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.

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

Sunsets, Beaches, and Bacterial Infection

Hello Everyone! Sorry I haven’t been able to update most of you, I have only been around internet for a few hours since I have been here so I guess I have to start from the beginning.  Arriving in Vanuatu was surreal, to say the least.  The group of everyone that I met with in LA turned out to be really fun and get along really well, which I think for a while distracted most of us from what was actually happening in our lives.  Then all of a sudden we were declaring ourselves new residents at Port Vila International Airport and being greeted by an overwhelming swarm of current PCV’s and Peace Corps staff wrapping lava lava’s around our waist and shoving coconuts in our hands.  For a week after that we stayed in a training camp where we were quickly forced to get used to waking up at 5:30 to the roosters and long afternoons in a hot tin building but falling asleep each night to the sound of the waves crashing on the beach; none of which I really minded. 

Now fast forward and I have become the proud owner of a 24 inch bush knife, drinken kava with a village chief, and gotten used to any spider less than two inches in diameter because, well, its small.  I have seen myself in a mirror a maximum of 5 times and unless I’ve just gotten out of the shower, I have hands and feet that any mother would be ashamed of.  One thing we all quickly learned is that cleanliness is relative and as long as I’m not completely covered in mango juice or have saltwater in my hair, I’m good to go.

A couple weeks ago we arrived in our training village of Mangaliliu which is located in northwest Efate and is known for having some of the best snorkeling in Vanuatu (which from my experience is true) and being the site of Survivor Vanuatu which ironically my mother may be watching right this very moment.  My house is extremely nice in terms of Ni-Van living as it has both an indoor flush toilet and shower and is made out of cement rather than local materials which makes it much less conducive to five inch spiders and poisonous centipedes.

Speaking of which, I did have a little visitor make a crash landing in my room the other night.  I had just gotten in bed and still had my headlamp on, which even before I never slept without, and was able to make out pretty quickly that it was a rat that had decided to stop in for a visit.  I have no idea where it came from since there are no holes in the ceiling but I think we were both surprised and very displeased by our meeting.  After some serious pep talking with myself, I found a way to usher him out of my room and haven’t exactly slept well since. This was a pretty harsh but necessary realization that there is more than just missing all you people that I am going to have to get used to over these next couple years and it is certainly not going to be easy.  Also, that I need to get a cat, asap. 

Training, which will last about 4 more weeks, is notoriously hated because the days are packed full of mostly dragged out classes and technical training followed by nights having to speak Bislama with our host  families and the general awkwardness that results from cultural differences.  This whole area is getting better but leads me to a very important part of Ni-Van culture called storian.  Anywhere else this would be called a bunch of women pretending to be working or cooking but really just sitting around talking and gossiping, maybe with a side project.  Sounds great right? Well, not when you don’t fluently speak Bislama and for most of us this leads to hours of just sitting with them in silence.  In their culture, women apparently don’t like to be left alone so they think they are doing you a favor just by sitting with you even if they have run out of things to talk about, whereas in American culture this seems awkward and just plain useless.  It is a bit better when my host parents are around as well as the pikinini who are insanely cute, and now that they have gotten over smiling and staring at the strange white alien in their grandma’s house, love to talk and play cards and duck duck goose with me.

I am also really excited because I just found out that in a couple weeks I will be going to Ambae for my host volunteer visit.  This is one of the islands I have been wanting to see most and really just going to another island at all is really exciting at this point since our training village is down a big steep hill with no cell phone service and feels really isolated.  Also, Ambae is supposed to be really cool and is known for having one of the biggest active volcanoes in Vanuatu.  It is tradition that everyone who climbs it gets a tattoo of the island at the bottom.   The volunteer I’m visiting lives really close to it and I’ll only be there a week but if we get the chance I definitely plan to make the hike.  Since my dad I’m sure is reading this, I won’t comment on the whole tattoo thing..

Overall everything else is going pretty well.  I am enjoying the company of other volunteers while I can, I seem to have a pretty good handle on the language and I generally enjoy being with my host family.   Every Saturday we go to the garden and I attempt to help cut down banana trees then not die on the way back as I carry a giant roll of banana leaves on my shoulder while my sisters carry that plus a couple pumpkins and bananas on their head.  Ni-Van women may not be motivated to work outside the home or even brush their teeth but they are amazing in their physical and emotional strength.  Then Sunday morning we all make lap lap before going to church.  Lap lap is probably the most common form of the staple root crops here and also probably the most difficult to make and disgusting thing I have ever eaten.  Making it not only involves the above mentioned work in the garden but also shaving about 10 coconuts, scraping the inside of about 30 bananas or taro or whatever kind you’re making, mushing it all together with coconut milk then finally shaving down the spine of the banana leaf to wrap it up in and cook on hot coals.  All that work for a food that tastes at best like feet and is the consistency of paste.  After last Sunday’s lap lap lunch of which I managed to eat about six bites before being “fulap tumas”- too full to eat anything else my papa asked me why blackman can eat so much more than whiteman.  Rather than say what I wanted, whiteman no likem lap lap, hemi tastem olsem wan foot, I made up something about us not being used to eating root crops so we get fuller faster.  That being said, don’t take your hamburgers and salads and burritos for granted, already I am dying even for just a slice of cheese.

The food is just one of many things I’m still getting used to.  Another is the plethora of health problems that are just accepted as a way of life and the treatment of dogs which can range but instead of going into the details Ill stop rambling and leave you with some pictures.  There will be plenty of time to talk later about fun stuff like the staff infections some volunteers got from our chief

Here is one of my favorite pikinini playing with some puppies of a family dog.  I’ll only say that I am trying to teach the kids that carrying them by their tails or one of their legs is not a comfortable means of transportation for the dog. 

And Tricia, to answer your question, I don’t have the luxury of a sink to brush my teeth or wash my face in, but I do it under a little spout attached to my house.  This however is my view while I do, so I’m willing to make the sacrifice..

And heres one of the children in the village after we had a little Halloween party with them where we carved some pumpkins.  Not only are they better with knives than we are but I'm pretty sure they think we are insane for cutting up what for them is an everyday food.  Regardless, they had lots of fun

I miss you all and am thinking of everyone all the time!

TWO days?!

Hello everyone,
As you all may know by now, I am a huge procrastinator.  I first submitted my application for the Peace Corps in September of 2009, on the 30th, at 11:59 pm.  Still, given two years of waiting, I find myself two days before my departure with an alarmingly sized to do list.  An array of clothes, shoes, office and camping supplies are strewn across my bedroom yet to be packed, health insurance to be canceled and I have many goodbyes still to make. At least I managed to finish class right? But I am still making a pre-departure post as promised, not just for you but in an attempt to learn how to even use this ridiculous website. 
The two years have served me well however for mental preparations and I believe I am ready for the challenge of whatever it is I have gotten myself into.  I miss everyone already and will try to update you all as much as possible. 
The past few weeks have been crazy, to say the least, but I will leave you with some pictures of Cincinnati in the fall which I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of. 

Everyone in New Orleans, do you finally see what I was complaining about missing all these years?