oranges are green & bananas are too!

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had a good talk with sher last night, doing well. here's another blog. =) --b

15 feb 2009

it's true: whether due to some tropical fluke or strategic adaptation, the oranges here are green skinned. my own greenness in this culture is something i am slowly fading out of, thought there are some instance that remind me of my white skin and foreign perspective. this morning, for instance, i was awake around 6 am and went outside to use the "smol haos" first thing. i'm washing my hands with our nifty bar-of-soap-in-a-plastic-mesh-bag at the water spicket when the neighbor lady strolls around her house. she is wearing an elastic waisted "swim dress" pulled up over her chest, carrying a bush knife and a small pig whose legs are tied underneath him. she tosses the pig to the ground and calls out to me, "sher-e-den! it's my daughter's birthday today and we want to bake in your kitchen!" as a teacher at the secondary school, her english is rather good and she likes to speak it with us. if she's killing a pig for her daughter's birthday, this is not a hard decidsion to make because she'll probably share some of the meat with us in exchange for using the kitchen. hastily, i agree and head back inside before we end up chatting as she proceeds to slit the pig's throat. once inside, i can't wait to wake justin up and tell him: today we'll be eating meat!

once he's up and around, we decide to bake a "banana cake" to take to the birthday girl. everyone loves them and since they don't require eggs or too much sugar, they are relatively cheap to make; especially so since bananas and coconut milk are abundant and free. we're getting rather efficient at this baking business: he usually shells and scratches half a coconut, then goes to build a small fire while i scratch the other half, and mix up the cake. he then "milks" the flaked coconut: squeezing all of the liquid from it, and then straining the liquid into a separate dish. one coconut makes about 1 cup of "milk." with the leftover flakes that have been milked, i have concocted a sort of coconut muffin recipe--> delish! as our baked goods were almost done, the neighbor lady and her family hauled in firewood, bundles of taro, and stacks of banana leaves. one started a fire in the baking pit and set the stones around it to heat up. eventually, the stones collapse on the fire, but the trick is not to let that happen until they are good and hot; which is about 2 hours. i helped the woman, who was stuck tending the fire, to carry out all the hot stones, layer the heated pit with banana leaves, set the peeled taro on top, and then cover with more leaves. we replaced the heated stones on top and left the hot sauna of a kitchen with sweat dripping down our faces and backs. baking is a truly heated process for all involved.

now, just for clarification, this kitchen is actually a seperate building than our house. it has bamboo walls and a thatched leaf roof with a bit of space in between the two to let the smoke out. the chief cook at the school likes to take advantage of the plentiful baking stones in our kitchen and bake for the students there. this we don't mind as it usually means we'll get to eat some of whatever he bakes (mostly taro). we use that kitchen for baking as well as boiling taro, soups, or anything that needs prolonged heat to cook. justin is getting good at starting fires with all "local" materials - he has swapped his newspaper and kerosene for coconut husks and dry coconut palms.

inside the house, we have two burners that run off gas. we use those to heat up water for coffee or oatmeal in the mornings and to make stirfrys or rice. the longer it takes to cook, the more gas it uses and the more likely we are to cook outside. buying a replacement gas tank is kind of expensive and plus we like to pride ourselves i being able to cook over fire. i can think of only three or four other families that have gas stoves and all of them are teachers (who would have a job that pays in vatu). otherwise, cooking with gas is incredibly expensive and not necessary for your typical family here on maewo.

another update on our house situation - since school has started (yes, officially last thursday) they run a generator for two hours at night to power lights for the teachers and students to work. the first night that the generator was on, i truly understood the fascination that bugs have for the electric blue zapper things. all of the sudden, with the flick of a switch, the dusky shadows of our house were gone and we could see every detail, every pile of clutter, every little project that had been pushed aside for a later date. while before we were used to slowing down as the sun set, now all of a sudden there was illumination and energy and and sort of pressure to make the most of this two hour luxury. so we wiped down the counter, cleaned off the kitchen table, and put some pictures on the walls. it's funny how bitter i feel towards this man made light. the next night, i was sitting on the porch watching the sun set through the trees in a glorious mix of oranges and blues when the generator fired up and the lights zapped on; drowning the awe of the last lights of the day. it's true that we could simply flip the lights off, but then there would be an element of "wasting" since we weren't taking advantage of the school paying for the gas for the generator for our benenfit. and it does save us money on not having to buy kerosene for our lanterns. so we tolerate the noise and extra bugs it attracts and the harsh light for now.

since the school has started, there are lots more people around. the secondary school, grades 8-10, is like a boarding school and the students sleep in dorms close by. the teachers are also moved in as well. we're now getting used to foot traffic through our yard and people being up and about by 5:30 am. my sister sophie and justin's brother kenny are both students at the secondary school, so they sleep on campus. it's neat to have them drop by our house in the afternoons to chat. the other day sophie and a few of her friends were over and i was telling them about valentine's day. we had just received some candy conversation hearts in the mail (thanks mom & dad brull!) and so i pulled those out for them to taste. at first, they thought the candy was erasers. then, giggling like the school girls they are, they had a blast pawing through them and reading their coquettish phrases. boyfriends and girlfriends here don't really happen. once a couple publically expresses interest in each other, they are "blocked" for marriage. so, reading things like "hey cutie" and "kiss me" was rather novel and thrilling for these girls. it cracked me up how they planned to stash their sweets and eat one a day for the next few weeks, but wound up inhaling them all before leaving the house.

