Coming back to the beginning

I’ve just come back from visiting my new site and what an experience it was. You know, we think and speak of Vanuatu as a single country, an archipelago of connected islands bound by the name "Vanuatu", but in reality Vanuatu is a mosaic of islands, languages, cultures, and customs. The traditions and histories, beliefs and languages, customs and "fashions" are very different from island to island. I’m lucky to have the opportunity to live on two different islands and deeply experience the uniqueness of each. But seriously, learning the local language bakegen....excited but...eh..There are dozens of individual local languages on the island, and hundreds of dialects. Where to even think about starting is beyond me..

Though Santo is another tropical island of Vanuatu in the South Pacific, it is so very different from Aneityum; it is its own piece in the mosaic of life that is Vanuatu. The land is less mountainous, more spacious. The mountains are opened up with coconut plantations and cattle ranches. Huge rivers cut across the fields and split the mountains running out to the ocean. There are maybe a dozen small islands just off the coast of mainland Santo. Some burst into the sky like jumping porpoises, their edges very steep and their island slanted towards the Pacific. Others are long, stretched out tongues of flat land. People take canoes between them. There is a reputation for sharks on South Santo, and I've already met two families who have lost members to shark attacks. I also met a man with one leg and another with half an arm... so I won’t be doing too much snorkeling! South Santo doesn’t have the amazingly light blue reef that Aneityum does. Instead the water is a deep deep blue which is beautiful against the gray black sand beaches that creep out of the dense jungle.

Espiritu Santo is the largest island in Vanuatu and so its geography and peoples are greatly varied. It has the second largest urban center--Luganville--where you can find everything from spices and fresh beef to a cold beer and a fudge brownie. It has all the basic amenities one would like to have, without having the chaos of Port Vila. So right there, I go from one of the most isolated and remote islands in the entire world I would say, to a pretty big island with an urban center and ships that come almost daily. There are 3-4 flights a day, unlike Aneityum's 2 a week. Malekula island where a lot of Peace Corps are is about a 2-4 hour boat ride; to get to the nearest island from Aneityum on a boat... its about 12-14 hours on a cargo ship. We have trucks and transportation on Santo, Aneityum your only option is your own two feet. The two islands are so very different in terms of development but it is not as clear cut as, say: connectivity VS isolation, roads VS footpaths, convenience VS inconvenience. It’s not like that. Yes, the levels of "development" are on opposite sides of the spectrum when looking at the bigger picture, but the entire western coast is said to be as remote as Aneityum, seriously. The road ends about 4 hours outside of town, so it stretches along a VERY SMALL portion of the southeastern coast, maybe 1/20 of the island coast. That leaves 19ths that must be trekked on foot or rounded by boat. One of the most amazing things about Santo is that you have this urban center, Luganville, with dial-up internet, spotty electricity, and leaky taps but at the same time, on the same island, you have a very large population living in the mountains in straight custom villages: do not wear clothes, do not speak anything but local language (their own village's individual language at that), eat nothing that doesn’t come from the garden except when they occasionally come down to buy somebody's dog to eat. It is the best of both worlds: you can go to Luganville and feel like you’re in a South American city in 1992 and you can journey into the mountains, inland, around to the backside of the island and get a very real and tangible taste of pre-westernization in every sense of the word. How cool is that? On a single island... I love it. And ultimately, while the islands are so different, the customs as unique as the hundreds of individual languages that color Vanuatu, we are all really the same; we are all just people living on what we have the best way that we can and loving life for it. Each island has its own hand of cards it was dealt, but they are all still holding cards. Know what I mean?

