MUSINGS AND MISCELLANY

Top Photo: This is how half the homes in Lelepa look. This structure is actually the kitchen. On the other side of the ripped white-ish fabric is a dining table, with the house on the other side of the table. The shelf area in the left half of the photo is the dish-washing area. there is a 2x4 raised just off the ground to stand on. Not sure why, but they are all have this. Then there is a wash and a rinse basin. Look closely and you will notice two or three chickens walking around all the clean and dirty dishes. Definitely getting thier dirty little feet on the clean dishes. Maybe pooping too.

Middle Photo: This is a Tanna nakamal (kava bar) near Matt's house in the bush. They usually choose a site between a 2 or 3 large banyan trees. Women are not allowed in nakamals and usually don't ever drink kava. When we want to drink kava with PC girls we have to fill up a water bottle and take it to another site. At our nakamal in Lelepa they would often run out too soon, so we got them in the habit of taking pre-orders with advance payment. This photo shows a particularly large and beautiful banyan. Tanna is known for it's chewed kava. Usually it's prepared in a meat grinder - but the traditional way is to have young boys chew it up and spit it out. They aren't allowed to drink the actual kava until they get older, but they let them chew the roots 'cause they think the purity of youth adds sweetness to the flavor. Whatever. It still tastes like dirty cucumber water.

Bottom Photo: This photo was taken directly across the path from the nakamal in the above photo. These boys are all wearing towels since they've all recently been circumsised in one of Tanna's famed circumscision ceremonies that were happening when we were on walkabout. Each weekend for about a month a small group of boys are cut with a special piece of bamboo and then hidden away in a special house in the bush where women are forbidden to see them for a certain period of time. When the time is up a huge festival occurs. Some men were telling us about this whole process one night at the nakamal. At the same time a bunch of little kids were running around the area. I asked the guy which kids were next on the list and he pointed out a kid here and a kid there. When I looked at the smiling, happy kids I turned to the man and said "gee... he sure doesn't seem too nervous about what's gonna happen to him in a couple days". The man said they had no idea and that it was a well kept secret until the moment it was to happen. I still can't imagine how, when other boys who were just cut are running around the same area, that it can be kept a secret. Just another Vanuatu mystery. We've already been invited to attend a circumscision ceremony. I'm not sure how i feel about it - one of those things that would haunt me forever (4 guys hold the boy down as he screams bloody murder while being cut with a sharpened piece of bamboo - holy christ i get queasy just typing this). On the other hand it's one of those things you might just kick yourself for not seeing when you had the chance.

Sharing a little culture:

Tawi - married men can't look at his wife's mother. Women can't look at the husbands father. Suppose one of these pairs is walking towards each other down a narrow path?? The women must defer in either case and literally will jump off the path and into the bush to avoid the situation - although it's just as likely the man will do the same. It's works in different ways on different islands, but this is how it is on Lelepa and I've seen it in action.

Uhmmm - they have a terrible habit of always saying "yes" despite occasions when they really want to say "no". We've all learned this one the hard way and now find ourselves asking a Ni-Van the same question in several different ways (very difficult with the limitations of bislama) and often you still don't know the straight answer. This happens ALL THE TIME and makes things very difficult. I guess it's in their culture to be pleasing and positive. They simply never want to say no, even if it's bad for them - like when Survivor TV film crews want to damage an ancient and humongous banyan tree just to make the shot a bit more TV friendly (those damn french).

Uhmmm pt.2 - along the same lines as above, they will regularly claim to understand something you've just told them, even though they really don't. Or they won't reveal to you important pieces of imformation for absolutely no good reason. We've heard countless stories of PCV's that asked their village if they'd like to have a co-operative store (for example) and they will always say yes (see above) but they won't voluntarily inform you that maybe they've already had several co-ops but they all failed because nobody would pay the accounts, or the village chief kept taking the money for himself, or no one wanted to staff the store. They no all the reasons it did't work, they just aren't gonna tell you this unless you ask the right questions. Or maybe you'll plan a workshop, and everyone will tell you they are interested, but on that day no one shows up. later you find out that was the day they all go into the gardens - why didn't they just tell you that so you could have picked another date? no one knows. it's just how it is here. You have to learn to work around that kind of stuff. Election results in Tanna so pissed off the locals, for unknown reasons, that they burnt down the provincial offices. New ones have since been built, but the charred remains of the old building linger on as a habitate for weeds and such.