school gearing up also means we're having to crack down on our plans for the year. we've met with the primary teachers a few times to get a feel for how they would prefer our workshops to run: how long, when, etc. the zone curriculum advisor for maewo is based from gambule school and we share an office with him (he is like a superintendent). we are treading carefully around him as it seems he is rather anxious for us to be taking over some of his job responsibilities in addition ot our own programs. we very tactfully created a year long calendar to hang in the office and illustrate that our schedule is rather full. i have accepted the extra task of giving workshops to a second primary school that is about a two hour walk from here once a month in addition to the bi-monthly ones i will put on for gambule. justin has sketched out plans for his computer workshops, as well as, one-on-one sessions with staff who have specific questions/needs. i also started giving my pre-assessment with grades 1-3; a slow but steady process of finding out where students have gaps in their phonics program. it is exciting to see where the potential need is and start dreaming up lesson plans.

a bit of vanuatu pop culture: there is a band here who has released a single that is literally sweeping the nation. when we were in training close to the capital, the song was huge there and is now starting to gain popularity on maewo. it has a catchy tune. anytime you switch on the radio or hear music videos on a generator-powered tv, odds are you are going to hear this little ditty; even kids walking by will sing it. at first, i too would hum mindlessly along. then i picked up enough of the bislama lyrics to get curious and started asking questions. in the simple and straight forward fashion of vanuatu culture and language, the lyrics tell a rather shameful story of a young woman who has a baby and is not able to take care of it. she covers the baby in cooked rice and leaves it in the trash to die. the body was discovered by a dog who pulled it from the trash. the song is voicing a growing occurrence in vanuatu, mostly in the newly developed urbanized areas. there are now articles in the newspaper and dialogues on the radio in reaction to the single. it is arguably a good thing that the song is so popular because now people are looking at the trend and at what they can do to keep it from happening again. many blame the growing urban dependence on vatu and the stress that causes on families who now have to pay for bills and food that before were taken for granted with owning their own land. then when a woman is pregnant before she is married, just like in the u.s., she may face ridicule for premarital sex as well as the strike of being a single parent. for some young mothers here, it may not seem worth the battle and so they give up. the positive side is now it is opening up discussions all over the country and people can talk about the issue quasi-indirectly by referring to the song, yet still try to overcome the events that would lead up to it happening again. even though i still cringe when i hear the blunt references to the dog pulling the dead baby from the trash, at least the problem is now able to be discussed and hopefully overcome.

this, too, may be linked to the world wide financial problems. yes, even in vanuatu there are some struggles. on maewo, people don't depend heavily on having cash. when they do, it is namely for paying school fees. the month or so before school, dry coconuts that have fallen and are starting to sprout into a new tree are harvested, shelled, and dried in huge barrel ovens. the copra is then bagged in brown burlap sacks and sold to a man who owns a ship, and therefore runs the copra business here. he buys the copra and puts it on his ship to be sent to the capital or to santo, another more developed island ,and sells it to buyers there. but lately, copra prices are down and the man is not getting a profit by the time he ships it away. when you look out onto coconut plantations, you now can see the ground dotted with coconuts starting to sprout. these coconuts shouldn't be there, but since the man with the ship isn't buying copra, the coconuts are not harvested like they used to be. justin's oldest host sister is not going to school this year because the family cannot pay for it. so, even though it is not as dire as sacrificing food and shelter, the economy here is feeling the struggle too.

justin and i hear the news of the u.s. economy and hope mr. obama can sort out the country in the next two years before we get back. in the meantime, we are flexing our skills as minimalists. it is hard to see how consumer driven our country is until you step away from it for awhile. when we first got to maewo and were settling in, we kept a running list of things we would buy next time we got "to town" (the capital) in march. a new strainer, a potato masher, something for me to knead dough on. but the reality was that we still had to survive four months without. back home, we'd have run to wal-mart the next day and picked up these items we thought we needed. now, we're improvising. we put away dishes more often to compensate the size of the strainer. a glass jar has become quite the efficient potato (taro) and banana masher and a flattened and floured cardboard box is my new kneading board. amazing what a bit of isolation mixed with thrifty creativity can do for your "needs" list.

other news: our cat is pregnant. i'm hoping her pregnancy doesn't render her out of commission for mousing duties. justin and i have placed bets on when and how many kittens she'll have. not very many people here keep dogs and cats around, but a few do. most young offspring are either taken to right away or neglected. it's hard to see little puppies with their rib cages jutting through their flea bitten fur. but its either one extreme or the other. if they make it past a young age and are taken in, they are typically well cared for. other than dogs and cats and agricultural animals like chickens, cows and pigs, there are the native fauna of vanauatu for birds. there is one that looks just like a pigeon but with green wings and also a parrot with a blue head and red, green, and yellow feathers that always catch my eyes. there are flying foxes too, really large bats about 3 feet long that people hunt for food. lots of varieties of lizards, geckos, and pests like ants, mosquitos, cockroaches, and millipeeds. rats too. other than that, and a few wild baors, there aren't many large mammals or rodents creeping about in the bush. i've heard there are horses on other vanuatu islands, but none here.

predictably so, the aquaculture is rich here as well. the rivers have prawns, like a fresh water shrimp, that justin has quite a taste for. from the ocean, there are reef fish, crabs (those are all over actually), octopus, and sometimes eel. our village doesn't seem to have seafood that often, but farther south it is really popular. we're familiarizing ourselves with other creatures like sea cucumbers as well. such horribly awkward little boogers.

well, hope you enjoyed the biology preveiw. as always, thanks for staying tuned in and keep us posted on your adventures too!

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