adventures in vanuatu: good day sunshine

pineapple heart

I’m not really the best (or anywhere close to it) teacher, so when it comes to the classroom, I’ve had a good time doing everything I can to avoid traditional teaching. This includes yoga, class gardens, nature walks, building gnome homes, bottle brick packing, group dances, and instrument making. Whoops! One of my favorites lately has been what I call the Beatles sessions. Every Thursday I spend an hour and a half with class 6. I choose a Beatles song, write the lyrics on the board with some blanks, and have the kids copy them down in their notebooks. Then I play the song and they have to fill in the missing lyrics. It’s terrific! Beatles songs are perfect for this because 1. it’s the Beatles, come on, and 2. the words are simple and for the most part, they sing clearly. Lots of repetition and rhyming and ridiculousness. Some naughtiness, but luckily there’s enough songs to avoid those. Once we’ve figured it out, some kids write the words in their correct places and we sing the song a few times through. We go through a few songs a class and we all leave happy. So far we’ve covered Ob-la-di Ob-la-da, Octopus’s Garden, All Together Now, Help!, Yellow Submarine, All You Need is Love, Baby’s in Black, Dear Prudence, Can’t Buy Me Love, Hello Goodbye, Sgt. Pepper’s, Here Comes the Sun, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, and Piggies. and there’s plenty more where that came from! I think next week we’ll spiral into Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds...

This has, naturally, put me in a real Beatles mood lately. You know the kind. Light, happy go lucky, silly. Thank you for sharing your spirit-lifting magical tunes with the world, Beatles! You can make a sunny Vanuatu morning even brighter. Good day sunshine!

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur came in September. I ate naos (local apples) and honey to celebrate the sweet new year and I fasted on Yom Kippur. I took my mat down to the saltwater and spent the day with myself. I crossed cultures for a bit and reread my favorite parts of the tao teh ching. And on Dave’s suggestion, I began Atonement (only fitting) and also finished up Michael Pollan’s book a Defense for Food. It was an easy fast- I didn’t get many hunger pains until the afternoon. My mama made simboro for me to break the fast. Simboro consists of grated manioc wrapped in island cabbage boiled in coconut milk garlic and onion. It’s my favorite island meal and was extra delicious after an empty bel of a day.

Sometime during the month I was down by the water. I was standing on two rocks in a trance watching a buluk drinking saltwater (bizarre) while peeing (making it even more bizarre) she looked up at me and I fell, not a big fall, just an awkward one. I jammed my middle finger and it swelled up like a misshapen balloon. That night I showed my parents and they had the cure: Mama Joy’s oil. Mama Joy’s is the coconut oil cure all that everyone here swears by. So we rubbed some of that on and then my papa proceeded to “hold it,” Holding my finger sounds like a delicate act, but a better name would be “yanking the joint back into place.” Painful, but effective.

That’s what they call massages, too. Holding your back, holding your arms, holding your legs. Some people are good holders and you can ask them to hold you and they’ll happily do so! Sometimes I get held just for kicks.

I’ve been making lots of sunset bonfires on the beach lately. I usually bring down my kettle and boil some tea and sip that while the sun drowns. My favorite is ginger hibiscus and lemon with honey. The sky does wonderful things and sometimes I’m joined by a few fascinated kids. Fascinated in my odd behavior more than the sunset, but then they ask what I’m doing and we appreciate the sky together. Or they are just silently contemplating why I’m a weird white creature. Both viable.

Aho maroro means “the sun is drowning” or sunset and Aho mocalo means “the sun is climbing” or sunrise. I love that.

Another day, another market house fundraiser! With no end in sight. I usually take the responsibility of walking to town early that morning and acquiring supplies. I love early morning walks. Sometimes it’s just me and my thoughts. Other times I’ve got music or a podcast to keep me company. This Friday morning I passed the market house and the foundation was complete! Great news! I got back to site and they were butchering the 2 pigs we bought for meat. I helped fan the flies away, set up the kava station, and then I relaxed until the food was ready.

