September 16th is Penama Day, or a day to celebrate
my province! Penama province consists of Pentecost, Maewo, and Ambae islands.
And when I say Penama Day, it actually means a weeklong celebration of all
things football, kava, music, and food. I’m in! This year the celebrations took
place in Saratamata. When I got to town, I ran into Sydney and her sister who
was visiting! We watched a parade, swam in the ocean, had an embarrassing public
pee session, and enjoyed some football. At one point, we got some green
coconuts to drink and I offered to open the second hole in Sydney’s sister’s
coconut to make the drinking more smooth. Well no surprise here, but I slice my
finger in a bloody mess! This poor finger that has already fallen victim to the
knife from clumsy encounters with a passionfruit, an avocado, and now the
coconut. I also have a scar on this finger from a plastic sword fight with a
middle school friend sawyer. I just realized that his name may have some
connection to this digit’s unfortunate fate! Worth looking into.
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shrooms by the bush kitchen
unedible, sadly, but fun to get down and look at! |
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| gangs all here |
October 6th is is Teacher’s Day in Vanuatu, which
means another reason to take off from school and celebrate! This one is pretty
special considering I live at a school and am surrounded by teachers, plus I’m
part-teacher these days. In fact, not only are my mama and papa wonderful
school teachers, they are absolutely my best Vanuatu life teachers. By the time
I got to Ambae after training, I was probably at the infant ni-Van level of
learning. Now I am post-toddler, heading into the adolescence stage, all
because of good ol mom and pops! The skills inherent to these kids or learned
at remarkably young ages are just now coming around for Alison. For example,
I’ve never seen a 4+ year old not crack open a coconut on their first hit with
the bush knife. It’s unreal! I’m getting there! I felt the need to express my
gratitude, so I rambled on their behalf for a lelebet and gave them some Mojo
bars and Crystal Lite packets as an attempt to say thank you. They loved it!
We walked an hour or so down the big road to Lolopuepue, the
place where the PISSA games were held. We, with all the other zone 5 teachers,
met there for a la fet or party. We were salu-salu’d (leis put around your
neck) and my papa gave a speech. He’s the ZCA or zone curriculum advisor and
looks out for the all the schools in da zone. After that we all held each
other’s shoulders and cut the cake (always a big to-do!) and ate some delicious
kakae. When we had arrived, this white man showed up in a truck, which is
always confusing. We met and I found out he was James Buluok, a volunteer from
the UK living on Pentecost, an island to the southeast of us. For 4 years! My
papa had talked to him on the phone, but upon meeting, he was dumfounded. James
took the Pentecost family name Buluok and his Bislama is incredibly good. Like
eerily good – his tones and pronunciation sound like a native speaker’s.
Assuming that he was ni-Van and then finding out he was white man, my papa was
blown away! It was pretty amusing to watch unfold.
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| wai maito spilling into the sea |
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| wai maito, or black water |
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| group cake cutting, the only way to do it |
James came to Vanuatu 4 years ago with a small volunteer
group and basically never left. He lives on Pentecost and has created a summer
school program for top 6th grade students preparing to enter
secondary school. There just isn’t enough emphasis on good students here. No
chance to excel or be rewarded, so this program would give those students an
opportunity to build confidence and skills at a one month summer school/camp. He’s run the
camp 2 times on Pentecost, including more regions in the second year. This January
will be year 3 for all of Pentecost, and next year they’re expanding it to
include Ambae! So by this point, James had been on Ambae for 28 days going
school-to-school spreading the word and gauging interest. All positive thus
far! His last stop was my school to fill us in on the plans and then he’d hop a
ship back to Pentecost. He came to our school a couple of days later. We
chatted for a while and he told me about his story. He also told me about his
trek around Ambae. He didn’t even bring a towel with him. Man-Ambae just took
care of him at every stop with a place to sleep and food to eat, totally
appreciating the work he’s doing. I love this place!
Halloweeeeeen! By far the most ridiculous thing I’ve had to
explain cross-culturally since being in Vanuatu. Dressing up, jack-o-lanterns, trick
or treating, candy galore… it’s all a mess! It probably didn’t help that I
dressed up as something as abstract as, say, the ocean. My puskats were catfish
and my dog was a shark. It was really all just to entertain myself, but that’s
what life is for! It was Friday so I had class with kindy. We decorated masks
and ears and all jumped around the classrooms like mad men. A typical Friday
kindy day, but a little more festive!
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| class crafts |
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| the crew |
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| goin wild! |
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| garai |
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| sweet little lawence |
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| my favorite lavenda! |
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| julina and those chompers |
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| girlz |
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| braunia and tari in the back with the seduction |
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| mus and alison, halloween 2014 |
My mama and I walked into town in the hot sun. At one point
she said that Halloween sounds like “hot wind” (or the way it’s pronounced here
– hot weend) so we kept saying Happy Hot Wind instead. By the grace of the Halloween
gods, the huge public works camion truck scooped us up and we rode the monster
into town, singing out, “Happy Halloween!” because the wind was no longer hot
when you’re riding that high. When I tried climbing in the truck, I flashed
some thigh to make the leap up. It got quite the laugh from everyone around,
considering it was my thighs’ debut in the outside world of Vanuatu. Yes, after
9 months of hiding under skirts, my thighs saw daylight! And they happened to
be dressed up as ghosts, because they were white as hell. Haha, everyone
cracked up at bright surprise, especially me. White man wan taem!
