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Published: October 27th 2010
Kindy March
Opening the conference with a parade through the village and into the school groundsA few news blurbs and then a final note on saying goodbye to Vanuatu.
Kindy Workshop As mentioned in an earlier blog, I had the opportunity to present two workshops to a province wide (3 islands including Maewo, Pentecost, and Ambae) kindy teachers' workshop. The kindy teachers touch my heart every time as they are paid, usually very scantily, by their villages and have little to no formal training. The teachers from other islands used their own money to find transport to come to the conference.
Two fellow volunteers, Jessica and Rachel who live on Ambae, joined us on Maewo to also present at the conference. There were over 80 participants, so they were split into 6 smaller groups. We each gave 2 workshops 6 times each, once for every group. It was the most exhausting few days of my entire service, teaching in another language all day long. (I wonder where my stamina for teaching has gone.)
The conference started with a parade through the village. We joined the teachers in shouting out phrases to the community, promoting playing as learning and the kindy system in general. The next five days were packed with sessions.
Kindy Conference Kava
Kava with Justin's host family In the evening there were music night, culture night, and custom night. The three of us did the Cha Cha Slide for our custom night. The teachers got a huge kick out of it!
My two workshops were phonics and local language books. The phonics one I had done with primary teachers previously but revamped to suit the preschool age. I talked with the teachers about adapting all the activities into their own local languages (coming from three islands, the teachers represented over 8 distinctly different vernaculars!), and gave a model lesson using the language from Maewo as a sample.
I was very excited, as well, to share the local language books. I went through the process of creating a book with them and then worked with each group to create their own group. The focus was to choose one topic (sea animals, colors, fruits, etc) and then choose a phrase that was repeated over and over again on each page. Since the groups were mixed up and had many vernaculars among them, we wrote the stories in Bislama and left it up to them to translate it for their kindy. My favorite one was about a starfish
Good ol American Burgers
Justin teamed up with a member of our group to make a mass amount of burgers to feed the hungry volunteers at COS conference who went from sea animal to sea animal asking if he could "pillow" (yes, a verb in Bislama and in language) on them. The turtle says "I'm too hard," the octopus "I have too many legs," the whale "I'm too big" and on and on until he finds a shellfish that helps him find a stone to sleep on. Very clever because both shellfish and starfish are found sleeping on stones.
COS Conference In early September we were in Vila for our COS (close of service) conference. Basically meetings and sessions preparing us for the paperwork to come at COS time and the transition to life back in the States. Peace Corps put us up in a nice resort for the three days of sessions, where we basked in the luxury of having a gas oven and en suite laundry machine and dryer. It was awesome to see our group back together again, some we hadn't seen since March of 2009. The resort was known for it's starfish that are populous right off the beach. We spent an afternoon checking them out by kayak!
Since we were in Vila, Justin and I visited my host mom
Aldayer in Vila
Visiting Aldayer and Mami in Vila. We bought coloring books to keep him busy while his cousins are in school and Aldayer. Aldayer and three of his cousins are living together with my host mom and aunt. While the three kids go to school during the day, he stays home with his mom. We brought him some color by number books and crayons to keep him stimulated during the day. It was a bummer to see him stuck in that house all day, my ideal Aldayer will always be freely roaming the coconut plantation, singing at the top of his lungs.
The new training group arrived in Vila while we were in for COS conference as well. We joined a group of volunteers and staff with leis, fabric wraps, green coconuts, and nametags to welcome the group of 40 to Vanuatu. It was precious to see those naive yet well intentioned looks from that new group. And thus Peace Corps Vanuatu continues.
Crabs of North Maewo Back at site, Sandy invited us to join her family and another visiting volunteer for a venture to far north Maewo, an area known for plentiful crabs. We took a truck as far as the road would go and then walked the rest of the way to the very tip
of the island. Crabs scuttled through the dead leaves, and could be seen everywhere you look. Every nook of every tree, behind every stone, everywhere! I'm pretty creeped out by crabs, but the other three were loving it. At first, on the walk to the northern point, we (well, not me, but everyone else) simply broke one claw or "tut blong krab" from each crab, leaving the crab to run free. The crab will regenerate its claw and continue to grow and reproduce in the meantime. We often found one crab with a significantly smaller claw and one big one, showing that someone had come before us and taken it and it was starting to grow back. The crab claws were boiled over the fire and we ate them with manioc laplap. All you can eat crab claw buffet! I was proud to crack and pick out my own crab meat, but my taste for crab only goes so far. I focused on the laplap while Justin and the others went to town on the crab.
