end of a good one

I returned from New Zealand on the 20th totally refreshed and ready to get back to Ambae. On the 23rd while we were flying into Lolowai airport, I was eager and excited thinking about the final leg of this Peace Corps journey. I’d be at site for Christmas, New Years, and the beginning of January. Our COS (Close of Service) Conference is mid-January in Vila and then back home to Ambae for 2 months. I plan on leaving the island on March 14th and I’ll have a week in Vila to sort everything out and then off to Southeast Asia for a few months of traveling. And then! Back to the states to figure out what and where “next” is. 

“How simple it is to acknowledge that all the worry in the world could not control the future. How simple it is to see that we can only be happy now, and that there will never be a time when it is not now.” –Jonathan Harnisch

So for now, time to turn on savor mode and enjoy the happiest place on Earth.

I’ll tell ya what – when I stepped off the plane, it felt like someone turned on the heat, full blast. It’s like being in a sauna except there’s no exit door. 6:00 am rolls around and sweat is already rolling down my neck. You can’t leave the heat, so you just get comfortable with it. Setting up my mat or hammock down by the saltwater is my usual escape, but when the wind is sleeping, even the ocean breeze is hot.

Because of the rush of heavy rains, extra sunshine, and lack of work party students, I returned to an overgrown bush of a school grounds. My parents had spent the last three weeks in the village, so my unattended garden went from polished to wild. I tried to open the corrugated iron door and a faol squacked at me for disturbing her progress – a few days later, 14 baby chicks popped out of the garden! My apologies! My clothesline disappeared into a big island cabbage bush and the path to my toilet was gone. I’ve slowly whacked and hacked my way back into a presentable space, but I haven’t been in too big of a hurry. 

While I was turning the enclosed jungle in my front yard back into a garden, I found some surprise veggies tangled up in the others – capsicum, cayenne and presumably carrots! I haven’t planted cayenne peppers since May 2014, so that was an unexpected find. I did a little surprise veggie dance and asked my parents later to identify the potential carrot heads. Well they got a big kick out of that considering those weren’t carrots, but wild tobacco. They thought it was hilarious! They really couldn’t fathom how someone could get the leaves mixed up, forgetting I am not a fellow lifelong subsistence farming green thumb. As for other exciting garden news, the zucchini I planted sprouted up and my family got to taste it for the first time! They had as much fun saying “zucchini” as they did eating it. 

a banana tree heading to maewo

double decker truck rides

gardens gone wild

former clothesline, current food!

 

hatched

All the pups have gotten a month older and rowdier. Quinn and Fule my puskats are still alive and successfully protected my house from rat intruders while I was gone.

On Christmas Eve morning, my mama woke up early and made laplap and we walked to town to sell it at mami amina’s store. Lolowai was busy with classic last minute Christmas shopping, but with an island twist. The family store now has an icebox and generator which means ice cream and cold drinks and a rotating fan! Fans, quite the invention.

laplap transport - shadow box head

The next morning was Christmas. My family went to church and I got to relax in my own sanctuary – my hammock down by the sea. When they got back we caught two roosters to cook. Catching chickens is one of the funniest activities to participate in. Everyone finds their strategic position around the school grounds and prepares for the chase. Someone chooses the target and chases them in the direction of some anticipating hands. If you’re fortunate it works within the first few tries! My papa roasted one of them in a pot, turning it into an oven by covering it in coconut husks. I cooked the other one in a big chicken soup with homemade noodles. It was all so so delicious. Mami Amina and Uncle Glen came from Lolowai and brought a 24 pack of the new Tusker cans with them. We feasted and drank and listened to Dixie Chicks, Mami Amina’s favorite these days. In the evening we drank some kava and kale’d with wine. It was such a wonderful Christmas and one of my favorite days on Ambae.

jug wine!

classy ladies

merry christmas

The 26th is Vanuatu Family Day which is really just another excuse to enjoy each other’s company. We engaged in a little tie dye ad spent the day relaxing, eating laplap, and playing uno. My papa shot two nawimba and we had that for dinner along with some pig Uncle Glen cooked up. Another good day with good people.

laplap in action

two turtle doves... jk, wild nawimba!

peti wanting me to dye

pros!

masterpieces

 It’s back. The fruit trifecta, that is. Watermelon, Pineapple, and Mango overlap during summer and these three make the sizzling days sweeter. Before I left for New Zealand, we tasted the first watermelons from my parent’s garden this season and they were delicious. Since then we’ve emptied out their stock (somewhere around 100 watermelons!) and have been enjoying everyone else’s. People are pretty generous with fruit here. It’s one of my favorite things. Maybe I’ve talked about this before, but because the land is so rich and the produce plentiful, it allows people to give freely.  There’s nothing better than picking a bundle of mandarins and sharing them with whoever you pass on the road. And produce is cheap enough that even if you do pay the dollar for a pineapple, sharing the juicy goodness is the natural and easy thing to do. Christopher McCandless said “Happiness only real when shared” and I think that definitely applies to fruit.

