los animales

I coexist with a variety of animals here. Luckily this doesn’t include lions, tigers, or anything poisonous. We’re pretty lucky in Vanuatu! No killer animals (except the wild bulls and pigs! None on Ambae, but they were on Moso where we had training) and nothing that will bite you and kill you. This makes walking in the bush much more relaxing! We’ve got cows, pigs, horses, chickens, dogs, cats, many different birds, snakes, critters, and the infamous rats. That’s it, that’s our spread! We all get along pretty well and for the most part, I really don’t notice their presence. Whenever I’m on the phone with someone at home and they ask what the hell that noise is, I remember that there are over 50 chickens on school grounds who squawk and cluck, sharing their business with whoever will listen. Chicken have a bunch of different songs. Tunes telling stories such as “I just laid an egg” or “they’re ready to hatch” or “Alison is the best, she’s welcome to all the eggs her belly desires.” Or at least I’m pretty sure about that last one.  Cows have songs, too. Just recently I heard some new moos. My auntie said it was mama cows who couldn’t find their babies. Another day I heard a sad song. I learned that the cows just found the blood of another cow that was killed and were mourning for him.

When my island mates spent the weekend at my site, Thomas helped me build a ladder for the house blo fowl attached to my bush kitchen. It’s like a chicken annex. And it’s in use! There’s nothing like fresh eggs. The puskats use the cubbies, too, for snoozing. A multipurpose triplex.
Other than the brand spanking new chicken coop, my bush kitchen has a few good egg spots in it. Pretty often when I peek behind the firewood or dry coconut leaves, I spy a handful of freshly laid eggs. Sometimes I scoop them up for omelets, breakfast tacos, and eggs over easy, but usually I let them be so they can sprout and become chicks. My kitchen is an egg-laying hotspot, so usually the eggs belong to more than one hen. At one point in July or so there were 4 mama fouls making egg drop soup in there. When it came time to roosting, they all laid (ha!) on top of each other, pecking at each other for the 20 or so days of incubation. Eventually 2 backed off, so by the time the eggs hatched, two moms claimed the litter.  I saw these moms leading the new chicks around town and got a kick out of it. I now call them the lesbihens and they don’t seem to mind. I saw this as a good opportunity to casually bring up the idea of same sex marriage to my family. Sometimes two men or two women love each other and in America, they can now get married and live happily ever after! I received blank stares. A progressive toktok gone exactly as expected!

lesbihens

One day I saw a chicken carry her eggs, one by one, in her beak out of my kitchen and off to somewhere seemingly better. It was bizarre. Maybe my kitchen just wasn’t fancy enough. We can’t please everyone.

Speaking of taking your business elsewhere. Lucky, one of the family dogs, is pregnant again! One weekend when my brother OB was home, we set up her usual birthing place near the big tree that Wala the pig lived in. We set up iron to block the wind and rain, made sure there were dried leaves down, dusted out the cobwebs. The works.  I brought Lucky over and showed her the luxury suite and she seemed please. A week or so later, we found her in the morning with 6 newborn pups in a hole she dug behind my parent’s house! Total curveball. I couldn’t be offended because the pups were so damn cute and she clearly chose the best place for her. We built her a shade structure and she was happy go Lucky.

pupville usa

Now the pups have grown and they are great! No one here really likes puppies or other adorable things, so it’s just me having nonstop puppy parties. Puppy parties consist of me singing “puppy party!” and all the pups pile on top of me and do puppy things like lick my leg. While everyone stares with disgusted looks and talk in language about crazy Alison. I’d say I’m pretty used to it by now.
There is, of course, the runt. His name is Lagegi which means runt or last born. He is becoming stronger, but still has a crazy glossed over look in his eyes. I love him.  My favorite is the fattest one we call Sandy because he looks like the sandbeach.  My family is planning on keeping him and actively trying to get rid of the rest. This is Lucky’s 4th litter just since I’ve been in service. Poor dog, surrounded by too many male dogs. Her puppies are scattered all over northeast Ambae and they’re all healthy and beautiful.

master quinn

wild eyed lagegi the runt

My puskat Fule Biti is still pretty biti, but she’s starting to grow. She still thinks that my other puskat Quinn is A.) a female and B.) her mom and tries to titi him. I think Quinn is cool with it now, so I’m not sure which one of us is going to break it to Fule that she’s all wrong. Other than attempting to breastfeed off of a male armpit and sleeping all day, Fule has become quite a huntress. I’ll wake up to the sound of her playing with the rat in my house, tossing it around (dead or alive) like a toy, and finally munching it down after she’s bored with it. The funniest thing to me is when the cats growl at me when I see them with the rat. They give me the “this is my rat, not yours” glare with such seriousness, as if I had a nasty habit of stealing their prey.

One night I was storying on the mat with my mama and we heard an owl screeching. Or I heard a noise and my mama heard an owl screech. And then she informed me of what we were hearing. I like owls! But on Ambae they are a symbol of black magic. ManAmbae believes that people who practice black magic can turn themselves into owls and spy on you and send down curses. So this owl won’t go away and my mama is kind of freaking out. She started getting worked up that someone sent this messenger owl to hurt her. And there’s nothing in the world I can do to calm her nerves because it’s a kastom belief. And kingfishers are another black magic bird. When a kingfisher sings out to you from your right side, it’s good luck. But if it’s from the left, it is actually the devil trying to hurt you and you have to scream  “devil go lus!” or get lost!

september vila visit

My September Vila town visit was unplanned, but ended up being a great one. I went in because I had been feeling sick at site and the doc thought it was a good idea to get some tests done. All is well, so no worries! Probably was just a bit dehydrated (even with drinking 2 liters a day) and iron deficient. Feeling health bakagen, so no worries.

Alexis, a volunteer on Maewo, had helped organize a workshop in Vila for solar digital libraries. Because it wasn’t Peace Corps run, we’d have to pay our own roads to attend. I ended up being lucky because my medical visit was aligned with the workshop and I got to attend for only the cost of accommodation.

