Cabana Boy Matriculation

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 ice creams, but they finally brought in their a-team to make the cake, which has frankly been shitty all week. I ate way too much cake, and everyone else should have too. It was delicious. They also had a kids section with tater tots which we freely raided. There were hardly any kids anyway.

One cabana boy has managed to get an infected foot. It started out as a simple insect bite on the ankle, but his entire foot has swelled up into something that looks like a special effect from Total Recall (1990) when they were shot out into zero atmosphere and started to swell up and explode. Today he received a painful shot for all of his efforts, and he isn't being released like the rest of us. He will probably return next week, and yes, he got ice cream anyway.

Example of a wound dressed by and for a Cabana Boy.

We're leaving behind satellite tv, a generous buffet 3x/day, air conditioning, and comfortable beds in rooms with maid service. But we're all truly looking forward to leaving. Why? Because that is what we all signed up for and wanted. We want experiences very different from what we had in the U.S. We want bucket showers, chickens wandering into houses, and (us) cooking over an open fire.

If you turn on the tv and there is always, and I mean frigging always a soccer game on, you have left the U.S. Look for French sponsors too. If you can't tell what sport it is, follow this decision tree: Is there a French sponsor? No, then you're watching the NFL, NBA or C-SPAN. Yes, then ask, are there more than four players? No, then it's tennis. Yes, then it is soccer.

Crushing dissidents just isn't what it used to be. If BBC World News is the only news, you've left the U.S.

We're looking forward to getting back together with our generous host families, some of whom have probably had their houses damaged by the recent weather (though the cyclone didn't hit, plenty of rain and heavy winds did). We're looking forward to continuing our language training. Many of us feel we've started to get a foothold on Bislama and are eager to get back to our villages where we can continue to practice and take lessons. That gender neutral pronoun is "hem," by the way.

We're all cleaned up and fattened up now too (did I mention the cake?) so they might even be happy to see us. My problem is my nose hair, which at the rate they grow here you'd think I snort Miracle Gro. If Nair made a product for nose hair, I'd try it.