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...