Vila and IST

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so i thought i'd shake things up a bit and post a blog on a mid-saturday morning. i got a letter from sher this week aaaand got to talk to her on the phone this past sunday. it'd been since the end of the school year since i'd done that, because i don't have a land line at my house in pitt. and the fact that i hadn't been home since then. we had a great talk, to the tune of justin's ukulele. =) take care--

b

2 June 2010

We are back at site after a weeklong trip to Vila. All of the SHREP volunteers (volunteers working primarily with education) were flown in for group meetings with the programming and training staff. Even though its’ been over twenty four hours since my last ingestion of dairy products and conversation in English with someone other than Justin, my head and stomach are still reeling.

I thought trips to Vila would become less drastic as our service went on, but they still are incredibly overwhelming. Vila is by far the busiest place in the country, not to mention notably busier than the pace of life on the island. In Vila, the bank is open every day, businesses have regular store hours, aisles, and overwhelming amounts of selection, there are lots of cars (many of which don’t use the right kind of oil and smell horrific), the Peace Corps staff and subsequent paperwork command our attention, and we have the chance to catch up with fellow volunteers, many of whom we hadn’t seen in over a year! I need a list whenever I step out of the hotel room or I lose my focus. Every time we gear up to go to Vila, I consider meditating every morning for a week to prepare myself for the over stimulation. I never do and I always regret it. Just stepping into a bathroom with toilet paper that has cartoon puppies printed on it and is scented like baby powder just about puts me over the edge.

To ease ourselves into the rush, we planned to head straight from the airport to our one of the Peace Corps staff members’ homes. The staff member and her family are from Fiji, another island nation in the South Pacific that also drinks kava. Justin brought back a stump of Maewo kava and all the tools for grinding it so he could introduce the Fijians to stone ground Maewo kava. It was intense for Justin, doing most of the grunt work to grind kava for three, but they definitely appreciated it.

Also joining the family for the evening was another Peace Corps staff member’s husband and his two daughters. A grand total of five kids in the house, counting us, a total of ten. Even in all the mayhem that kids can rile up in each other, I appreciated the limited number of people and homey setting for our transition into Vila life. I especially appreciated the staff member’s husband’s dialect. He is from Iowa and I hadn’t realized how priceless it is to “story” with someone who speaks English like you do. Most other volunteers are east coasters, or second language speakers with slightly different English dialects, something I didn’t realize until I heard this guy talk. Chatting with the Iowan felt like chatting with an uncle; and made me feel an inch or two closer to home.

The next day, our IST sessions began. IST stands for In-Service Training and is intended to keep volunteers up to date and connected to resources and to each other. We had one IST last March and this was our second (and final) one for our service, as they are an annual training. We sat through sessions from 8-5, which was more structure than I’d had in a long time, probably since the last IST. In addition to my training group, there were members of the “new” group that arrived in country last September.

There were sessions with speakers from the Ministry of Education on the new curriculum, new language policies, and upcoming teacher training programs. It was good information to keep us as Peace Corps Volunteers in the loop with their goals and plans. However, given the pace of how things work in this country, I know the information presented will have little impact on my final months as a volunteer. Selfishly, I wanted to know how will this information affect ME? and what can I do about it NOW? Most of the proposed plans will easily be years, if not decades, in the making.

Then there were sessions by Peace Corps staff members. Refresher courses on Safety and Security policies, what ringworm and scabies look like, and how we can help out with future site identification procedures. A bit more relevant.

The best sessions, in my opinion, were ones run by fellow volunteers. In these, we relaxed and shared our successes and failures over the past year (or few months for the newbies). Somehow, just writing down that I continue to be frustrated by the fact that two leaders in our school have died in the past year on a pale yellow post-it note was relieving. We talked about what we could change and what we couldn’t, and then brainstormed ways to improve common problems that volunteers face.

There were also sessions volunteers ran on specific projects, like starting a library or applying for a grant. I helped out with a session about helping the kindys and told about my “Mama’s Workshop” where we made shape dominos. I was excited to find a few volunteers interested in getting a copy of my workshop notes so they could run one in their own villages.

By far, the story I appreciated hearing the most was told by a volunteer who extended her contract for a third year. Her village gave her the custom name “Lemanu,” which is the language name for a particular bird. The village told her the custom story about the bird, how the bird flew over from another island just for a visit. Even though the bird was there only a short amount of time, as he flew around, he spread seeds. Many years later, those seeds grew up into prosperous fruit trees and, even though the bird wasn’t there to see the fruits of his labor, generations of people enjoyed the fruit from the full grown trees, fruit that had grown from seeds the bird had sown. Her village thought of her much like this bird, that even though she is here for a short amount of time, the seeds she is sharing will benefit the village for generations to come.

The volunteer told us to think about that story for a second. The bird was flying all over the island and spreading his seeds, but he may not have been thinking of it like that. In fact, he probably thought all he was doing was spreading his shit all over the place. She said she felt like that, that most of her projects feel like she is just spreading shit all over the place with little or no progress to be seen. A reality that many Peace Corps Volunteers can relate to. Lucky is the volunteer who sees the goals of his or her work actualize in their few years of service. But, just like the fruit trees in the story, the final results of project work may take years or even generations to be seen. A glimmer of hope to keep us all trying our best in our project work.

An important part of IST, other than the time spent in sessions, is time spent meeting and reconnecting with fellow volunteers. Just a reminder that many of us are facing similar issues and hang-ups at our sites, that we’re not going through all this frustration alone is a blessing. We spent most of our evenings cooking in the hotel’s guest kitchen and sharing stories and experiences.

One night, the Maewo volunteers all got together to send one of our members home. Justine, who came in the training group six months prior to us, is probably reading this blog from the comfort of an air conditioned room, in a cushy swivel chair and slurping down the last of a Dairy Queen blizzard. Hi Justine! Maewo misses you already! But, before she left and after a long day of IST sessions, we all went out to a glorious steak and mashed potatoes dinner (did you know Vanuatu beef is ranked #2 in the world?) for her “last kakae” with the Maewo crew.

Another perk of collaborating with volunteers for awhile is the sharing and swapping of goods. We have acquired Lost Season 6 and are rationing our sunlight so we can watch it regularly. We restocked on food stuffs (hot finds - sundried tomatoes and dried black beans!) and exchanged some of our books in the library at the Peace Corps office.

Justin and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary on our last night in town. We went out to eat at a favorite Thai restaurant, dining in the company of tourists, place settings, and themed interior including reddened bamboo walls. Such luxuries are not to be taken for granted!

Just one day over a week later, we landed back on Maewo…and exhaled. The rains paused just long enough for the plane to land and for everyone at the airport to clamber into the one truck that had shown up. Our luggage, along with that of another teacher and his family who arrived on the plane, was thrown into the shortened bed of the truck. The driver and five others piled inside the cab while the four men and I created little nests for ourselves amidst the boxes, mattresses, and suitcases.

Riding back to our house from the airport is one of my favorite things about life on Maewo. Riding in a truck makes you instantly popular, and anyone who has any inkling of who you are will smile and wave hugely. The conversation in the truck bed was predictable and slow.

These transitions back and forth between island life and Vila life are coming to a close. It won’t be long now that we’ll have to be transitioning back to the States for good. Better start that meditation regimen today…

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Photos

Bringing island life to town
Justin teaching one of the kids to grind kava. What a great way to experience island culture, from the comfort of your back porch.

Justina
and her (okay, our) desserts.

Back to this
and trying not to take it for granted.