Vanuatu Week Four: Alphabets and Feasts

A lot of people are not fans of Mondays, particularly that morning struggle to pull yourself together and get to work or school after a week. This Monday morning was a bit harder, not because I didn’t love where I was and what I was doing. No, after the wretched dog barked all night. The cows started mooing at 5. At assembly it was revealed that if they’re on school property, we are allowed to kill them. Jeffery’s dad’s bullock needed to watch himself because my mamie had plans involving a bush knife and a feast.

Monday afternoon was spectacular! Courtney and I watched Sorina and Lavi while their mum taught class five. We made sweet rice, ate fruit, coloured and scrubbed some pots. When school let out, the sisters came and collected us. We were off to the garden for the first time. I have major respect for the gardens and their owners, the sheer amount of food that comes out of them is incredible. It took half an hour to walk there, barefoot up and down the hills sliding in the mud, bush knife in hand. We dug taro, collected bush cabbage, picked island cabbage and devoured sugar cane. I loved the garden, as you go down into the valley there is so much greenery hiding the actual gardens. It’s like walking into a secret, as though the place might be forbidden for some reason, it is so beautiful.

In class one and two we ended up with four English groups. I still had the top level Pineapples, but I also had the Soursops. Soursop is a fruit that smells nasty but is delicious, it was the only fruit we could think of in a pinch. The Soursops were 5 francophone transfers who no idea what was going on. Their main goals were learning the alphabet and writing their names. They really needed a confidence boost too. It looked like it was going to be an uphill battle. On Tuesday, Familla and Jerine, two of the soursops, managed to write the whole alphabet out between them. It took an hour and a half but they did it! I was so proud of them!

Reading was my planned activity for Tuesdays in classes five and six. I had no other explanation for that disaster other than God testing my patience. I got totally blank looks for the hour I spent with each class. It didn’t matter who I asked to read, how slowly we went through the work, it just didn’t work. Why anyone would write a book about a Mexican walking fish called Pepe who looks like a banana is beyond me. In class five, I kept repeating the word banana. Lavi walked into the classroom, handed me a banana, smiled so big her tiny face nearly split in half and left again. She didn’t say a word. Everyone in my class looked at the banana, looked at Lavi, looked at each other, looked at Miss Viran, looked at me, looked at the banana, looked at where Lavi had gone and then we all burst out laughing.

Tuesday was also Mamie’s birthday. Courtney and I spent the afternoon with Wawa (Auntie) cooking. We made banana laplap and while it was cooking we had to keep running out of the kitchen, eyes streaming because of the smoke. It made splitting the cabbage take a very long time.  Birthdays mean feast in Vanuatu. Mamie’s birthday was no exception. We had laplap, noodles, rice, bread and cake. There was cordial as well. I never claimed that the food I ate was healthy but parties really were all about the carbs. We played uke and cards, two things I was getting very good at. There was singing too, there is always singing though.

It was a food week because on Wednesday, we were hanging around before breakfast when Dad and Daddy Presley showed up carrying a whole pig. Well, half a pig each which they had already gutted. It certainly explained the barking we woke up to. Breakfast was the eight shaped donuts, except not eight shaped and real bread. I had some of my bread a s a snack later. We had island cabbage and namumbah at lunch. Namumbah is a kind of nut that you cook at eat. It’s not particularly flavoursome but it is tasty. Then the school was having a fundraiser after classes so we had baked taro and pork at 4:30. This was after I had eaten a simporo roll that was actually really good. The day was polished off with more pork and taro for dinner. I have never had food baby quite as spectacular.

It was a good thing it was sports day as well. The whole school played Cat and Mouse and Seaweed, which started people laughing. Then while the big girls played volleyball and the boys played soccer, we taught the year 1/2 girls the hokey pokey. The whole body shake had all the parents laughing. We also played left, right, under, over which was designed during maths week and duck, duck, goose. No one could stop laughing and when I almost rolled down the hill we were playing on, I had to agree.

On Friday I opened a coconut all by myself! I popped a blister but I was still super pleased with myself. We also got to use our little kitchen for the first time. We made soursop and orange tea to celebrate and didn’t burn ourselves. We then invested in a box of matches and a bag of sugar. Phil and Terry were due to visit us that weekend, so we taught year 1/2 the choruses to “Our God” and “10,000 Reasons”, they could sing the song but they liked to do it in an echo. They’re funny kids.

Love from Me and My Backpack

Vanuatu Week Three: Rain and Good Food

After the weekend from hell, Courtney and I were both functional again but got into the habit of taking a siesta. My phone ended its holiday and I got a stack of messages which definitely helped me feel better. Things were looking up, one of my friends was coming to visit us around Easter and we were back in contact with the outside world.  

