easter weekend

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have another blog and a good week. - b

15 april 2009

we had a visitor for easter weekend; a volunteer who is stationed in port vila and was out visiting the "outer islands" to get a taste of village life. he had heard about maewo from other volunteers and added it to his must-see-before-leaving-vanuatu list. school let out friday and monday for the easter holiday, so we got to play tourist along with jeremiah and justine, the volunteer farthest south (which is really still central) on maewo, who tagged along as well.

the other two came walking into betarara friday as we all sat around outside after the good friday church service. the community was a buzz wondering who the new "white man" was and what he was doing here. as they had just hiked three hours from south-central maewo, we spelled and chatted for awhile by the church, eating bananas that the post master offered us. we headed back for our house and were about halfway there when justin and i sensed a heavy rain was coming on. we detoured to my host families' kitchen to hide from the rain and, consequently, make plans for jeremiah to test maewo's infamous hand ground kava that evening.

that afternoon we took jeremiah to see sau, the waterfalls and pools close to our house. he is from michigan and so therefore into seeing impressive bodies of water. we chilled (literally) in the pools for a couple hours and headed back to the house. justine had carried some lemons from her village as she had heard we could make lemon bars. my how news travels. so we sat making some "hati" or "wash-a-mouth" for the kava drinking session that night. and i must admit, our lemon bars are pretty impressive. we rationed a few of them out for later that weekend and wrapped the rest in an instant noodles package (we keep everything nowadays), ready for kava.

my host papa, jeremiah, and justin, by now a kava grinding veteran, sat outside the bamboo walls of the local kitchen storying and grinding for about two hours as the sun set behind the coconut palms over head. justine and i sat and chatted with my host mama and brothers until the kava was ready. my brothers, too young to drink kava, were curious about my hati and managed to get themselves a sample before drifiting off to sleep. we left them to snooze and joined the guys, now relocated to the kitchen because of rain.

we drank kava, washed our mouths with lemon bars, and carried some laplap back to the house for dinner. the walk back was slow going as it was dark and we were pretty mellow from the kava.

the next day we planned to walk about 3 hours to the north of big water, an awesome waterfall you can see from the plane on the way to maewo. justin and i had visited it higher up "in the bush," but not yet seen the main fall that tourists sometimes come to see. (yes, maewo, too, is subject to travel guides and charter a flight or boat to bring them. usually they come only to see the waterfall and then leave the same day.) playing hostess, i made a big breakfast of pancakes and fresh pineapple to get us carbed up for the long walk about. and we were off.

first, we stopped at justin's host families' house (about 1/3 of the way) and dropped off some of our bags. we asked around to see if anyone was interested in going with us and added justin's papa, mama, brother kenny, and small cousin fred to the entourage. another hour or so down the road, we stopped at a saturday market house just in time for lunch. we bought leaf parcels of nalot, a variation of laplap, for 20 vatu each to go with our water (only the white ones, however, were drinking water).

we trekked the rest of the way to naone, the village that owns the tourist spot, and stopped to ask permission to see the falls. advised by a tourism workshop to charge admission, we each coughed up 1,000 vatu to go look. i was a little upset by this, being a sort-of resident and all, but still we paid. justin's family members, being locals, didn't have to pay. outside the village, we veered off the big road and onto a trail in the bush. the slickness of packed mud made it more effective to walk barefoot than to forfoot the sensations of ground by wearing shoes, so i opted to kick off my shoes and leave htem to the side of hte path.

we could hear the water thundering as we approached, picking our way past water taro gardens and the channeled streams that fed them. through the banana leaves and coconut palms the waterfall started to come into view. i'll post pictures as soon as i can; it is truly a gorgeous site. and nice and cool too, especially in vanuatu-maewo heat and humidity. we spent hours exploring the pools, taking pictures, and jumping from the falls. (here i'd like to take a moment to thank my parents, swim team coaches, and anyone else who suffered headaches or heart attacks during the years i was learning to swim. i am thankful now to be able to enjoy jumping from waterfalls and confidently swim afterwards.) the highest jump we're guessing is about two to three stories high; or anyway enough time to scream, run in mid air, and re-hold your breath two times before going underwater. we reached the top by walking up steps that had been cut into the stone ine places where the water didn't run as strong. i was thinking what a nice touch for the tourists until i saw a local couple walking back from their garden, depending on the steps to make their way down. what a spectacular place to walk by everyday on the way to and from the garden.

