Port Vila

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Port Villa, Vauatu August 2007

We are now in Port Vila, the capital. We are doing some major provisioning since from here we go to the remote northern Vanuatu Islands and then to the Solomon Islands, so it may be months before we get to a store by any description again. Port Vila is very expensive and we need to move along before we really blow the budget. It’s just so hard to pass up all the great French restaurants, wine, champagne followed by a little indulgence in the casinos. We justify this by saying we won’t spend any money for the next few months!?!

I never thought I’d hear myself say, ‘I want a Wal-Mart’. Not until you leave the country for an extended length of time do you realize how cheap and bountiful products are in the U.S. Dave and I have been shopping for months for a new dish drying rack. Ours was a special one made for boats that folds up, so the first time it’s dropped it breaks! There are Chinese shops in every town, and each shop has about 98% of the same things, but there is a gross amount of inventory in no logical order so that you must search endlessly. For example if you need a bra, then of course you go look by the fishing poles! Anyways our search for a damn dish drying rack took us to no less than 30 different stores and I hate to shop so it gets pretty tiring. We finally found one a few days ago and who would have thought we’d be so happy about our newest purchase.

The language here is Bislama, a type of Pidgin which is basically phonetic English with some French thrown in. We have been working on our pidgin which is quite funny. With the word “School” spelled “Scull”, “thank you” as “tank you tu mas” and “A beer for you and me as “Bia blong yumi”. Colonization came here in the early 1900’s by both the French and the English and unwilling to give in a dual government system called The Condominium, but know rather as ‘The Pandemonium’, with a bizarre duplication of rules and services was established. The Ni-Vans (the indigenous Vanuatans) recently won independence in 1978. A strong French influence is still prevalent here in the capital of Port Vila with as most locals speaking French, English and Bislama and possibly a native language as well.

For more stories and pictures see Dave’s blog at: www.svlavie.blogspot.com

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