Just after we ate, the rain moved in for the afternoon. We still had about an hours walk back, but the rain was
One Little Claw
Notice this crab has one average sized claw and one small one here to stay. This is where things got interesting. The walk back was our chance to pick up crabs that we would be taking home with us. Everyone had gathered rice and flour bags to fill up with live crabs. Rain or not, we didn't want to make the trek up here for nothing. Here I found myself jumping off the path behind a toothless old woman in a yellow polyester dress, five hyper kids, and Justin. The woman knew just where to find a bunch of them. Since I didn't want to be useless, I carried the bag. The others would scamper off, grab a crab, and come toss it in my bag; I would try to keep in the middle of them as much as possible. Soon the bag was so full that the crabs were crawling on top of each other and almost to my hands. I struggled to keep up and get the bag to my eager crab gatherers, and soon the woman with the yellow dress swooped over, effortlessly grabbed half of the bag, and proceeded to drag me along, scooping up crabs with her free hand. Feeling uncoordinated, compared to this 60 plus year
Crab Claw Buffet
Crab claws in the middle with laplap manioc around the outside old, at that moment is an understatement. Still it was the most energetic moment of the day.
World Map Project We successfully completed the World Map Project at our school! As a last project, we gathered the materials and organized the students and teachers to paint a huge world map mural at our school. The World Map Project is a Peace Corps project done all over the world. Our resource center hooked us up with the project manual and all we had to do was follow it. After painting the wall ocean blue, we drew a grid on the wall in pencil. Then, the gridlines were the base for blowing up a smaller version of the world map on to the wall. Justin and I did Antarctica as an example, and then turned it over to a very enthusiastic and talented bunch of 9th grade boys. They did an extraordinary job of drawing precisely every last detail. Our only complaint was trying to get them to keep the small islands down to scale, as they tended to exageratte them. Something they must want to do justice to the small spaces as they to know what it's like
Drawing
3 boys crammed on a rickety ladder, all wanting to help draw the map to live on a small island.
After the drawing, we outline all the boundaries with marker and called in the primary students to help. The teachers and even some community members who heard my plan to have the younger kids paint where aghast. "Bae oli spoelem ia!" There going to ruin it, they'd say. However, I was stubborn and set on the idea that every student would have a hand in this map. Even the principal at the school was after me at the last minute, but I stalked right up to first grade and took out five kids to come paint. They did just fine and I am so proud to know that
they know they were a part of this map.
Once all the countries were painted, we labeled them all, put a varnish on top and voila, a world map. I can't even type how so excessively impressed and exciting this project was. One day, an olfala man from the bush came down and was asking Justin and I all sorts of questions about the map while we were labeling. Concepts like country size and location are now a bit clearer (obviously a 3D globe
Painting
A class one student painting Madagascar would be ideal). Now people can walk up anytime they like and see how big and where countries that they here about all the time are: China, Fiji, New Zealand, USA, and Australia. Very very cool.
Last Kakaes and Goodbyes Even as the excitement and rush of the map project were going on, we were starting to say our goodbyes. We had last kakaes with all the groups of people that we have been with these last two years: Justin's host family in Gaiowo, my host family in Betarara, the teachers at the school, the Betarara mamas, the Betarara church, and three others with close friends and family. It was an emotionally exhausting time, we'd think the tears and emotions were over only to conjure them up again with every humbling speech, presentation, and food prepared on our behalf.
Saying goodbye here is more complicated that when we left the States. We know Kansas, we were born and grew up there, we'll always belong there, and our family will always be there. Now we have developed relationships and routines in a new place, have family and friends here, been recipients of the most genuine, long-term hospitality
World Map
Finished! that I have ever known, and really laughed, cried, and lived with these good good people. Saying goodbye here is so hard because we may not ever see these people again. It's sort of like planning an infinite funeral. We can send letters and photos, but it will probably all be very one sided, with few replies. We'll fly across the world with an invisible thread connecting our hearts forever to a tiny, largely unknown island in the South Pacific. No matter how many stories, pictures, speeches, and examples we share with people back home, it will be impossible to convey how much this whole experience has completely rocked our world, changed our perspective and given us a new pair of life goggles. And at the very same time, going home to Kansas feels like the right thing, the next thing for us to do.
We will start coming home the scenic route November 1st with our first stop in Hong Kong. Stay tuned with the blog, it may be just a mad smattering of photos with captions but I'll do my best to keep you all seeing what we're seeing.
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Stephanie Beshore
non-member comment
Wealth
What wealth you have acquired in your experiences!! Thank-you for sharing. I have thoroughly enjoyed your blog.