Training weeks 4 and 5-halfway done

---

Hey everyone, I’m in Port Vila for the morning today since it will be the last chance before we leave for “wokabaot week.” It’s about the end of week 5 of training and sometimes I am ready for it to finish. We finally find out our sites next Wednesday and I am really looking forward to finally knowing where I’ll be living for the next 2 years. They have been telling us we would find out a few weeks ago and then it got moved to the next week and the next week. During wokabaot week we spend a week in the site to find out more specifics about the community and meet everyone. We can find out things like if we'll have drinkable water, cell phone service, if our house is built yet, things like that. I’ll have a host family there and will stay with them for that week and for the first three months of service in my site. I can’t remember the exact swearing in day, which is when we officially become volunteers, but I think it’s around Nov. 27th or sometime shortly after my birthday. We had a session yesterday on communication devices used by volunteers and most of the sites we’re going to will have cell phone service. There’s this new company Digicel that covers about 80% of Vanuatu so now a lot of the really rural places have reception. For the few people that won’t have reception, they have satellite phones or HF radios to use for an emergency or with sat phones you can receive calls from anywhere, just at the expense of the caller. Cell phone service would be nice, but either way it’s good to know I won’t be cut off from all means of communicating.

I’m getting kind of tired of going to the training sessions all day and every day. It would be nice to have some days to just hang out, but people say when we get to the site we’ll miss the structure of the sessions so I shouldn’t complain. A lot of the sessions are geared toward the teacher trainers who make up about 75% of the group, and there’s only 5 of us Rural Training Center (RTC) volunteers. This past week we took a little field trip to go visit some schools on North Efate. The school I went to visit was a secondary school with grades 9-13. The students who attend the RTC are usually dropouts of one of those grades, and it helped to see what level the students might be at. The facilities of the school were really nice, but about half the students weren’t in class because they couldn’t pay school fees. It’s a boarding school, but if they can’t pay they get sent home. The dropout rate increases as the years increase and by year 13 the attendance is pretty low, but it’s good to hear that the rate is decreasing.
Other than the visit to the school the training sessions have not been too exciting. A few weeks ago the RTC people got to help build a new school in our training village that will be for grades 7 and 8. We helped again a few days ago building the foundation of the school. What would have been a couple hour job in the states of mixing cement and pouring foundation took about 2 weeks. There was one cement mixer and the other cement was mixed by 2 groups of people mixing it by hand by mixing cement, water, coral, and sand in tarps. We were all covered in cement after that so that was fun. After we finished working for the day the foreman thanked all of us and commented on how he especially respected the girls who helped because Ni Vanuatu girls would never do that work.

There’s a marriage this weekend in my village and there has been some celebrating going on with kava and Tusker (Vanuatu beer). The other night there was a big feast at the girl’s house and we finally got to drink some beer. We haven’t been allowed to drink in the training village, but since it was for a celebration it’s ok. It was so nice to have a cold beer especially because I haven’t drank anything cold in a while. I had some kava right before, and I’m still getting used to kava- the taste and the effects. My papa has been making kava pretty much every day, and he makes it pretty strong. I don’t think it’s possible to get used to the taste, which is unfortunate because it is pretty awful tasting. It actually gets worse the more you drink because you know what to expect. There is a nakamal right by my house and for the past few nights the guys have been up till like 6 am drinking kava and Tusker so it’s been pretty noisy and I haven’t been sleeping that well. Luckily kava puts me to sleep quite well so I can fall asleep through any noise.

My Bislama is coming along pretty well, it’s not a hard language to learn, but it takes some practicing. It’s getting hard to write in English because it’s so similar, but Bislama has some pretty fun words that I’m probably going to add to my English vocabulary as well. I have some favorites like Nambawan- meaning number 1 or the best, Bigfela (big), or just fela cuz you can add it to any word and it’s kind of fun.

That's it for now, hopefully I'll get a chance to give an update soon after wokabaot. And thank you for the letters and emails, please keep sending and keeping me updated me on what's going on in that part of the world 😊

Oh yeah and disclaimer: This blog is based on my experience and views and does not reflect the views of Peace Corps...

---

Comments

[Lorraine Meehan]

Bigfela
Love following your blog- your bigfela blog, if I'm using it the right way. I enjoy following your days there.

[yves]

Hey
Hey Marie, Thank you for this - and the pictures. I am glad that you seem to be doing well ... and adjusting to kava, which I am told indeed tastes pretty awful. Here things are tagging along, except that it's really cold and my motorcycle does not start in the morning ... fun. Good timing to be in the Peace Corps for 2 years while the economy slides in the worst recession in decades ! I wish I had done the same right now, because I am graduating in December and the job market really sucks. I keep running into Dempsey, who took an unpaid job with Convergent Energy right after the business plan. It seems Michael Griffith is struggling to get some money for CE ... as we expected. So Dempsey is already looking around for other jobs. Keep writing and good luck with the rest of the program. Cheers, Yves

[MarieB]

Hey
Hey Yves, thanks for the message and the update of what's going on in Monterey. I feel a little disconnected from what's going on in the world haha. I found out about our new president about 3 days after election day ha. So for that it would have been nice to be in the country but other than that I can't complain, I love it here so far. Good luck with finishing up the semester and the job search, keep in touch! PS my training village is full of French army men bc they're helping build a school and they love their short shorts... and hitting on all of us peace corps haha