A class at University of California Polytech has been working on making and improving a self-contained solar digital library then call SPELL. Their goal is to create something that can withstand the tropical climate and conditions, something portable, cheap, and practical so that everyone around the world has access to information. Amazing! Two students and their teacher led the workshop. Each of us got to take home a digital library: a waterproof box with a solar panel on the back. Inside is a small banana pi computer with a memory card full of information in a beautiful interface they designed, a battery, and they gave us a tablet to use with the community. I am so very glad that I attended this workshop and in hindsight would have bought my own flight if I had known how damn cool it was. I’ve trained the teaching staff at my school and they love playing on the “website” the polytech team created.

Other than that, the Vila trip was the typical run around to different food venues and indulging in cold beer and cheese and speaking English with other volunteers. The Peace Corps Response Volunteer Kate had a birthday party and that was a fun night of games and dancing.

I got a bike! I’ve been wanting a bicycle, but have been discouraged by the state of the roads on Ambae. They’ve improved since I got to Ambae, so I started lookin’. Bikes are either really expensive or really shitty. But! My friend Thomas found a flyer for a few bikes that an ex-pat family was selling. We checked them out and I came home with a pretty cheap foldable (yes, it folds!) bike from Japan. It’s a silly little thing, but it does the trick! And it’s complemented by my super cool peace corps issued helmet. No shame!

There are yoga classes in Vila every day, so I usually take advantage of that. I practice yoga pretty much every day at site, but being in a class and having an instructor guide me is a really nice change up. On Wednesday Kelsey and I went a class and then met Thomas at this restaurant called Chill for the best dish in town, lobsterlicious pizza. I daydream of it often. We 3 way split the family size and a plate of steak and haloumi kabobs (whoa!) and were in food bliss all afternoon.

We went to a couple fundraisers and had a bunch of family style dinners at Pac Par, the motel we stay at. It was a great trip catching up with friends, but as always, by the end of the trip I am eager to get back to the sweet life on Ambae.

edible adventures

garden guard

Whenever I go to Vila, I treat myself (treat yo self!) to some goodies to bring back to site. Usually its lentils, chick peas, and rolled oats. Sometimes it’s something extravagant like walnut oil! This time in town I came across the most prized of edible possessions: a small shaker of parmesan cheese. Game changer! Cheese is simply the best. Even if it’s a little expired and comes from a green cylinder. I’ve been putting it on everything, especially things that don’t usually go with parmesan cheese. Well they do in my kitchen!

I’ve led a pretty active taco lifestyle lately. Throughout my service I’ve made tortillas somewhere around once a week because they are easy to make, last a couple of days, and can be transformed into tortilla chips when they get stale. Taco fillings have ranged from egg to fish to carrots, with no exceptions! And salsa, always. Some form of it, anyway. Depending on the season: tomatoes, guacamole, pineapple-mango salsa, I’m not picky! I brought back black beans from Australia and Laura’s mom sent me a bunch when they came and visited, so that’s been my main ingredient as of late. And once in a blue moon I’ll get mincemeat and the family will indulge in traditional taco Tuesday!

One woman in the village Lo One (lo-oh-nay, means sandbeach. Home to the most beautiful black sand beach!) got word of my tortilla making and asked if I’d give her a tutorial. Her proposal was this: if I came to teach her tortillas, we’d make a variety of fillings and have a lunch feast. And she’d make cake. She had me at cake.

 So I went to Vetai’s house and we got to work. Vetai is an excellent cook. Her food stall was next to ours during Penama Day Week and I was one of her most loyal customers. She can also bake. Most people bake in an earth oven or convert saucepans into mini ovens by putting hot coconut husks on the lid. Vetai has a mini coblike (sans cob, just cement) oven outside that is where she makes her delicious concoctions: scones, bread, cake, coconut buns.. I’m drooling. I saw the oven and decided that a quick lesson on pizza making was in order and so she learned that too. Island pizza is delicious! Substituting coconut milk for cheese and topping the dough with whatever fresh ingredients are growing. We made the tortillas and snacked on the cake while the fillings were on the fire.

Fillings:
local chicken, peppers, and onions stir fried together
carrots, round cabbage, spring onion, and ginger
kumala (sweet potato) beetroot and onion stir fried in coconut oil
salsa – tomatoes, pepper, corn, spring onion, garlic, s & p, lemon, vinegar, local chili

We feasted! I left with a happy belly and hands full of goodies from the garden: carrots, peppers, spring onion, and a pumpkin! And almost every day since then, her class 6 son Angelo has brought me more treats. The tasty benefits of a little skill share!

ambae easy bake oven

time to grub!

SOUP! Has been on the menu most days. It’s so easy throwing together some veggies and spices, letting them simmer, and enjoying them for lunch and dinner. And sometimes breakfast if I overshoot, which is usually. Other than traditional chicken broth soups, here are some of my favorites:

- Cannellini bean with mushroom, round cabbage, and rosemary
- Lentil, black beans, and veggies
- Black bean chili
- Pumpkin with curry, coconut milk, garlic and onions

My most fulfilling (or maybe just filling) edible adventure has been making pasta. Because it is tomato season and there is no possible way to eat the amount of tomatoes that the gardens here generously grow from the earth, I had to get creative. I pop tomatoes all day long and I make salsa as if it’s my job (what is my job, anyway?) but I needed another avenue. In Vila we met a traveler from Marlborough, New Zealand named Patrick that was making pasta at the motel we were staying at. I taught him tortillas and he showed me his guess on how to make pasta. A pretty impressive guess! When I got back to site, I asked Shoshana to send me a recipe and I decided to test it out.