My village is a 2 hour truck ride from town, down the southern coast on a dusty enchanted road that winds through coconut plantations, cattle ranches, vanilla farms, and vegetable gardens. We cross huge rivers of musty green water where you will see men without shirts paddling across in their custom canoes made of tree trunks. We follow the spaghetti-like road around the contours of the land, like we're tracing the outline of the mountains' toes, in and out, up and down, forwards and backwards. Enormous banyan trees stake their ancient spots in vast open fields and I like to think the owners of that ground left the tree out of respect. Banyan trees--Nabanga-- are so incredible to sit under and look up. If you have yet to do so, put it on your list. There were zero open fields on Aneityum, except for 1/2 soccer field that was cut short by a hill. Aneityum was like that cloth napkin that you pinch up with two fingers and it stands up on the weight of its own folds, very steeply. Santo would be like trying to do that with a whole table cloth: a lot of it is going to slide down the wooden table and lay flat, but there will be that part in the middle that held onto the upward thrust of your two fingers and took up higher ground.

We ride in the back of "camions" or trucks, packed in snuggly with exotic mamas in island dresses, papas in tattered shorts and barebacked, and bushmen who wear nothing but a cloth over their groin. Chickens, pigs, copra (dried coconut), tires, cargo boxes of food and other random things are converted into seats so that we have 3 levels of people: those that sit along the edge in the bed of the truck, those that sit in the middle on the cargo-formed "seats", and those that sit on the lip of the bed of the truck with their legs hanging out. I haven’t figured out if there is a sort of social hierarchy that determines where you sit, I only know that being the one whiteman, I was seated on a bag of flour in the center of the truck, the spotlight seat. Then I rode 2 hours with about 30 pairs of eyes glued to me. The trucks are so old and noisy that you can’t hear a single word anyone says, and the roads are so disastrously damaged that it is impossible to read lips as our bodies rumble with the bumps, so just eyes glued on me, no conversations. I’m the first volunteer in this part of South Santo, so I was quite the spectacle. String band music and string band-remixed American pop songs boom from the front cabin as we fly down the white rocky and unpaved road. You only realize its blaring when we stop to drop someone off along the way, but the grumbling of the truck muffles the music to a faint melody while in motion.

I don’t live in a village per say, rather I live on a school compound: Ebenezer Center School. We have about 8 permanent buildings made of concrete. some are concrete floors and the walls half concrete, half woven and painted bamboo. The roofs are either corrugated iron or woven from Natangura leaves. The campus is big, about the size of a football field. All of the teachers live on campus in a row. We each have a house and a bush kitchen (local building made of bamboo and natangura leaves), and there are 13 of us; 9 women, 4 men. They all live there with their families and children. The school is a boarding school too for grades 7&8 so together we all form our own kind of "village". Around the school, there are 10 villages whose children all come to Ebenezer, so during school days the campus is overflowing with happy kids running around, and the weekends tend to be more subdued. There are close to 300 students at the school, one of the largest in the country im sure. Because we all live on campus together, the community of teachers is strong with lots of teachers' gatherings and teamwork. Every Saturday night, the women teachers get together as part of the Women’s Association Network and cook together. Last Saturday it was "creative cooking with laplap"; the week before it was making variations of banana cake. Because we live on Santo where there is an urban center, we have tons of resources and different foods: fresh beef, tons of chickens, and every vegetable and fruit you can imagine. The possibilities are endless. I ate more vegetables in a week on Santo that I did in my year of Aneityum x20.

When I arrived, there was a huge welcome ceremony (unlike Aneityum) where all the students gathered at the center field of the school with representatives from the School Council, PTA, and surrounding villages. I stood at the front as the students sang the national anthem, school anthem, and a welcome song. They draped rings of Plumeria/Frangipani flowers around my neck and each representative gave a welcome speech. I am the first volunteer in south Santo, so I guess my arrival was quite the event. They spoke of the school's history, the school's vision, their hopes for the future. I also gave a speech of where I come from, how I got here, and what I hope to accomplish with the school and community. We then had a huge welcome feast with salads, soups, roasted chicken, and custom dishes. The main custom dish is "sofsof" which is taro beaten with a wooden mallet and then spread out like a huge cake, baked, with vegetables lining the rim and a roasted chicken in the middle. The custom is that I had to break the chicken--rip it in half-- then we all clapped and ate together. We storied for a few hours as they had many questions about America, Obama, Aneityum (nobody has ever been!), etc. The best part was the sense of community support that I felt. Everybody is in it together, they all wanted a peace corps volunteer and they are all looking out for me. They welcomed me into their village but more importantly, into their families. They are so kind and so loving and so open, my eyes water throughout their speeches and thank yous.

