manaro camping trip

The new Ambae vols were eager to get up to Mt. Manaro and I was excited to go back. Manaro is the island’s volcano— its cone sits in the middle of a toxic lake on top of Ambae. We decided it would be a much more enjoyable hike spread out over two days (last year we hiked it in one and it was hellish) and everyone was down for a mid-May camping trip in the bush. 

On Friday we met in Saratamata for payday ritual: a tub of half-melted ice cream, a cold beer, and grace’s porch. We got supplies, hopped the truck, and headed North. At Vuiveto, Avery and Thomas continued on to Avery’s site and the 3 gals rested before the hike up. At the bottom of the hill is a kava bar, so we indulged in a few shells with Kathleen’s counterpart and some other women. It’s hard to leave any gathering without a fruit or two in your hand, and this time was no different—each of us had a pamplemus and a few green coconuts to carry with us up to Wainasasa from our generous kava drinking friends.

We reached the top after a rainy, dark, and wobbly hike and met the boys at Kathleen’s house. We cooked up some burgers and fell asleep early, ready for the trip. We woke up and enjoyed a slow morning preparing the hobos filled with potatoes, beans, onions, and capsicums. Around 10, the boys showed up with a change of plans (which is more common that not changing plans here) and let us know that the trail we were planning on taking was going to be impossible because of the rains. Not a problem! Avery’s papa offered to hike with us, which made us very lucky to be heading to the top of the mountain with a bigfala chief who knows the land better than most could imagine. A youngfala David and two girls joined us, as well. We packed up the gear and started the preliminary hike to Ambanga, the highest village on Ambae, before following Ambanga’s trail to Manaro. This is the road I took last August, so I knew a hard hike was ahead. Everyone was in great spirits despite the rain clouds (dondo in language) lingering overhead. 

The hike from Wainasasa to Ambanga was hard—uphills and downhills and creek crossings (oh my!) and complete with an intense knife incident. Thomas was in line ahead of me as we climbed up a hill. He lost his footing and threw his bush knife into the ground to try and catch his fall. Bad, bad idea. His hand slid down the machete’s blade and did a number on his digits. He’s lucky the blade wasn’t facing the other way or else his palm would be a mess! The cuts were really deep, but eventually we got the blood flow under control. After the initial shock wore off, he was a brave trooper and agreed to hike to Ambanga before deciding if he should continue on. Once we arrived there for lunch, we cleaned him up and he was ready to face the Ambae wilderness, deep gashes or not. 

"thumbs up!" so clean, so naive

stomping through a bush garden

watcha doin up there?

funky mushroom

avery

the scratch

The hike was grueling. I’ve never had a reason to use that word, but it’s what comes to mind here. Day one was lots of ascending and at a quick speed – papa chief was leading the pack and even though he’s 70, he was waiting on us to catch our breaths over and over again. The trail hadn’t been used for a while, so I’m not sure what we would have done without his invaluable knowledge of the land and impressive knife skills to bushwhack us back on path. I’m usually a steady, but medium-paced hiker, but today I was feeling strong and keeping up with the leader. It felt great! But after 6 hours of going up, I was just as beat as everyone else. It was getting dark and rainy, so we cleared a piece of the trail and laid out our shelters: Papa chief and David sharing a tent, the two girls in another one, Grace and Thomas in their own hammocks, and Kathleen Avery and I 3-manning a 2-person tent. All squished together on a bushy trail. It was an amusing site! Once our bodies cooled down, we realized how cold it was and eventually found warm bliss in our dry things. Dry bags to the rescue! For some reason I brought my heftiest pair of wool socks to a tropical island from home a year and a half ago. I say “for some reason” because that reason didn’t present itself until I was on the side of Mount Manaro and I slipped them over my blistered, sore, freezing (and now very grateful) feet. Irrational packing has its hidden benefits!

Once everyone was situated, we passed around the bottle of wine, feasted on peanut butter, chips, oreos, and crackers, and laughed in exhaustion while our delicious hobos were marinating at the bottom of our backpacks. Nothing even closely resembling dry wood could have been found up there and it’s not like anyone was interested in searching for it anyway.  It was time for sleep, but sleep we did not. The tent ended up being more spacious than I’d originally imagined it, but we were restless and couldn’t quite get into rem. Around 2 am, we asked each other if anyone had fallen asleep yet and the answer was nope. The hammock kids were snoring and there was storian happening in the other two tents. We sang out to them, checking to see if they were alright, and we all just accepted our sleepless fates. The girls played music on their phones and Kathleen, Avery, and I storied about whatever came to mind.  

