Walkabout week 3: Day One in Tongariki
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 included the classrooms, library, and a few other rooms and the exterior. A previous PC volunteer painted a nice world map on one exterior wall, and it was nice to see it was still there after 3-5 years. The library was an unused dirty room in complete disarray, but I was told to expect that in a school library here. The classrooms looked like typical classic classrooms, with various pieces of student work, the alphabet, or instructions on what to do if there is an earthquake or cyclone posted on the walls.
The school has a sound system, a guitar without strings, a synthesizer that looked nice but didn't work, a 2kw solar system, and at least 4 water tanks which gather rainwater from the roof. I'd like to show respect and gratitude to the New Zealand military for their life saving and rebuilding work here after Cyclone Pam devastated Vanuatu in 2015. I doubt if many Americans are aware of that. I wasn't.
The school's 2kw solar system wasn't working. One of the solar panel arrays was disconnected and stored in a classroom, and the one still on the roof just wasn't working. Cyclone Donna from just a few weeks ago did that, and cyclone Donna didn't get close to Tongariki. I hope that conveys just how precarious life and technology is here, and how powerful cyclones are. Solar is no panacea and the arrays are helpless against high winds.
I then spent the next two hours or so asking Mawa and Daniel a bunch of questions from the PC "Walkabout week workbook" we're supposed to fill out. I appreciated their time; people are very generous with it here. We'd had enough of that so we went to the nakamal for lunch, which was yams. And fish. And maybe we had island cabbage too, I'm not sure. But believe me, we had yams.
I took a good two hour nap, and when I woke up I didn't have anything left to do for the day. So I made my next task eating some sugar cane someone gave me earlier in the day. That was fun and delicious. Next up, I went to the nakamal to write some more. Another person gave me two coconuts he'd husked. They were very green, and looked delicious. Later, a guy named Songi asked me if I wanted to open nangai nuts.
Songi took me to the boulder where you open nangai nuts. He'd climbed a tree earlier and had branches filled with the nuts, which unshelled are about the size of a small egg. The actual nut part, if you can get it, looks like an almond. Nangai nuts are a stone fruit, which means they are a nut that is hard as hell to open because it is so damn hard. To open them, place the nangai nut on a nangai nut opening boulder and hit it really hard with a large rock, while trying not to hit your hand. There is an art to it. Songi repeatedly opened his perfectly with one or two blows, whereas I clubbed away at mine and usually ended up with a crushed nut. But I got it right a few times and didn't get hurt, so it was a win.
I am certain at some point he told me bodybuilders ate nangai nuts. But when I asked him why bodybuilders ate them, he looked at me like I was a talking dog. I must have misunderstood.
At the nangai nut opening boulder, another guy came up and offered me another new food, which I think was called nangorise. It is a type of wild cane, and it was delicious. I must have a thing for cane. Nangorise isn't anything like sugar cane, and when baked briefly over a fire, warm nangorise, with its simultaneously spongy and stringy texture, was the best thing I'd had here so far. I've since heard it is a decent source of protein. Someone said let's go play football.
So I'm not any good at football (soccer). But it was just a fun game on the nakamal which they play most nights, and I wasn't entirely sure who was on whose team. I was a participant in the chaos. One thing: a girl played with us. In Epau, none of us ever saw a girl playing soccer, only the boys did. So I didn't expect that. On Tongariki, nobody cared and it seemed completely unremarkable to everyone.
It got too dark so we sat down. I pulled out my iPad to show photos and soon had a crowd of about 20+ people gathered around to see what Minnesota looks like, what my host family in Epau looks like, and whatever else I had. I took a picture of one kid, then brought it into an image editor and added the requisite glasses and moustache. Everyone loved it. Dinner time.
We had fish and yams. Let me make something clear: They are very proud of their yams. Their Tongariki yams.
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 included the classrooms, library, and a few other rooms and the exterior. A previous PC volunteer painted a nice world map on one exterior wall, and it was nice to see it was still there after 3-5 years. The library was an unused dirty room in complete disarray, but I was told to expect that in a school library here. The classrooms looked like typical classic classrooms, with various pieces of student work, the alphabet, or instructions on what to do if there is an earthquake or cyclone posted on the walls.
The school has a sound system, a guitar without strings, a synthesizer that looked nice but didn't work, a 2kw solar system, and at least 4 water tanks which gather rainwater from the roof. I'd like to show respect and gratitude to the New Zealand military for their life saving and rebuilding work here after Cyclone Pam devastated Vanuatu in 2015. I doubt if many Americans are aware of that. I wasn't.
The school's 2kw solar system wasn't working. One of the solar panel arrays was disconnected and stored in a classroom, and the one still on the roof just wasn't working. Cyclone Donna from just a few weeks ago did that, and cyclone Donna didn't get close to Tongariki. I hope that conveys just how precarious life and technology is here, and how powerful cyclones are. Solar is no panacea and the arrays are helpless against high winds.
I then spent the next two hours or so asking Mawa and Daniel a bunch of questions from the PC "Walkabout week workbook" we're supposed to fill out. I appreciated their time; people are very generous with it here. We'd had enough of that so we went to the nakamal for lunch, which was yams. And fish. And maybe we had island cabbage too, I'm not sure. But believe me, we had yams.
I took a good two hour nap, and when I woke up I didn't have anything left to do for the day. So I made my next task eating some sugar cane someone gave me earlier in the day. That was fun and delicious. Next up, I went to the nakamal to write some more. Another person gave me two coconuts he'd husked. They were very green, and looked delicious. Later, a guy named Songi asked me if I wanted to open nangai nuts.
Songi took me to the boulder where you open nangai nuts. He'd climbed a tree earlier and had branches filled with the nuts, which unshelled are about the size of a small egg. The actual nut part, if you can get it, looks like an almond. Nangai nuts are a stone fruit, which means they are a nut that is hard as hell to open because it is so damn hard. To open them, place the nangai nut on a nangai nut opening boulder and hit it really hard with a large rock, while trying not to hit your hand. There is an art to it. Songi repeatedly opened his perfectly with one or two blows, whereas I clubbed away at mine and usually ended up with a crushed nut. But I got it right a few times and didn't get hurt, so it was a win.
I am certain at some point he told me bodybuilders ate nangai nuts. But when I asked him why bodybuilders ate them, he looked at me like I was a talking dog. I must have misunderstood.
At the nangai nut opening boulder, another guy came up and offered me another new food, which I think was called nangorise. It is a type of wild cane, and it was delicious. I must have a thing for cane. Nangorise isn't anything like sugar cane, and when baked briefly over a fire, warm nangorise, with its simultaneously spongy and stringy texture, was the best thing I'd had here so far. I've since heard it is a decent source of protein. Someone said let's go play football.
So I'm not any good at football (soccer). But it was just a fun game on the nakamal which they play most nights, and I wasn't entirely sure who was on whose team. I was a participant in the chaos. One thing: a girl played with us. In Epau, none of us ever saw a girl playing soccer, only the boys did. So I didn't expect that. On Tongariki, nobody cared and it seemed completely unremarkable to everyone.
It got too dark so we sat down. I pulled out my iPad to show photos and soon had a crowd of about 20+ people gathered around to see what Minnesota looks like, what my host family in Epau looks like, and whatever else I had. I took a picture of one kid, then brought it into an image editor and added the requisite glasses and moustache. Everyone loved it. Dinner time.
We had fish and yams. Let me make something clear: They are very proud of their yams. Their Tongariki yams.
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