Homemade noodles:
1. Mix 2 cups of floud with ½ teaspoon of salt
2. Make a well in the center and add 2 large eggs and 1 tablespoon of olive oil
3. Whisk and slowly incorporate the flour
4. Knead it until you’ve got a smooth still ball of dough
5. Wrap the dough ball in plastic and let it sit for 30 minutes
6. Break it into 4 portions so it’s easier to work with. Leave the extra in the plastic
7. Dust the area and the dough with flour and flatten into square shape
8. Roll it out into a long thin sheet. Don’t have a roller? Old wine bottle or Nalgene do the trick
9. Keep dusting while rolling it as thin as possible
10. Fold it into a flat wide roll (as opposed to rolling in into a tube)
11. Use a sharp knife to cut this into thin strips
12. Shake the noodles out into a pile, keep dusting with flour
13. Drop them into boiling water for 10-15 minutes and wa-la! Noodles!

A big success! I can’t believe it is so easy.



Once my astonishment subsided and my belly started to rumble, I started preparing the tomato sauce that would be enjoyed with the noodles. I chopped and cooked up capsicum, green beans, mushrooms, onion, garlic, and pima. I added in a bunch of overripe tomatoes and some spices and cooked the fresh medley until it was too tempting not to eat. I sprinkled (poured) my handy dandy parmesan cheese on top and enjoyed a fantastic Wednesday lunch. With plenty left over for round 2 that evening!

I’ve made them a few more times since the original test day. I tried thicker and thinner noodles, but my favorite is bow ties. Long live homemade things!

my oldfala neighbor put my hat on a pumpkin he left me

niko si

So a lot has been going on on this sleepy island during the busy month of September. I got back from Vila town on Saturday the 12th and was just in time for Penama Day Week. I call it Penama Day Week because damn, do these people know how to stretch out a holiday! Penama Day, or Sept 16, is the day we celebrate Penama province, the area where I live. 

Vanuatu has 6 provinces, cleverly named after their main islands. From north to south:

1. Torba = Torres Islands and Banks Islands

2. Sanma = Santo and Malo

3. Penama = Pentecost, Ambae, Maewo

4. Malampa = Malekula, Ambrym, Paama

5. Shefa = Shepherds Islands and Efate

6. Tafea = Tanna, Aniwa, Futuna, Erromango, and Aneityum

Every province has its own holiday, and ours had arrived. Sunday the 13th was opening day of the whole shebang so the community gathered at the Lo One celebration grounds where we rang in Children’s Day and Independence back in July. The week would be full of football and volleyball tournaments, kastom dances, and music. The food and kava stalls were up and running and the women’s council decided to run our own food stall. Now I’ve always respected the people behind the counters of these things – it’s so much work preparing, cooking, and serving all day long, all week long, in the tropical heat. However, after an exhausting week of these activities, I now know just how grossly I underestimated the commitment. I knew it’d be hard, but didn’t know it would be that hard. And it was, but the good kind of hard that pairs with a good time when you’ve got excellent company. I really love the women I worked with and spent much of the 4 days in admiration of their hardworking and tireless natures. Such incredibly tough mamas! I was the weak link at first, the one in the way, but eventually got into the groove of the food stall machine. 

I did introduce a ridiculously innovative means of selling kato, or deep fried dough rings. Usually you make normal sized kato and they go for 20 vatu a pop. I thought, hey! let's make them half the size, call them kato biti, and sell them 10 vatu. Just for kicks! Everyone was super weary and hesitant to try it out. I'll admit, it was an extreme proposal with big risk. I got in on production with Rolin and everytime I split the dough in half, I saw her put them back together. Finally I convinced her to try it out and if they didn't sell, I'd buy em all. Luckily they were a hit and we made many rounds of bitis. Rolin still makes them to sell at school market, too! 

Finally the 16th rolled around and we all had a great time celebrating. Avery and Matthew Hardwick, a former volunteer now working with UNDP, came and we all took some shells and storied. They were working on a land and water survey in the bush the following week. 

Penama Day came to a closing and so did my days as a Vanuatu food stall worker. With the fee to run the stall, supplies, and other expenses, we ended up raising $150. Good, but not great for the effort put into the whole ordeal. It was an experience I’m grateful I had, but have no plans of signing up for ever again. The next morning I slept in til 8 and when I told people this, they cracked up! Sleeping in until 8 is unheard of here, but my exhaustion easily overpowered the rooster alarm clocks, blaring sun, and the allure of the fresh morning that usually nudge me out of bed by 6.

supplies

setting up shop

coconut milk milk milk

peaceful cook space, pre smokey sauna status

julima and alison sellin kakae

view from the stall

super jealous of dorina hammock naps

pack it up!

little geraldina! 

kato biti, the 8th wonder of the world

On Friday I walked to town and was excited to see Cindy, the post office lady, move to the shelf when I walked in. This means there was something with my name on it! I got a wonderful letter from my friend Ellis who has been a loyal companion in penpalhood with me throughout my service. Additionally, Cindy grabbed a carton that was basically as big as the post office and handed it to me. What! It was a package from my Aunt Jenny and my cousin Kaitlyn that was packed with the most amazing goodies and a thoughtful letter. I was overwhelmed and in shock as I dug through it to discover more and more treats and school supplies. Wow! It’s been a great sharing package. One project I run at school is the Niko Si Club, which means “Yu, Yes” in language. Yu yes is bislama talk for “you rock” and that’s the goal of the club. When I was in primary school, we had a sparkle club that awarded students for good behavior. Well, niko si club is our sparkle club. It’s sadly the norm here to punish students for bad behavior and shame them when they are in the wrong. We’ve got serious behavior problems at the school— it feels like every day kids are doing punishment work and there are weekly whippings. I haven’t witnessed much positive reinforcement or reward-based initiatives and I think it’s time to try something new. So we’re trying it out. Once a week the teachers choose a student from each class to join the niko si club. We announce the new members, hand out glittery certificates and prizes, and acknowledge the students' respectful actions and positive attitudes in front of the school. Lucky for them and thanks to Aunt Jenny, the prizes now include rice krispy treats and great school supplies!