Monday saw working practise again. The idea behind this is that the students will be better prepared for adult life. Work practised includes clearing the school ground, helping with building repairs, grass and plant cutting. Sometimes it includes a group of girls being told to go and get the “Missises” dirty clothes and washing them. I have never seen little girls run so fast towards the river, red calico bags streaming behind them, laughter bubbling up from inside them, as that Monday when they had to take our clothes from the sick weekend.

The tanks had emptied out on the Monday, it looked like dry season had come early. We tried tempting the grey skies by hanging our washing out, that didn’t work. In a last ditch effort we put the buckets outside and went to bed. The Small Devil (Shakey the dog) barked during the night and I was about ready to go and shout at her when it started pouring with rain. The rain was so heavy that on Wednesday classes were cancelled and all of the water tanks and buckets were full. Good news for everyone. Or so you’d think.

We had a roof down at the big kitchen made of a green tarp, with pockets for water so that the water could be used for washing. The strain from the water captured was too much and a week’s worth of water came spilling out. Faster than I could process, Kae and Kerina had grabbed the tarp and held it up while the rest of us scrambled for every empty container we could find. Fifteen containers later, we’d stopped the flow and emptied some of the other pockets for good luck.

That night, the sunset was spectacular, purple clouds, pink edges and the sun burning orange at the centre of it all. The trees were dark silhouettes framing the whole thing. It went quite well with punir we had for dinner. It was made from taro, bush cabbage and fish, baked in coconut milk. I think I had found my favourite island kaekae. We also had hard boiled eggs because Courtney had found them lurking in the office. The miniature feast ended with hot powdered milk and crackers and I was really proud that I could and would eat anything put in front of me now.

I started teaching English instead of maths and it was a constant test on my patience. Class six were a united front, class five was divided and class one and two was a bit of shambles. It was the biggest class we taught and so we split the students into groups based on their ability. We had three groups that week, ranging from no English to understand the vast majority. Some of the students were transfers from French schools so I tried speaking French to them to see if they understood. I’m pretty sure they were just as confused, poor things. This was on top of bullying because they really had no idea and were considered easy targets. I felt so bad for them.

Market days happen on Thursdays at Level. The local mamas come up to the school at lunch time and trade for other types of food. Market and school events meant one thing for me and Courtney. Lots of food. We ate eight shaped donuts, which are made from fried bread, there was fresh meat! Fresh meat was always exciting because it tastes so much better and there aren’t tiny little bones in it. Somehow, we also ended up showing everyone our photos that we’d brought with us. We explained who are friends were, our family, what different relatives were called, what a formal was, all the good things. The astra I drove before I left was in the background of one of the photos and I explained that it was my “small truck”. The thing that got the most laughs was my sisters flipping to a photo of me and my boyfriend and then telling whoever we were talking to who he was. Like any family, my sisters found something to tease me about and then they did.

Friday was an important day. Aside from being a public holiday, Courtney and I cooked banana pie with cooking bananas. They’re thick and straight, yellow on the inside and really hard to peel. The best thing was that we were given bush knifes. The machetes we had are about the length of my calf and I wasn’t really sure what I was meant to be doing with it. One thing was for sure, nothing was getting into our little house, even if they made it past The Small Devil.

I ended up at church on Sunday which I was still totally confused by because of the languages but the main messages consisted of “Get behind me Satan”, “Take up your cross and follow Me” and something about Vanuatu’s independence. The ni-Vans definitely know how to sing though.

It poured down on Sunday after church. This was a slight set back as we had just finished all of our washing and had run out of room on the line. We had put some string up inside to hang the last of our clothes up. The line snapped and all of our clothes ended up on the dirt floor. We threw them outside, rinsed them off and stretched them out on the grass for an extra wash. Then we danced around in the rain like hooligans, washed our hair in the downpour and laughed until we were soaked to the skin. Turned out we had very few clean and dry clothes after that and I ended up wearing shorts which was a bit weird and Mamie kept rolling the ends of them down for me.

All of our spare time was spent playing ukulele, reading and just hanging out with our family. Getting a big family all of a sudden is quite an experience but I wouldn’t trade them for anything. We taught them go fish and they taught us island life. We spent more time laughing than anything else. My Mamie and Courtney kept trying to set me up with Roger who was a bit funny around us. I loved being around my family, it was both easy and challenging at the same time but in the best ways. That and they didn’t seem to mind my off-key singing or questionable ukulele playing.

