Wrapping up the first month in Tassiriki

First things

A couple updates from my previous post.  Remember those two turtles?  Well, Sima told Terry to let the little one go, because it was just too little.  (Terry didn't catch the turtles, I don't know who did.)  I missed that release, unfortunately.  But then a couple days later the larger one was still sitting around.  I thought it was dead, but evidently you can just set a sea turtle on its back and it will survive for weeks, as long as it is not in the sun.  Terry gets tired of people doing this.  I guess many times someone catches a turtle then it just sits around, and Terry puts it back in the ocean.  So he did the same thing with the other turtle.  Well, he flipped it over anyway so it could walk back.  The big ones are heavy.  Both went back to the ocean.

How old is this turtle?  Don't know.  There isn't a visual way to age a green sea turtle.  What sex is it?  Don't know that either.

The turtle had to frequently stop and rest while making its way back.  Worse, a couple boat loads of people showed up while the turtle was headed to the water, so it kept trying to turn around and go the other way.  I kept reorienting it.  Once it was in the water, another guy helped it navigate around the boats.

After Terry flipped the turtle over, Sima filled a bucket of water from the ocean and poured it on the turtle, to help the turtle feel better and clean it up a bit.  The day before, she picked dirt out of its eyes that had accumulated there, with the same delicacy she'd use with one of her own children.

Also, tiles were applied to the tomb of Flora after my last photo in the previous post.  Here is what the finished tomb looks like.

The tiled, finished tomb

Lastly, Melissa pointed out that the family cat had a name, which is really unusual here.  I remember I noticed that the first day or two here, but then it just became normal.

Thu, Aug 31

I heard the sounds of a Vanuatu ukelele and went to see who was playing.  There is no string band in Tassiriki, so I was excited to hear live music.  He only reconfirmed that there wasn't a string band.  Nobody has a push bass, for example.  I saw another guy learning the guitar a few days before.  Maybe there is hope yet.

A Vanuatu ukelele player demonstrates one of the 7 fingerings used.  This instrument survived hurricane Pam (2015) and is about 10 years old.  Unlike other ukeleles and guitars, the sound hole is in the rear.

I've been asked to paint a world map and a Vanuatu map on the side of the kindergarten.  This is a common project for PCVs - you see a fair number of them here.  You find a map you like, then project it into the building, and trace it and color it in.  Of course they want a Pacific-centered map, which makes sense.  I'm going with a Robinson projection on this one.

I looked up the coverage area you can expect by liter of paint to try to estimate how much paint I'd need.  The store I went to sold paint labeled by weight.  So I just guessed and bought some paint.  Also, I found the only use of English measurements I've seen so far.  Paint brushes are labeled as "4 inch, 2 inch", etc.

I spent quite a bit of time today with the headmaster, Paul, trying to get the projector to work.  When powered by a small generator, the projector almost never turns on.  But when we power it from the inverter on the solar system, it works.   I think the generator is producing power that the projector doesn't like for some reason.   Voltage too high, too low, or maybe the cycles/sec are off.  No way for me to know.  We're going to just string together three very long extension cords to get the projector where we need it to go.

Ozil decided he wanted to eat some wild birds.  He's three. But his older brother Charles played along and caught three birds for Ozil.  They were put in a box.  The cat promptly found the box and ran off with one of the birds.  The next day, when I was being told about this, I could see the box behind Sima who was telling me the story.  While she was telling it I watched the cat go into the box again and take off with a second bird.  I didn't say anything because it was funny to watch.  They kept the box with the last bird inside the house after that.

The two photos below are a good example of how the color of light (color temperature) affects the perceived color of an object.

The Laka, photographed under LED lights at night

The same Laka, photographed the next day in natural light.

Sat, Sep 2

Bingo is a popular game in Tassiriki.   Most players are women.  They use decks of cards instead of bingo cards, which is nice because you don't need to buy anything special to play.  Decks of  cards are 100vt here.

Each bingo hand is 5 cards and costs either 10vt or 20vt a hand.  You can play more than one, and many do.  Multiple decks are used to let everyone buy hands.  After all hands are handed out -- they're not dealt, and people keep their hands through many games -- someone has another deck from which they pull cards and call cards.  If they call out the 5 cards in your hand, you yell Bingo and win.  Winnings varied from a few hundred vatu to 1,000 vatu, depending on how many play.