Creeping - they have a very strong seperation of the genders. The men hang with the men, the women with the women. Rarely do they mix. We see the youth play volleyball together, but you never see them alone as couples unless they are married. There doesn't seem to be any sexual energy on this island at all, and you certainly don't see any flirting or dating/courting. Many marriages are arranged. As for everyone else, there's creeping. This is when a man (or very rarey a women) goes to the outside of a house and scratches on the door or screen or window of the person he likes. This only happens in the cloak of darkness, is very subtle and secretive, and has the intention of getting the other person to come out of the house and join you for a romp in the bush. There is no "hanging out" together. Just run off into the bush. Do that a couple times and marriage is right around the corner, usually 'cause she's pregnant. We've all been warned about creeping and how to handle the unwanted situation should it occur. Funny stuff.

$$ - The role, and power, of a Peace Corps volunteer is often misunderstood by the local community. Sometimes they think we are a money ticket and can get the village large items it might need - like a boat or a truck, or a solar-power system. The disappointment that comes from explaining the truth can be very awkward and difficult. I doubt this will be a problem for me, but I've already heard stories from others in my group who were met by extremely high expectations by the locals.

Black Magic - Rarely have I met a person that will admit they still believe in black magic but then they turn around and tell you a ludicrous story like the one about the guy on Epi who caused the last bad tsunami when, in jealous rage, tied a large leaf to a string and tossed it into the ocean. He pulled back on the string so fast and hard that the leaf pulled all the tsunami waters onto the land. And while you laugh at the this crazy little story they stare at you with all seriousness. And then when you say something like "gee, that's a funny story, but you don't really believe that's how it happened... do you...?" and they continue to just stare at you like you're the crazy one. More often than not, Ni-vans are quick to laugh at other islands and claim that other islands are the crazy black magic islands. They never want to admit that they still believe in that, at least not to the white man. Every time someone dies, though, doesn't matter if they were 86 years old, it must have been black magic.

THEY REALLY AREN'T KIDDING

Your tax dollars at work. Get a load of this flow chart - click the image to enlarge and then guess how long it took for us to realise that it really wasn't a spoof of government bureacracy bullshit. Needless to say, it took a long time. Especially since we had just spent 10 weeks isolated on a remote south pacific third world island. And then they hand us this.

This chart tracks the progress of a submitted trimester report from the time we, the PCV's in the field, submit them, until the time they get reviewed by members of congress holding our purse strings. It hurts my eyes just to look at it. Gives me the heebie-jeebies. I mean, what the harry-hell were they thinking when they put this thing together? First of all, there is no earthly reason for them to give US this information. Look at some of these boxes: "PA photocopies report", "PA sends photocopy to APCD", "APCD carefully reads report" . "carefully"?

And look in the bottom right corner. The box that's completely underlined. What's the name of that newsletter? who's idea was that? I can't wait to read all the pupu in that newsletter.

In fairness, though, I think the idea was to let us know how important the field reports are and how they come to end up in the halls of congress where rich, white men will maybe read the report and decide whether or not all this hippie, feel good stuff is a still a good idea or if they could better spend the money on a mega-million dollar Alaskan bridge that will benefit about 68 people.

Ohhh, but now I sound cynical. The truth is that the US Congress has always held the Peace Corps in high esteem - on both sides of the aisle - and recently voted to increase the budget at the presidents request. Yes, it's true. George Bush actually did ONE good thing. ONE. Never mind the fact that the entire budget is still, after 45 years, only about $300 million - less than the price of one failed Star Wars Anti-Ballistic Missle test.

We have people from our group, including me and Matt, that will not have acceptable (by Peace Corps standards) communication access to PC HQ in Vila. In a country prone to natural disasters at a rate higher than most others, it's imperative that people in HQ can quickly communicate information to us when needed. Not to mention emergency messages from the States. Not to mention us communicating with them should an emergency happen on our end - like... help me lord I've gouged myself with a bush knife and the locals want to stuff my leg with leaves and do a sacred dance to heal my wound please send a goddamn plane quickly. Why don't we all have satellite phones or radios? 'cause they cost a couple thousand each and they only have a handful so they go to the poeple, deservedely so, that are the most remote. Matt and I, assuming it's not the bush knife scenario or the erupting volcano, can walk 90 minutes to the nearest working phone if need be. I also just found out that as a cost-saving measure we are all getting dumped onto the rusty, archaic cargo ships that will haul our luggage to our respective islands. Previous groups took planes (1 hour to Tanna) and then greeted the cargo ships at a future date (10 hours to Tanna assuming a direct trip, but one should never make such silly assumptions in this land).

