say that my contributions were the weakest of all the decorations. I have clear handwriting, so my best offering was writing Happy Kindy Day in the sand. These ladies know how to flasem gud (decorate, make flashy) just about anything! 

We ended up settled in the dining hall around 10 and got started soon after. All of the guests and the one tuturani (me) were given salusalus (leis) and went to our designated seats on the stage. No opening ceremony is complete without a plethora of speeches. A pastor started us off with a ridiculously long sermon that wrapped around so many tangents, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one lost in there. He covered everything from how a ripe papaya holds the seeds for a whole plantation, exclaiming that little class 1 “Lawence the nation” could lead us all if we believed in him, he explained that we are all like the Virgin Mary (and someone named Elizabeth? I clearly never attended Catholic school) and went as far as saying that we are all virgins, a somewhat confusing topic for the mixed crowd. He analyzed the school motto “Vano Dadari” which means “to go beyond” and he finished up his lengthy, thunderous monologue (the whole hour was in screams and shouts, fire and brimstone style) with how papas are not the heads of the household, but the foundation. Some of these topics would have been engaging on their own, but this was an example of one of those times when the sum falls short of each part’s value. It was amusing nonetheless. My papa and the headmaster gave their toktoks and I excused myself from the last ones to join my mama who was listening from my front porch. 

Once part one was complete, we all moseyed over to the playground and witnessed the ribbon cutting and the cake cutting, both incredibly important when making things official in Vanuatu. By this time it was past lunchtime and the women got to work serving the food. A full blown mama machine, I tell you! I helped with the cake, aka the best job, because it entails sneaking bites. We ate while the kindy kids sang songs for us. 

The afternoon was a long SCA meeting with plenty of discussion and argument and back and forth. This all happens in local language, so I usually read my book or drift off into day dream.  I stuck around because the women’s council had a few announcements about the past fundraiser and our future plans. After expenses, we ended up raising around $300 at the June 3 fundraiser! I’ll be out of town for the next work party on June 24 when the men will cut the trees and level out the land and I’ll sadly miss the next fundraiser on July 3. In the meantime, mamas will be preparing the natangura panels for the roofing. Our goal is to have the market house up and running by end of August and I think it may just happen!

The closing prayer finally happened around 6:30 and my papa went out and brought some kava for the fam to enjoy after a long day. My day had two highlights: the delicious 400 slices of cake I ate and the bizarre insult I was given. 10 points for a creative insult, especially when said in complete oblivion that it would be offensive in the first place. It’s not every day someone tells you that your cheeks are swollen like a lamb’s!

cake time

tasi

fancy fancy!

aunt yvonne preparing the scissors for the ribbon cutting

ms gwinet and shamila

salu salu line

stage view

all hands on deck for cake cutting

mama and me

shelda with her masterpiece

yum

lawence trying out the swings!

pretty kindy gals

monkey bar mania

new kids on the block

Last year when I got to my site for the first time, I was lucky to have Michelle and Sydney, two older Ambae volunteers, with me to help ease the transition. Even though bush life during training helped prepare me for the daily occurrences on an outer island, this new place was about to be my home, community, family, everything for the next two years, which nothing can quite prepare you for. At the time I was grateful (still am of course) for their tips, their grasp on Bislama and local kastom, and I admired the easy pattern they fell into when storying with people – things you learn after some time out here. Anyways, I knew at that point that when the new volunteers eventually (how time passes) come after me, I’d pay it forward and give them a hand. 

The new volunteers’ site placements were not excluded from the things Cyclone Pam jumbled up in Vanuatu. Many of their sites were in the Shepherds, on Tanna, and on the outer islands surrounding Efate. So by the time the trainees became volunteers mid-April, plenty of them had new sites to look forward to. Ambae would be receiving her fair share of new kids on the block: Grace would be living in Saratamata and working for the provincial government doing IT work, Avery heading to Vuimberugu to work at the aid post, Kathleen to Wainasasa to teach primary school, and Thomas replacing Jessie Rae and Nathan at Ambaebulu as a teacher. Peace Corps asked me to accompany Kathleen to her site while Michelle (who used to be at Kathleen’s site) would be taking up Avery to get him settled. 

Before the sites were confirmed, Peace Corps requires visible confirmation on elements such as locks on the house, screen windows, a toilet, and bathhouse. The office asked me to make these checks for the two North Ambae sites a few weeks before their arrival. My papa and I set off early in the morning and made our way up to Wainasasa. My parents were teachers (my papa the headmaster) at Simon School in Wainasasa for eight years when my siblings were little. They loved it there and (no surprise) the village loved my parent’s warmhearted, easy going natures. Everyone time I visit Wainasasa, many people tell me how they love being around my parents and I let them know I couldn’t agree more. We checked out Michelle’s old house, soon to be Kathleen’s new house, and hiked over to Vuimberugu. I had been to Wainasasa several times, but this was my first time at Avery’s future site. It is so peaceful in the bush and I fell in love with the hike to Vuimberugu, ups and downs and bridge crossings and overwhelming views of the ocean. We got to his house and met his family. His papa is the bigfala chief, who I call Dadi Paulwin, and he and his wife were so kind. Avery is a tall man and his little house would be a funny fit. Dadi Chief showed us his tilapia ponds which were close to harvesting and my papa and I got excited with the prospects of our own tilapia pond plans. We followed a different trail back down and leisurely wound up on the main road and eventually home. Hiking with my papa is always a treat because he, like most man-Vanuatu, is so in tune with nature. Walking these paths is as natural as breathing for him and he’s always generous with insight and outlook. It ended up being a really nice day and I was looking forward to returning to North Ambae sooner than later with its new residents.

