niko si

So a lot has been going on on this sleepy island during the busy month of September. I got back from Vila town on Saturday the 12th and was just in time for Penama Day Week. I call it Penama Day Week because damn, do these people know how to stretch out a holiday! Penama Day, or Sept 16, is the day we celebrate Penama province, the area where I live. 

Vanuatu has 6 provinces, cleverly named after their main islands. From north to south:

1. Torba = Torres Islands and Banks Islands

2. Sanma = Santo and Malo

3. Penama = Pentecost, Ambae, Maewo

4. Malampa = Malekula, Ambrym, Paama

5. Shefa = Shepherds Islands and Efate

6. Tafea = Tanna, Aniwa, Futuna, Erromango, and Aneityum

Every province has its own holiday, and ours had arrived. Sunday the 13th was opening day of the whole shebang so the community gathered at the Lo One celebration grounds where we rang in Children’s Day and Independence back in July. The week would be full of football and volleyball tournaments, kastom dances, and music. The food and kava stalls were up and running and the women’s council decided to run our own food stall. Now I’ve always respected the people behind the counters of these things – it’s so much work preparing, cooking, and serving all day long, all week long, in the tropical heat. However, after an exhausting week of these activities, I now know just how grossly I underestimated the commitment. I knew it’d be hard, but didn’t know it would be that hard. And it was, but the good kind of hard that pairs with a good time when you’ve got excellent company. I really love the women I worked with and spent much of the 4 days in admiration of their hardworking and tireless natures. Such incredibly tough mamas! I was the weak link at first, the one in the way, but eventually got into the groove of the food stall machine. 

I did introduce a ridiculously innovative means of selling kato, or deep fried dough rings. Usually you make normal sized kato and they go for 20 vatu a pop. I thought, hey! let's make them half the size, call them kato biti, and sell them 10 vatu. Just for kicks! Everyone was super weary and hesitant to try it out. I'll admit, it was an extreme proposal with big risk. I got in on production with Rolin and everytime I split the dough in half, I saw her put them back together. Finally I convinced her to try it out and if they didn't sell, I'd buy em all. Luckily they were a hit and we made many rounds of bitis. Rolin still makes them to sell at school market, too! 

Finally the 16th rolled around and we all had a great time celebrating. Avery and Matthew Hardwick, a former volunteer now working with UNDP, came and we all took some shells and storied. They were working on a land and water survey in the bush the following week. 

Penama Day came to a closing and so did my days as a Vanuatu food stall worker. With the fee to run the stall, supplies, and other expenses, we ended up raising $150. Good, but not great for the effort put into the whole ordeal. It was an experience I’m grateful I had, but have no plans of signing up for ever again. The next morning I slept in til 8 and when I told people this, they cracked up! Sleeping in until 8 is unheard of here, but my exhaustion easily overpowered the rooster alarm clocks, blaring sun, and the allure of the fresh morning that usually nudge me out of bed by 6.

supplies

setting up shop

coconut milk milk milk

peaceful cook space, pre smokey sauna status

julima and alison sellin kakae

view from the stall

super jealous of dorina hammock naps

pack it up!

little geraldina! 

kato biti, the 8th wonder of the world

On Friday I walked to town and was excited to see Cindy, the post office lady, move to the shelf when I walked in. This means there was something with my name on it! I got a wonderful letter from my friend Ellis who has been a loyal companion in penpalhood with me throughout my service. Additionally, Cindy grabbed a carton that was basically as big as the post office and handed it to me. What! It was a package from my Aunt Jenny and my cousin Kaitlyn that was packed with the most amazing goodies and a thoughtful letter. I was overwhelmed and in shock as I dug through it to discover more and more treats and school supplies. Wow! It’s been a great sharing package. One project I run at school is the Niko Si Club, which means “Yu, Yes” in language. Yu yes is bislama talk for “you rock” and that’s the goal of the club. When I was in primary school, we had a sparkle club that awarded students for good behavior. Well, niko si club is our sparkle club. It’s sadly the norm here to punish students for bad behavior and shame them when they are in the wrong. We’ve got serious behavior problems at the school— it feels like every day kids are doing punishment work and there are weekly whippings. I haven’t witnessed much positive reinforcement or reward-based initiatives and I think it’s time to try something new. So we’re trying it out. Once a week the teachers choose a student from each class to join the niko si club. We announce the new members, hand out glittery certificates and prizes, and acknowledge the students' respectful actions and positive attitudes in front of the school. Lucky for them and thanks to Aunt Jenny, the prizes now include rice krispy treats and great school supplies!

Our school has some old cement water tanks that are just asking to become art. So at the end of the term, each of the niko si club members will have a chance to paint a sea creature on the big water tank and it’ll transform into a magical underwater mural! Hopefully this tradition will continue with the next volunteer at my site and the school grounds will be covered in beautiful masterpieces and reminders of the tangible benefits of being a nice kid.

The main order of business for Friday September 18 was Tim’s last kakae or his farewell feast. Tim came at the same time as me, January 2014, and is an IT volunteer at St. Patrick’s College, the secondary school where we had the camp in August. Tim’s faced a variety of obstacles during his service and one of the biggest was with his school. So after a year and a half of back and forths, the school (well the Anglican Church, the people who run the school) decided to let him go. We all went to his site that afternoon and hung out on his porch. He was selling everything and we got to pick through the leftovers of the daylong sale. We collectively split the remainders of his Bailey’s and a few stashed beers. My best 2 finds were a can of mushrooms and something else...

I’ve become quite complacent with the oddities of my site. They no longer bother me, just the folks that come to visit. And now that I think about it, many of them are door-based. We could even narrow this down to hinges.

1. The wind knocked my toilet door out of whack last year and now it doesn’t close properly, so I just hold it while a squat, both for balance and privacy.

2. The floor in my house is uneven, so my back door is also uneven. It used to scrape against the ground every time I tried to open and shut it, which was all the time because I’ve only got two doors. And this is just the way it was until one day I was building a shelf and decided to shave off some of my cement floor with the hammer. It worked! But then the weak door started to shift down without the support of the floor rubbing against it and now it has a new set of problems. Now that it’s unaligned, it won’t naturally stay shut when I close it. This wouldn’t really be a problem except my house has the most wonderful cross breeze and the wind swings it open all the time. Unless I lift it and pull jusssst right. Which I often forget to do because I’m in and out of the house all the time. So now I’ve got a house that seems to be protesting against nothing, acting like a teenager with its door slamming and temper tantrums. Oh well.

3. Finally, the creakiness. I had the loudest doors around. This always made me cringe, but I resigned to doing nothing and got used to this, too. It really only got worse when I got built a screen door for my front entrance. It was your typical screen door screech, except 500 or so times louder. I settled into squeakhood for the past 18 months until…

I found at Tim’s house sale a can of wd40! Now why had I not thought of that? And it truly doesn’t matter now why I didn’t act sooner because I was fine and sane. But I still can’t believe my neglect. Because when I got home, all I did was spray each hinge and now there isn’t a creak to be heard coming out of this little cottage. Unbelievable! A fix that easy… unheard of.

The last kakae was really nice. Tim’s mama made great food and we all enjoyed some shells of kava in Tim’s honor. For g26 Ambae vols, I started with Jessie Rae, Nathan, and Tim. Now it’s just me and my g27 friends. And in 7 months, I’ll be having a last kakae of my own…