But no matter - this is all just part of the fun.

(ps - I may eat these words, but i'm really not too worried about the phone situation. My site has several cyclone worthy structures I can run to in under 5 minutes, and we have, ahem, a hospital within an hours walk. although we've been forewarned that just 'cause they call it a hospital doesn't mean that it will have doctors!! - and if the doctor is in, we are told to only see the australians)

PEANUT BUTTER-GATE

How do you insult an entire village of people? Simple, just tell them their food sucks in a public speech!

In what was the first of three public speeches I had to give during my training, we were asked to prepare a short and simple speech that taught the audience something about America, and present it in Bislama. The idea was to present our language skills and get us used to giving oral bislama speeches, the subject matter was really not that important. As such, I choose peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as my topic. Seemed like a good idea - the ni-vans make a pb+j with super thick bread and just the thinnest application of peanut butter and jelly. Basically you get no flavor and tons of carbs. As a vegetarian i need more protein. I would show them how I would make the sandwich in America. I would show them how, if you slice the bread thinner and add copious amounts of goodness then the sandwich would actually have flavor and would, in fact, be good. I told them, in my best bislama, that in America we like things big - bigfala house, bigfala trucks, bigfala airplanes, and bigfala flavor. I actually made two sandwiches on stage. I sliced the bread and spead on the stuff. One sandwich I made like theirs, one like mine. I built in quite a bit of humor and the speech sure seemed well recieved at the time, but as you can plainly see, I had made a serious faux pas. Even though I was only trying to demonstrate how I prefer my sandwiches, I did it at the expense of how they prefer theirs. Now, the controversy I caused by all this was somehow completely lost on me. Several of the Momma's were mildly upset by this and expressed as much to other trainee's and my own momma - who had helped me translate the speech and only seemed upset that I didn't tell her sooner how i like my sandwiches. But all the hubbub managed to escape me for over a month until that time when we were ask if two of us would volunteer to give speeches at our swearing-in ceremony. I volunteered for the english speech (the other was to be given in bislama) and more than a couple people in our group surprised me with their distress that I might somehow repeat the trauma of the peanut butter speech. arrrgh. After giving it some reflection I was embarrassed that I would have been so naive to let something like that happen - especially when we've all be on pins and needles hyper-aware of cultural sensitivity. How could i have been so stupid? It doesn't matter that if you read the speech, or watched the speech, you would have completely understood that i was in no way intending to insult thier cooking. It' s a whole different culture and they are affectd by things in different ways that we can't always predict. And in my own defense my very own Momma helped me translate the speech and didn't indicate any problems - but of course she never would since that would be out of character for a Ni-Van. Really it wasn't a big deal, but I felt really bad that some Momma's were personally hurt and I didn't have a chance to apologise at the right moment.

Luckily I more than won-over the village with my dancing antics at our beach party the evening of our site assignment announcements. They're a very prudish bunch (thank the missionaries) and only a couple momma's had the courage to get up and dance. Me and some other volunteers, however, had been away from nightclubs for too long and sort of broke it all down - let it all out. carried on like dancing fools. In fact, I was laying it on pretty thick just 'cause they were having so much fun watching me be a fool. So much so that for every day that followed I was able to garner squeals and giggles with just the slightest little hip wiggle when any momma happened to be looking at me. I gained something of a reputation - only to be enhanced and solidified by my crowd pleasing Swearing-In speech. details coming soon.

GROUP 19A AND TRAINERS

Back Row - Standing L to R:
Jasmine and Troy (married), Nancy, Bill (w/eyes closed), Amy, Aaron (w/sunglasses), Aileen, Thad, Jess, Eddie

Middle Row Starting in Front of Jasmine:
Noelle, Matt, Ryan, Matthew (Trainer), Teresa, Charlie (married to Nancy), Leonel, Solo (Trainer), Kevin

Front Row Starting Far Left:
Judy (Trainer), Christina (Head of Training), Katie (purple skirt), Ale, ME.