When she was hiking in Australia, Kathleen screwed up her big toe and now it was hanging on (hovering is a better description) by a thread. Earlier in the hike, Thomas and I had named it Sybil Penbrook, but Kathleen wasn’t as amused as we were. Now in the middle of the night, I tried it out again, and it stuck! Kathleen even started referring to it as Ms. Penbrook! This is a good example of the group vibe. It’s amazing how the group’s energy sets the tone of the trip. Everyone was in a cheerful mood, happy to go with the flow, and down with the idea that this rainy, cold hike was an adventure we wouldn’t forget.

It must have been around 4 or so when we all shut our eyes and drifted off for a couple of hours before the sunrise woke us up. We packed up and began the hike down into the center of the island. This part is a cluster of sliding down mud cliffs and scaling up rock faces (while realizing that we’d have to make the return trip on all of these obstacles, too) We reached the creek and drank from it while we got ready for the last push. By this point we were all pretty exhausted, except for papa chief, surprise surprise. After another hour of sloshing through creeks, climbing, butt-sliding, balancing on logs, stomping through thick vegetation, and falling during all of these steps, we arrived to the eerie top.

ready for day 2

curly ferns

The top of Manaro looks like the elephant graveyard from Lion King. Because the weather was still overcast from the night before, we didn’t have the clear view of the lake that we hoped for. On both of my bad-weather trips, the view at the top was underwhelming, but that didn’t subtract from the hike for me. I’ll make the trek one more time before I leave Ambae, but it’s going to be a cloudless day so I can take in the full thing. Papa chief sang out to the volcano and before too long, some of the clouds separated and we saw the cone. I loved this— less because of the view and more because of the pride in his face when the mountain listened to his request. We snapped a few photos and got ready for the daunting hike back to Ambanga. It was incredibly hard, but we did it. By the time we collapsed in grassy Ambanga village, we had been hiking for 17 hours between the two days… and about 2 ½ more to go before reaching Kathleen’s house. We eventually made it back with dreams of hot tea and our hobos for dinner as our strides’ motivation. After eating, everyone passed out hard at Kathleen’s, not wanting to get up early the next day. But that we did. Grace, Thomas, and I hiked down to Vuivetu to catch a truck back to our sites before 6:30. When I got home, I miraculously threw all my muddy things in a bucket of soapy water and crawled into bed for the rest of the morning. An exhausting last few days, but a wonderful new set of memories on this rugged little jungle of an island.

elephant graveyard

a long way down!

what! a! view!

a week of learning

My usual school schedule is teaching something English-related between 7:30-9:30, rotating between the classes throughout the week. Mondays are a little different – I work with kindy and 1st grade, both classes that don’t speak Bislama (much less English) so we throw that out the window and play games, make musical instruments and bang on them, and do arts and crafts. This is always fun because, frankly, teaching English isn’t my forte and I enjoy playing games, making musical instruments and banging on them, and doing arts and crafts as much as any other kid! Mondays are no doubt made possible because of the class teacher, serving as the Bislama/local language translator and my partner in managing wild little kiddies. One Saturday in May, the class 1 teacher Mrs. Aru was informed that the next day she’d be hopping a boat over to West Ambae for a workshop. I offered to look after her class for the week, clearly having no idea what that entailed. 

It was a very long week! I’ve already expressed on here my deep gratitude for teachers. What an exhausting profession, successful only with a certain type of both patience and passion. And the understanding that your work, serving as a foundation, may or may not be effective, and the fruits of your labor won’t fully flourish until long after that school year has ended and another (and another and then another) flock arrives. Teachers know the balance of the classroom: each student has his or her individual needs that deserve unique attention while the class as a unit needs its flow through the lessons. Its richest rewards are internal as you see the changes in the students that you know intimately through daily challenges and failures and successes. These are all qualities I can’t help but sincerely admire, and these are all qualities I have to admit I don’t necessarily have. Which is okay! I love children and I enjoy teaching and sharing, but I am not a school teacher. I never really thought I was, but now it has been tested and can be confirmed. Which means I’m something else – I’ll have to figure that out at some point or another! 

