A FEW IMPORTANT NOTES

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS:

Tanna is often referred to as "Black Man Town" by the locals. I'm not really sure why, except that in Vila there are many shops that are owned by Chinese men and various white men, whereas in Tanna all the shops are owned by black men. There are a few resorts that are owned by non-Ni-Vans, but even some of these have Ni-Van management and staff. And basically the entire population is black. The only time you see a non-black person it's a tourist or an aide worker. Or a damn proselytizing missionary (lots of these - why do they think god needs recruiters?!?!).

Here the common vernacular is to say "black man" or "white man" to differentiate between anything that is Ni-Van or not Ni-Van. It's as simple as that. And this includes not just people, but places, ideas, and so on. When we have conversations we talk about "white man thinking" or "that's white man talking" compared to "black man thinking" or "black man culture" and everyone knows this has nothing to do with racism but everything to do with development and training specific to Vanuatu. And nor does "White man" just refer to people with white skin - but any person that isn't a Ni-Van. So when you read this type of wording on my blog please keep this in mind. I've already become completely accustomed to it and I don't think twice about the implications it may have for our overly politically correct country. And I don't plan on going through each post to make sure everything is PC so long as I know that here in Vanuatu it's all good. Which brings me to another note:

SPELLING, GRAMMAR, AND SYNTAX:

Due to the speed of my internet connection I am loathe to open any window or click on any button that take up eons of time. My hair is grey enough. And since I pay by the hour and wish to do as much as possible in my time (I also walk 90 minutes each way to get here) I usually don't proofread or spell check anything. Just type and go... type and go. So please forgive me for any infractions of grammar, spelling or even just basic sentence structure - sometimes I'm multi-tasking (like when i get the special opportunity to chat live with another gmail user) and the thing I'm composing suffers for it. My bad.

MISSIONARY'S:

Yes, we are full of them. Or at least it sure seems that way in Tanna. There is at least one large group of mormons that I often see in Lenekal, but I think they live out in the middle bush. The one guy I've spoke with looks about 14 but is actually 20 - I can't believe they would send him out here. Apparently when you enroll (?) for your Mormon mission they don't tell you where you are going, be it in the US or not. He just got tossed on a plane and sent to Fiji where they passed him off to this place he had never heard of before. He was asking us questions about joining the Peace Corps in the future and Jeff had to explain how Peace Corps is specifically secular and that this should be a serious concern for him as his missionary endeavors would be a serious concern for PC recruiters. I would imagine that the type of person that would fly around the world to "preach his word", whatever it may be, would find it very difficult to then be in a situation where you would specifically NOT be allowed to preach at all even when in a strange land where maybe they practice black magic and you would need to incorporate an understanding of that belief system into your Peace Corps work (such as here in Vanuatu).

Then there is the group of Christian bible-thumpers I had the mis-pleasure of overhearing at a restaurant. The leader, whom I've actually met several times, was discussing strategies for dealing with the misunderstanding between the different types of Christianity and about how best to spread the word. I had indigestion all day.

I guess we can credit the missionaries for ending cannibalism, but there's a slew of things the missionaries have done to mess things up in this country such as getting them all wearing sensible clothing - where's the fun in that?? Damn those missionaries!

But again I say... Why do these people think GOD needs recruiters. Makes not one bit of sense to me. Right up there with giving money to a church. Religion shouldn't cost a dime - no amount of money is gonna get you a better cloud than mine.

Oh... And this brings me another note:

THE FUTURE OF THIS BLOG:

I guess there will be times, such as the above mini-rant, where I stray from the subject of my Peace Corps musings and branch out a bit into other subjects, be they political or personal or whatever the hell I feel like talking about. It's my blog, my prerogative. Plus, just writing about Man-Tanna is gonna get boring for me and anyone who knows me knows I can't keep my mouth shut anyway. So I guess that can be viewed as a warning, or an invitation. Transit34 was always going to be about transitions anyway.

And I might as well take this moment to just go ahead and make it clear to anyone reading this who doesn't know me personally:

I'm a 35 y/o liberal, bush-hating, tree-hugging, travel-bitten, alcohol-drinking, book-reading, sometime -casual-drug-using*, reality-TV-hating, reasonably-educated, very skeptical, and often overly-opinionated, multi-racial-loving, homo (this means I sometimes date black men - yes BLACK MEN!!)... Among other adjectives and slurs which escape me at the moment (go ahead and send your comments!!)

And as such I might use language not suitable for all audiences. Sometimes I might even use unnessary language like "fuck" or "dip-shit" (sorry grandma - yours are the only eyes I worry about, but I still ain't gonna sensor myself).

Or I might say something really outrageous like "we need a national health plan to insure all Americans". I might even say something about the mind-boggling stupidity of the people that voted for Bush the first time and now expect me to pat them on the back for not voting for him the second time (I keep meeting these people). Sorry. I'm not gonna do it. You get points for coming around, but it's still too little too late I'm afraid - you had all the information you needed the first time. My ears bleed every time I hear one of these people say something like "well... I didn't think he would be this bad, or do this thing or that thing...".

Anyway.. Enough of the disclaimer stuff. Now it's back to Vanuatu for at least a few more posts.

phew... You'd think I had one too many "Tuskers - Bea Blo Yumi" (the local beer slogan is "Tusker - Our Beer".

*yes, that's correct - I'm a mature adult who enjoys many of life's vices and don't act like you don't break the law here and there. Everything is relative. Everything.