Sydney and Michelle’s services were coming to a close, so
they invited us to their last kakaes, or farewell feasts. I followed a truck up
to Sydney’s village Nanigama for the weekend for her toilet project opening and
her last kakae. This was my first time staying in East, so I was looking
forward to a flood of new faces. First stop was Lovuinvili, Sydney’s first
village and the location of the toilet opening. Sydney is a health volunteer
and her community’s focus was sanitation. Lovuinvili and the surrounding
villages are all clustered together and overpopulated and there was beginning to
be a problem with toilets – the old ones were full and no place to put new ones
that wouldn’t spoil gardens or the water supply. The vol before Sydney, Cara,
helped the village get water pipes to pump water from springs in the mountains,
so to build on this, Sydney helped them build 11 flush toilets with septic tank
setups.
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sydney's great chinese shop notebook
it says "This is the most comfortable notebook you have ever run into.
You will feel like writing with it all the time." Classic! |
So why move sites when you’ve got a mega project going? It’s
a weird story, but after Sydney’s first year at site, she was able to move to a
village half an hour up the road that actually wanted her there and appreciated
her presence. Nanigama is a special place and ended up being the perfect home
for her.
I arrived when all the food was being cooked. A feast
celebrating toilets! We helped her first host mama cut the watermelon. They
told me about this woman’s green thumb – she grew a 25 kg watermelon! She
married a local seed with a kind from another island and boom! Watermelon
monster! They sent it to Port Vila and it sold for $70 US. Pretty impressive!
We went to the ceremony and some community members gave
speeches. Sadly her first host papa called her Cara the whole time, which
sucked, but what can ya do? Sydney gave her report and it immediately reminded
me of a picture we had hanging in our bathroom growing up: “No job is finished
until the paperwork is done.” Ha! I love that. We went down to one of the
completed toilets for the ribbon cutting. These guys love ribbon/cake cutting –
anything to make something official. I support! The bathroom was all flas’d out
(fancy-fied) and looked like a party instead of a potty. More speeches, some
test flushes, and back to the community hall for gifts and food.
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| toilet talk |
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| laplap galore |
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the fanciest of potties
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| syd and her counterpart and the throne |
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gifts
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They passed out the laplaps to all those involved and
showered Sydney in baby powder, calico, salu salus, and baskets. She got 12
baskets! One had “Mr. Bowman Sydney” woven into it while another had “Sydney Do
man” Both are timeless. I was called up and both Sydney and I had to stand and
shake everyone’s hand before we ate. It was a funny thing to include me,
considering I knew about 2% of these folks, had never been to the village, was
not leaving Ambae, and did not provide them with access to better sanitation.
Yet I was a “distinguished guest” they kept telling me, so I had to “seik han”
with everyone. Picture all the oldfala giving heartfelt goodbye hugs and
shedding tears with Sydney and then arriving at my handshake, confused at who
the hell I am, shaking my hand anyway, and then going to grab food. I wasn’t
even the warm up handshake! I was post-Sydney. Very odd, but such is life. The
two of us got plenty of sideways glances and laughs in with this line of
encounters, so all is well.
After stuffing our faces, we headed up to her home in the
beautiful Nanigama. We got settled, passed out some laplap, stored away the
whole chicken (what! such a good surprise!) that was cooked with the laplap,
and got to burger making. I brought up a half kilo of mince from town and we
had the most delicious baby burgers! About 8 total. Gobbled em all up, tailor-style
on her floor, laughing about the events of the day. Fell asleep happy.
We started Saturday with Sydney pulling apart the chicken
and me reading to her about Chile, her future 5 month home after a coupla
months in the states. She’ll be volunteering with the UN and Chilean Government
teaching English in a primary school! The world is full of the coolest
opportunities. Reading this guide book made me seriously want to check out
South America for a bit. Definitely a place you gotta commit some time to! As
all continents and countries and places should be treated, I suppose. Gotta
brush up on that Spanish, who knows what’s next!
Tim Jessie Rae and Lynda Mae came and we all ate the chicken
noodle soup that was cookin all morning. It was delicious! We hung out, played
nostalgia games with Sydney, and asked about her two year takeaways. Jessie and
Lynda Mae split before dark because Nathan was coming home from Vila and they
were walkin to meet him at home, so they had to miss out on the last kakae.
That night was the last kakae. Sydney was covered in salusalus, kalicos, baskets, flowers, and love. Many hugs and tears and speeches and other things that make up goodbyes. I was glad to be there to see her off! The food was delicious and of course we ate too much of everything. A wonderful visit indeed.
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| trabel the mama |
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sydney in all of her glory!
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Oh! But I must mention that her puskat Trabel (yes, Trouble)
has a cute 7 week old kitten! We spent a good part of the weekend playing with
these two! A funny story about the birth – Sydney was going to sleep and Trabel
was being extra cuddly, so she let her shack up under the mosquito net. When
Sydney went to the toilet in the night and returned, she found a baby kitten in
her sheets! Along with the afterbirth and all the other good stuff, of course.
So she flipped the mattress and passed back out after sticking the cats on the
floor. Anything can happen! Now little ginger hair is a sweet puskat and going
to live at Tim’s site to chase away/munch on his absurd rat population.
A night at Jessie Rae and Nathan’s and then back to site. Always,
always good to arrive back home after a weekend away.
