There are good times and there are.. really bad ones

There are few sounds I have heard in my life as horrifying as the Ni-Vanuatu crying for someone who has died.  Crying doesn’t quite cover it actually, and to say wailing is really only coming close.  Only a few days after arriving at site, I woke up to this sound at 2:30 in the morning.  That previous night after dinner I heard that a boy named Anderson had a really bad case of malaria and had gone to see him at the health center.  He was really out of it but had no fever and was taking Coartem, the drug that the study had just proven was a really good treatment for malaria, so like everyone else, I assumed after a good night sleep he would be much better in the morning.  Waking up to this horrendous sound was alarming and confusing but quickly I came to my senses and realized that based on the location it was coming from, Anderson must have died.  My heart sunk of course, but especially because Anderson was a really cute, sweet little boy, one of the few children here with a few manners.  I woke up my host family and we all headed to their house where, until daylight, I sat in a room far too small to comfortably accommodate both the dead body and the intense crying. 

There is a lot of culture surrounding death in Vanuatu so I am glad in some ways to have been able to experience it but hopefully this will have been the saddest and also most frustrating week of my two years here.  Anderson was four years old and had only been diagnosed with malaria the day before when he started his first of three days of treatment.  Even if I, or anyone else, had recognized his incoherence the night before as a sign of cerebral malaria or some more serious disease, the health center was not stocked with an intravenous or suppository treatment that would have been needed.   The nurses had never even heard of cerebral malaria or bacterial meningitis or any of the other possible reasons for his death.  Why?  Well that’s just a small portion of what made the situation so frustrating.

The next day began what I suppose is the Ni-Vanuatu version of a visitation.  After someone dies, people from all around, whether they knew the person or not, are required to come share their condolences in this form of hysterical crying.  There are always people whom for them it is obviously fake and just hold their tea towel over their eyes rather than actually using it to wipe tears.  On the flip side there are people who cry so intensely that they scream and hit not just the dead body but the closest family members who sit beside it.  The mass of people surrounding the immediate family changes as people come and go from other villages but the crying only dies down every once in a while until somebody new comes and they are required to do it all over again.    

It seems really weird to us to be forced to cry so hard for someone we didn’t know as well as to be forced to cry at certain moments and I have always been too distracted by its strangeness at other funerals to actually feel sad.  Now after having experienced one where for people close to me the emotion was very real, it in some ways it makes more sense than our custom of trying to hold it together at a funeral and then crying alone in your house for the following weeks.  After this insane catharsis of emotion for a few days they seem to in some ways have gotten out everything that they needed and after about a week or two his mother was even smiling again.  It probably helps too that they seem to be less affected by death than we are and are able to more readily accept it as a part of life.  My guess is this is either because it happens more often or because they are so religious, but then again this is also a culture where children and family members disappear to other islands for years and adoption or essentially just giving away of children to other families is really common.  Maybe they are less attached or emotional but whatever it is, it seems to make them way more able to handle the loss of a close family member.  You wouldn’t think this on the first day when you see them crying as if their world was just ending but in the end they accept it and move on I think more quickly than I would be able to.

So for the first day the crying continues as people continue to come “share their sorry” as it would be put in Bislama until finally the pastor comes and does a small funeral like service and eventually the body is wrapped in layers of calico and mats to be buried.  The uncles of the deceased are responsible for doing this as well as digging the grave which in this case was right in front of the boys house.  Eventually in one last fit of crying, we all throw a handful of dirt on top of the grave, shake hands with the family who line up beside it and go eat the cow that was killed that morning. 

The kids here absolutely love the Mardi Gras beads I give them whenever they show up in packages and one thing I will hopefully never forget about my time here is that Anderson liked his so much that he was buried in them; one strand of red and then the big white ones, because he was so sweet that I gave him two. 

