Hi Everyone,
Hope you're all having a good day. I definitely am! This time next week I'll be back in Vanuatu!! I found out just over a week ago that I would be able to go back to keep teaching.
Originally I was placed at Level Mission Primary School. It's in central Pentecost and as far as damage to placements goes, we were the worst hit. The big water tank was damaged, the gardens flattened and trees and buildings were down everywhere. This means I won't be able to go back to Level. I absolutely love all of the people there but going back would be a burden on the community and would be completely irresponsible, as they are struggling with food as it is.
My new school is a four and a half hour walk north of Level at a place called Atavtabanga. It rhymes with cowabunga. I'm going back with a different placement partner, because Courtney will be going back to Level later this year, something I can't do. Ally, my new partner, and I will be at Atavtabanga for ten weeks. Ally was placed there in February but came home for a little while after TC Pam.
Atavtabanga wasn't hit at all during the storm. It's one of two placements that is viable on Pentecost right now, so I am extremely lucky to be able to go there. I'm fairly certain that I'll be teaching primary school again, although there is a high school as well, so I'll just have to wait and see.
Moving placements means I'll be up to at least five mamas in Vanuatu. I'm probably going to need to start using my toes when I count how many sisters I have. The Ni-Van are amazing in the way they just adopt people they've never met before. It's an incredible thing to arrive in a new placement and have a horde of kids introduced to you as your siblings, while your new parents smile.
As you can imagine, going back means that this little blog isn't going to be a very interesting place for a while. There's no internet on Pentecost. I'll be putting some links to places you can get information about Vanuatu and what I'm up to up in the next few days.
Now, if you'll be so kind as to excuse me, I have to go and pack!
Love From Me and My Backpack
"Travel isn't always pretty. It isn't always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts. It even breaks your heart. But that's okay. The journey changes you - it should change you. It leaves marks on your misery, on your consciousness, on your heart, on your body. You take something with you... Hopefully you leave something good behind." -Anthony Bourdain.
Monday 27 April 2015
Sunday 26 April 2015
An Island Home
Hi Everyone,
I mentioned Vanuatu briefly in my first post. At the time, I was a bit preoccupied with the insurance company. I went to Vanuatu as a volunteer teacher. My placement was five months long and I taught at Level Mission Primary School.
The first week in Vanuatu, I stayed in Mangaliliu Village on Efate. I discovered just how beautiful Vanuatu is. As clichéd as it is, the sea actually sparkled and there were so many plants and flowers I'd never seen before.
More than the physical place, it was the beauty of the people that won me over. In Australia, I have one brother. The first night in Vanuatu, I was introduced to at least five brothers and sisters, I had two mamas, one papa, I'm not sure if the second one is around and the community itself adopted me and the other eighteen volunteers as their own.
I spent the next week getting a crash course in island life. We had medical and safety briefings, introduction to bislama classes, the shortest talk on cyclones, a history lesson and more bislama classes.
Our last night at Mangaliliu, we learnt to cook island kakae (food). We chased down two roosters which some of the boys then killed and plucked. We grated manioc, rolled it in island cabbage leaves and soaked them in coconut milk to make simporo rolls. I learnt to grate the coconut and how to open one without a knife. It's as simple as dropping a very big rock on it. It was a pretty awesome last night feast and everyone's mama had outdone themselves by making us island dresses or shirts. They didn't measure us and we didn't know they were making them. We looked absolutely fabulous.
The next day, we were got on a plane to Santo, the biggest island in Vanuatu. Then, after waiting around for several hours, we got on a Twin Otter, which sits 19 people, and flew on over to Pentecost. I did not enjoy the flight as I was scared the whole time but flying over the island before we landed was pretty sweet. We landed safely and were greeted by someone from our new community.
Courtney, my placement partner, and I were greeted by one of our host dads and the truck driver. Level School is a 2 hour truck ride from Sara Airport, it's a 12 hour walk. One of our uncles met up with us in a nearby village and for the next hour and a half, we had the greatest time ever, riding in the tray of a ute on a dirt road is awesome. Of course, it rained for the last half hour so we arrived, soggy, cold and slightly travel sick. Waiting for us were our host families. I have two mamas, two papas, nine sisters and three brothers in that community. Plus Courtney, who is referred to as my sister. Then there's grandparents, aunties, uncles, third cousins four times removed who stay for dinner, I'm related to at least one child in every class at my school.