Our school has some old cement water tanks that are just asking to become art. So at the end of the term, each of the niko si club members will have a chance to paint a sea creature on the big water tank and it’ll transform into a magical underwater mural! Hopefully this tradition will continue with the next volunteer at my site and the school grounds will be covered in beautiful masterpieces and reminders of the tangible benefits of being a nice kid.

The main order of business for Friday September 18 was Tim’s last kakae or his farewell feast. Tim came at the same time as me, January 2014, and is an IT volunteer at St. Patrick’s College, the secondary school where we had the camp in August. Tim’s faced a variety of obstacles during his service and one of the biggest was with his school. So after a year and a half of back and forths, the school (well the Anglican Church, the people who run the school) decided to let him go. We all went to his site that afternoon and hung out on his porch. He was selling everything and we got to pick through the leftovers of the daylong sale. We collectively split the remainders of his Bailey’s and a few stashed beers. My best 2 finds were a can of mushrooms and something else...

I’ve become quite complacent with the oddities of my site. They no longer bother me, just the folks that come to visit. And now that I think about it, many of them are door-based. We could even narrow this down to hinges.

1. The wind knocked my toilet door out of whack last year and now it doesn’t close properly, so I just hold it while a squat, both for balance and privacy.

2. The floor in my house is uneven, so my back door is also uneven. It used to scrape against the ground every time I tried to open and shut it, which was all the time because I’ve only got two doors. And this is just the way it was until one day I was building a shelf and decided to shave off some of my cement floor with the hammer. It worked! But then the weak door started to shift down without the support of the floor rubbing against it and now it has a new set of problems. Now that it’s unaligned, it won’t naturally stay shut when I close it. This wouldn’t really be a problem except my house has the most wonderful cross breeze and the wind swings it open all the time. Unless I lift it and pull jusssst right. Which I often forget to do because I’m in and out of the house all the time. So now I’ve got a house that seems to be protesting against nothing, acting like a teenager with its door slamming and temper tantrums. Oh well.

3. Finally, the creakiness. I had the loudest doors around. This always made me cringe, but I resigned to doing nothing and got used to this, too. It really only got worse when I got built a screen door for my front entrance. It was your typical screen door screech, except 500 or so times louder. I settled into squeakhood for the past 18 months until…

I found at Tim’s house sale a can of wd40! Now why had I not thought of that? And it truly doesn’t matter now why I didn’t act sooner because I was fine and sane. But I still can’t believe my neglect. Because when I got home, all I did was spray each hinge and now there isn’t a creak to be heard coming out of this little cottage. Unbelievable! A fix that easy… unheard of.

The last kakae was really nice. Tim’s mama made great food and we all enjoyed some shells of kava in Tim’s honor. For g26 Ambae vols, I started with Jessie Rae, Nathan, and Tim. Now it’s just me and my g27 friends. And in 7 months, I’ll be having a last kakae of my own…

two kinds of fellowship

One Sunday in September was the Melanesian Brotherhood graduation. The Melanesian Brotherhood (which I jokingly call the Aryan Brotherhood, but the other Ambae vols never actually laugh) is a group of men on the religious path to Anglican priesthood. They are split between the aspiring, the novices, and the brothers and they all wear different colored robes. They live in a compound in an area called Tumsisiro, affectionately called Tumsi. I always ask what place names mean because they are usually descriptive and interesting. Tumsisiro is the word describing a rock that has a shallow dip in it and when it rains, it fills with water and you can see your reflection in it. I love that! 

There was church service and then graduation ceremony. They fed the whole flock of us tea and bread, and then lunch a few hours later. I saw a cluster of 3 white unfamiliar people, an unusual sighting on Ambae. I started chatting with them and learned all about their adventurous lives traveling around the world via sailboat! 

Karen and Larry have been sailing around on their boat Panta Rhei for many years and have invited their Seattle marina mates, Jeff and Brenda, to tag along for a bit. Jeff and Brenda are retired (and in their 40s! and badasses! wow) and planning their on around the world rendezvous once their boat is all set. These folks are some of the friendliest people I’ve met so far. They radiated with relaxation and ease and I hope to take a page (or a chapter) from their books. 

Sadly the yachties (a surprisingly non-pretentious name in most other parts of the world) headed back to the boat before the kastom dances began. Throughout my service I’ve seen my share of dances and am always in love with what I see –a group of Ni-Vanuatu chanting, stomping, and preserving a beloved tradition. It’s one of my favorite aspects of Vanuatu and I really treasure each chance I’m able to participate in and observe such a joyful, sacred thing. This time was no different except!! a group from Gawa (an island in the banks, a northern set of Vanuatu islands) shared their jig with us. They had these badass, colorful headdresses (that’s not the right word, but neither is hat or helmet) that had long flexible sticks (coconut frond leaf spines) with white fluffy cotton-esque flowers that whimsically floated around while they danced. It was mesmerizing! And made me really excited to for my visit up to Jessie Rae in the banks in October!

bumbu joyce

a great place to practice your handshake

thom and marj

ambae kastom dance

for shits and giggles, this man flas'd up his kastom suit with a sequin skirt

gawa caps!

 On Monday I took over my mama’s class for her while she went into town to get medicine. She wasn’t feeling well and was planning on doing the 1 ½ hour walk in the sun to save some money. She was sick and I knew her birthday was sometime at the end of September, so I told her those two things and gave her the money to charter a truck to the hospital in town. Two birds: an easy early birthday gift and one less sick mama (specifically my sick mama!) walkin the streets.

After morning break a truck pulled up and off hopped the 4 yachties! When we were chatting in Tumsi, I had invited them to my site, but never expected them to make the trek over. What a lovely surprise that was! They came to class 2 and introduced themselves, along with their favorite color and animal. We blew up a bigfala globe (this was an event in itself) and Larry showed the kids their winding route around the world. At lunch break, he gave the same toktok with the school’s world map so that all the kids could hear about their adventures.