These are the 20 people that managed to get through the training program and were all sworn-in yesterday, Monday, June 26th. They are all excellent people - I'm very fortunate to have had such a great crew to train with. Everyone got along great and each person was friendly and helpful.

The trainers, the only Ni-Vans in the photo, were all super nice and helpful, easy-going and friendly. Language training was the hardest, and Solo, thanks to his take-no-prisoners-you're-going-to-speak-bislama approach proved to be the most effective and sought-after. We only got to work with each trainer for one week in groups of 5-6 and then we would rotate to the next trainer. Matthew, the young, single, sexpot of the group, was brand new to the Peace Corps (he's the guy nearly centered in the photo). Super smiley and charming, he was also a push-over as a teacher and therefore not the best language instructor. By the end of training he was getting a clue, though - I'm sure he'll make a great PC trainer for the next group. Judy, far left in the photo, and 8 months pregnant, is sweet and soft-voiced. Next to her is Christina - the training director and the sorry soul who got the brunt of all our frustrations. Despite all the flaws of training, and considering how rough it is to do any kind of sensible logistics in a country known for it's lacksidasical approach to schedules, she did a great job and kept a very positive attitude through-out.

TIME STAMP

I have a brief, unexpected moment in Vila so I thought I'd take the time to update the TIME ZONE on these postings. So I did. Although I didn't expect it to change the time and date on all previous postings so the time is incorrect on anything posted prior to arrival in Vanuatu. Small matter. The important thing is that when you look at the time and date on my posts it is actually accurate. Should you care about such things. Peace.

TANNA SUNSET

My Tanna island "walkabout" was awesome but I don't have the computer time today to blog about the experience - so instead I'll leave this image, one of my parting shots of Tanna. This was after 3 small bottles of vodka and a couple shells of Kava. Matt and I, along with Jeff (the guy i'm replacing) and Kamut (my counterpart - more on that later) all enjoyed my iPod on the beach, drunk and happy from a wonderful week. As soon as the sun disappeared the large flying foxes (bats) came out and circled overhead making halloween looking moon shadows in the sand - creepy and beautiful at the same time - only in Vanuatu!!

MAIL UPDATE - wanted to let you know that I got mail today. I haven't read it yet, but like to let you know how long it takes for things to arrive. Today is 6/3/2006.

Rossell - mailed 5/10 - letter
Harney - mailed 5/9 - card
Serwalt - mailed 5-19 - large letter

I'll look at them when I get back to Lelepa - right now i'm in transit back from Tanna island - making a computer pit stop at the Peace Corps office in Vila. Next bus leaves in 30 minutes and I still need to stock up on snack food. If i miss the bus, then I miss the boat!

BUNYA BUNYA BABY

This is an earthoven - a bunya meal. More details to follow - I just want to get the pictures up. A hole is dug about 3-4 feet down and a fire built inside. The fire is covered with rocks, and as the first burns out you are left with hot rocks at which point you cover them with palm leaves (or something) and then your food. You cover that with more hot rocks, more leaves and more dirt and more random stuff (like a trap and a piece of corrogated tin?!?) then you let it cook most of the day. In this photo we are loading the food into the oven. Back row left to right: Kevin, Matt, random Momma, Eddie, and Ryan in the navy blue. The food in the oven at the moment looks like Taro root, or maybe Kumala - either way it wasn't good. The structure in the background is a nakamal where kava is served. And this is on the Peace Corps office/house property.

PELE ISLAND

This is the view from Pele island, just off the northern coast of Efate (and just off the eastern coast of Nguna island). We took a field trip out here one Saturday a few weeks ago just for the hell of it. We had a guide leading us around the island and by the time we got more than half way around our group had splintered into several smaller groups - some, like me, without guides. We saw some others duck into the woods to take a short-cut through the bush, but by the time me and one other girl got to the entrance of the bush they were out of sight. We followed the path for a while before realising we were lost and had to back-track. Luckily we joined up with another guided group that led us out to the proper trails. Wheew! It was fun, and no matter how lost you feel you only ever need to walk in one direction for about an hour to hit water. Small islands are cool like that. I included this photo to provide some sense of environment on volcanic islands. These huge rocks where presumably blown here during the creation of the island or the destruction of some other island. The jagged islands in the background are not inhabited and don't show on the maps. I forget the names. I