october fun

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

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

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

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

heading to lolopuepue

laundry!

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

a basketball court with a view

dorina bear

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

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

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

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

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

dawna boiling water

shamila

vetai

dawna sneakily snapped me at my sunset spot!

good day sunshine

pineapple heart

I’m not really the best (or anywhere close to it) teacher, so when it comes to the classroom, I’ve had a good time doing everything I can to avoid traditional teaching. This includes yoga, class gardens, nature walks, building gnome homes, bottle brick packing, group dances, and instrument making. Whoops! One of my favorites lately has been what I call the Beatles sessions. Every Thursday I spend an hour and a half with class 6. I choose a Beatles song, write the lyrics on the board with some blanks, and have the kids copy them down in their notebooks. Then I play the song and they have to fill in the missing lyrics. It’s terrific! Beatles songs are perfect for this because 1. it’s the Beatles, come on, and 2. the words are simple and for the most part, they sing clearly. Lots of repetition and rhyming and ridiculousness. Some naughtiness, but luckily there’s enough songs to avoid those. Once we’ve figured it out, some kids write the words in their correct places and we sing the song a few times through. We go through a few songs a class and we all leave happy. So far we’ve covered Ob-la-di Ob-la-da, Octopus’s Garden, All Together Now, Help!, Yellow Submarine, All You Need is Love, Baby’s in Black, Dear Prudence, Can’t Buy Me Love, Hello Goodbye, Sgt. Pepper’s, Here Comes the Sun, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, and Piggies. and there’s plenty more where that came from! I think next week we’ll spiral into Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds...

This has, naturally, put me in a real Beatles mood lately. You know the kind. Light, happy go lucky, silly. Thank you for sharing your spirit-lifting magical tunes with the world, Beatles! You can make a sunny Vanuatu morning even brighter. Good day sunshine!

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur came in September. I ate naos (local apples) and honey to celebrate the sweet new year and I fasted on Yom Kippur. I took my mat down to the saltwater and spent the day with myself. I crossed cultures for a bit and reread my favorite parts of the tao teh ching. And on Dave’s suggestion, I began Atonement (only fitting) and also finished up Michael Pollan’s book a Defense for Food. It was an easy fast- I didn’t get many hunger pains until the afternoon. My mama made simboro for me to break the fast. Simboro consists of grated manioc wrapped in island cabbage boiled in coconut milk garlic and onion. It’s my favorite island meal and was extra delicious after an empty bel of a day.

Sometime during the month I was down by the water. I was standing on two rocks in a trance watching a buluk drinking saltwater (bizarre) while peeing (making it even more bizarre) she looked up at me and I fell, not a big fall, just an awkward one. I jammed my middle finger and it swelled up like a misshapen balloon. That night I showed my parents and they had the cure: Mama Joy’s oil. Mama Joy’s is the coconut oil cure all that everyone here swears by. So we rubbed some of that on and then my papa proceeded to “hold it,” Holding my finger sounds like a delicate act, but a better name would be “yanking the joint back into place.” Painful, but effective.

That’s what they call massages, too. Holding your back, holding your arms, holding your legs. Some people are good holders and you can ask them to hold you and they’ll happily do so! Sometimes I get held just for kicks.

I’ve been making lots of sunset bonfires on the beach lately. I usually bring down my kettle and boil some tea and sip that while the sun drowns. My favorite is ginger hibiscus and lemon with honey. The sky does wonderful things and sometimes I’m joined by a few fascinated kids. Fascinated in my odd behavior more than the sunset, but then they ask what I’m doing and we appreciate the sky together. Or they are just silently contemplating why I’m a weird white creature. Both viable.

Aho maroro means “the sun is drowning” or sunset and Aho mocalo means “the sun is climbing” or sunrise. I love that.

Another day, another market house fundraiser! With no end in sight. I usually take the responsibility of walking to town early that morning and acquiring supplies. I love early morning walks. Sometimes it’s just me and my thoughts. Other times I’ve got music or a podcast to keep me company. This Friday morning I passed the market house and the foundation was complete! Great news! I got back to site and they were butchering the 2 pigs we bought for meat. I helped fan the flies away, set up the kava station, and then I relaxed until the food was ready.