For multiple reasons I was so glad when that day was over, however in terms of custom it was just the beginning.  Vanuatu tradition says that no one in the family, which is usually the entire village, is allowed to work for five days following a death and we were all supposed to stay at the boy’s house for these five days, only leaving to gather firewood or food to eat from the garden.   For those five days all three meals had to be eaten there along with family worship which is more or less a small church service every afternoon before dinner.  All the women considered a mama of the boy had to wear the same dress they were wearing when he died for the entire five days, luckily this actually didn’t get too stinky, and the men got to drink lots and lots of kava. Throughout this week people who couldn’t make it on the first day came to cry for Anderson and as if having the dead body around on the first day wasn’t enough, his clothes were hung above his grave throughout the week.  It was all very overwhelming and got to the point where practically every time a rooster crowed, which is frequently, I froze hoping it wasn’t wailing I was going to have to hear all over again.

On the fifth day another cow was killed and there is a custom exchange between the aunts and the mamas of the dead.  For the entire fifth day the two groups of women were not allowed to be in the same area leading up to this exchange, each staying in separate yards making food for the opposite group.  On days such as these lap lap and big pieces of root crop and random cow parts are all put in a hole together and covered with hot stones to cook it like an oven.  I was not informed of this exchange which was pretty much just calico and a few island dresses for Andersons close family so having not brought anything I hid amongst the men, utilizing my third gender privilege as a white woman.  Then for the following weeks leading up to the one month anniversary of his death, his mother was not allowed to leave their yard and we continued having family worship every evening followed by dinner at their house with all their mamas wearing black island dresses. 

Number two reason why this was the most frustrating week ever:  The boy had malaria.  The boy died.  So since malaria spreads amongst people shouldn’t we all be worried about malaria?  Well that would make too much sense.  Instead we are going to say that because Anderson was what we would consider an illegitimate child (not sure if you noticed I haven’t mentioned anything about his father) it was not malaria but black magic that killed him. 

Belief in black magic is huge in Vanuatu which can be really interesting or in this case actually kind of dangerous.  Since everyone was afraid of the black magic they all wanted to sleep together in the same place, which in this case meant outside on mats without nets or blankets, at the house of the boy who died of malaria.  Luckily it soon got cold enough that people either covered themselves or moved inside under the nets but they its times like this where my role as a health volunteer seems so necessary but futile at the same time.  They needed someone to tell them that what they were doing wasn’t a good idea and I did, that it is a health risk to ignore malaria as the cause of death but they were too worried about black magic to think of anything else and in trying to be culturally appropriate and not call their belief stupid like I wanted to, I just made everyone put bug spray on every night.  Instead of sitting around not doing work for those five days we should have been cleaning the area, covering up any standing water and promoting the use of mosquito nets but saying so would have been culturally insensitive.  Only in one on one conversations could I share my belief that it was malaria and even then most people couldn’t accept this and we had to agree to disagree, making my role again seem useless.

Also, in that week I learned way more about black magic than I ever thought they would share with me.  Who can do it and who cant and how, if a kingfisher bird flies on your left it means black magic is going to happen around you.  Somebody who was at health center even claims that he heard footsteps the moment Anderson died as if the person doing the black magic was running away after he finally killed him.  Since people who do black magic also turn themselves into animals to get close to the person they are trying to hurt, men stayed up every night, circling the village, ready to kill any animal they didn’t recognize as one of ours.  One night a large man was supposedly seen running into the bush which led to another alarming wake up in the middle of the night to our elder immersed in really intense fervent prayer right outside my house, protecting me from the evil spirits that were lurking.  And just when I thought the whole thing couldn’t get any weirder, god did confirm that it was in fact black magic.  Somehow he even came up with a name but we are still awaiting a meeting with that person to hear his side of the story.

Finally, on the one month anniversary of Andersons death, we had another day of celebration with another dead cow (red meat is really exciting and must always be mentioned) and finally his mamas are free to go about their normal lives and activity. 