They treated me to PBJs and potato chips. We wandered around the school and I answered their questions about bush life. We spent some time soaking in the hot spring and I was the lucky recipient of their insight and advice.  They went back to Lolowai harbor in the afternoon and the kids left them trails of fans and figures made of coconut leaves for an entertaining walk to town. So so grateful for their visit and all the wonderful donations they left for the students and for me!

My mama got home around dinnertime and as storied about both of our days. I asked her what day her birthday was so I’d be prepared (we already missed my brother OB’s back in August!) and she said the 21st. Well.. we checked, and it was indeed September 21st that very day. Haha we almost missed her birthday too! So it turns out that the money for the truck was an on time birthday gift. We watched Home Alone and I passed along some of the donations that the 4 had just left- a purple skirt and some hair accessories. She was thrilled and we were tickled at the perfect timing of it all, including our urge to check the date. A funny little universe we live in.

Here are the links to their travel blogs. They lead very fulfilling lives and are pretty damn good at documenting them. If you’ve got time, check out their tales!

Brenda and Jeff:  http://www.svadventurer.blogspot.com/

Larry and Karen: http://www.sailblogs.com/member/pantarhei/

took these from karen - larry and class 2

hot spring foot soak plus nuggets of wisdom

tuturani invasion

The Gamalibulu Women’s Council organized a fundraiser on the Wednesday before the GAD workshop. This was our second big northeast regional fundraiser for the market house. Other than these, each nakamal council (there are 8 in Lolovenue, our area) is responsible for donating 2000 vatu (20 bucks) to the project every month. We did a lot of planning for the fundraiser and divided up the work between the council members and the teachers at my school. Everything seemed to be ready to execute, risks mitigated, all that good stuff. Mr. Allen the class 5 teacher took the responsibility of organizing his yungfala friends to go diving for fish the night before the big day as the main meat. Well it turns out that Mr. Allen dropped the ball on that one and we woke up the next morning with no fish and a bunch of excuses, which actually just translates to them being too kava drunk to do what they said they would. This was a bummer because it meant we now had to pay a couple hundred bucks for chicken wings from town. Luckily, Mr. Allen acknowledged his major f up and went to his land and killed a cow for us to use! Saved by the bull! 

meat line!

eileeeeen

The morning consisted of an excessive amount of scrambling trying to make things work, but eventually everything just fell into place. By 10 or so, there was local string band music blaring from the blown out speakers, the kava was being cleaned and ground (grinded? I just don’t know), and the enticing smells of brewing stew permeated the new school kitchen. This, by the way, was the kitchen’s big debut! My headmaster claims the school has no money, but then throws money into semi-unnecessary projects like a school kitchen. The kids bring their lunches to school so there isn’t a pressing need for a large fancy bush kitchen. It ended up costing over $2000, funds that could’ve gone towards teachers’ desks and school supplies. But! I’m unashamedly admitting that the school kitchen has served as a wonderful resource for the Women’s Council fundraisers. So I’ll bite my tongue and be grateful for a centralized place to cook enormous pots of rice and soup.

verinda, stew master

rice comin through!

I heard the plane fly in carrying all of the GAD members to Ambae for the workshop. They went to Tim’s school to get settled and after lunch, Dave hiked over to my site. If you know the path out of Tim’s valley of a school up to the main road, it’s pretty straightforward… but Dave doesn’t live here and ended up getting lost in the bush for an hour. An uncle ended up finding him and pointing him in the right direction and all was well. It’s always good to see Dave! He’s my best friend in the Peace Corps and we’re fortunate to have had our paths cross over and over again throughout service. Thank you, GAD Committee! So I showed him around my school and we took in the breeze by the ocean while he told me about his winding journey to my school- complete with eyeing the big black lizards thinking they would be his dinner if he was stuck out there at nightfall! Sorry Dave! The community gave us salusalus (leis) and I got an Ambae mat as a thank you.

We hung out with the mamas and eventually the other volunteers came. It was a tuturani overload. Tuturani means “white man” in language and I hear it all the time. In fact, the tip I gave to the incoming group last year in our volunteer profiles was to learn the local word for white man and repeat it back to them when you hear it. It still throws people off here. Tuturani is an interesting word, though, because it doesn’t have a negative connotation. Translated directly it means “go go kasem daylight” or work until the sun comes up, which ends up being a compliment here. So I hear people calling each other tuturani all the time—half-praising, half-cheeking the person for whatever they said/did/claim.

So yes, tuturani overload! In came Jo, Aaron, Lucas, Michelle, Cade, Tim, and Avery on a truck. Awo!  We took some shells of kava, Avery played the guitar, and we danced around with the kids. They all headed back to Tim’s site around 9 and I willingly (yet wearily) joined the team of kava finishers until late in the evening. There is this ever-present dilemma at fundraisers pertaining to kava: either prepare way too much and have excess or not have enough to properly satiate the community, the latter being worse. In order to avoid the shortage, we had far too much and actually had trouble polishing it off. After the fundraiser ended, it was a long night hanging out in our usual kava drinking spot at my parents’ house with a group of kava-kicked manAmbae not wanting to see the root juice go to waste. Teamwork! Needless to say, we all slept great that night. 

cuz every little thing...

The fundraiser was a huge success – we raised around 600 bucks after all the expenses were pulled out! This made the early morning cleaning not so daunting. After that, I hiked over to Tim’s site for a week and a half of peace corps playtime!

It’s that time of year again… Kamp GLOW/BILD TOT! Or in non-peace corps jargon, a training of trainers to teach volunteers and their Ni-Vanuatu counterparts how to run a youth empowerment camp called Camp GLOW/BILD or Girls Leading Our World/Boys in Leadership Development. Last year the TOT was held on Malekula and was one of my favorite weeks in the Peace Corps. This year it’s on Ambae at Tim’s site, St. Patrick’s Secondary School. The week is jam-packed with sessions on life skills, healthy relationships, adolescent reproductive health, and all things involving sex education. Mixed in are morning and night activities, sports, trust and team building events, and the week finishes with olympics and a talent show! Every volunteer/counterpart pair signs up to facilitate 2 or 3 sessions throughout the week. My job as a committee member is to co-facilitate and navigate all the tricky parts. The days are long (16+ hours, plus another hour of committee meeting) but it is such a rewarding experience and I have been looking forward to round 2 all year. And here it is!

