Vanuatu

Coconut Wireless is the way a lot of news travels here. It is all informal, person to person, and often gossip.  Sometimes the topic is local, as in who is drinking too much or who likes who.  But I'd earlier heard through coconut wireless, which usually begins with, "Did you hear...?" that Trump was going to ban Saturday church services.  Yes, that Donald Trump, the U.S. President, was somehow going to ban Saturday church services.  In Vanuatu. The most common question in a village is, "Yu go wea?" (Where are you going?)  Knowing what other people are up to is at the core of the community. It isn't nosy or rude, it is just what people do here.  Coconut wireless, accurate or not, is part of that.  It is one of the ways that ensures everyone knows what everyone else is doing.  Sort of.   But because of hyperbole, boredom or miscommunication, sometimes everyone knows something that nobody is actually doing.  And, I'd noticed an invers...

Welcome to the  Oreolympics My group of PCVs, Group 29 (or G29), was sworn in on July 1.  Or was it June 30?  Anyway, it was a couple weeks ago. Yet here I am, still in Port Vila.  What happened?  Well, my site changed.  I'm no longer going to Tongariki.  Everything I've written about Tongariki is even more irrelevant than when I wrote it.  The volunteer assigned to Moso Island decided the Peace Corps wasn't for her, and I've been reassigned to that site.  Here it is on Google Maps . It couldn't me more different from Tongariki.  Well OK it could.  For example it could be in Honduras.  But unlike Tongariki, Moso Island is not nearly so remote, not nearly so difficult, nor is it mountainous.  I was looking forward to Tongariki, and I'm looking forward to Moso Island too.  I'm just getting a little tired of looking. The site isn't quite ready yet, though I sure am.  A week is more than enough time in Por...

Supposedly I'm leaving in a few days for site.  I'll be there for 3 months before coming back to Vila again.  I say supposedly because logistics are hard to plan here.  Many other volunteers were supposed to have left by now, but for one reason or another, haven't.  For example, one of the airlines went out of business.  Or, a destination airstrip may be too wet for the plane to land, or someone didn't mow the grass. The Tongoa airstrip.  Cattle graze on it whenever planes aren't scheduled to land.  Too much rain makes the ground too soft for landing, and low clouds mean the plane just turns around and will try again another day. I'm pretty much all packed up.  I thought I'd share what the bags look like, and what's in them.  I don't have pictures of everything, but most of it is pictured.  I thought this would be interesting to look back on, and might help the next person going to site. This large bag is called a Chinese Bag,...