Week Seven: Water, Presidents and Pus

Truth be told, Mondays in Vanuatu aren’t all that bad. This particular Monday saw me help distribute 500L of water with Promedical. Fineen and I hitched a ride out of Port Vila to Mele Village with the water tank on the back of a truck. The kids were all pretty keen to have their photo taken after they helped fill every jerry can, bucket, bottle and kettle in the village with water. We also helped fill up countless containers before we left.

I had to go and see a counsellor after that and I was thoroughly unimpressed. I didn’t think I needed to see anyone but looking back on it now, I probably did. The counsellor was a very nice woman and it turned out I did not have any immediate PTSD symptoms so I was free to go.

The best news of the week was that my family in Australia was raising money to help fly a helicopter full of rice and water to Level, the plan was that it would happen within the week and I would be allowed to go with it. I would, however, have to be on the helicopter when it returned, drat. The plan was to fly on Wednesday.

Tuesday was the last day all 19 of us were in the country. Violet and I sorted lots of medical supplies for Promedical and got to ride on the back of truck back into town. We may have accidentally flashed some people when our skirts were flapping in the wind but we didn’t care.  There was also a final group briefing that night, we all said the positive things that happened to us this week, when a phone started ringing. Turned out to by mine or Courtney’s, but it was Dad Michael from Level. We had to tell him we weren’t allowed to go back and he told us just how worried they were about everything. That meant it was really bad, because he never worries. There was a lot more crying after this phone call.

On Wednesday, I went to Terri and Esline’s village for the first time. We handed out food and cleaned some nasty looking wounds, one of the kids had a literal river of pus running down his leg but for the most part, we were just recleaning from yesterday. Courtney and I played games with all the village kids, we sang if you’re happy and you know it and their reactions were hilarious. We also picked Jineth and Gwendolin up from school after their first day back. It was just one of those fantastic days where everything seemed right in the world, even with the cyclone damage around us.

I went back to the village on Thursday and we redressed some of the wounds, they were all healing nicely by then. Having accepted that I was going home, I changed my flight and told almost no one I was coming back. I was unbelievable excited because the next day we were meant to be flying out to Level to take rice and water to them. I also discovered that during the lost week, there was a man called Derek who was leading a team that hacked their way through the Pentecost bush in an effort to find Level. He seemed surprised when I called to thank him but was very nice when he realised what I was talking about.

Friday was meant to be helicopter day. It was not. It turned out that a lot of stuff happened, but the long story short is that the President stole the helicopter. It would appear he did not want us to deliver aid. So I spent a lot of time on the phone organising everything so that we could go on the Saturday. I ran out of credit, highly unusual. I was so angry about it and I wanted to write a letter along the lines of “Dear Sir, please get out of my helicopter and stop nicking the aid.” I restrained myself because that might not have gone down well.

Love from Me and My Backpack 

Weekend Six: Bread and High Commissions

It was odd to be back with the other volunteers, we were all back together which wasn’t meant to happen. But then again, most of what had happened in the last week wasn’t meant to happen.

Where we were staying people had realised there wasn’t really enough space for all of us to fit in and sleep, 19 volunteers, a family of four, soon to be five, and our two co-ordinators who had flown in. 

The other people in the complex had opened their houses to us so we all got to sleep on a mattress of some sort. It was thicker than 5cm, that’s for sure, but apparently I thought I slept better at Level because I wasn’t so worried about them there, and I knew what was going on with my life.

On Saturday morning, I had an interview of sorts with Phil about what had happened at Level and that I really wanted to stay in Vanuatu. The future of that dream was looking pretty bleak because I was becoming aware of just how bad everything was.

Courtney and I were on a mission that morning, we went and found an internet café that also had computers. We did actually google our names and it’s so weird seeing your name and photo in the top hits of a google search. We read a few of them, but mostly we were there for facebook, to talk to people at home and reassure everyone that we were definitely not dead. It turns out there were 800 articles about me, which is insane. My mum told me that was the figure and it till blows my mind.