Love from Me and My Backpack

Vanuatu Week Two: Throw Me In The Island Deep End

One week after I arrived in Vanuatu I started teaching. I walked into class five and my carefully laid lesson plan abandoned me. Everyone at our school thought that we were only studying maths in first term. That’s right, all maths, all the time. We tried to get in contact with other volunteers to ask what they were teaching and Mamie Colin tried to call the curriculum office.  I really felt like I had no idea what I was doing and if I made any semblance of a plan it never really happened. In the end, I just had to go with what I had and make the rest up.

I taught year five and six for an hour each every morning and then Courtney and I teamed up to teach the year one two class for an hour and fifteen minutes. It was an interesting week figuring out how to teach maths with limited resources and to kids of all different ability levels. Thankfully some of the previous vols had left books to help us out. I ended up teaching multiplication and division, checking addition and subtraction and trying to make it fun. In class one and two the maths was simpler, learning things like up and under, left and right, thing that you forget that you had to be taught because they are just part of everyday life.

Homesickness slammed me that Monday. Living on school station meant that it was a very short distance from my front door to the class six room. The shower was diagonally behind our house, a teacher lived just behind us too and was using our tiny kitchen as hers wasn’t quite finished yet. From the kitchen, you can see straight into the shower. I took to washing my underwear in the bucket after I showered because it’s pretty easy to run out of clean underwear and students were told to wash our clothes as part of working practise on Monday afternoons.

For all the homesickness, I was able to see how beautiful everything was around me, to start with the pit toilet had a concrete floor. The Level School Station is beautiful, grassy hills surrounded by trees and topped off with open skies. At night all you can see is stars and the sunsets are magnificent. 

Sitting outside my front door and watching the sun go down was an extra special treat. The children were gorgeous too. The ones who I lived with all the time appeared much healthier than some of the village kids but a snotty nose didn’t detract from the smiles. They loved being around us to the point that even if I was reading or writing, they were watching.

Island life took a bit of getting used to; squat toilets are something you have to get used to.  I won’t forget the time Courtney reappeared from the toilet exclaiming that she’d nearly fallen in because a cow had given her such a shock by mooing next to the little building. Bucket showers are cold at the best of times and freezing at others. Island kaekae is the thing that takes the longest time because your body has to figure out how to deal with it. I spent a lot of time trying to get the food into my body. The Wednesday I was victorious at dinner, having eaten all my taro, canned meat and corn and I managed to wash it down with a biscuit or two. Lunch was still not my favourite because it was always steaming hot.

We had an earthquake that week, something I had never experience before. About 20 minutes before it happened, the dogs started barking and the chickens went a bit nuts. I obtained a dog that day, we referred to her as Shakey because of the earthquake. She’d belonged to the other volunteers, her name was really Pumba which I didn’t find out until I came home. Either way, that dog was more trouble that she was worth more often than not. She was the cause of a lot of lost sleep.

My favourite visitor in the first week was little Lavi. Lavi is Mr Kelly’s middle daughter, all of about three and she’s an expert at getting dressed at 6 in the morning and having removed all of her clothes by 7, much to everyone’s amazement. She would appear whenever she wanted to play with the beach ball we had or thought she needed at bandaid. Her biggest achievement so far is her round belly, gained through eating two rounds of each meal every day. She’ll finish eating with her parents and then race down to the big kitchen to get a second plate. She and her sisters, Sorina and Krystal, are going to grow up to be stunning.

After a week of putting away all my island food, I was excited that the boys were going prawn diving at the river. Dinner was going to be awesome and we were keen. We had prawns and shells for dinner. The shells are the kind you pry off rocks at the beach with the tiny creatures inside. The squishy bits are hooked out with an orange needle and taste a lot like dirt. We ate all that was put in front of us, feeling pretty good about the whole set up.

What followed can only be described as the weekend from hell. I may never eat prawns again and what I got was mild to Courtney. I managed to keep all my food down, barely, she was so sick. There was a moment when I was sitting outside and our family was coming up the hill while she yelled at me to keep them outside. I couldn’t stop laughing at that point because it was that or cry and I wasn’t going with that. Everything hurt and the wretched dog would bark all night that weekend. The two of us spent the weekend in hiding, sleeping and I would remove myself to the empty kitchen to play ukulele when I felt halfway decent. Mamie kept trying to feed us the prawns again; she didn’t believe that was what had made us sick. If memory serves, we ended up eating breakfast crackers and drinking tea.

Being sick in a different country with people you’ve just met is an interesting experience and I wish it was the last time I was sick but it was the last time we were that sick. I really hope I never reach that point again.