It is something to do on a slow afternoon, and is one step away from doing nothing. I've thought of a twist on it. Make cards using English words instead of A-K, and instead of suits use adverb, adjective, noun and verb.  The game would be the same, but they'd be exposing themselves to English vocabulary while playing.

Puppy napping during bingo.  The crackers are called breakfast crackers and are the size of Saltines.

The cat brought Monique luck.  She won shortly after it showed up.

Sun, Sep 3

The SDA (Seventh Day Adventists) held their third workshop today.  They've been holding them on Sunday afternoons since they've been here proselytizing.  The first one was on nutrition, the second on painting fabric (see previous post), and today some recipes were demonstrated.  While I'm not a fan of religion, they've picked good topics for the workshops, and many people go.

What I have trouble following is the freewheeling mix of religious stuff with information about food.  I heard about unclean animals, and why Noah wasn't a Jew, for example.  They also promote a lot of  outdated information, such as margarine being good and butter bad, don't address portion control at all, and don't talk about managing the macros of carbohydrates/proteins/fats, instead labeling foods as 'good' or 'bad'.  But they do talk about how too many people are fat and have diabetes, and are trying to help.  So overall it is a positive, but there is room for improvement.

Terry decided to change his diet according to the SDA's recommendations for 10 days.  He's not eating rice, bread, tea, sugar, Milo (its like hot cocoa), soy sauce, Maggi sauce (like soy sauce),  fish or meat during this time.  I tried to tell him that tea without sugar was perfectly fine, and that the speaker must have misspoken about no fish, or was maybe referring to fried fish.  Terry pointed out I wasn't a doctor, and that guy was, and that was that. 😐

Following Vanuatu time norms, the 2:00 workshop kicked off just before 4:00.  The first recipe was for popo (papaya) scones.  Sima took notes and I imagine we'll try that one soon.  There was one with tomato, onions and rice that was made like a pineapple upside down cake.  Another one used beans from the natongtong (mangrove) tree.  Well not the beans, but the pod, which was shaved down with a shell.  Then they showed one made with a certain kind of yam.

The yam dish is made by hollowing out a depression in the yam and filling it with coconut cream before baking.

Below is a picture of the nakamal.  You'll notice the complete absence of chairs.  I have a legs that just aren't made to sit on the ground.  I can't sit Indian style, and can't find any comfortable way to sit on the ground.  So I stand.  I was just going to stand the whole time, until one of the class 5 students, Jinny, brought me a chair. I was the only one there with a chair, but I think they're used to that now.

When a large group sits in the nakamal (a place to gather), people sit around the edges so they can use the walls for back rests.  Our nakamal has a couple lights which aren't connected to anything, and could use a solar system.  This western style building meeting Vanuatu meeting norms is not a perfect fit.  

I've gotten into the habit of making bread on Sundays.  Unfortunately I bought self-rising flour, which strangely enough doesn't rise very much, even when yeast is used.  Yesterday I found the garlic I'd brought and forgotten about.  Two were starting to grow, so Sima will plant them.  The rest we grated into butter and used on garlic bread last night.  Nobody had tried garlic bread before and everyone liked it.  Sima was off listening to the SDA, so Terry's sister Melissa and I made everything, and I think Sima liked that part of it too.

I just made the aelan bread (island bread) normally in a sauce pan.  Then after it was done and cooled, I sliced the rolls in half, and we put the garlic butter on, wrapped them in foil, and put them over the fire to heat up again.

We only used half of the bread.

Two foil packs of three buns each.  Maybe next time I'll make the bread in a long loaf shape, which will allow for the addition of even more butter (although we did have leftover butter and freely added that to the bread after it was done warming up).  The aluminum foil here is the thinnest foil I have ever seen.  It is really fragile.

Mon, Sep 4

Another turtle.  Someone caught another turtle, a small one.  It has been here 4 days I think.  Neither Terry, Sima nor I saw it.  Ozil, Terry and Sima's youngest, saw it the other day.  This morning I thought I'd take some photos of it.  When another guy here saw me with it, he said it was too small and that I should put it back in the ocean, so I did.  He also said he didn't like it when people would leave the turtles on land for days and that it had suffered enough.