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were spent preparing for the TOT and orienting our newest member Cade to the world of GAD. Day 1 we went to town to grab lunch and enjoyed sunshine and saltwater on the beach in Saratamata. Jo and Aaron got to admire their mountainous island across the way, Maewo, and we spied some weeping waterfalls along the coast. Thomas’ dogs Shelly and Marj followed us back to St. Patricks for the week because Thomas was in Vila town. 

A little about marj. Marj is Shelley’s last pup standing from her latest batch. She’s a few months old and follows Grace and Thomas around like, well, a loyal dog. Marj was her usual rambunctious self for the first few days, but then a new era arrived: The Slow Demise of Marj. 

Marj just kept getting weaker and skinnier. The theory arose and was locally confirmed that she must’ve eaten a fish bone or two. This usually means the end. We gave her a lot of love and belly rubs, but it wasn’t looking good. More on this drama later…

Sunday the TOT begins! Everyone paints their faces, we take a group photo, we learn the rules of camp, and we play human bingo. Early dinner and early to bed to get ready for the hectic week ahead.

On Monday my favorite session kicked off the day – trust and team building. We started the morning with trust falls, human knots, and blind walks to get everyone a bit more comfortable with this inter-island cluster of Americans and Ni-Vanuatu. That afternoon we had a wonderful game of capture the flag; for some people this was their introduction into the oddly competitive but friendly world of capture the flag. For the rest of us, this afternoon invited playground nostalgia. 

Tuesday we discussed personal beliefs and values, self-respect, how to find (and the importance of) your “stret partner” or the right person for you, and healthy communication. In the afternoon we played ultimate Frisbee and that night we had a building competition with local materials. 

Wednesday’s theme is sex. Last year we had “sex on the beach” and led all the sessions by the saltwater, but Wednesday morning we were greeted with rain clouds and stayed indoors. There’s an expected long term drought here due to El Nino, so this weather was welcomed. Filling up the rain tanks one downpour at a time!

There are sessions on parts of the body, puberty change, sick moon, pregnancy, family planning, and what is sex. I had the pleasure of facilitating “wanemia seks” and leading the discussion on a wide and wild variety of questions pertaining to the topic. Sex Ed is so important and it was a great learning experience figuring out how to navigate some taboo and usually avoided subjects. In Bislama! That afternoon we did tie-dye, another first for many participants, and we made friendship bracelets as the evening activity. Another terrific day!

Thursday is STI/HIV day and a pretty heavy one at that. But the intense day closed off with a relaxing night on the black sand beach. The night was lovely— good sing-alongs, a blazing bonfire, and the ocean breeze. I did, however, have a short dance with danger near the end of the evening. I felt something crawling on me, probably an ant or another little critter, but then I looked and saw a flustered milpod scurrying away! I’ve fortunately never been bitten by one, but they are infamously painful biters! I tangoed with one on Moso island during training after I found it hiding in my sarong, but got away from that one too. Two narrow escapes under my belt (what belt?) Phew!

Friday morning I trekked to Lolowai to meet the Makila, a cargo ship carrying the market house materials! It was a busy morning of loading up trucks, but excitement was in the air at the prospect of the market house construction soon underway. The freight ended up costing 1700 USD, a big chunk of the grant money, but of course a necessary expense. That afternoon I got back to camp and took a shower – too many people commented on the pink and blue dye all over my legs from the Wednesday tie dye session. And I probably smelled, so a shower was called for.  The hilarious camp olympics were that afternoon; superlatives and certificates, and then a big closing meal to wrap up the week. We had pig, freshwater prawns, beef, and other tasty kakae! After dinner was the talent show, which ended up being great. My thoughts on talent shows are that they’re always worth doing at least for a laugh or two at the random mix of acts. People come up with the oddest talents and they usually end up fitting together just how they should. Humans are great!

Saturday was close up shop day. We cleaned up the school and most of the participants and their counterparts found their way up to Ambanga to make the hike to the volcano the next day. The committee had a meeting to review the week and Michelle, Dave, and I stepped down and passed the torch to the g27 committee members. GAD was one of the best things I got involved with during my service, and it was time to hand over the responsibilities and refocus my energies on my site life and the market house project for the rest of my time here. That night the remaining 6 of us made another beach bonfire, cooked up some chicken wings, and drank kava to celebrate a successful week! 

Sunday I headed back to site with Dave in tow. Last January, Laura and I went down to Tanna to visit his site and now he had a chance to check out my little slice of the pie! He already knows my papa from a Peace Corps training in Vila – they became quick pals, so it was a fun little Ambae reunion! The visit consisted of post-camp relaxation, really good meals, and my favorite card game spite and malice.  On Wednesday we headed to the airport. Dave was heading back through Vila to go to Tanna, I was going in for medical (all is okay!) and a big surprise was that my papa was flying in for an orientation before his trip to… China. Yes, China! That’s about as wild of a transition as you can get (bush life on a remote island to Shanghai, Beijing, etc) and I was looking forward to hearing all about it. I lent him my camera and we had a tutorial at the airport so he couldn’t come up with “I couldn’t get it to work” or “I didn’t know how to charge it” nonpicturetaking excuses. This would be an adventure worth documenting. More on papa goes to China in another post.

papooski!

triplets

papa's first picture. deep

My very first time in Ambae back in February 2014 for our wokabaot week, I used the airport bush toilet. My memories of it were not pretty. And they didn’t smell good. And there were spiders and other critters crawling all over the place while I pooped. It was branded in my mind as worst bush toilet ever. So I’ve been pretty careful as to not have to use it again – maybe I’d go somewhere in town beforehand or I wouldn’t drink too much water. Well we were at the airport and I really needed to go. So I toughened up and slogged over to the toilet. And guess what? It wasn’t so bad after all. In fact, it was far better than most toilets I’d squatted in over my last 20 months! I lingered a bit just for kicks, relishing in this newfound sense of pit toilet contentment. It’s amazing what a year and a half will do for your soul. Perspective is truly everything!