Silver lining of the whole experience:  I got to make steak when a joke with my papa led to him actually bring me an huge hunk of meat from the cow killed the first day and even though I had to sneak away at times to stay sane, it has all brought me a lot closer to my village as we all went through it together.   

Since last time..

Smol Disclaimer: This blog post was, admittedly, recrafted from a facebook message to the best friends in the world.  It’s rare to be able to sit down and actually have things go down on paper in a way that I feel is honest but also able to be understood by people who have not yet experienced Vanuatu so when it happens I figure I should run with it.  Brace yourselves, its kind of a long one and as always, sorry for not updating sooner.

Every time I go back to site from Port Vila, there is always a little bit of culture shock to be had all over again.  All of a sudden friends, good food, electricity, running water, connection with the outside world, basically everything.. is gone.  But along with that comes an even deeper level of comfort once I do finally get used to my life on the island.  I integrate a bit more each day I think but I have also come to terms with the fact that I will always be different.  No matter how often people comment that I do things “local style” or make jokes about me being woman Vanuatu I will always be different since being an American apparently requires having people fret over me, making sure I’m comfortable everywhere I sit down, being served food first out of a group of people, and basically being made a priority/treated like a child.. however you choose to look at it.  I will also never understand their local language and whenever I go to a different village I will inevitably be stared at.  I have however accepted and learned to not feel insecure or guilty about these things.  Guilty mostly about people going out of their way for me and being willing to do for me or get me literally anything in their power while some days I do a minimal amount of work or need to just be alone and American and watch Dexter for hours.  Insecure because that seems to be the natural reaction when having to learn to do things differently than I ever have before and the kicker is being the only one in completely new surroundings.  My acceptance of this basically means that I have trained myself to no longer worry about the cultural differences; no matter what, I’m going to do and want different things because of where I come from and who I am, and eliminating the stress of feeling it was wrong for me to be different has made me able to live a lot happier.

Actually a lot of people reading this probably don’t know that cultural exchange makes up two out of the three goals of Peace Corps so just by writing this I am actually doing my job!  That also means that blaring American music not just from my house but my bag as I walk through the villages, pulling out my world map to show people the different states, playing movies when my lap top has power, and inevitable sentences beginning with “in the US we…” are all part of the job description as well, and often times may more interesting and rewarding than giving a tok tok.

But I have been attempting to keep myself busy with actual work as well.  During the primary health care workshop the village decided they needed to work on trash disposal because in Vanuatu we only have trash pits and they were worried that those downwind would spread disease in the community.  This is not really a correct assumption but in the end everyone dug two really nice, big holes individually for tin/plastics and food scraps which was pretty awesome not necessarily because it eliminated a health threat because as well all know wind cannot in fact carry malaria or tuberculosis on its own but more so a victory in that they followed through really well with an action plan.  So it’s a good omen for the future.

The next thing on the priority list is toilets, which we will be working to improve probably on an individual basis but something that came out of side discussions in the workshop that is probably going to end up being one of my biggest areas of work, nutrition and NCD’s (Non-Communicable Diseases).  Not what I had expected to be something I would work with in the Peace Corps but really logical considering everyone is overweight, cardiovascular exercise is hard to work into the island lifestyle and when people die from something internal they pretty much always assume black magic, completely failing to recognize things such as heart disease. So I’ve designed a little workshop with my counterpart where alongside the education awareness of diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease, all the participants are assessed according to a weight for height chart and blood pressure monitor.  When I did this in my village, of the 40 adults who came I think only three were at a healthy weight and everyone except six people had unknown mild or moderate hypertension.  For me this was one of the best programs I have run here because I could actually see them grasping and caring about the information, and being sincerely thankful. We were also asked to run the program throughout the island so now the hardest part is helping them to figure out culturally appropriate ways to exercise and find what’s needed for a healthy diet and then get them to actually do it.  Behavior change sometimes seems nearly impossible. 