Love from Me and My Backpack 

Vanuatu Weekend One: The Best and Worst of Travel

After the incident with the pig, the 19 of us and our co-ordinator Terry piled into two mini buses the next morning. Leaving anywhere in Vanuatu means hugging your way through a village. Everyone, mamas, papas and siblings, lines up to say goodbye and you are paraded down the line, shaking hands and having your cheek kissed.

Baggage has different meaning to both the Ni-Vans and Air Vanuatu. None of us were travelling light really, we all had at least one hiking pack equivalent and a backpack, with a large number of us having second bags, all full of school supplies and other such goodies. The locals who were on the flight to Santo, in comparison, had maybe a basket or a cardboard box. Amusingly, bush knifes are allowed in carry on.

At Santo the six girls who were off to Ambae had a quick flight change and were gone barely after we landed. I still think we looked like a school group in our blue island clothes, that dress is one of my favourites. The next few hours passed with us reading books, looking at photos and talking.

Our flight to Pentecost was on a Twin Otter. Twin Otters have exposed propellers on the wings, seats 19 and the front row seats are basically in the cockpit. To get the 13 Pentecost volunteers and all our gear on board that week’s mail was apparently left off the flight. It was loud on board and for the whole half hour flight, my knuckles were white. We were flying so low I could see the islands and the ocean beneath us. I thought that flight was going to be the scariest thing I would do in Vanuatu. Looking back, it’s not that scary at all.

Coming into Pentecost was a sight to behold; we circled the airfield twice, blue ocean below, amazed by the natural beauty of this island. I imagine the islanders were amazed when we all got off the plane. Our bags were dumped straight off the plane into the mud and we had arrived. Courtney and I pulled ourselves together, grabbed our bags and lugged the three big ones over to the concrete building that serves as an airport in one hit. Super human effort really. Our dad was waiting for us, not that we knew who he was at the time.

We were loaded into a truck and pulled out of the airport. In my journal I wrote “We rode in the back of a ute yesterday! Standing up, holding onto the bar behind the cab going at questionable speeds given the condition of the roads around the place. We laughed most of the way.” Riding in the back of the truck is one of the best things I did. I loved it, it feels like flying, your skirt streams behind you, your hair is a mess, branches have to be ducked, leafs and twigs slap and catch on you. The only thing that is not fun about truck rides is having to sit down when you get travel sick. The last half hour of our trip took place in the rain and cold and by the time we arrived at the school, I felt like throwing up.

Every child on the school station was there to greet us. They all watched with big eyes and the adults talked and talked. Now is a great time to introduce my family. I’m lucky enough to have two. The family I ate with consists of Dad Michael, Mamie Colin (said Colleen), my sisters Kay, Virana, Nellie and Musiro, the adopted brother Leona and assorted kids who board at the school, Jineth, Faylina, Kesia and Basil. There was also the year two teacher, Kerina and the year three teacher Roger. My family who lives in the village is Daddy Ben, Mamie Annick, my brother Hensley, my sister Firenze and my baby sister Nikki. She’s named after one of the first volunteers to Level.

All of that mad family watched us unpack our bags. There is nothing like being watched while you unpack your knickers to get to know the locals. Excellent family bonding if you ask me, you have nothing to be ashamed of after that.

We ate in the big island kitchen, sitting on raised seats, surrounded by people. We had corn, freshly picked and cooked, my first run in with taro which I described as “tastes good and is kinda like a potato”, along with beans and meat. I didn’t know that I would fall madly in love with taro and the like that day, but it was only a matter of time.

There was a thunderstorm that night. The thunder was so loud I could have sworn there was a cannon next to my bed, the lightening light up my bamboo house brighter than the sun. Dad Michael came and checked on us in the middle of the storm but we were so tired that aside from that, the two of us slept like logs.

Sunday morning, bright and early, we headed up to church, sliding everywhere. Church was hard to understand as it was in three languages, only one of which I spoke at the time. I got a few of the Bislama words but the language part of the service was lost on me. Courtney and I were given flowers and shook hands with everyone again. The church service saw me sitting on wooden plank with some sisters while my backside went numb.

We spent the afternoon walking down to the river pack Wosak Village, where my Mamie Annick lives. She gave Courtney and me these beautiful fans, woven diamonds with some of the strips dyed pink and purple. They served us well. Our sisters, and little Sorina, the daughter of Mr Kelly, went to the river with us, feeding us nuts and shouting to the village kids about us. The river was beautiful and cool, although the climb back to the station was hard work and I think I might have been sweatier when I got back up the hill than I was before I went down there.

The first weekend at Level was not truly what I expected, but then again I don’t know what I expected. It was fun, after I had warmed up and gotten over my disgusting travel sickness.

Love from Me and My Backpack