THE CLEVER

Our volunteer in South Tanna, David Keppen, had some items stolen from his property a few months ago. This is kind of shocking to me, since the culture and island life don't really leave themselves open to this sort of behavior. Plus, at least for me, it's easy to develop a family-like repoire with your village where they would feel very ashamed if anything, especially a theft, occurred. In fact, it's been my experience that they are very protective of me and my belongings. On the other hand, man will be man. And when you have flashy things like CD players and digital camera's I suppose you open yourself up to any possibilities. And of course people from outside your village are just as capable of theft as anyone.

So David had some items stolen right from inside his house. He talked to the village about it, had some meetings and so forth. No one seemed to know what to do, and David wasn't about to let it go. If someone knew what had happened they weren't sharing any information or they were too ashamed for one reason or another. David needed to appeal to a higher power - higher than the village chief. Turns out his village had a suggestion. They told him to go see "The Clever". "The Clever" - David had never heard of him. What kind of person was this? what sort of special powers does someone that goes by that name possess? But David had little other choices and in any event this all sounded rather intriguing, so why not humor everyone. And so David went to seek out this mystical sounding individual.

As if he had stepped into the Matrix seeking the wisdom of the Oracle, David found himself climbing hills, jumping rivers, and crossing forests of lush green tropical flora in hopes of having a face-to-face with the all knowing, all powerful Clever.

Upon meeting the Clever the interview process began. There was no pomp, no ceremony to the occasion. Just enter the hut, sit down, and wait for your turn to speak. What is your name? where did you come from? what is your business here? and so on. The Clever understood the problem and declared his ability to help David and restore his possessions.

But first he needed to communicate with his underlings.

The Clever reaches to the ground by his side, where David notices for the first time a selection of small stones and random sticks and rocks, and makes the carefully considered selection of a small, plain looking stone. He then nonchalantly places the stone into his ear. Then, while holding a finger to the inserted stone, and looking absently away from David, makes like he is placing a cellphone call. To David's great credit he stood by patiently and politely while waiting for the call to go through. Then when there was an apparent connection The Clever begins speaking out loud providing details of the situation at hand, periodically pausing to get clarification from David.

"Yes, that's correct... a Peace Corps Volunteer", he says to the... stone.

Then quickly turns to David:

"Uhm... What did you say your name was?"

"David Keppen

"Ah yes", then turns his face away, "He says his name is David Keppen". Then to David again:

"And you are from which village?"

"High Hill"

"Ah yes", then looks towards the ceiling while continuing his call, pressing the stone solidly into his ear, "He's from High Hill and he had items stolen from his home..."

This line of behavior continued for some time before The Clever purportedly hung up (pulled the stone out of his ear and carefully returned it to it's special place on the dirt floor) and explained that all was going to work out just fine, he would have his items returned shortly. David thanked The Clever, and took his leave without asking any questions.

Returning home from work the next day he found on his doorstep his CD player and digital camera and the other random items that had been taken. No indication of where they came from or who may have taken them - but there they were back again with nary a scratch.

He later came to learn who the most likely suspects where, as did all the villagers, and he decided to let it go - to not follow up by "pressing charges". The village, however, insisted upon have a "Sorry Ceremony" as a way for healing and moving forward. More about "Sorry Ceremony's" in another post. Couldn't we all use a Clever.

Love the name.

FOUND IMAGE Pt.4

And a couple more good photos found on the Peace Corps Resource Center computers. If you are the photographer or you know who the photographer is, please email me. I don't know any details about these photos except to say that, yes, the water is that beautiful. These photos have not be re-touched. The guy is holding a coconut crab, a creature that is taboo to eat as they are going extinct (i think?!?), but some restaurants still sell them.

This might be from the coast of Efate or maybe Lelepa:

GIANT BANYAN TREE

Lonely Planet travel guide refers to it as the world's largst living organism. I'm pretty sure that's not true. It's possible that it's the world's largest tree, and even more likely that it's the largest one in Vanuatu, but that's not a fair description either since it's more like a series of trees. Banyan trees are hard to describe - they grow up and out, then branches come down, vines are all around, it's impossible to see where the tree begins or ends, and it's just all jumbled like that.