I have also just been really appreciating village life.  Its so quiet and laid back that even though on certain days it is insanely boring, I know I will miss it when its gone.  They seem very proud that on the island they don’t have to rely on money, and are actually even shocked that we pay for things like water and food.  This very idea may actually be a big factor for why the Ni-Vanuatu technically live in poverty. Land is free, housing material is free, food is free except on the rare occasion of a fundraiser, even kava is often free as in my village.  This allows for a pretty relaxed lifestyle, which sounds great until its time to buy soap, or pay the pastor or feed the childrens ramen obsession or buy rice when you’re feeling lazy to clean root crop for dinner (hence the NCD’s). 

There is also a big difference between the “town” of Port Vila and the outer islands that transcends to so many different aspects of life just based on this simple context of living being free or not.  In town, people are generally more educated, have more “things” and a context of an outside world.  This is refreshing to visit but the islands also have a custom that may set them behind the developed world but makes them more interesting, frustrating, but most important to the Peace Corps experience, more welcoming.  The downsides can really easily and frequently get in the way of development work but the up side to a lot of this is that people genuinely love me for absolutely no reason, despite knowing very little about me.  Just by being competent in culture and language skills and living here “as the locals do” they find me extremely amusing and I am therefore always extremely welcomed and met with smiles and an “awo Maria!” pretty much everywhere I go.  I like to think they respect my work too, but that is a battle that I have apparently have not won yet since it took me about two hours the other day to get them to a community meeting that THEY decided to have.  I know I shouldn’t consider it a lack of respect, since there are a lot of cultural factors that play into “island time”, just a perfect example of it getting in the way of my already slowly progressing work in the village. 

For another window into life in Vanuatu I will include all the different things that have happened throughout the two hours of me sitting in my house to write this:  My five year old brother threw a huge fit and cried for like 20 minutes right outside my house which is not really a rare occurrence, children here have zero discipline.  People came to buy bras. Since I’m selling some that were donated by Red Cross for like $3 as a fundraiser for our kindy ive become a regular Victorias Secret which can be really funny sometimes.  My papa came to talk to me but saw saw me doing “whiteman things” with a computer and got all weird insisting that he come back another time.  A younger mama on the other hand came in and sat down, insisting to watch me type.  Since that’s really awkward I started showing her music videos instead which worked until all I had left were Rihanna and Shakira.. far too scandalous for Vanuatu.  Then my mama came, alarmed that I hadn’t come for dinner even though she had just shoved a giant piece of wild yam lap lap down my throat like four hours ago and I had the opportunity to try to explain what I was doing as writing a letter that would get there really really fast.  Bislama is not nearly a vast enough vocabulary to explain the internet, though I have tried, only somewhat successfully. Then when I did get hungry I ate some peanut butter crackers starting from the opposite end of which they were already eaten by ant/rat/island insect.  And now my cat is crunching on a lizard in the corner.  This, I would consider a pretty eventful night on the island.

i ren tumas

A  rainy day in Vanuatu can be great.  It is an excuse to stay inside all day which is something a lot of us want to do every once in a while but which would otherwise be considered ridiculous or even rude unless of course we were sick and sleeping.  Luckily, Ni-Vans think white people are weak (lets face it, we are here) and are constantly afraid of “spoiling” aka breaking us so this can easily be faked if necessary.  Anyway one of these days is nice, four however is not.  Rainy days also involve constantly wet and muddy feet since staying inside entirely is impossible when your kitchen, toilet, and water source are all separate entities and require walks down dirt paths and tall grass if your nine year old brother has not recently cut it for you with his bush knife.  They can also get really boring and coming out of one of these four day stretches I am working towards finding motivation to get the things done that I need to before heading out again next month when I will actually be able to post this.