Our next trick was going to the supermarket. We bought what we considered a feast. There was no fruit or vegetables in the town so it was pretty much all bread based. There was a croissant each, chips, fruit juice, skittles and m’n’ms. When we got back to where we were staying we the only people around, so we enjoyed our feast and just hanging around doing nothing.

The two of us then went off to the airport to collect Kerri, Courtney’s mum. She was coming to look after all the volunteers so that the co-ordinators could get on with their jobs. We waited for ages at the airport, watching flights of defence relief workers come in, expats return, tourists roll out and aid come in. Kerri was among the last people off her flight but the screaming from her and Courtney was so worth it. I found myself dragged into a tight hug too.

She had brought food with her, we were all a bit amazed at how much she had managed to bring with her, people had donated so much. We were pretty pleased with ourselves because people had sent chocolate. If that can’t lift your spirits, I don’t know what can.

There was another briefing that night, our organisation wanted to keep us as busy as possible so we didn’t have time to mope around. Some guy turned up and asked if we could help him fill up water containers. So we did, because it was something we could to do help.

Sunday was just bizarre. I ended up at the Australian High Commission, meeting Julie Bishop. The lunch itself was pretty disappointing, but I can say that I have met some pretty powerful people and been interviewed about a hundred times. The paramedics who had been on the helicopter were there, Edda and Dave, and they helped us pull off the food heist of the century, smuggling out juice, chocolate and biscuits for the non-Australian volunteers who hadn’t been allowed to come.

That afternoon, Violet, Jasper and I collected plastic bottles that had been abandoned in the streets. There were 120 of them, which I washed and filled. Doing the maths, I think it was about 90 litres of water to hand out. It was something to do when I felt like there was nothing to do.

I found out that I couldn’t go back to Level, it was something that I knew but I had to be said before I would accept it. I had no idea what I was going to do next, it hurt so much and I cried so much I didn’t think I could cry anymore. All of this in a room full of people. There worst part was, there was nothing I could do about any of it.

Love From Me and My Backpack

Vanuatu Week Six: Silence and Roaring

Losing your voice for 18 hours is a lovely way to start a Monday. I felt like death warmed up. I even missed a taro and chicken feast because I didn’t feel hungry. That said, taro is good for sore throats. Eating rice made me think of swallowing pebbles. Thankfully, I was still able to eat gateau and drink tea.

For all her health on the weekend, Courtney was slammed on Monday. I may have felt like death warmed up but if that feeling was a person, she was it. While I was boiling, she was freezing and couldn’t move. We were worried because 10 days earlier she had missed a doxy and malaria takes 10-14 days to show up. Thankfully, she ended up just being sick.

I washed for the first time since classes were cancelled, which felt amazing because I was grubby and sweaty. I never realised how much I liked showers and being clean until this week. When you’re constantly filthy, you appreciate the scrubbing and the freezing water.

The week progressed in the weirdest fashion. Buildings were chopped to pieces, other buildings repaired. School was cancelled for the week because the weather was still unpredictable, the classrooms were too damaged and the students needed to help with the clean up. The phone reception was still terrible and I thought it might just have been us, so I was ready to walk further north when my lungs stopped trying to escape my chest. That was until I found out it could be a month before the phones were back up.

We did slowly but surely get better. Well enough to focus on other things. Myra, my friend, was meant to come to visit us in two weeks. We just assumed she was still coming, so we’d be able to pass messages through her. We discovered a lime/lemon drink which was heavenly, so we kept an eye out for lemons.

Even as this happened though, food was running out and so was water. Bananas were at every meal and there was no more aelan cabbage. There is only so many bananas a person can eat before they go crazy, these bananas were also not quite ripe and cooking them had not improved them. Water had to be hauled up from the river past Wosak because the tank had run dry. Things were not looking good.

