Arrival

I've joined the Peace Corps and have been assigned to the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu.

My group!
Vanuatu Peace Corps Volunteers, Group 29.
We arrived in Vanuatu last night, Monday, April 17, 2017, touching down at 7:45pm.  It took about 42 hours of travel and airport delays to get here.  Long day, but other than the delays everything went well and everyone was in a good mood anyway.
This is the Fiji airport (NADI).

One vol. suggests keeping a pillow on your backpack for airport delays.
Long layover at the Fiji airport.

The Vanuatu International Airport at night, from the tarmac.

I think we were all blown away by the greeting we received at the airport last night.  I mean, we were dazed after 40+ hours of travel, but still.  The PC staff, which consists of both local staff and US staff and volunteers, overwhelmed us with joyful and enthusiastic greetings.  One woman wrapped a colorful cloth around my waist (we all got one) and told me now I'm an island boy.  Everyone got a handmade lei and a coconut with coconut water too.  But it wasn't the stuff.  They were genuinely happy to see us.  Given that they too had to wait at the local airport for hours and hours because of our delays made me really appreciate this.  I've never received such an energetic and warm welcome.

Unexpectedly we're going to be staying at a Holiday Inn resort on the capital island (Efate) until Friday.  (The hotel the PC normally uses was damaged last week by Hurricane Cook.) The place is, well, a beautiful tropical resort with pools, beaches, endless great food, and even a trampoline.  The PC is going to train us all to be cabana boys I guess. :)

After that we'll be assigned to live with individual host families for several weeks, where we'll hopefully pick up on how to live in  the culture, go to the market, not insult everyone, and so on.  Our days will be filled with language classes.

The other volunteers are a diverse bunch.  This is the second PC tour for one person.  There are a couple other middle-aged people like myself, but most of the other volunteers are in their 20s.

Time to go to the first session!

Comments

  1. SteveApril 17, 2017 at 6:15 PM

    Woohoo!

    Sounds great - glad to hear you have arrived well.

    You could be the first PCV trained as a cabana boy - someone has to do it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownApril 17, 2017 at 6:53 PM

    They were short cabana boys so they put in an order through the PC. How do I submit an order? 😋

    Good to get an update!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cabana Boy Matriculation

Image
After 10 days of intensive cabana boy training at the Holiday Inn, tomorrow we return to our training villages where we will officially be Cabana Boys. A note about the language here: "ol man" refers to everyone, not just men. Interestingly the Ni-Vanuatu have also come up with a gender neutral pronoun that isn't just "it". Anyway, both men and women are Cabana Boys, which is not only the official Peace Corps title, but also approved by the GAD committee because reasons. For the first time in their lives, four newly minted Cabana Boys contemplate a life outside the Holiday Inn. Cabana boys must keep up with popular culture in order to be conversant with guests. The Holiday Inn values us as cabana boys and isn't making leaving any easier. Tonight they served dinner on the beach. It looked like a wedding dinner, with all of the chairs covered in those special form fitting tablecloths made for chairs. And not only did they bring out the mango and coconut
Read more

Back at the Port Vila Holiday Inn

Image
I havent posted since my last post because the Holiday Inn Wi Fi stopped working, and there was no connectivity at our training village of Epau. We abruptly learned early this afternoon that a tropical storm heading our way was starting to look like a cyclone. The PC evacuated all trainees back to the Port Vila Holiday Inn, and we'll probably be here until Sunday. Maybe the Wi Fi will even keep working. What PCTs fleeing a hurricane look like. So while it may look like we just hang out at this resort, we've all been living with our own host families and having adventures. I've been writing notes on my Ipad about the adventures. I didnt write every night. Most night I didnt write. Many times i am just done with the day, or we have some evening session or function. Anyway, here are the notes I did write. Tip: PST=pre service training, PCV=peace corps volunteer, PCT=peace corps trainee, which is what We are until we're sworn in. Friday, April 21 Today my group, the
Read more