                Lucky for you all my work today is comprised of sitting in Lamen Bay waiting for a ship to come that will hopefully have the materials I need for a big workshop I have planned for next week.  The school here, where my closes neighbor Kathy works, has electricity three hours a day so right now I am staring in awe at fluorescent lights and writing this without having to sacrifice any of my precious battery life which must be conserved for an occasional episode of Arrested Development or Dexter when I need a solid dose of America.   It looks like I will also be doing quite a bit of teaching here as well.

                Kathy had the idea of creating a health club for the students after a previous volunteer last year did an adolescent reproductive health talk that was really well received with the students.   The first day I decided to make a true false game where they stood in a line and when I read out statements regarding lots of different health topics they would move to one side if they thought it was true and another if they thought it was false.  People here can be super shy so they sometimes tried to just follow what their friends did but overall I think it turned out really well.  The purpose was to give them an idea of what we would be going over in the club as well assess their knowledge and dispel some crazy myths about health.  Then I had them put any questions or subjects of interest in a question box and this is where it really got interesting. 

                With about 50 teenage boys and girls I expected to get plenty questions surrounding sex but was surprised to find that most have no idea what menstruation is, where babies come from or how sexually transmitted diseases spread (I guess their name is also lost in translation).  So basically I have my work cut out for me there and will also be helping one of the science teachers go over some chapters on health and sanitation in her class.

 I’ve also been trying to carve out some work for myself by making awareness posters for a different sickness each week at the health center, talking the women who just gave birth about family planning and healthy eating for the baby and the workshop next week is basically about community mobilization for primary health care.  We will be doing a bunch of activities through which everyone will identify the health disparities in the community which are preventing them from achieving the ideals outlined in a healthy islands program and ultimately make an action plan for whatever project Is needed to address those issues.  As is pretty common here, I’m expecting water and toilets to be some of the top needs.  I already have some project ideas for these but I want to do the workshop as well to get the village involved so they will ultimately feel like it is their project.

                Other than that, in terms of work, I have been neglecting the malaria study a bit to help the area secretary with some profiling and survey of our side of the island.  This essentially means making maps, calendars, inventories of livestock and resources and a big survey of what is available in the community.  The idea is that whenever one of these villages wants to ask the government or donor for funding for a project they will have this to look at to assess the legitimacy of the project and motivation and ability of the community in executing their action plan.  Unfortunately the area secretary is one of many with the mindset that donor funding will always be required and available, because a lot of villages have gotten money from Australian and New Zealand High Commissions in the past which has kind of created a lack of empowerment among Vanuatu.  In so many instances they rely on outside sources such as these for development rather than acknowledging that they are surrounded by extremely fertile land and with the right motivation, infrastructure and maybe a little help with business management from the outside could bring in a lot of money from copra, sandalwood, cocoa, kava or any of these things that are able to grow in this hot and sticky climate.  When talking to a friend one day on the phone I blurted out my feeling that Peace Corps comes to places such as this and essentially tries to find creative ways to solve the problems created by really poor infrastructure.  This is true of Vanuatu at least and is a rant I will save for the few who may be interested sometime. 

                All other news consists of an unfortunate weight gain as a result of lots of taro, wild yam, bananas and coconut milk combined with few level running surfaces and a giant blister on one of my toes, a recent bout of mild giardia, and learning to be content and happy.  Returning to the village after such a long time in town was difficult as expected but in overcoming this I feel more at home than ever and all the things that were once out of place are quickly becoming daily life.  Why wouldn’t I be eating dinner on a mat outside in the dark? Why would I buy produce at the store rather than using a bamboo pole to knock down grapefruit and avocados from the trees outside my house?  And the people I see every day are coming more and more like actual friends and family. 

                This doesn’t mean I have forgotten about anyone or anything at home.  I miss friends and family everyday single day and sometimes would kill to blend in, be ignored, and eat a cheeseburger while using the internet. But then I make a good joke in Bislama, someone comes to my house with questions he would have to be ashamed to ask at the health center because the nurse is his aunt, or I get to laugh at the look on people faces when I tell them something about my life in the US it is all pretty well worth it.  At least for two years.