I should mention, I am not a professional teacher, the qualifications I have are in swim teacher and a CPR course, so I was thrown in the deep end here. And that's what I'd signed up for. I teach year five and year six for an hour each in the morning, then year and two with Courtney for an hour and fifteen minutes. There are 45 kids at the school, most of them are in year one and two. For the first week and a half, we taught nothing but maths. The other teachers were doing maths too, somehow everyone was a bit confused and thought term 1 curriculum was maths only. Thankfully we discovered otherwise and we taught English from then on. My year five class loved grammar, the year sixes wanted to learn to write stories and we taught year one and two songs and the alphabet. I am super proud of my french speaking students, who had no English and were totally confused by the alphabet because just before I left, they wrote the whole thing by themselves!
Aside from teaching, I did a lot of learning. I learnt to use a bush knife the length of my calve, to open coconuts and eat sugar cane, how to wash my clothes in a bucket, which leaves make good tea and which ones are good for toilet paper. I learnt a new language, to not worry too much, that sometimes all you need is a ukulele and a smile to have a good day.
Sure, a rat ate my clothes, a dog barked through the night and the cows started mooing at five in the morning. Yup, I got sick and Courtney got sicker. And yes, it's true that we were generally weird by ni Van standards but we had fun and we were loved by the people there. At the end of the day, Vanuatu is a second home to me, and the "bad stuff" pales in comparison to all the good stuff that happened. The good stuff breaks the scales.
Love From Me and My Backpack
"You get a strange feeling when you leave a place, like you'll not only miss the people you love, but you miss the person you are at this time and place because you'll never be this way ever again"
- Azar Nafsi
I mentioned Vanuatu briefly in my first post. At the time, I was a bit preoccupied with the insurance company. I went to Vanuatu as a volunteer teacher. My placement was five months long and I taught at Level Mission Primary School.
The first week in Vanuatu, I stayed in Mangaliliu Village on Efate. I discovered just how beautiful Vanuatu is. As clichéd as it is, the sea actually sparkled and there were so many plants and flowers I'd never seen before.
More than the physical place, it was the beauty of the people that won me over. In Australia, I have one brother. The first night in Vanuatu, I was introduced to at least five brothers and sisters, I had two mamas, one papa, I'm not sure if the second one is around and the community itself adopted me and the other eighteen volunteers as their own.
I spent the next week getting a crash course in island life. We had medical and safety briefings, introduction to bislama classes, the shortest talk on cyclones, a history lesson and more bislama classes.
Our last night at Mangaliliu, we learnt to cook island kakae (food). We chased down two roosters which some of the boys then killed and plucked. We grated manioc, rolled it in island cabbage leaves and soaked them in coconut milk to make simporo rolls. I learnt to grate the coconut and how to open one without a knife. It's as simple as dropping a very big rock on it. It was a pretty awesome last night feast and everyone's mama had outdone themselves by making us island dresses or shirts. They didn't measure us and we didn't know they were making them. We looked absolutely fabulous.
The next day, we were got on a plane to Santo, the biggest island in Vanuatu. Then, after waiting around for several hours, we got on a Twin Otter, which sits 19 people, and flew on over to Pentecost. I did not enjoy the flight as I was scared the whole time but flying over the island before we landed was pretty sweet. We landed safely and were greeted by someone from our new community.
Courtney, my placement partner, and I were greeted by one of our host dads and the truck driver. Level School is a 2 hour truck ride from Sara Airport, it's a 12 hour walk. One of our uncles met up with us in a nearby village and for the next hour and a half, we had the greatest time ever, riding in the tray of a ute on a dirt road is awesome. Of course, it rained for the last half hour so we arrived, soggy, cold and slightly travel sick. Waiting for us were our host families. I have two mamas, two papas, nine sisters and three brothers in that community. Plus Courtney, who is referred to as my sister. Then there's grandparents, aunties, uncles, third cousins four times removed who stay for dinner, I'm related to at least one child in every class at my school.
I should mention, I am not a professional teacher, the qualifications I have are in swim teacher and a CPR course, so I was thrown in the deep end here. And that's what I'd signed up for. I teach year five and year six for an hour each in the morning, then year and two with Courtney for an hour and fifteen minutes. There are 45 kids at the school, most of them are in year one and two. For the first week and a half, we taught nothing but maths. The other teachers were doing maths too, somehow everyone was a bit confused and thought term 1 curriculum was maths only. Thankfully we discovered otherwise and we taught English from then on. My year five class loved grammar, the year sixes wanted to learn to write stories and we taught year one and two songs and the alphabet. I am super proud of my french speaking students, who had no English and were totally confused by the alphabet because just before I left, they wrote the whole thing by themselves!