Thursday was the worst of it for Courtney and I. We ventured into the plantation to open coconuts and pour the water into the water bottles we had. The water we had been given had questionable floating things in it. We opened 20 odd coconuts to fill the three bottles. While we were out, we saw a helicopter flying super low. Everyone was going nuts about it because planes are a rarity, let alone a heli. It seemed to hover in front of us for a bit, the two of us waved but couldn’t see who was inside. We made a joke about Americans and could they please fix the phone towers. I didn’t know just what that helicopter would mean.

Mamie discovered the coconut water and marched all of the kids, the two of us included, off to a neighbouring water tank to fill the drinking containers. Somehow there was taro and cabbage at dinner. The afternoon and evening were spent chewing sugarcane, laughing, playing ukulele, dancing, painting nails and hanging out with our family.

Much like the Friday of the cyclone, I will never forget the Friday that followed. Nothing could ever have prepared me for that. We woke up late, just after seven. Courtney asked me what time it was, she didn’t hear my response, so she turned her phone on. It nearly exploded with messages. I leapt out of bed and we started laughing and dancing. Dad ran to our door and banged on it, thinking something was wrong. Everyone was in our house, Courtney called her mum while my phone caught up the texts. All we could hear to start with was Kerri screaming. 

Then I called my mum. The call came up as an unknown number on her phone, so she answered with just her name. “Hi Mum, it’s Zoë” I have said those four words before and after that day, but never have I been so glad to say them. I spoke to Mum, Dad and Angus. It was amazing, Dad was about to go on the radio. Apparently I was all over the news. There was a helicopter being sent to collect the two of us. It just didn’t seem real.

The next three hours were a blur of getting messages through to people that we couldn’t get to the harbour, the helicopter would have to land closer to us. We saw it go over us but then it didn’t come back. I later found out it was getting other people. A young man from the village ran up the hill shouting about coconuts falling from the sky. He had a plastic bag, which had had a coconut and two notes in it. He had offloaded the coconut to run up the hill with the note. It said the helicopter was coming for us.

While we waited, we ate breakfast, tiny birds are mostly bones. Jineth braided my hair, we sat with our families and stopped our sisters painting their teeth with nail polish. Then the helicopter started to come down where the church had been. We ran up the hill, hugged and kissed our way through the crowd and ended up in the helicopter. On board was Terry, two paramedics, two pilots and an Australian official. We were given a chocolate muffin each and shared a bottle of water. They said they had more stored but we didn’t care, we were happy to share.

The ride to Santo was 20-30 minutes and was incredibly loud. It was pretty awesome too. We had been the hardest people to find but not the last to be picked up. They were going back to get Ally, Camille and Fineen.

At Santo, it was like stepping into a different world. We washed our faces, cleaned our teeth, ate chips and got our hands on a newspaper. My photo was in the paper. The story was about me being missing. It was so weird seeing that. We gave a report to a medic who was working on food and water supplies.

We were flown to Port Vila in an Air Force Kinger. It seats six, one of the seats was taken up by a life raft. Flying over Vila, there was no green, just brown and smoke from people burning all the debris. The airport wasn’t too tidy itself but that was not the biggest thing I had to think about. I was about to shake hands with the Australian High Commissioner. His name is Jeremy, he’s very nice. We signed information release forms, had a media briefing and then we stood behind the commissioner in front of news cameras. We ended up giggling a bit because it just didn’t seem real.

Courtney and I answered three questions afterwards. We told people we were good and very glad that no one in our community was hurt and that I didn’t know what I was going to say to my parents when I saw them next, I wanted to stay until July. We were asked how we felt when the coconut came down, we just laughed at that one.

We were taken to where everyone else was staying and ate peanut butter on bread, which was amazing. There was pasta for dinner. Everyone talked about what happened to them, sounded as though Level was hit the worst but Ambae barely felt it. We were having interviews the next day and then Courtney and I were collecting Kerri from the airport.