EPIc Haikus

I was also asked by a friend to write an article for our Peace Corps newsletter called the Van-American about my experience going to site.  My group tends to get a little silly during some of our long training sessions which this time around ended up turning into a new found appreciation for haikus.  So, following in this step and in an attempt to avoid writing something cliché I wrote haikus for the majority of my entry.  I figured why not re-post them here?  

  

This plane is real small

Will my village likem me?

Where is all my stuff?

More bananas? Really?

Is there nothing else to eat?

At least make lap lap

I used to like kids

Why are you staring at me?

Get out of my house

Don’t know what to do

No gat wan job description

This kava is strong

Snails are everywhere

My house is made of big sticks

Poop in a hole? What?

There is no power

Did they forget to pay bills?

Ice cube trays, no gat

I’m all alone here

Never thought I’d miss training

Rats eat all my soap

We’ve all gone through the process and emotional turmoil that is going to site.  We stressed over packing in the states, then again in Vila, and finally got to site needing nothing but the reassurance of why on earth we were actually there.  Mostly, I missed all the friends I had become so close with during training but did my best to get started filling those voids with things in my community. 

                I was lucky to be given the opportunity to help with a malaria study at my health center, which gave me a sense of productivity that a lot of volunteers lack from showing up at taem blong spel.  I went with the team to take blood from each case which gave me the opportunity to see a lot of the island and I took the liberty of adding my own personal task of promoting Peace Corps goal #2 by giving lollis to all the crying pikinini post-stik. 

These haikus, though silly, in a lot of ways do describe a lot of what I felt after getting to site; the children in particular.  No matter what I was doing whether it was hanging calico, staring at the wall the morning after discovering the strength of Epi kava, or organizing my house in order to avoid general freak out, they were there.  I played more games of seven lock than I ever thought imaginable, made excuses to walk about and almost always ended up eating far too much pineapple.

Going to site is probably one of the most interesting, difficult, and don’t forget, awkward times in our lives.  It makes you question not just the culture but yourself; you’re ability to connect with different people, survive in the island environment, and most profoundly, spel large.  Getting on the plane this time around from PST II, I feel much more prepared to figure out how to work with my community as well as cope with the ups and downs that is the rollercoaster of Peace Corps life. 

Life on the Island

A lot of people asked me before I came here why on earth I would want to go to the other side of the world, a country that no one has really even heard of and live for two years.  I don’t think I really understood the weight of that question until I got to my village on Epi and for the first few days sat in a daze looking around me, asking that exact same question.  Things are great now though there was definitely an initial freak out staring at the pictures of what once was my life stuck up on a wall made of sticks.

Most of what I did at first was attempt to keep the hoards of children invading my house to a minimum, sit around at the health center, and followed the malaria study around to follow up on all the cases.  I didn’t actually have to do too much for the malaria study, just play a buffer between style blo island and style blo town but it was really great to ride around with them and see different places on the island.  Most importantly, it gave me purpose in a life in which, if I really wanted to, I could choose to not do anything all day. 

I’ll go ahead and answer a lot of the questions most people have already been asking and just get it out of the way.  My village has about 120 people.  I eat bananas, a lot of them.  Strong banana, Chinese banana, ripe banana; boiled, roasted, occasionally with peanut butter, it’s the main food of my area along with breadfruit which is just about as easy to get sick of.  My house, kitchen and swim house are made out of wild cane with a traditional natangura roof, the wood was cut too early and it gets dust all over everything all the time.  I drink rainwater and shower from a bucket I fill at my host families house which is right next door. Electricity? Yeah right.  Internet? Not sure why Cox hasn’t made it out here yet.   Epi does have a road with a few trucks so it’s usually possible to hop in the back of one on a market day to save me a three hour walk to the bank or post office when I need to go.  I cook over fire when I actually attempt to make one and usually end up having to get help from one of the pikinini, mainly my 12 year old neighbor Peter who thinks he’s my best friend. 