we walked back to the market where we had had our lunch and the guys decided to stop for kava. we gals sat inside the market house. every once in ahwhile a woman would come in with a juice glass full of kava and offer it to another. the typical reaction to this is for the offer-ee to act shocked and surprised and call out, "eeee, no!" while at the same time getting to her feet and heading outside so she can have a good place to spit after she drinks. between shells, the women sit inside on the merchant benches and chat. trying to live up to the promise i made myself in vila to start taking more pictures, i whipped out my camera and started taking pictures of the guys drinking kava outside. i had just tucked the camera back away when a woman asked me to take a picture of her and her mat she had just woven. well, actually, typical to ni-vanuatu culture, justin's mama asked me to take the picture; as the woman didn't know me, she went indirectly through someone else to initiate communication.

of course, i agreed and took a few shots of the woman holding a beautiful custom mat with the tradional maewo diamond style woven into the middle. i chatted with her for quite awhile about weaving and custom mats. she told me an interesting, yet sensible, fact that some villages on maewo use custom mats instead of vatu to pay for goods and services. for example, sometimes villages ask other villages to come put on a custom dance for a wedding or other event. depending on the villlage, some prefer to be paid in vatu and others in mats.

we finished our walk and reached justin's families' house as the stars were brightening in the sky, around 6:30. we slept there for the night and went to the easter church service the next morning. justine's dog, who had been hanging with us all weekend, also decided to go to church. she had trained him pretty well to sit and lay down and he behaved very well, but that didn't keep the curious glances from coming in our direction. the way we kept close tabs on him and kept patting him on the head is quite a nuance in vanuatu.

after the service, we changed out of our island dresses (we being the girls, not justin...) and justine and i followed justin's host sister edvina, who claimed to have found a spot where her cell phone could get netweork. having been without mobile network for a week or so, we followed her to check our voicemail and see if there was any pressing matter we should act upon. so there we go, easter sunday after church, and we're slipping and sliding, trying to climb a hill for the cell phone. on top, sure enough the network came out and at the same time, so did the rain. regardless, we used our phones through plastic baggies and between calls, joked about how there was absolutely no way we could get down without just sitting on the ground and scooting, crab style, on our hands and knees. in the background of all that were three boys, expertly running all about with slingshots, trying to kill a chicken for their easter dinner. how they (all ni-vanuatu in fact) manage to keep their balance and traction is a talent i hope to acquire.

very very slowly we picked our way down and slipped back into our shoes, which we had left by the big road. we started walking back and i thought i heard wailing, as though someone had died. edvina knew that the maewo custom of naole was starting and the cries were coming from the opening dance. we bustled back to the village to catch the end of it.

naole is about one month in april-may when the men who have earned a rank by killing a pig at a ceremony get a chance to dress up and run around and "spoil" people. it kind of reminds me of halloween. like the dances, the men's rank determines their costume (which leaf and which mask, etc.) as well as what they can do to people. some carry a stick and hit people with it (not too hard, but if you say that they'll hit harder), others throw ashes, others throw stones or lemons. when the guys are in their costumes they are covered from head to mid leg with natangura leaves; the same leaves that are used to make roofing for local houses. they look like man-sized hay stacks that have sprouted legs. they wear the same anklets that are used for custom dances so when they come running, you can hear them approach. you also know they're coming because droves of terrified kids will be running away.

that afternoon we hung out at the house as the "naole" ran to and fro finding people to mess with. back at gambule, the teachers new to maewo were very ineterested in knowing what was going on. one lady asked me if i had seen all the devils running about on the road, and if it was really true that they hit people. trying to improve the teacher retention rule of maewo schools, i showed her some picutres on my camera and made sure she knew it was just "wan kaen plei-plei" (one kind of play-play). maewo sometimes has a hard time getting teachers to come, even if they are assigned, because of the stories surrounding maewo custom.

so for the next month or so, we'll de dodging schizophrenic hay stacks as we make our daily rompings, in addition to the other exotic aspects of island life. all of the supplies that we bought while in the capital successfully made it to our house. to contact the ship for that one, i found myself sitting on a teetering hunk of dead coral just off the shoreline where it was rumoured that mobile network would come out. i did get ahold of the ship and now we're contently stocked with our supply of pasta and nutella for the next few months. we even got some chocolate chips and are thinking dutch oven chocolate chips cookies are a possibility in the not-too-distant future. in short, things are well and, as always, we are thinking of and anticipating news from you all back home.

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