kiddos!

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i was appreciative to notice that sher had only written two pages front and back...until i noticed that she had also written smaller... - b

27 april 2009

the longer we're here, the more grateful we become that we have two sets of eyes and ears to try and piece together personalities, current events, and the intricate infrastrucure of family relationships. so much can get lost in translation; especially when we're off school grounds and submerged in the local language (which we are still slowly picking up). we often come home from a day or two in the village and spend an hour or so debriefing and confirming what we thought we heard.

i am happy to report that we are growing more comforatble with the ins and outs of daily life "in the village." i am constantly impressed, if not fascinated by the seemingly natural ease of motherhood and the literal application of the belief that "it takes a village to raise a child" here on maewo. it has taken justin and i months (and counting) to piece together whose kids are whose; partly because kids call their mom and all her "straight" sisters "gwao," or mom, and their dad and all his "straight" brothers "tati," or dad. on top of that, any cousins are referred to as brother or sister, and only if you ask, "is he your straight brother?" will you find out who shares the same biological parents. such an intricate web of family (and i thought i peaked in mastering justin's family back home). another part of the family relationship confusion is that kids are swapped all over the place all the time. someone will tag along on a trip to the garden, pop in for dinner, or sleep over in another village; sometimes, i'm sure, just to topple our already wobbly understanding of who belongs to whom.

another element of parenthood in vanuatu is that it is important to families to have at least one of each: at least one boy and one girl. people here are rather perpelxed at justin and his brother not having any sisters. here, if a family has their last child that is a girl born to a family who already has a daughter or two, they might look around or a family full of boys and "adopt" one of theirs. for example, my host papa is one of three boys, so his parents "adopted" a girl from extended family. so, biologically she is their cousin, but they still "sing out 'sister'" to her. it's different and especially unique as it seems most cultures favor having sons to carry on the family name.

the kids here have it made. most of them get to strut around naked for the first five or six years of life, putting on clothes only for church and school. and there is definitely a strut, like, "i'm so proud of my belly full of taro so i think i'll take as troll with my chin held high and tummy thrust out and see what's shaking down at the beach" strut. not gonna lie, i'm pretty jealous. now i could easily take a picture of one of these kids with their wise stares and naked bodies, maybe pose one with snot running from his nose in front of some rusty metal roofing and use it to ask for money for such and such organization. the kids look the part, that is, the part of what we westerners may deem as needy, but the last thing they are is poor. their clothes maybe mismatched, ragged, or altogether nonexistant, but how necessary are clothes for survivial in a tropical climate when your feet are thick enough to race over coral and skin dark enough to ward off sunburn?

because of the predictable fact that everyone here knows whose kid is whose (and is related to them), kids are extremely autonomous. as soon as they are old enough to toddle, kids wander around from house to house or wherever people are. kids that come up to my knee in height don't heistate to carry around a knife of equal length and hack down a bush or whack open a nut to snack on. just a few mornings ago, my little 3-year-old cousin (aka 'brother') boe (pronounced boy) found his way to our house while his parents were still sleeping. he is just starting to learn bislama, so we bridged the language barrier by feeding him breakfast crackers and juice and showing him pictures of family. when we walked him home, his mom had been looking for him and was grateful he had clothes on for the little adventure. we were rather honored that he came to visit, regardless of the presence of his clothes.

in the school setting, kids are painfully shy. from what i have observed, that may be because knowledge is regarded as a gift that someone is choosing to share, but not necessarily as something one should seek. asking questions is not necessarily encouraged in this culture; if one or two kids in a class catch on, the teacher may assume they have done their job and not explore variant ways of presenting the information. the preferred learning style seems to be role memorization and not necessarily problem solving.

most kids, however, are very talented in working with their hands and crafty in manipulating natural resources; like weaving grass into necklaces or channeling water into pools. lately, the kids hanging around our house (children of teachers at the school) have crafted bamboo blow guns from thin bamboo shoots and harvest amo from the cherry trees in our yard. the red cherries are soft but messy and the green ones sting something awful. justin likes to join in. a few of them started calling out to us "white man!" since they didn't know our names. i tried to be teacherly and say, "my name is sheridan, what's yours?" but justin keeps going, calling them "black man" and asking them to call him "blue man." so the blue man and the black man romp around the yard together shooting cherries at the unlucky passerbys and, becuase there is usually a lack thereof, at each other.

kids who are children of teachers and living at the school usually speak mostly bislama because they come from different islands. but the kids in the villages, especially that of justin's host family, mostly speak language. as we are still learning the language, we try out new phrases on them and sometimes pick up some interesting vocabulary too. farting must be some universal excuse for giggling because that is exactly how i learned the word for fart in language: "hasu." i was sitting in a local kitchen at justin's family's house, watching his mama bake bread over the fire and testing out my language skills on little couisn georgio. we covered the basics: cook, eat, good. and then all of a sudden little georgio farted and started chuckling uncontrollably. and then turned accusingly to me and said, "ningo hasu?!" (you farted?!) good thing justin's mama was there to make sure the accusation didn't rest on me and translate the new vocabulary too. it's been my favorite new word for awhile now.

in the realm of our projects here, we are still putting on bimonthly workshops in our respective areas for the staff at gambule school. too, we are putting together a schedule with the island's zone curriculum advisor to travel around and visit more remote villages and put on phonics workships (justin will escort). i'm pretty excited to see other villages and get to recycle and improve upon some of my past work. we are still waiting on the computers the school (as well as we!) have ordered, but justin has put on two workshops with some very convincing visual aids and parts from already broken computers. this week a "word wall" workshop is in store for the primary teachers; a method of introducing sight/high frequency words to students. should be a good time.

oh, and our other "kids" are growing up too. the cat's three kittens are getting too big for our house, so we're arranging other homes for them. one will journey to ambae with a teacher as he takes his two weeks break holiday (the first two weeks of may) back home. we hope that he has full life as we have heard rumors that cats get eaten over there. another will head further south on maewo to help fellow volunteer justine with the rat empire at her house. and the cutest one will stay with us, just in case her mother is older than we have heard. until they part, justin rigged up a twig-string-stick contraption that keeps them entertained (and us laughing) for hours.

**also enclosed was "justin's top ten most exciting upcoming events"

- bullok/school fundraiser with beef!
- penecost trip to watch land diving
- packaged filled with beef jerky
- sheridan's family visit
- trip to new zealand
- laptop computer
- alfredo pasta with peas
- riding a world war II cargo ship
- killing and cleaning and cooking a chicken for sheridan's family
- ICECREAM IN PORT VILA

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