Class 1 is taught in local language, so my Bislama is only faintly familiar to them. This just doesn’t make sense to first graders. In fact, my mama taught me the phrase “I don’t understand local language” in local language because kids would just blabber to me, tattle-taling or just rambling about first grader topics, and I wouldn’t understand a lick of it. Usually I’d just respond in gibberish and laugh with them at our mutual confusion. Teaching is hard, but trying to teach students who you don’t share a language with you is a challenge. A challenge you must get creative with! We spent the week drawing and coloring lots of things, singing songs and playing games. We started each day with yoga, meowing and mooing during cat/cow and naming trees of Ambae while wobbling in tree pose. 

We sat around and told plenty of kastom stories — “we” really meaning “them” because I’m clueless to the language, but still equally entertained by their dramatic storytelling. The first student Braunia said “dom dom,” which I thought was the title, and then everyone responded with a phrase. It happened again when Flexson started the second story. I interrupted, oblivious to how little I knew, and said that Braunia has already shared that story, choose another. Flexson looked at me in confusion and again said “dom dom” and so it went again and again. After class I told my parents how the kids kept telling the same kastom story called “dom dom” and they cracked up. Turns out “dom dom” is what the leader sings out, asking permission to tell a story. Only when everyone responds with “sige gom gale” you can begin. Ha! I can only imagine what the students thought of this tuturani telling them they were the crazy ones.. 

One day I arrived to a room full of argument and, with my mama’s help, discovered someone hit someone who had kicked someone who had yelled at someone who had teased someone etc. We had a whole sorry chain going and spent the morning doing a sunshine circle, an activity I learned during an alternative spring break where you pass on a compliment (aka sunshine) to the person next to you. 

nap time

And when all else failed, we took naps. Lots of whispers and giggles at first, your classic naptime behavior, but eventually everyone surrenders to the mat and enjoys a good rest. Including Miss Alison! It brought me back to my own kindergarten naptime where we got to choose our teddy bear and lay out on those silly cots. And I hadn’t thought about those rolled up pads we used in preschool (and the pattern of my own, lambs in a meadow) which I can’t remember ever thinking about before now. It’s lovely how the strange situations we find ourselves in evoke the most distant of memories to show back up in the confines of our headspaces. The past year and a half have been filled with times like this and I’ve come to relish in the trails my brain wanders down. Jessie Rae pointed out once that both of us love reminiscing. I can’t believe it took so long for me to come to this realization! I love thinking about good times, basking in the laughs and smiles that accompany them. Spending so much time here in my own company has allowed me to venture deep in nostalgia and because of this, has reminded me how lucky I am to have so many good memories to linger on, while creating a whole new set of ones to return back to in the future. The continuous cycle of life pleasures sustains itself. What a beautiful thing!  The week of class 1 ended up being a great time, but I think I did more learning than the class did.

even cows want to come to school

wala, my favorite pig in a tree

home sweet home

With all the big rains and long days of sunshine, the area around my house was getting a bit bushy. My mama finally pointed this out to me when it was clear that I either didn’t notice or didn’t mind. This is something I’m sure my own mom is laughing at right now, as this is usually my custom. So one morning she handed me a rake and told me to clean the area by my kitchen. I soon discovered, after an hour or two of weeding and cleaning up, what a difference it made! Imagine that! My sister, who, like me was only ever grounded due to our messy rooms (but honestly, probably a handful of less trivial things too… thanks for paving the way shosh!) gave me a wise piece of advice in the art of clean room deception: making your bed immediately makes the room feel cleaner, followed by vacuuming. I have now discovered that raking and a little weeding are the “making your bed and vacuuming” of the yard world. My mama was very pleased with my work and I was, too, and continued on with this new addition to my list of mindless/mindful enjoyables. 

