This is just the beginning..

Well it appears that I have survived my first turkey-less Thanksgiving, as well as training, and I’m afraid I have dug quite a hole for myself by not writing something sooner.  I have been in the city with internet for over a week now and have just one more day before I head out to my permanent home on the island.  In our last few weeks in Mangaliliu, the group ventured out to Eratoka island where I tried my hand at spear fishing and probably don’t need to tell most of you that I didn’t catch anything.  The fish were either too fast or too beautiful for me to actually kill but I still felt pretty baller just for trying. We also had to practice a small workshop with the school in the village as a training practicum which thank goodness is over, for better or worse.  It was a mixture of successes and mostly failures and a really great learning experience for how to better execute a toktok in the future.  But most importantly, we finally got our site assignments.

 Site announcement is always a big deal because each island of Vanuatu is so different that in a lot of ways your site sets the scene for your entire experience.  After my host volunteer visit, which was to a village that required two planes, an hour truck ride, and a two hour hike to get to, I was half expecting to end up in the middle of the bush on some really small remote island; and somehow had come to terms with it.  In the end it turns out I will be going to Epi, one of the bigger of the tiny islands where there are already two volunteers while a couple of my good friends are on the even tinier specks on the map.  

I am really happy with my placement, mainly because the World Health Organization has a malaria project going on there and they have asked me to help in a way monitor things from the village.  Cultural differences and misunderstandings can greatly delay the work of a lot of humanitarian organizations and the relevance of the project could really benefit from someone actually living in the community, who not only has a background in public health but can also bridge this cultural gap between the WHO and a rural village.  This is what I will do by making sure that malaria follow up at the health center is done properly so that the data can be used for case studies of the treatment.  Most health volunteers go to site and determine for themselves, often through survey, what the village needs then feel out the best way to go about making a project out of it.  I will be doing this as well but to go to site already needed for something that matches my background, I feel really lucky.  The project may only go until April which will make it kind of hectic with getting settled in but I plan to prove myself useful so they keep it going; plus there is a lot of malaria on the island.

In other news, I have gotten a little kitten who, after a serious of names, will be called Oreo and already has eaten a few rats and spiders, making her my new best friend.  I have not gotten completely comfortable with most of these creepy crawly things at night but on the other hand I don’t make a fool out of myself anymore by jumping up every time there is an earthquake.  The first one I felt was a Sunday afternoon while I was laying in bed and I jumped up and ran outside, thinking of course everyone else would be concerned with the fact that the earth was shaking with increasing intensity.  But no, I would soon realize this is completely normal here and everyone pretty much just laughed at me, which I am strangely not offended by. 

I have also officially become a Peace Corps volunteer!  This involved a big ceremony full of island dresses which are the hottest article of clothing in the world (as in temperature of course), a visit from the ambassador and taking the same oath as the US President.   Another realization that I had integrated into life in Vanuatu was when I didn’t even think twice about wearing flip flops to this event, which I have also worn to climb halfway up a volcano.  I’m actually fairly sure the average Ni-Van  has never worn any other kind of shoe, and I am certainly not complaining. 

I hope you all are preparing for a wonderful holiday season.  Christmas here is not Peace Corps favorite time because not only are we are away from our family but it is also the only time that the Ni-Vanuatu drink alcohol.   Crime here is so low in part because kava has a much more relaxing effect, but during Christmas it tends to increase with the alcohol drinking and things gets a little crazy.  I will be safe but surely missing home. 

Also a big thank you to everyone who has sent a package for the holiday season! Getting one anytime is like Christmas, so I will post my new permanent address in case anyone is inclined to do so again in the future, or just wanting a pen pal.  This first month at site will probably be the hardest but I am confident that when I get back in February for Phase II training, I will have plenty of good experiences to share. 


Some of my host pikinini all dressed up before a wedding ceremony

 My entire host family in Mangaliliu the day I left

My host mama and papa and Oreo trying to escape

Little Oreo doing what she does best, meow at my feet