The fundraiser was a success. Some yungfala boys brought down a big speaker and played music. At first they didn’t have a flash drive or memory card, so I put some Bob Marley, Rebelution, and local music together and we played that. I stuck some Beatles and CCR on there too, hoping these songs would trickle out after I gained credibility for my super cool reggae mix. Unfortunately (for them, not me) Yellow Submarine and Obla di Obla da were back to back and the yungfala were not having it. They scrambled and found a cooler memory card and my flash drive was immediately replaced with the same old music that they put on repeat at every community event. So close! At least the class 6 students enjoyed hearing the Beatles tunes they just learned in class and all the mamas and papas were into it, too.

My badass island mates Grace, Thomas, Kathleen, and Avery all came to support. Grace works for the province, so she’s got the provincial truck hook up. We drank some shells and storian’d until they headed out. Avery brought me a book, Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley (so so good!) and Thomas brought me his Peace Corps issued bike helmet so I can safely roam around on 2 wheels.

We flattened all the food and kava and made around 500 bucks between the two, around 300 after pulling out the expenses. This money goes into the Women’s Fund to help with the market house construction. A man who is running for provincial government came and presented his donations - $100 and a ton of cement. Actually one ton! It’s great knowing that there are bigfala supporters of what we’re doing, even if it’s kind of a local publicity stunt. We’ll take it!

kava root

evana and hego with laplap leaves and flowers for their favorite aunti

That Saturday was September 26th, which marked my 20 months in country! Pretty wild to think of all the ups and downs and sideways and inwards that have happened during the past 20 months. My service ends in March, so that means only 6 months left. Plenty of time, but also not that much time. I joined my mama, OB, and Morris for a trip to the garden. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but “garden” is a gross understatement. Vanuatu is mainly subsistence farming and therefore, the bush is mainly gardens. Humungous, well-maintained gardens that produce all sorts of delicious things. “Farm” is more like it, but it seems to take away the charm. I love going to the garden! My family has several gardens, as do my brothers and sister, but the one we visited is their main one. It’s about an hour hike uphill into the bush from my site and only a half hour or so from their house in the village.

Right now the garden is growing pineapple, pawpaw, bananas, green onion, capsicum, manioc, taro, corn, cabbage, kumala, yams, and watermelon. There’s a lot going on! Our job that Saturday was weeding around the yams and watermelon. Some plants are friends – they grow well together – and yams and watermelon are an example of friends. The yams climb up the stalks and the watermelons expand underneath. Everyone assumed squat position and began to silently weed. I have found that the garden, tucked away in the living, breathing forest, is a nice place for quiet contemplation. Or turning off the headspace, zenning out, and simply enjoying the task at hand. I have a deep appreciation for weeding after spending time in the family garden. So satisfying to pull out a chunk of weeds by the roots. Except for the ones with thorns. Those can go to hell.

Before we left for the garden I made some hobos for our lunch. Hobos are a meal I learned at summer camp when I was a kid. You chop up veggies and potatoes (and meat if that’s around), douse them with spices, and wrap them up in aluminum foil. I’ve always called them hobos without thinking about the name. I don’t think about it having negative connotation considering a hobo is just a wanderer. And hobos are easy-to-eat meals on the go, a tribute to the fluid lifestyle. And in the book Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert’s poem states that hobo is just short for “homeward bound.” Whether that’s true or not, I like it.

After weeding for a bit, I got a fire going and put the hobos in it to cook. After a half hour or so we ate our hobos, drank some green coconuts, and got back to work. There were some manioc ready to be dug out, so Morris got to working on that. Manioc is a tubular root crop and the main ingredient for my favorite meal simboro. So needless to say, I was more and more excited with each manioc treasure he found underneath its stalk.

We got back home and my brother fried up the purple-est yammiest yam pancakes and my mama make simboro for our dinner.

Here are some photos from the garden!