This morning's turtle.  Green Sea Turtles take at least 20 years to reach maturity.  They lay over a hundred eggs at a time, with few young surviving to maturity.

Out to sea.

Tue, Sep 5

This morning Thilo left.  He was visiting my brother in law.  They met while working on an apple plantation in New Zealand.  Thilo was there on a work/travel visa, and my tawian (brother in law) was there on a work visa.  Many Ni-Vans work seasonally in New Zealand picking or packing apples, pruning grapes, or other agricultural work.  But not just Ni-Vans or the odd German.  Many Chinese, people from other Pacific Islands, or others from Asia work in New Zealand seasonally.  I didn't know New Zealand produced so much agriculture or had such a labor shortage.  Most Ni-Vans work there for 7 months at a stretch, and tell me the work is very hard, but the pay is good.  A number of people have pointed to their house and said that their work in New Zealand paid for it.

Thilo (the white one) leaves Tassiriki

Garden day.  Today we planted bananas, manioc and yams.  We also gathered a ton of bananas and coconuts and nafara.  Planting yams is also a lot of work, though not as much work as harvesting them.  We burned the ground last time, supposedly to kill any bugs in the soil that might eat the yams we would plant.  However, heat goes up, and not a lot of heat gets into the ground and I was skeptical of this.  While digging the holes for the yams, I found many bugs including ants, grubs and worms.  So I'm not sure about the whole ground burning thing, though it does clear weeds.  On the other hand, burning the ground would wipe out any bugs on the surface, and burning the ground might allow new yam shoots to get growing without being eaten.

Planting yams is also an elaborate process, which I believe may be completely unnecessary.  This is based on my personal experience of being given elaborate or specific planting instructions, which I tested and found to be completely unnecessary.  Usually put it in the ground and water it works.  I'm going to propose that I plant three yams using a simpler method, and we'll see if they turn out better or worse.  Since three yams represents a potential loss of income for my family, I will buy the yams if they don't grow well.  By the way, yams are planted the same way as potatoes, where you cut one up into chunks and stick the pieces in the ground.

Terry sit-dancing while bringing home the bananas.  OK, he is actually fishing, and adjusting the line over his shoulder.  And bananas!

Chris next to this "long mouth" fish he caught.  "Soka" is the local language name of the fish.

Lap lap - wrapped in banana leaves (no lap lap leaves were available) and placed between two layers of very hot rocks.

More banana leaves are placed over the rocks.

All in all there were 6 layers of different materials on top of the lap lap which is wrapped in banana leaves in the first place: rocks, banana leaves, metal sheets, canvas, plastic and finally a mat.

Wed, Sep 6

New Zealanders.  A group of seven New Zealanders arrived today to build an additional school building.  They're a church-based charity group from Invercargill, New Zealand, they'll be here two weeks, and they love Tassiriki.  They first came here about six years ago and built a cement water tank.

They were going to build the additional school building about two and a half  years ago, but then Hurricane Pam hit.  All of the building materials had arrived on the island the week before, so the group came anyway and helped the villagers clean up all of the trees and destruction.  Undaunted, they returned to New Zealand, and once again began fundraising.  Now, two and a half years later, they're back and the building is going up.  What an amazing group!

The foundation was poured about 3 years ago.  The New Zealand group paid for it, but the work was done locally.  This is the same foundation pictured in my last post, where we cleared and burned the surrounding ground.

We made good progress on day 1.  We built about 10 wall assemblies.  That's Steve on the far right.  He's the brains of  the operation, and we all built according to his design.  Many villagers are helping too of course.  Everyone's carrying lumber, sawing it up, pounding nails, etc.

And we built 5 trusses.  The first one took a very long time to build.  Getting all of the angles, lengths and cuts right was difficult.  Reproducing them is going very quickly now.  12 more to go.

The face of a man (l) whose chainsaw has failed him  (the recoil broke).  I don't know what's up with Norris, but to be fair he looks like he doesn't know what's up with me, either.