fellow truck passengers

Sadly I’ve had to face a hard truth when it comes to mangos. Last year I was a bit itchy from the green skin and since then I’ve been careful. Apparently plenty of people are allergic to the skin and its usually just fine to wash your face and hands after indulging. Unfortunately this year the hot hot heat mixed with the itchiness, green or ripe mango, is unbearable and I’ve had to say farewell to one of the tastiest fruits around. It’s too hard to avoid the skin! Unless it’s peeled and chopped up, which it rarely is, I can’t even look at them without getting itchy. Such a tragic love story. One day we visited my Aunt Merelyn’s house and I decided to go all out. She has parrot mangos which are funky looking and super sweet. I ate a ridiculous amount of mangos and for an afternoon, forgot the consequences that would follow. The next few days were spent with two hands simultaneously scratching up and down my face and neck, nonstop. A small price to pay for a scrumptious snack, but not worth it. Adios mangos! We shall meet again in America where I have access to cortisone cream and an electric fan. And sadly there is the face that there are too many mangos. Even if/when everyone here ate a dozen a day, the ground would still be covered in rotten fruit. The pigs have a field day every evening underneath the mango tree at the school entrance gobbling up the fermenting grub.

rotting mangos make happy pigs

sandy the pineapple homebrew guard

 My sister Petrina and I have been conducting our first solar dryer experiments. We’ve tested out bananas, mangos, and pineapple. You chop up the fruit and boil them in sugar water, place them on the trays in the dryer, and let the sunshine do the work. So far, so good! I also did straight banana (without mixing with sugar) and made banana chips that turned out well. And I dried out cayenne and pima peppers, crushed them up, and now have some homemade chili spice! When I go to Vila I’m going to get some more recipes and ideas to bring back.

banana boil

treats

One day we went over to Lololiso, the one-house village where Auntie Merelyn lives. She is one of my favorite people here and her girls are a close second, third, fourth, and fifth. There are actually more of them – one boy and six girls – but Jeffrey lived in Vila and the other girls live in Lolowai. Anyway, they are a lovely, smart, beautiful family and I love when we spend the afternoon at their house. Jeffrey’s son Jared is visiting from Vila for December and January. Being a Vila kid/person is vastly different than being an island kid/person. City vs. country. Jared loves visiting the island and eating fruit off the trees and living bush life. We all climbed trees and played around while the adults talked. When the sun went down we danced around with ember-ended sticks and made floating designs in the sky. We were all entranced by the glow. Whoever said don’t play with fire has never done this!

jared, aunti merelyn, and hego in the back

fire!

On the 28th I went to a kastom mared pretty close to where I live. After part one in the bride’s parent’s village, everyone shifts to the man’s village. While this transition was taking place, I scooted on back home and spent the afternoon swimming and reading down by the water. It’s funny, a year ago I wouldn’t have felt comfortable leaving a community function early. But now I’m free to move around independently instead of being constrained by social obligations. A positive catch 22 – the more integrated you become, the less you have to integrate!

rockin the tie dye to a wedding!

8 am pig roost

dream station

 The last day of 2015 marked my first Vanuatu church wedding! I’ve been to many kastom weddings, but have never attended one that looked familiar. And to make it even better, it was Daphne and Donald’s wedding. Daphne is my next door neighbor Aunt Yvonne’s daughter and she’s the mama of my favorite bumbu Dorina and her babydoll sister Dorinette. They live in East Ambae, so we got up early and followed my Uncle Dimas’ truck over there. The wedding was darling – westernized and tacky and lovely all bundled up in one. They had the ceremony, cut the cake, took pictures, and we feasted. Usually kakae time is an overwhelming mess – feeding that many people isn’t an easy operation. We usually use leaves instead of plates, so the handling and bundling of food is all over the place. There are too many people serving, a handful of fly swatters, and a snail pace line. But! This time is was so simple. They packed Styrofoam boxes with meals ahead of time and everything was fluid and organized. It was all people could talk about! Because it was an SDA (Seventh Day Adventist) wedding, there was no drinking or kava or even dancing, but that also means no drunk yungfala breaking stuff, so no complaints.

aunti yvonne and dorinette

best friend/mom

fancy fancy

mata and petrina "witnesses" aka bridesmaids

daphne and donald

everyone sighing with ease

sweet little dorina

one in an endless series of awkward family photos

aunties

triple baby powder action

thrilled

 We left in the afternoon and got home just in time to do some sunset yoga down by the beach to say goodbye to 2015. The little cousins came over and I painted their faces and we all vowed to stay up until midnight. I drank kava with my parents, which made staying up a challenge, but I made it! We listened to music and played checkers all night and when the clock struck 12, we banged on the school bell! That day they had informed me of a kastom that when the new year comes, a white cloud will pass over where the sun rises and that means the year will be good. Hmmm. Maybe I would have been hesitant to believe this ritual a year ago. However, I’ve learned not to doubt these kinds of things and lo and behold, it happened. We cheered for the future and I passed out at approximately 12:05. A sweet and simple island new year’s eve.

new years eve joy

 The end is only the end when you forget that there’s a beginning on the other side. I am happy to say goodbye to 2015 because 2016 is full of adventure-filled promise. Who knows what this next year will bring? A lot of change and a lot of excitement, that is for certain. And this past year was wonderful! I had the opportunity to travel around to see new places and familiar faces. I got to meet my sweet nugget of a niece Lyla, share my little world with Samantha, and visit many of my best friends’ sites around Vanuatu. 2015 started in Port Vila, then Aneityum, Tanna, back home to the states, back home to Ambae, a few Santo trips, up to the Banks, over to beautiful New Zealand, and it all wrapped up in the sweetest of places. 2015 was full of tasty meals and laughs and shells of kava. It was also full of tears and growing up, thanks to Cyclone Pam and all the other detours and speed bumps I’ve encountered. And for these, too, I’m eternally grateful. Henry Miller said, “There is only one great adventure and that is inward toward the self.” I’ve learned so much about myself this past year through mindfulness and meditation and doing what I love and the journey within continues on. Cheers!

nipple mushrooms!

kindy with our vanuatu flags