My family saw me on the news. I got to call Jack, I texted people back home and I ate enough food and drank a lot of water. I knew one thing for sure, I did not want to go home, I was not ready to say goodbye to Level and I was not finished in Vanuatu. I just hoped I was going home to Level soon.

Love from Me and My Backpack

Vanuatu Weekend Five: Damage

We survived! Happy one month on Pentecost to me. I spent Friday on the floor in the same room as all the sisters, Kerina, Basil and Leona. Mamie, Viran, Kelly, Lavi, Krystal, Sorina, Roger and Dad slept in the other room. I got kicked in the head all night by Jineth, Kay kept rolling onto me, it was about the same temperature as the surface of the sun but we got some sleep.

After breakfast we waited for the all clear. We spent our time playing with the local kids. The ones who aren’t at school yet are either terrified or completely intrigued by white people. Some liked having their tummies tickled, others screamed when they saw us. Can’t win them all.

The climb back home was silent. There was no wind, no rain, just Courtney, Faylina, Kesia and I. 

Surrounding us was destruction, fallen trees, ripped branches. Raton Village had a house with a tree straight through it while the house next door was untouched.  The school station had taken more damage. The school office, known for its drunken angle, had collapsed, class six was all but destroyed, I climbed in under broken beams, had I been sitting at the teacher’s desk in the storm, I would have been squished. The cobana was gone, kindy and class three had lost their roofs, class one and two was a mess and the water tank had a massive split through the bottom.

My little house hadn’t escaped. The roof at the front was gone, there were holes over the bedroom. The toilet had survived, so had the kitchen. The shower didn’t have a roof and the door wasn’t attached anymore, that was going to make life interesting. Our belongings were just in need of a wash.

From what we heard, no one was hurt during the storm, not even a chicken. Ours had sheltered in the big kitchen, which was total mess from them. The cows were already back to their usual antics. Sadly so was the Small Devil but the rats seemed to be in hiding.

The Ni-vans are incredibly resilient. My dad was straight up on our roof, reattaching it. Mr Kelly was doing the same to his. We were all out collecting the fallen fruit. The calm now wasn’t waiting, it was the resting kind.

Sunday was kind of the start of many problems for us.  Turns out it takes a cyclone to take me down and I got really sick like everyone else had been before. Coughing, sweating through whatever I was wearing, itchy ears, sore throat, the works. As soon as the Panadol started to wear off, I felt like my head was going to explode. Courtney, on the other hand, actually felt better and was out helping with sweeping in other buildings. She also had flying fox for lunch. I tried it and I am never keen to again, but she claimed to like it. I am not going forget the smell of burnt fur for a long time.  

The phones were down too, so we had no way of telling people that we were ok. I hoped people weren’t worrying too much but I knew that the news would be reporting the worst of the damage. I didn’t think that’s where I was because we were all still alive, life was getting back to normal and the cyclone had only skirted us. I also reasoned that soon enough Australia and New Zealand would be sending aid in. Surely it wouldn’t be too long until we had contact.

Love from Me and My Backpack

Vanuatu Week Five: Cyclone Pam

I could have edited this episode but instead I took it straight from my journal entry that day. And yes, I was painfully aware that it was Friday the 13^th.  This was written in Wosak Village.

This morning the wind got heavier and the wind stronger. We had gateau for breakfast and that was when it started to get bad.

We had to bolt from the kitchen because the roof was being showered with coconuts. We hid in the store until Mamie told us to run to Miss Viran’s. We were there until lunch. There were 11 kids, Courtney, Miss Viran and me in the house.  I managed to rescue my passport and important documents from our house. Viran’s house literally bowed in the wind. The school office is down, I don’t know where the water tank is. There was a scramble by assorted Ni-van adults to reinforce roofs further, ours in particular but I doubt the classrooms will have them when we go home.

Funny to think I refer to a dirt and bamboo hut as home but it’s true and I pray it’s still there when we go back. Daddy Ben’s place blew down already but him, Mammy, Hensley, Firenze and Nikki are all safe.