So I know you’re on the edge of your seat with the unfinished story of … deliberate paws… Marj’s fate! Well the great news is that she is back to being a healthy, happy pup. The bones passed (I love how this is the proper way of saying she pooped out the fish bones she ate) and all of her borderline-obnoxious puppy tendencies returned. Long live Marjarin!

town girl

Here I am enjoying my last couple of days as a town girl before heading back to site. Luganville is the other town in Vanuatu- a much more pleasant, slower, more beautiful version of Port Vila, subjective as that sounds. We just finished up a workshop on Santo and now I’m spending a few days at Kate and Bryan’s house savoring cheese and refrigeration, catching up with family back home, and finishing up a grant application for the market house. I’ve been away from site for 3 weeks now and, regardless of the joys associated with dairy consumption and speaking English, I am more than ready to be home. I’ve been fortunate enough to have had many opportunities in my service to travel around in country, but every time it just makes me long for the sacredness of “home” a bit more. Lotahimwamwavi, here I come!

On June 17 I was off to Port Vila for our Mid-Service Training. MST should have happened back in April, but weather got in the way and everyone asked for some time at site before returning to town. MST is a few days of doctor and dentist checkups (I’m all good!) and a few sessions on how to approach part 2 of service. Really it was a chance for us all to reconnect and share stories of our current successes and failures in the community. And drink a few cold beers. The newer group (I’ll just refer to them as g27 to attempt the hard to avoid patronizing them as newbies, new kids, the young ones, etc.) was in town for their in-service training and we had some overlap with them. This isn’t usually the case (65 volunteers busting the seams of Pac Par and Vila as a whole) but a rare situation encouraged the all-vol reunion. Carrie Hessler-Radelet, the Director of the Peace Corps (our bigfala boss) visited our little island nation! She served in Samoa long ago, so I can imagine it was nice to return to the South Pacific for a visit. More on this in a minute.

MST didn’t start until the 21st, but as the GAD (Gender and Development Committee) Programming and Training lead, I came in early to train g27 on a project planning tool called PACA. PACA (Participatory Analysis for Community Action) is a fantastic series of sessions that guides a community towards a project that benefits men, women, children, and future generations. It helps the community identify what they already have, what they need, priorities, challenges, conflicts in gender-based daily schedules, and how to create a realistic action plan. It’s great for the style of work Peace Corps believes in: community-based decision making and implementation. My time on the GAD Committee has been incredibly rewarding and being able to share these tools that we’ve tweaked and modified to work in villages and at schools in Vanuatu has been a great part of my service. So the two days of training went well. We experimented with letting each pcv and his or her counterpart facilitate a session of PACA during day 2 and it worked out much more smoothly than anticipated and I think they all appreciated the practice.

My visits to Vila town are usually a blur of storian, laughter, food, and not using the Internet efficiently, and this trip was no different. My first night in town, Laura and I went to the John Tari kava bar and took a few shells with my brother Moli. Moli is 20 and about to set off for Australia for 6 months! There is a great opportunity in Vanuatu for men and women to work overseas in New Zealand and Australia picking fruit. I guess it’s the only way the empire knew how to apologize for blackbirding. Moli has joined the brave ones and leaves for Aussie land this month! He’s in Vila for a few weeks sorting out paperwork and living with family until he heads out. It was nice seeing him and hearing about his month in the big smoke. He had visited Port Vila as a boy, but this was his first time off the island as a yungfala. My parents miss him already (mom, I told them they finally understand how you must feel with your girl over here in Vanuatu!) and true to Vanuatu nature, my mama sent some familiar island food down to her first born. I brought a laplap and a chicken on the plane with me and delivered it to their boy and it made him very happy. Family is such a beautiful thing here!

The next night Laura brought me along with her to hear some live music. Stan is a really talented ni-Vanuatu musician and the singer of Stan and the Earth Force, a local reggae band. He played an acoustic set outside of the cultural center for some visiting Australian group and we got to check it out. It was beautiful! And it was refreshing hearing live music not governed by the twangy ding-da-da-ding-ding-ding of Vanuatu string band music!

Alliance Francaise hosted a festival called Fete de la musique one Friday night which was pretty cool. We saw some more exceptional live music and had a pretty non-Vanuatu night at a party called French Touch. Because it was Nik’s last weekend in Vanuatu, I joined him and a few others at a late night eatery called Emily’s and wound up with a chicken finger in my purse the next morning. A sign of a good night, indeed!

The next night was Nik’s last kava and the whole gang went out and grabbed a few shells in his honor. Nik was in group 23 (we are 26) and has been here for 5 years as a volunteer, an extendee, and as an office staff member. He’s one of those people that has made Peace Corps Vanuatu exponentially better with his kind heart, open mind, and passion for sustainable change. Nik helped build my group’s foundation in training and has served as an invaluable guide ever since. He just got hired for the DC office and is off to the land of traffic lights and dunkin donuts. Can’t wait to see where he winds up!

Another event was the Namatan Film Festival in Saralana Park. I happened to be in town last year and now had a chance to check it out again. It was a very funny night. The films were all over the place (very different from last year’s lineup) and most were so absurd that we were amazed by the ridiculousness of it all.

Most other nights were spent cooking dinner and storying with friends. Jessie Rae’s mom came to visit and we grabbed drinks with her one evening. Mary and Jessie Rae are two peas in a pod and both know how to put me in laughing fits. Laura’s parents were also passing through before they headed up to Malekula and they treated a few of us to a delicious dinner. There’s something fun about meeting people’s people and gaining a little insight into who they are when they aren’t dirty island-living volunteers.