Most families in Vanuatu live pretty much only off their garden.  They find different ways to make money for school fees like selling mats, copra or food in markets but mostly during the day everyone disappears into the garden, which can make the place pretty quiet.   My island also grows a lot of peanuts which can be pretty time consuming at planting and harvesting times but the gardens in my opinion are beautiful.   My families version of “the office” is going off into the bush to the top of a hill where you can look out over everything, sing out to all the other people in the garden and roast yam over a fire for lunch.  I cleared a garden for myself close by, more for street cred than the need to actually grow food but I’m excited to hopefully grow some stuff. 

In terms of work, I have done some surveys and identified some areas of need in the community such as HIV/AIDS and NCD awareness but am planning on making what is called a Participatory Analysis for Community Action workshop where you essentially trick the community into identifying their own problems.  The Ni-Vanuatu are not only a really shy but a very indirect culture.  My first couple months basically served to integrate into the culture, and gain the trust of my community to work with me. 

Small accomplishments so far include tricking my 5 year old brother Freddy, who used to think that the world was his toilet, to actually go to one, making a few fires of my own, and perfecting my grunt to prove to the cow I have to pass on my way to the health center that I am no longer afraid of him, even though he finds great entertainment with bucking his horns and running me off the path.

                There have already been a lot of ups and downs.  Life can be really interesting when you’re spearing fish on the reef and roasting hermit crabs in the middle of the night and it can be really difficult when you’re sitting in custom court or trying to connect with someone on a level which only exists in your culture.   There is a lot that I don’t agree with in regards to culture here.  Gender equality does not exist and I did unfortunately have to attend a court in which a man beating a woman was justified based on the laws of “kastom”.  Though originally it seemed to be a desirable thing about a place I have come to learn how much some people here hide behind kastom and what detrimental effects it can have on a society.

                In Vanuatu, a custom court can be held before the actual law of Vanuatu is ever consulted for a crime and in the end a fine will be given, the families involved will shake hands and they will make “good face” meaning they have all forgotten and forgiven each other for whatever happened.   I was required to do this in a situation of domestic violence in which it wasn’t wrong that this man chose to beat his wife almost to the point of unconsciousness but that he did so in front of a white man.  I lost a lot of respect for people in my village that night, men and women.  I was so upset not just because I had never expected to see something like that in my life but because I was the only one who felt this way about it.  The woman was immediately told that she wrong by men who were not even present for the altercation and the following day his actions were justified, even by other women, based on custom; because it is their “custom” that if a woman disobeys a man he has the right to hit her.   This may be off topic but is just an example of how hard trying to integrate into this culture can be when you don’t agree with such a big aspect of it and you are forced to try to explain your feelings in the minimalism of pidgin English. 

                On the brighter side I had already applied to the Gender and Development Committee and got accepted just a few weeks after the incident, which had obviously motivated me to do some work in this area whether or not I was invited to join.  The GAD committee, as we call it, was started by Peace Corps about 30 years ago and started as Women in Development, to recognize the important roles of women in societies while the process of development had typically only involved leaders, aka men.  Even National Geographic has identified women as one of the most underutilized resources in development so in this country it was easy to see the disparity in opportunity and I decided to get involved.  Ironically our GAD committee has just added a gender based violence component and I am now the lead on a 6 step prevention program that we have developed and will soon be piloted by some of the volunteers in the previous group. 

                After nearly a month in town of enjoying internet, my fellow PCV’s, and probably a few too many nights at my new favorite bar, Voodoo, I am a little nervous to go back to site and readjust to life on the island.  I am also re energized however by the eagerness of my counterpart, the local midwife I have been suggested to work with, and now having some of the resources to actually get some work done.