Anyway, there was an almighty crack and Kelly’s kitchen came crashing down. Kerina and Auntie were both inside and Mamie said that Dad had to lift the building to get them out. So it was decided that we were evacuating to Wosak. We were sent home to grab clothes etc and I was lucky enough have my journal and bible in the bag I chucked stuff in.

The walk down the hill is the single most terrifying thing I have ever done. Future me, should you decide to walk down a muddy hill in a cyclone, you are crazy and should stay put unless there is no other option. The path is entirely surrounded by trees, which in strong gusts can and do fall down. The descent was a mixture of bolting as fast as humanly possible, screeching to a stop and sliding through mud, half falling the whole time.

I prayed my way down that hill, a tree fell just behind us, Roger was carrying Lavi and I thought we’d lost Basil for a minute. Even though they were telling us not to be scared, every single person scrambling down that hill was in some way. I prayed that we made it to the village intact, nothing more. I had to talk to myself rather sternly for a minute because there was no way I was going to die terrified on a muddy hill. It paid off.

We made it to the Nakamal in one disgusting, soggy piece. I was soaked though, my pyjamas were due for a wash anyway and it was easier to walk in them than my skirt. Oh, the rat that ate my shoes took a few good chunks out of my favourite skirt. I fixed it yesterday. I hope the rat drowns. At the Nakamal, we changed and ate. I have never been so happy to be inside in my life.

Since then, we’ve been moved to a very sturdy house, it’s raised off the ground and you can’t feel the wind. We’ll stay here until the cyclone passes. She’s expected to hit Vila at 1:57 tomorrow, I believe in the morning. This time tomorrow, 3:30pm, we should have survived the worst. Perhaps we’ll be home.

So I don’t forget, the rain is so heavy at points that you cannot see. Complete white out. The wind bends trees in two, they crash into each other and domino down. It’s not hot, it’s constantly dark and the sound of air and water is ever present. This is the worst cyclone Vanuatu has faced in 35 years, since 1980. It’s going to be a hell of a story to tell.

I didn’t realise just how true that sentence was when I wrote it. Just because the cyclone was passing didn’t mean life would go back to normal.

Love From Me and My Backpack

Vanuatu Week Five Monday to Thursday: Batten Down the Hatches

Monday started with bad weather and Courtney having a cold. The weather was so bad that the edges of our roof would lift up and there was a patch of rain water on my bed. The pouring rain did have one advantage, I had the biggest bucket shower of my life. I felt clean for a whole ten minutes.

We were sitting outside in the afternoon when Lavi appeared and started pretending to read us Courtney’s book. We had some picture books inside, which I grabbed. She was delighted with them and spent the rest of the afternoon laughing at us and the pictures. She also got into a fight with a chicken and stole my hat, there is never a dull with moment with that little girl about.

The other exciting thing about that Monday was that we had been in Vanuatu for a month. Somehow we’d actually managed to not make complete fools of ourselves the entire time. It was quite an achievement because every day there was something else that I’d never experienced before.

Tuesday explained why the weather was so bad. There was a cyclone hanging out near the Solomon Islands and we were getting updates about where it was headed. Courtney and I packed away our belongings and stored them under the beds, important documents waterproofed. We just had to hope and pray for the best.

The rest of the day was just normal life. I sewed my sandals back together because a filthy rat had eaten straight through the straps. They were the only shoes I had left and I really wanted to keep them. The Ni-vans were amused, I was not. We had namumbwai which I split open myself, before I could eat it, cheeky baby Krystal came and nicked mine straight out of my hand.

Waiting for a cyclone is not a very exciting experience in many ways. Classes were cancelled on Wednesday. Everything was moved to the class five room because it was deemed the most structurally sound. After that, we were practically confined to our house. All around us, trees were being cut down, branches cut back, roofs reinforced and belongings collected. The metal roofs were taken off buildings and weighted down because it is hard to come by and can be deadly in the air.

