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.