october fun

October arrived and that means that my papa was coming home from China! He went to China for 3 weeks for an island economy workshop with 6 other Ni-Vanuatu. The PEO nominated him to go and fortunately it all worked out. They joined representatives from a bunch of other countries in the Pacific and Africa for a seminar-filled run around China, all sponsored by China. It was an incredible opportunity for him to see a new place and meet so many different people, although the motives and intention behind the whole thing is still a bit sketchy and unclear.

Papa Ishmael came back that next Saturday with new clothes, stories, and a bigger belly. This active bush man was just pampered all over China and is now, probably for the first time in his life, chubby! It’s pretty funny. I finally got to tell someone else they look “fatfatgud” and it not be a baby. We all hung out that day and had a welcome home kava ceremony for him in the evening. So glad to have that funny man back at site!

He showed us the photos he took all over China (they flew on 12 domestic flights and took lots of buses) He had great pictures of the food he ate, the museums he visited, and the fancy hotel rooms they put them up in. Some of the pictures disturbed me – the ones with endless fields of vegetables growing right along the highways they were traveling on. I know that pollution is everywhere, but I didn’t realize that so much produce is being blasted by even more chemicals than what’s already being generously sprayed on them. It was definitely another reminder of why I want to try and eat as local as I can when I return to the states.

October 5th was Vanuatu Constitution Day and World Teacher’s Day so naturally this meant no school. A holiday-filled country! We walked down to Lolopuepue where the celebrations would take place. I like the hour and a half walk to Lolopuepue because it’s pretty flat and views at the end of it are outrageous. Your eyes can’t take in the amount of ocean visible at Lolopuepue’s point! You must engage in sprinkler style rotation to get the whole deep blue panorama. We arrived and I sat with some mamas washing their clothes in the creek that feeds into the ocean. They slam the wet clothes on the rocks to clean them and then lay them out all day to dry.

heading to lolopuepue

laundry!

Representatives from VTU or Vanuatu Teacher’s Union were there and they gave a toktok about changing fees and the credit union and other information. While this was going on, I had a nice storian with the north Ambae paramount chief Shark Sese. Yes, his name is Shark and he has dreads down to his ass and the funkiest walking stick. He is an oldfala badass! When Peace Corps came to Vanuatu in 1989, he was on the team of Ni-Vanuatu training the Peace Corps staff. A very cool man. Lunch was delicious and so was cake. I got to see my Aunti Lorinette whose gat bel! Her three kids Lavenda, Graydon, and Myra are all darling, so I’m sure #4 will follow suit.

a basketball court with a view

dorina bear

how many ni-vanuatu does it take to cut a cake? the more the batter :)

The day ended and it was time to prepare for the long walk home. It was still daylight so I passed on kava, but I was nudged toward the bucket. Chief Shark helped me empty my Nalgene and replace my walk’s water with kava to bring home. A fair trade! This was the first time I’ve used my water bottle as a vessel for the dirty root juice. It did the trick. However, the unforgiving smell of kava does not easily leave the bottle. I learned this the hard way drowsily the next morning. So it’s been soaking in bleach for a couple of days and will be back to its original purposes today.

October also meant that my best friend Samantha Watts would be visiting soon! Sam and I had talked about her trying to visit for the past year and a half, but back in August she actually bought the ticket and the daydreams became real plans! So once I flipped the calendar to October, I was in Sam mode, eagerly anticipating her visit. But! Before her arrival, I still had one more commitment. Dawna, a volunteer on Efate, has created an incredible 12 week program (and workbook to go along with it) for teaching mama’s English classes. Dawna and her two counterparts Evelyn and Tousong have taught two rounds of the classes in their village Eratap with success. They applied for and received a grant to travel around the country training local community women to lead these classes in their own villages.  They came to Ambae and we held a training of trainers at my site with a few women. They ended up crashing at my site for 3 nights and we had a really lovely time eating good meals and soaking in the hot spring. The kindest thing they could have done, they did. Sam was coming in only a few days and they helped me spring clean my house! I was going to half-ass clean it, but Dawna insisted that we take everything out and scrub the place down. She said that a few months ago she did the same with a few helping hands and it made all the difference. So we turned on some Motown and got to work. By lunch time, the place looked great! It’s amazing what a little Otis Redding and bleach water can do to a place.

Dawna, Evelyn, and Tousong left on Monday to head up to Kathleen and Avery’s sites for more workshops. I accompanied them to Lovuivetu, the village on the road where you hop out and take the path up to Wainasasa. Kathleen came down to meet us and we had a few shells together. A yungfala in her community just passed away and it was a friend of Kathleen’s. This was her first experience with a ded, so it was good to see her and see how she was doing. They had just finished the 10-day a few days before and things were settling down a bit. They began their trek up and I hopped in the truck back to site for a nice kava buzzed sleep.

“How was Sam’s visit? What did yall do??? Did she poop in a hole?” All valid questions. I asked Samantha to write up the journal entry about our wonderful, couldn’t-have-been-better time together. She had to return to her life with a big girl job and responsibilities, so once she gets a chance to reflect, I’ll post it in here!

dawna boiling water

shamila

vetai

dawna sneakily snapped me at my sunset spot!