My home becomes more of my favorite place with each new project. My papa and I built a screen door for my front entrance and a new bench in my main room. The big change came with painting my bedroom. Instead of its unfinished white, it is now mellow shades of purples, blues, and greens. My talented and dear friend Marlee Raber sent me a hand painted picture of Jerry Garcia for my birthday and it resides in a frame I made out of the wood that grows on the fence posts behind my house. I hung up pictures, postcards, and letters and now my cozy bedroom is filled with reminders of home – both versions of it, a wonderful mix of here and there. Here’s a taste of my little cottage.

marlee's badass artwork!

dream station

Mondays at school are work party days. I’ve been dreaming up a chicken coop for a while and with the help of some class six girls, there’s now a 3-bed chicken coop annex off the back of my bush kitchen. Grass-fed, happy chickens make the most delicious eggs with dark yolks and rich taste. I’ve got a couple spots inside my kitchen that are prime laying spots, but now it’s a whole new ball game!

the chicken coop crew

and some random ones...

HI!

the ultimate pouty face

shrooms

a soulless egg sack-carrying spiders and my excellent paint job

community happenings

I love that we’ve rounded the corner on year two because now holidays are repeating themselves. Easter was a lot like last year. My family isn’t a church-going bunch; we usually spend our Sundays down at the saltwater instead. But when Easter shows up, so do we. On the way to church, my papa successfully sling shotted a couple of birds that we’d eat for lunch. The longfala service has a bonus baptism attached to it and afterwards we drank tea and ate bread with everyone. 

That afternoon we headed up to Lovusinava for Shamila’s 20th birthday party. Shamila is a temporary teacher at my school and lives with her papa, Mr. Allan, the class 5 teacher. Shamila and I take early morning walks and I sometimes convince her to run back with me. She is family, just like everyone else, and I singaot “sista” to her.

Birthday parties, similar to all other social gatherings, consist of sitting on mats, storying and helping wrap up the food until kava is ready.  The day before they killed a pig and it had been baking in a big earth oven with some taro and bush cabbage for later enjoyment! I’ve become a fan of pig, especially when it’s slow cooked like this. Local meat just tastes better, period. Once the kava is ready, there’s a lot of drinking and spitting while the sun goes down. Eventually it’s time to go. If there is kava left, as there was this time, you fill up a bottle and carry it with you back home. My papa likes drinking a few shells on the hike back and my mama and I usually gladly join him. This makes the walk back a little more wobbly and enjoyable.

The market house that I’ve been helping out with is finally gaining momentum. On June 3rd we had a work party and fundraiser to kick off the market house’s construction. While the men cleared the land that was given to the women by the chief, the women prepared the food. Mamas brought 6 pieces of laplap and we cooked up rice, susut vines, chicken, and fish. My mama suggested that because I figured out the organizational aspect of the day, I should step back and let the council run the show. Sounds good to me! So I grabbed the 3 kilos of onions and 6 heads of garlic and found a shady spot for my chop station. 

I spent the morning storying with Bumbu Nelson, Northeast Ambae’s sweetest and oldest oldfala. He is 83 years old and just lost his ability to walk, but his mind is still sharp and his humor is still on point. I learned the word for storian (laqa laqa) and heard stories about the Ambae of his childhood. He reminisced about his travels to America (he was chosen to attend a teacher’s workshop in New York City back in the 60s!) and we joked about how similar NYC is to village life. He asked sincere questions and listened intently to my answers. He is one of the kindest people I’ve met in Vanuatu and believe me when I say that Vanuatu is overflowing with kindness. I noticed a wood carving and asked him if it was from around here. He told me he received it at his graduation from USP in Suva, Fiji in 1963. And then he gifted it to me, telling me he’d had it long enough already and it should go to someone new. Bumbu Nelson made the chop station significantly better. And man, I love this funky little word carving as if it were my own inner child. It does conveniently look like the pose I make over my pit toilet… 

bumbu nelson

my long-droppelgänger

 Jessie Rae was visiting Ambae that week to give toktoks about her project, Sarem Hart. Jessie was on Ambae at first and then changed sites to Buninga, a little island in the Shepherds above Efate. The Shepherds took a beating from Pam, most of them losing all of their vegetation and most of their houses. Jessie has been stationed in Vila since we got back and has worked with the National Disaster Management Office and shelter cluster to create an interisland program called Sarem Hart. The ni-Vanuatu want to help each other, but it’s hard to figure out just how to help. One thing that ni-Vanuatu have (and have a deep connection with) that outside aid does not is local resources. Aid donors have sent endless tarps, but these tarps are breaking from the heat of the sun and not serving as proper shelters for families. But Vanuatu has natangura, a wonderful tree with fronds that, when woven together, make thatched roofs. Jessie Rae, in all her brilliant resourceful glory, figured out a way to empower the ni-Vanuatu to help their fellow men and women. She helped set up the road (this includes the ship road, too!) to get these materials from the bush of Ambae into the hands of manBuninga. She signed interested people up and gave them tags – one tag equals 500 natangura leaves. Around 30 tags (or 15,000 leaves) make a roof for a home or community center.

