Vanuatu

2016-Jun-07 I moved into the bungalow today after class. It is really nice and more importantly spacious. I have a whole small house to myself instead of one small room. The bungalow rents for 3,500 vatu per night ($35.00), which is paid for by the Peace Corps. This also seems to be the place where three kittens hang out. They're tiny, adorable, and always stalking each other. The quality of my living arrangements went up several notches today. My new sister helped me move. She's another trainee named Angela, and we were next door neighbors in Epau. I really like her. It is like having a sister here, and since I miss my real sister, that's pretty good for me. I am working on my habit of refusing help. I almost refused her offer before I came to my senses and accepted. I've just grown into a lifestyle of having to do everything by myself, and am not used to accepting help. But moving was better and more enjoyable with Angela. I have sort of a dream of goi...

2017-Jun-07 Today is my mom's birthday.  Happy Birthday Mom! No photos in this one. Getting pix from an iPad to an Experia Xzs when you don't have Internet or any cables or adapters is tough. They could talk Bluetooth to each other,  but they just don't. Anyway... Only foot trails connect the four villages of Pele island. [photo here] They're easy to walk since all the ground is on the same level.  There are even signs at the points where the trails branch off into a village.  The people of Piliura have setup the entrance to their village from the trail especially nicely. [photo here] The island has 4 villages, and is basically a beach town. I've never been someone to hang out on a beach.  The beaches are lovely and you can go swimming. Ok, but then?  I'll be here for 3 weeks and need to figure out what to do. (Yes,  I do realize this is a high-quality problem.) [photo here] There is a nearby island to visit, which has an unfinished hotel...

 Photos of my host family in Epau, in no particular order (except the last one). Anthony's best monkey face wins the monkey face contest, a shot made even better because Tony photobombed him. Distant runner up in the monkey face contest. I showed Jackjack what you can do with the front facing camera. The inevitable outcome. Anthony displays two stools he made the night before.  He's a good, smart kid. Anne making banana laplap.  She scrapes the banana out of its peel using a shell. Fredfred with his grandma Anne.  I think she kind of likes him. A frequent sight at the river. I'm pretty sure Jackjack is in this one. A rainy day with Susan. Breakfast with Jackjack.  This is a nice, helpful, fun, smart kid. Tony ran the village aid post, meaning he was on call.  One night a fisherman with an injury (from a weed whacker, not from fishing) came by for a bandage. Mama making a coconut basket.  They b...

2015-05-26 There is one truck on Tongariki, which is owned by the aid post on the island. Once ashore we waited at the bottom of the mountain for the truck to come. Someone had brought down some yams with coconut milk for us, which I appreciated since I had missed lunch. I tried to chat with some of the children who waited with us, who were both very curious about me but also very shy when I'd try talking to them. After maybe half an hour of waiting, we loaded up our bags and rode up. Do I even need to mention the road was narrow, full of switchbacks, deeply rutted and bumpy at this point? Annette even let me sit in the front seat with her this time. We came to a stop at a flat space, the first one I'd seen, near the Coconak K-6 primary school. The area is what we call a saddle in the U.S., that gentle arc between two mountains. When I tried to describe it, I learned there is no word for saddle in Bislama, and they call it a "ples blog sid daon long hos" (the plac...

2015-05-30 Feel better but still lousy. Didn't sleep much last night either, and occasionally felt feverish had sweated a lot. The full-body pain is gone, so this was a 24 hour flu I guess. But now I have a new problem. Something bit my left lower leg several weeks ago. It seemed ok (my leg), but about a week after that it looked infected around the bite. I'd been putting antibiotic cream on it, and kept it covered with a band-aid so the flies would stop biting it.  Then maybe two weeks ago it got red and sore around the bite. This morning my whole lower leg is swollen, sore, and a little red. It hurts to walk on it. I ate a hard boiled egg for breakfast then went back to bed.  I stayed in bed all day.

2015-05-27 After I woke up and took a bucket shower (that's where you dump a few small buckets of water over your head and pretend you took a shower), I went to the nakamal. It was still early, a little past six, but the village PC chairman was outside there so we talked. I took notes because otherwise I don't remember names. Actually that's not true; I don't remember them anyway, but I can look them up on my notes. We talked about the village, what he did, his family, and so on. It was one of those quiet, early morning talks in low voices. Annette came out later and joined us. After a bit we had a breakfast of - guess what? - yams and fish. I'll have an entire post on yams on Tongariki later, in case you're wondering what's up with all the yams. After breakfast and a little post-breakfast break, Annette and I met Mawa and Daniel (the PC chairman) at the school for a tour. The students are on a two week break, so we had the place to ourselves. The tour...

2017-05-28 All of the churches decided to combine into one ceremony on this Sunday, followed by a big feast, all to welcome me. We would gather at the Presbyterian church, in the neighboring village of Leiwoma. My host family explained to me that the traditional call, a conch shell, would be used to let everyone know when to head over. That, and every dog in the village went nuts when it heard the conch. At the church, they used the new traditional method of notifying people, which is to bang on a suspended welding tank with a piece of rebar or something. Seriously, there are so many welding tanks here. I was in the church with the welding tank 50' away, and it kind of hurt my ears. I feel sorry for the guy who has to ring it. The most interesting part of church was the singing, where everyone seemed to know how to harmonize "karem pat" and just did it. The other interesting part was where everyone devolved into a sort of speaking in tongues kind of thing, with some...

2017-05-29 I woke up at about 2 am. I felt really cold (it is never cold here), and I was shaking uncontrollably.  Because of some videos they showed us before about people who got Malaria (think about those movies from driver's ed), Malaria is on every PC trainee's mind, so of course I thought I might have it. I know shaking and feeling cold, alternating with feeling very hot and having a fever, are symptoms. I didn't bring my PC health handbook with me though, and couldn't look up the others. I called the PC doctor - honestly it was difficult dialing because I was shaking to badly - to ask for guidance. I didn't have vomiting or diarrhea, so he thought it was probably a viral infection, and that I should call him back in the morning. I went back to bed and the shaking eventually stopped, but every part of my body hurt and I didn't get any sleep. I did get up that morning to refill my water bottle and tell my host family I was sick and wouldn't be eatin...

2017-05-26 Yesterday I made the trek to the island of Tongariki. This is the site where the PC has assigned me to work as a teacher trainer for the next two years. For now I will be here for one week, which the PC calls a walkabout week. The purpose of this is for me to get a glimpse of where I will be living, to get to know the community, and to get a first hand view of my living arrangements. Accompanying me is Annette, one of the PC staff here who has been trying to teach us Bislama. Annette was probably assigned to me because she is from Tongoa, a larger island just to the north of Tongariki. To get here from Efate, we took a bus (buses here are Toyota minivans) from the village of Epau to Port Vila. There we caught a flight on a small twin-engine plane to Tongoa. After landing on the grass airstrip on Tongoa, we took a pickup truck (I rode in the back) down to the shore. Finally, we rode a small fishing boat - maybe 15ft - to Tongariki. The guys running the boat also fished...