This giant banyan is yet one more reason why Tanna Island kicks ass. Located on private property, the locals charge 200vt for tourists, but free for PCV's. The tree is about a 40 minute hike north-east from Matt's house, which is a 45 minute hike east from my house in Lowkatai. If you are using Google Earth to check out the island I'm not sure if you would be able to differentiate which tree is which, but it is located at the beginning of a valley several kilometers east and slightly north of the factory. A discerning eye might be able to detect the canopy - but the real beauty of the banyan tree lies beneath. You can climb through the vines and be totally encased in the tree's network to branches. Climbing the tree is like a jungle-gym paradise - very easy and tons of places to go, every branch is super strong and after you climb up you might be able to find a good vine to slide right back down.

There is no good way to capture the enormity of this tree with the lens I have on my Canon G3. This shot is from in the valley on the west side of the tree. There is a rotting tree trunk laying across the valley, just above a slight stream. I was able to shimmy back several meters to get as much as possible, but it's also important to note that while the tree goes from left to right in this photo, it also goes straight back in five other directions as well. That's Jeff standing in the bottom right corner raising his arms.

FOUND IMAGE Pt.3

An aerial view of Vanuatu. This image shows the treacherous rocky coral reefs just under the crystal blue water. We have very little sandy beach here. And it sucks. You can't even walk out on the reef without footwear - the rocks are really jagged and painful. Although the Ni-Vans just hop and jump around like it's nothing at all.

FOUND IMAGE Pt.2

Further snooping around revealed these images of land divers from Pentecost Island. And it just occured to me that since I'm publishing these photos on the internet, likely violating some form of copyright law, I should give serious credit to the photographer. Unfortunately I have no idea who that person might be. On the other hand, they left these images on a public computer. In either event, if the photographer makes him/herself known I will gladly give credit where credit is due.

Now on to the nearly naked men of Pentecost Island.

I don't know any details about the history or ceremony of land-diving - except to say that they build a large rickety structure several stories tall, then tie vines to their feet which are cut at a length just long enough so that they just miss hitting the ground. I'm almost positive this is where bungee-jumping originated, although there is little elasticity to these vines. I'm told the scaffolding is constructed in such a way as to break, or collapse a bit to allow some "give" when the diver gets to the end of the dive, but I'm really not sure. I anticipate possibly traveling to this island during my service in Vanuatu, so I might one day be able to share my own photos, and much more detail about the why's, how's, and so forth.

Although it's also possbile that I might never travel to Pentecost, so I'm happy to be able to at least share these photos with you today:

NOTE: Nambas, or penis sheaths, are a custom thing. The nambas, as you can see, only cover the penis, not the testicles, and different islands have different styles. On Tanna we have the small nambas village, and big namba village - it's hard to guess which might be more interesting since it's not clear what the "big" and "small" are referring to - the namba or the person. These are really just worn for custom ceremonies. I think there are very few places left in Vanuatu that actually wear these things on a daily basis. The guys in this first photo seem to be just hanging out, or maybe waiting for their turn at land-diving - and yes, the little kids dive too:

And here are some dudes climbing the scaffolding:

And then getting the nerve to jump...

Check this shit out - maybe that tower is closer to 5 stories high? It kills me that these guys aren't even paying attention to the nut-ball flying through the air right behind them.
Holy jesus...

The only good story I've heard about the land-diving is the one about the Queen of Englands visit back in the 70's. Apparently they had planned to put on an elaborate show for her, but when one of the divers made a jump the vine was the wrong length (or it broke, or the tower didn't break properly) and he cracked his brain open and died - right in full view of the Queen. She didn't like that too much.

FOUND IMAGES Pt.1

I haven't taken the time to write any decent stories lately, but I have been loading some good photos. And a photos is like a thousand words, right?

Peace Corps Volunteers often load stuff onto the Resource Center computers (photos, reports, files, data, letters, so forth) to be used in the future, to share with other volunteers, or to transfer to other media (memory sticks, CD's).

And then they never delete the files off the computer.