The fundraiser was a success. Some yungfala boys brought down a big speaker and played music. At first they didn’t have a flash drive or memory card, so I put some Bob Marley, Rebelution, and local music together and we played that. I stuck some Beatles and CCR on there too, hoping these songs would trickle out after I gained credibility for my super cool reggae mix. Unfortunately (for them, not me) Yellow Submarine and Obla di Obla da were back to back and the yungfala were not having it. They scrambled and found a cooler memory card and my flash drive was immediately replaced with the same old music that they put on repeat at every community event. So close! At least the class 6 students enjoyed hearing the Beatles tunes they just learned in class and all the mamas and papas were into it, too.

My badass island mates Grace, Thomas, Kathleen, and Avery all came to support. Grace works for the province, so she’s got the provincial truck hook up. We drank some shells and storian’d until they headed out. Avery brought me a book, Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley (so so good!) and Thomas brought me his Peace Corps issued bike helmet so I can safely roam around on 2 wheels.

We flattened all the food and kava and made around 500 bucks between the two, around 300 after pulling out the expenses. This money goes into the Women’s Fund to help with the market house construction. A man who is running for provincial government came and presented his donations - $100 and a ton of cement. Actually one ton! It’s great knowing that there are bigfala supporters of what we’re doing, even if it’s kind of a local publicity stunt. We’ll take it!

kava root

evana and hego with laplap leaves and flowers for their favorite aunti

 

That Saturday was September 26th, which marked my 20 months in country! Pretty wild to think of all the ups and downs and sideways and inwards that have happened during the past 20 months. My service ends in March, so that means only 6 months left. Plenty of time, but also not that much time. I joined my mama, OB, and Morris for a trip to the garden. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but “garden” is a gross understatement. Vanuatu is mainly subsistence farming and therefore, the bush is mainly gardens. Humungous, well-maintained gardens that produce all sorts of delicious things. “Farm” is more like it, but it seems to take away the charm. I love going to the garden! My family has several gardens, as do my brothers and sister, but the one we visited is their main one. It’s about an hour hike uphill into the bush from my site and only a half hour or so from their house in the village.

Right now the garden is growing pineapple, pawpaw, bananas, green onion, capsicum, manioc, taro, corn, cabbage, kumala, yams, and watermelon. There’s a lot going on! Our job that Saturday was weeding around the yams and watermelon. Some plants are friends – they grow well together – and yams and watermelon are an example of friends. The yams climb up the stalks and the watermelons expand underneath. Everyone assumed squat position and began to silently weed. I have found that the garden, tucked away in the living, breathing forest, is a nice place for quiet contemplation. Or turning off the headspace, zenning out, and simply enjoying the task at hand. I have a deep appreciation for weeding after spending time in the family garden. So satisfying to pull out a chunk of weeds by the roots. Except for the ones with thorns. Those can go to hell.

Before we left for the garden I made some hobos for our lunch. Hobos are a meal I learned at summer camp when I was a kid. You chop up veggies and potatoes (and meat if that’s around), douse them with spices, and wrap them up in aluminum foil. I’ve always called them hobos without thinking about the name. I don’t think about it having negative connotation considering a hobo is just a wanderer. And hobos are easy-to-eat meals on the go, a tribute to the fluid lifestyle. And in the book Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert’s poem states that hobo is just short for “homeward bound.” Whether that’s true or not, I like it.

After weeding for a bit, I got a fire going and put the hobos in it to cook. After a half hour or so we ate our hobos, drank some green coconuts, and got back to work. There were some manioc ready to be dug out, so Morris got to working on that. Manioc is a tubular root crop and the main ingredient for my favorite meal simboro. So needless to say, I was more and more excited with each manioc treasure he found underneath its stalk.

We got back home and my brother fried up the purple-est yammiest yam pancakes and my mama make simboro for our dinner.

Here are some photos from the garden!

yam vines

OB

garden

lucky in the shade

yam!

taro leaf

watermelons everywhere

humble beginnings

maniocs with a side of moris

taro

mama, queen of the garden

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…