 Jessie traveled up and down East Ambae and was overwhelmed with the support and love of manAmbae. She shared her toktok with my North Ambae community and they pledged 40 tags, more than she had gotten from any other area! In the end, they filled an order of 50 tags, 25,000 natangura fronds. And now, for ever and ever, they will have a connection with little Buninga island and the ni-Vanuatu who inhabit it. I’ve been coordinating things on this end and so far, so good.  This is an incredible project and I’m so happy to be helping Jessie out. It’s amazing what can happen when you give people the opportunity to do good.

Once the men had gotten their fill of work, they came over and had lunch. When the afternoon rolled around, we all had kava and enjoyed the end of a successful fundraiser and the start of a beautiful element of community development. Jessie Rae and I walked back to my site with some of the mamas and spent the evening playing catch up. The next morning we took our coffee down to the ocean and perched ourselves up on a cliff while storying the morning away. I walked her halfway back to town at midday and came back home just in time for mama’s yoga.

Mama’s Yoga! What started as a bible study yoga class combo, an attempt to convince people to try out a little relaxing exercise, is now a bona fide yoga class, Tuesdays and Thursdays 12:30 in the kindy room. It was a once a week gig, but the mamas asked for more so I gave it to em! I’ve never taught yoga before, but I think (hope!) I’m doing some justice to the ancient practice. A woman’s daily responsibilities in Vanuatu are demanding on her body, especially the shoulders and lower back – activities such as cooking over a fire, washing clothes, sweeping, weeding the garden, and carrying around little ones. We do a lot of poses that focus on relieving the stress in these areas and stretching out everything else. The effectiveness of this class is primarily thanks to the book Light on Yoga that former volunteer Sara Barr left for me that is full of information on benefits of different poses. And some trial and error and class feedback for working out the kinks. The class has a few regulars, but other than that, the size fluctuates from 4-10, which is totally cool with me. I really enjoy watching their progress and seeing their interest levels increase as they become more flexible and confident in the poses. The class lasts half an hour to an hour, depending on the mood of the room and we always end with a little meditation. 

They seem to really love the class and when Jessie came to the fundraiser, a few women ranted to her about how good they feel after 1 or 2 classes. Not sure how much of this is placebo effect, but that’s okay, too! Feeling good comes from the body and the mind, so if the mind is feeling healthy, then yoga is doing its job! Some mamas told me that they are doing the stretches in the morning when they wake up and before they go to bed at night. One day the class asked me if we could make a traveling yoga club that visits the oldfala women who can’t make it to class and practice at their homes. Not sure if that’s the smartest plan considering I am an uncertified, amateur mama’s yoga instructor not a physical therapist, but I love the idea! And I’m delighted I found this niche with the mamas and get to spend some great afternoons doing things that make me happy.

There was a week in May when classes were canceled due to a whole buncha of wedding ceremonies taking place. These kastom celebrations are full of fun stories and I think I’ll save em for a full post of its own.

At the beginning of June we were told that the Bishop’s ship arrived from the Marshall Islands and the confirmation ceremony and priesting (what do you call it when someone becomes a priest?) would take place that Monday. My sister Petrina was participating, so we got up early and followed a truck to a village in East Ambae. It was a nice, long day. The next weekend there was a big kakae for the man who was priested, my uncle Glen’s papa. There was kastom dancing, good island food, and my grandmother was there so I got to story with her.

Fraser! 

blonde hair babies

priesting? 

lunch line

my sister peti, the newly confirmedling

mami amina and fraser

kastom dancing

the new priest and his lady covered in gifts

my mama's mama bumbu joyce

the happy trio

mami amina, bumbu priest, and uncle glen