MST was good and semi-useful. The medical officer reminded us about all the medical issues we face and we spent a good, solid hour re-learning about not-so-solid poop, or sit sit wota. Lots of hilarious experience-based commentary during these discussions! One morning we had presentations on what projects we’re tangled up in at site. This was my favorite part – learning about how damn cool everyone is! We are all doing vastly different things with our two years and its inspiring hearing what people are creating out of this ambiguous adventure. Mike divided his secondary boarding school into four houses (Harry Potter style) to help curb misbehavior and encourage responsibility and teamwork. Without his guidance, the houses hung flags, cleaned up their dormitory grounds and planted flower gardens. Now the school environment is flowing with healthy, positive competition academically, athletically, and socially. Dave’s school on Tanna isn’t allowed to have afternoon classes because of post-cyclone recovery which leaves the teachers and students with little to do. Now they are preparing for a Finding Nemo musical that Dave created- learning songs, building props, and gaining confidence in a way you can’t imitate in a classroom. Jen created a library leveling system based on island fruit that is friendly and colorful and innovative. The list continues! It’s so inspiring being surrounded by peers that thrive in this unstructured environment and are really impacting their communities in nontraditional ways.

So for the Director’s visit! They gave her the whole Vanuatu treatment: kastom dances, sand drawings, island food, and a sleepover in a village. Not sure if she had a shell, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she did. She’s such a down to earth lady; it’s cool knowing that she’s the leader of our organization. Easy-going, not intimidating, and full of good stories from her travels to other Peace Corps countries during her years as director. Our staff organized an event where she presented the Women of Courage award to a ni-Vanuatu woman who got a hospital working after the cyclone. Carrie gave us volunteers a toktok about being emotionally present and it really resonated with me at this point in my service. The fancy shmancy “luncheon” was pretty scarce on food, so a handful of us grabbed a burger at Warhorse afterwards.

Carrie got an authentic volunteer experience (bush life wan time!) when she spent a night on Nguna at Lynda Mae’s house and learned about the project she’s working on called Smart Sistas – teaching technology skills to girls. This aligns with Michelle Obama (and, too, Peace Corps’ initiative) called Let Girls Learn, and we heard Carrie was going to bring news of Lynda Mae’s project back to Michelle! Yeah, Vanuatu!

And if you haven’t already, check out this video my friend Jen compiled from over 100 of our island clips of Vanuatu booty shakin! We convinced the director and the US Ambassador to both show up in it, as well! I make a quick cameo painting my world map and a few of those kastom dances are from my hood. I’ve watched the video now far too many times and each time it makes a smile creep onto my face (and that damn song won’t leave my headspace. So catchy!) and I’m reminded of how lovely this place really is.

After the Vila whirlwind, I headed to Santo for GAD’s Gender-Based Violence Prevention Retreat. For 4 days, we facilitated a workshop focusing on gender equality and decreasing domestic violence in Vanuatu. Along with the 7 GAD members, 10 volunteers and their island counterparts joined us at Towoc next to Champagne Beach. It’s probably the most beautiful place I’ve been to in Vanuatu. Really, my backyard is the most beautiful place to me, but that’s because of all the emotion I’ve attached to it. But Champagne Beach is picturesque: white sand beach, teal blue unbelievably clear water, little islands in the distance. A perfect, peaceful setting for a really heavy set of topics! The bungalows we stayed in were wonderful and right on the water. The staff at Towoc were great and they cooked the most delicious food. Santo is known for its buluk- santo beef, santo beef, santo beef. I’ve never eaten so much beef in my life. Twice a day steaks of killed-that-day, grass-grazing buluk has no tastebud competition! My body has seemed to have gained its own skirt steak around the middle, but my soul doesn’t seem to mind. I get to eat meat every 2 weeks or so at site, so this was a much-appreciated 5 day beef feast!

The workshop was intense and challenging and rewarding. We dove into topics that are considered taboo in this culture and we had discussions that brought out rivaling opinions on violence, rape, and gender roles. Dave and I were in charge of creating the lineup of night activities. Night one was tower building (first with sticks only and then adding in other local materials) then we did back-to-back where you have to work together to stand up, and night three was a circle where you pass the yarn and share affirmations. All the activities were dosed in meaning pertaining to each day’s activities and it turned out to be a nice way to end the day.

Because it’s only year 2 of this workshop, there is a lot of work to be done to revive it before next year. It’s a bit ambitious for a cluster of volunteers to think they can introduce a topic that they have no professional experience in, and we collectively realized this mid-week. It was a humbling lesson and necessary for the future of the program. We are going to shift the focus on building healthy relationships as a foundation for decreasing (not preventing!) gender-based violence… happy family, healthy community. This means a whole lot of work for the next 8 months, but I think the whole committee is ready for it. July 4th was the day after the workshop and we spent it in Luganville deep in magical collaboration that felt more like 5 minutes than 8 hours. Afterwards, we headed back to Towoc and celebrated Independence Day with the other volunteers, the remaining counterparts and the Towoc staff. Beach, burgers, and beer, the 3 B’s of July 4th island style.

On Sunday everyone left except for Michelle, Cade, Jo, Dave, and me. We had the whole beach to ourselves and after that exhausting week, we finally had a chance to enjoy it thoroughly. Sunday totally rejuvenated me and reminded me how nature serves as the best medicine for the soul. Monday we headed into town and here I am now, Tuesday, heading back to Ambae tomorrow. Last night we played ultimate Frisbee with Kate and Bryan’s regular crew- a fun mix of expats, locals, and kids. We ate a big spaghetti dinner and tonight we’re cooking up Mediterranean tacos. The grocery store here has feta (are you kidding me, Santo!) so I’m borderline forcing it into our ingredient list. One last indulgence before the simple pleasures of home sweet home.

namele nakamal where we had our workshop

towoc restaurant

not too shabby!

bungalows for the week

phil!

buildem up or breakem down - healthy relationship activity

breakfast club