The full 7 days before they arrived, the weather on Ambae was absurd. Minus a few short spells, it didn’t stop raining for the whole week! On one of these days, my mama, papa, and I decided to embrace the pouring rain and walk to town. It’s a good thing Vanuatu’s money is now plastic because nothing was dry about this journey. Right after the first big hill on our wokabaot home, my flip flops broke and I finished the 10 mile round trip barefoot. Minus the rocky patches, the dirt road (turned mud pit) felt great! We grabbed some bush cabbage along the road and took turns throwing coconut shells at a mandarin tree that bloomed early. When we got home, my papa shot a small pig and we roasted it with the cabbage for a delicious dinner. 

It seemed as though the wet-ther wasn’t planning on easing up for the new pis kops’ arrival. It was a cloudy, gloomy, muddy mess and would make it pretty impossible for a truck to get us to the northern road village Vuivetu before the hike up to their homes. But! Lo and behold! Ambae must have read something somewhere about the importance of first impressions and the day they arrived the sun decided to show up and it was a gloriously cloudless blue sky kinda Wednesday. They hopped off the plane with grins on their faces (I remember these feelings vividly... so this little building is our airport? And did we just fly over an incredible reef and a coconut plantation before landing at it? Is this home now?) Everyone was here now, plus the folks heading to Maewo, Johanna, Aaron, and Leah who have to take a 1 ½ hour boat ride over from Ambae. As we waited for all of the bags to be flung off the plane, they looked around nervously, not seeing their stuff. True to nature, nothing happens smoothly in this country. I have come to learn that plan A is just for kicks and plan B, C, D, and so on usually unfold in their own roundabout ways. If Peace Corps has taught me anything, it would be the importance of flexibility. Life is much more enjoyable if you go along for the ride instead of always trying to direct the course. In my little home, I have a picture of my friend Shea and I at AfrikaBurn (Hey Shea!) and we’re holding a sign we found that says “Relax, nothing is under control.” Amen!

Anyways, Air Vanuatu said the bags would be on the afternoon flight, so we decided to postpone our trip up North until the next day so Avery and Kathleen could have their luggage (and mattresses, mosquito nets, medicine, everything) with them at site. The Maewo folks had it a little more difficult – with a boat to catch before afternoon set in, they took mental inventory of what was in their carry-ons and decided to head to their island. They were already aware that this is all a part of the adventure! 

We dropped off Thomas at his site (Jessie and Nathan’s old place where I spent many a slumber party sharing jugs of cheap red wine and storying until late in the night) and we all dropped our stuff off at Grace’s new place. Her situation is a bit different because she’s working at the provincial office and lives in town. Her place is a little two room (but two-story) building inside a guesthouse with an amazing porch upstairs that catches the ocean breeze. I wouldn’t trade my little world for her flush toilet, icebox, and running water, but that doesn’t mean I won’t cherish it every time I come in for pay day! We went down to the saltwater and swam for a bit, relishing in the incredible view of mountainous, waterfall-filled Maewo just across the way while savoring our own slice of paradise. Turns out that afternoon when we went back to get the bags from the airport, they hadn’t arrived and were promised to be on the next morning’s flight. Okay, okay, sure! That night we made burgers and got to know each other (as someone pointed out, our newly assigned friends!) and the next morning we headed to the airport for their things. Surprise! No gat. Nothing i kam, no wan samtin!  They were a bit bummed, but life travels on, so we hopped in the truck and headed North. Once we arrived at Vuiveto, Kathleen and I split from Michelle and Avery and started the half hour hike up to her site. When we finally reached the clearing, we heard shouts of “Michelle, Michelle!” from all the little kids, really disappointing them when they realized we weren’t their favorite tuturani (language for white man) ever. This, along with our sweat-soaked, huffing puffing selves, made for an awkward first few moments at Kathleen’s new home for 2 years.  Michelle is basically a North Ambae superstar and Wainasasa’s pride and joy. They knew she was visiting, but Michelle wasn’t going to spoil Kathleen’s welcome with her reunion and planned on stopping by on Saturday. I’m pretty convinced that sooner than later Kathleen will join Michelle in superstar status, just gotta be patient. We met her host parents and discovered that I singaot Auntie to Kathleen. Everyone’s family in this neck of the woods!

That night the school hosted a welcome kakae where the headmaster, Kathleen, and I gave speeches. They nervously asked Kathleen if she liked drinking kava and when she Kool-Aid man answered “Oh yeahhh” they were all thrilled. We drank our shells, ate some food, and went back to Kathleen’s and split the bottle of wine I brought for first night celebrations. The next couple of days were filled with an ample amount of handshakes (what’s new? I taught Kathleen a helpful hint in the land of not enough spoons to go around: shake with your right, eat with your left) and plenty of mandarins. We explored the creek and got her bush kitchen equipped with firewood and dry coconut leaves. 

On Saturday I left her with her own headspace and visited Avery’s site, a 30 minute hike away. We checked out his aid post and caught some great views of the ocean. On Sunday we went to morning service in the little Wainasasa church house and by the time it was over, Grace, Lin, and Thomas had carried up all of Avery and Kathleen’s shit! If hiking it with a small backpack leaves me out of breath, you can imagine 3 people hauling up loads of stuff in the morning heat. Awe le le! After lunch we walked back down, leaving Avery and Kathleen in their new solitary yet noisy, busy lives. The truck dropped me off at Lotahimwamwavi and everyone decided to check out my site. We went down to the water and ended up spending the next couple of hours jumping off a cliff and swimming around. A lovely afternoon (and last few days) spent with newly assigned friends!

snack break

wainasasa bridge! michelle's project last year

 

vuimberugu

avery's home

tilapia party 

good, the road works!