My new house is AMAZINGGGGGGGGGGGG. its concrete floors and walls about 3 feet high. Above the 3ft concrete walls is then woven bamboo painted red, white, and blue. My roof is corrugated iron with masonite insulation to keep the heat out and soften the noise of rain. I have 2 bedrooms, a swim house with ...wait for it... A FLUSH TOILET! my kitchen is the best part. they had a local carpenter come in and build an almost free standing cabana area artistically decorated with wild cane shoots and a Natangura awning. The bar is framed by arched wild cane shoots slanting diagonally for aesthetics. There was clearly a lot of forethought in its construction. They went above and beyond to make a house that they thought would make me feel comfortable and at home. Id probably say it’s the best volunteer house in Vanuatu! There is an L-shaped bar countertop and a 3/4 barn door to get in. They bought me a one burner stove and a gas tank so I no longer have to cook on fire! I also have a bush kitchen behind my house so if I run out of gas, I will cook on fire. There is a small garden next to the bush kitchen with island cabbage growing, and I just bought some seeds (eggplant, lettuce, tomatoes, and bell peppers) to add to it.

I did some assessments at the school my first week, figuring out what experience the teachers have, what areas of English they feel insecure about, what workshops they have already attended, and what areas they specifically want help in. Phonics was the big one. We also have 2 computers from the 90s that have so far only gathered dust. The teachers are too afraid to touch them for fear of breaking them! Well, one was broken, or just not running properly so I used my limited computer knowledge and somehow got it up and running again. Along with the printer which had dirt caked in the cracks and wouldn’t even turn on. I took it apart, cleaned it, and put it back together. Now, we have two working computers and a working printer/copier. I am going to run basic computer classes with typing lessons. we don’t have electricity but we work off of generators. And because we live on Santo, there is always benzene to run them.

Saturday, some of the girl teachers (there are 5 that are young in their 20s and unmarried--rare!) and I went for a walkabout. We went through the jungle for about 20 minutes and came across several small family compounds where my aunties and uncles and grandparents all live. there is a larger village at the end of the jungle where the river breaks in. We spent the afternoon meeting family and telling stories. The village is about 20 feet above the river, so I couldn’t resist joining the kids in jumping off tree branches down into the river. The teachers, once seeing I was going to join, came behind. We set a mosquito net at the mouth of the river and caught millions of tiny tiny tiny fish that we boiled and then fried. They jelled together and came out like a laplap kind of, and we had that for lunch. We then walked home along the black sand beach and they showed me several of the small islands off the coast. Since there is no reef, it’s the kind of oceanfront im used to: soft sand molded by the tides and waves. If it weren’t for the sharks, the surfing would be unbelievable!

My host family is absolutely amazing. They are so welcoming, so kind, so thoughtful. It reminds me of training where the people are very open and curious and go out of their way to make sure you feel at home. Aneityum was a bit different, the people more reserved and less apt to answer straight questions off the bat. I have 3 brothers and 1 sister, though 2 other cousin sisters live at our house as well (my family's house which is 3 teachers’ houses to the left). they are all great. I spent every night at their house storying until 10 or 11 at night. one night I passed out on the mats in their house with my mama by my side. it felt so good to wake up, all of us sprawled out on the mats
and feel really at home. They always wear smiles, never a strong face. The women joke and laugh and "cheek" each other. They really feel like one big family; the camaraderie is refreshing.

so, that’s the basic run down. since there is internet in Luganville, ill be in more regular contact. ill post a blog in a couple weeks im thinking, with pictures too. im going to buy a post mail box, a PO box, so I don’t know my address quite yet... im going back in about 5 days and then ill get a box and post the address.
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