Aside from teaching, I did a lot of learning. I learnt to use a bush knife the length of my calve, to open coconuts and eat sugar cane, how to wash my clothes in a bucket, which leaves make good tea and which ones are good for toilet paper. I learnt a new language, to not worry too much, that sometimes all you need is a ukulele and a smile to have a good day.
Sure, a rat ate my clothes, a dog barked through the night and the cows started mooing at five in the morning. Yup, I got sick and Courtney got sicker. And yes, it's true that we were generally weird by ni Van standards but we had fun and we were loved by the people there. At the end of the day, Vanuatu is a second home to me, and the "bad stuff" pales in comparison to all the good stuff that happened. The good stuff breaks the scales.
Love From Me and My Backpack
"You get a strange feeling when you leave a place, like you'll not only miss the people you love, but you miss the person you are at this time and place because you'll never be this way ever again"
- Azar Nafsi
Monday 13 April 2015
The Backpack, The Insurance Claim and I
Admittedly, I didn't plan on blogging about this year. That may have had something to do with the fact that for five months I was meant to be living in a bamboo house on a remote island with no Internet. Things, rather evidently, didn't go to plan.
But perhaps, I'm getting ahead of myself. Hi, I'm Zoë, I'm an Australian and 2015 is my gap year. The original plan was meant to be teaching at Level Mission Primary School on Pentecost, Vanuatu for five months, from February until July. After that I was coming home for a whole ten days before flying to Scotland, staying with family for three weeks, give or take, before visiting 16 countries in 16 weeks with one of my friends.
I made it to Vanuatu and everything was going well, I absolutely loved it, even if teaching was sometimes a little frustrating, then we had a run in with Cyclone Pam and things went downhill pretty quickly. The long story short here is that after a week of being "missing", I was emergency evacuated in a helicopter from my school to Port Vila. A little over a week later, I was on a flight back to Australia. Now I'm trying to get back there.
Love From Me and My Backpack started because I'm on the phone with my insurance company because I have to put a claim in, somehow my backpack survived the cyclone and the aftermath, only to have the attachment nicked off it on the way home, you can talk to me about irony later. We're up to 20 minutes on hold for this call. I'm not sure I'm ever going to get to talk to a person.
Depending on what happens in the next few days, there'll be posts about what I did in Vanuatu the first time around, what's going on with planning for Europe, and if the stars line up and the gods are kind, what happens when I get back to my bamboo hut after I've been there again. Stick around for the ensuing hilarity, tales of bush knifes and island food, and of course stories from my backpack.
Love From Me and My Backpack
"When you give yourself to places, they give you yourself back"- Rebecca Solnit
But perhaps, I'm getting ahead of myself. Hi, I'm Zoë, I'm an Australian and 2015 is my gap year. The original plan was meant to be teaching at Level Mission Primary School on Pentecost, Vanuatu for five months, from February until July. After that I was coming home for a whole ten days before flying to Scotland, staying with family for three weeks, give or take, before visiting 16 countries in 16 weeks with one of my friends.
I made it to Vanuatu and everything was going well, I absolutely loved it, even if teaching was sometimes a little frustrating, then we had a run in with Cyclone Pam and things went downhill pretty quickly. The long story short here is that after a week of being "missing", I was emergency evacuated in a helicopter from my school to Port Vila. A little over a week later, I was on a flight back to Australia. Now I'm trying to get back there.
Love From Me and My Backpack started because I'm on the phone with my insurance company because I have to put a claim in, somehow my backpack survived the cyclone and the aftermath, only to have the attachment nicked off it on the way home, you can talk to me about irony later. We're up to 20 minutes on hold for this call. I'm not sure I'm ever going to get to talk to a person.
Depending on what happens in the next few days, there'll be posts about what I did in Vanuatu the first time around, what's going on with planning for Europe, and if the stars line up and the gods are kind, what happens when I get back to my bamboo hut after I've been there again. Stick around for the ensuing hilarity, tales of bush knifes and island food, and of course stories from my backpack.
Love From Me and My Backpack
"When you give yourself to places, they give you yourself back"- Rebecca Solnit
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