And then I come along and search through all the files looking for good photos. This is what I found today. I think this is an image of the area near the volcano on Ambae Island.

Click the photo to enlarge:

And this one of the same location, different angle:

O' TANNA-BOMB

Christmas is in a few days.


I guess I should get "Happy Thanksgiving" out of the way first.


I had been working hard during November to get things wrapped up at the coffee factory, compiling data, making graphs and charts and attending meetings and all that happy horseshit. We had advertised a last day that the factory would be buying coffee from farmers so that we can finish up our work and shut down the operation (including the expensive electrical connection), but there is no effective way to adertise anything other than post a sign at the local store and hope that word speads around the island. We decided to tell people that we would close the factory two weeks before the actual last possible minute date to give people a chance to get everything in. Last thing we ever want to do is discourage a coffee farmer by turning them away from the factory. Well.. our "last minute" date has come and gone and farmers keep showing up.

Regardless, it was time for a break.

Matt and I were invited to a Thanksgiving dinner at David Keppen's house, another PCV in South Tanna. We were to be joined by PCV Mike Hoffman (from middlebush, Tanna) and David's girlfriend Laura - an Australian aide worker from the Youth Ambassador program. David's site is south of the volcano and required hiring a truck and traveling for a couple hours. Turns out that on the day we had planned to head south there was a dead body and his mourners arriving by air. The dead man was from the south. Every truck heading south was booked up for the funeral procession. We were S.O.L.


Then a friendly driver told us there may be room but in order to secure ourselves a seat in the truck we had to accompany him to the airport, wait for the dead body to arrive, and then travel with the mourners across the island. So that is what we did. For 2 1/2 hours we were the only white people sitting in the back of one of five pick-ups each packed with people. A motorcade of mourners. The truck in front of us had the body. South of the volcano we came upon a section of the road that was so steep and muddy that we all had to get out of the trucks and groups of guys literally pulled each truck one-by-one up the incline with a thick rope, wheels spinning and shooting mud all over the place. The sky a cloudless pitch black.


To make a long story much shorter, we arrived at David's house and Thanksgiving was the very next day. We hadn't planned very well about what to cook, we didn't bring any food with us, and didn't really know what to expect. Nobody had really bothered to make any good plans. I guess I didn't care too much - just needed to get out of my village for a short bit.


Turns out our Thanksgiving dinner was really to be a custom marriage ceremony for David and Laura. They had previously made arragements with his village to put on a little ceremony - mostly for the fun of it, and partly so the villagers felt more comfortable with Laura spending the night at David's house. I thought I would be a casual observer, but next thing i know Matt and I are called upon to play the role of Laura's parents and to "give her away". And so this required them slapping some black goo on our foreheads and sticking a feather in our hair. We had already been at site for 5 months and were feeling pretty scrubby so this only added to the effect.





It looked like this:

We weren't too happy.

Turns out Peace Corps wasn't too happy either. When they learned of David's custom marriage they apparently threatened him with "administrative separation" for violating Peace Corps policy. I guess the Peace Corps doesn't want volunteers participating in custom ceremonies since they are legally binding in Vanuatu, and I suppose it might also be considered culturally insensitive since we all know that David and Laura aren't really wanting to be married in the U.S. or Australia. So the Peace Corps has asked David to write a statement explaining his actions and so forth. To David's credit he had previously talked to his villagers and they all had an understanding that the marriage ceremony we all witnessed was just a little more than "play-play" and that everyone understood it was only effective until their service contracts were complete - and for Laura that meant just one more month.

Problem now is that Matt and his girlfriend Erin, visiting from Hawaii for the holidays, have already planned a similar custom marriage to take place in his village shortly after Christmas. As I type this Matt is in a meeting with the new Assistant Peace Corps Director, who is also the acting-Director while the real director is on holiday. So naturally she'll be wanting to follow all the rules as she is brand new in her job. Probably not too fair to her to be required to make these kinds of decisions having just arrived in country. Hope Matt can work something out.

Gobble gobble gobble.

We arrived in Vila about one week ago, and Matt was first to get a haircut. Here is a recent photo before I had a chance to get a haircut:

more to come...