I got a call from my mum, asking me if I was worried. I was less worried on Wednesday because people had been preparing for it, unlike on Tuesday. My brain had decided there was nothing I could do about this cyclone and that what was going to happen would happen. I just had to trust God and that his plan was the best thing for me, there was no point fighting that.

Thursday morning we got a message, the cyclone, Pam, was not coming at us as a 3 but as a full on 5. On Pentecost there is a kastom that spitting a certain leaf into the wind would keep the cyclone away from us. Needless to say, I was a little sceptical about that.

The weather really started to creep me out. I could deal with the wind and rain but there were these moments in between the two where nothing was moving. I began to understand why people who had been through cyclones and other natural disasters say the calm is the worst. The waiting is the storm getting close enough to do damage but not being quite close enough to actually show up on time.

Admittedly, we were better off than the Solomons, who had been beaten by Pam and then had Nathan smashing into the other side. There was also a third system developing between Fiji and Tonga. I decided that it must have been “Let’s Destroy The Pacific Nations” month.

Meanwhile, more trees were coming down. We helped drag coconut palms up the hill to secure the roofs. This involved hoisting them up to the person on the roof, who would then tie two together that were draped across the width of the roof. This would stop the roof lifting in the wind, no one wanted that in the night. 

Kerina, Kay, Wawa and Jineth stayed in our front room on Thursday night. They made a real slumber party of it, hair braiding and everything. The rain was torrential, the wind knocked the trees about. Sadly, the worst was yet to come. Pam was just getting started.

Love From Me and My Backpack

Vanuatu Weekend Four: Gardens and Visitors

Saturday was the day that Phil, the Australian co-ordinator, and Terry, the in-country co-ordinator, were meant to arrive in our little slice of Pentecost. We got a text saying they were coming on Sunday, giving us a free day.

I discovered the name for the eight shaped donuts is “gateau”, just like French cake. We helped make 47 of them for breakfast and as a result didn't  eat until after 10 because it takes a while to cook them all. I ate two without blinking. The rest of the morning was spent lazing around and reading. Kesia, my sister in year 3, came to collect me to go to the garden. We left Courtney sleeping off a headache and I grabbed my bush knife. In case you haven’t guessed, I love my bush knife.

Turned out I was going to the garden with my family, the ones that are not Courtney’s. Kay dropped me off at my family’s garden. I hadn’t seen a great deal of my family. I taught two of my siblings, Hensley and Firenze, but they live down at Wosak village and my Daddy is a francophone so I had to learn Bislama. My baby sister, Nikki, was not at all impressed with me and spent a lot of time crying. Weird, white girls, I know right. By the end of the day, she was better but I still didn't get a cuddle.

I spent that afternoon with them, eating sugar cane and answering questions before lunch. They had a lot of questions about family and Australia. Daddy is very talkative, Mammy would help when we got stuck with the language. We had banana laplap for lunch with island cabbage. Island cabbage will never be on my list of favourites, but I ate all of it and most of my laplap. I also had pawpaw which I was truly in love with. Firenze, who is in class one for the first time, and I ended up sitting outside while Mammy roasted taro in the garden hut, baby Nikki did not want to join us.

On the grand tour of the garden, I quickly discovered that they grow just about everything. Sugarcane, kava, banana, manioc, yam, taro, kumala, pawpaw, island cabbage and coconut. I planted a banana tree which I was assured would grow big and strong. I also helped Mammy pick island cabbage and wrap it into the packages to be carried back. I didn’t carry the cabbage but I did carry a piece of sugarcane longer than I was tall all the way back to Level and I didn’t fall over once. Mammy informed me that she was going to teach me to weave. They were going to make a proper island girl out of me.

Daddy came to visit a little later and gave me a tin of corned meat, meat blo taro. This was after I had showered, so I was clean and wearing different clothes. He thought I was Courtney because I washing clothes like she had been when he walked past earlier. We both laughed when we established that I was in fact the daughter he was looking for.

This is the time that I had discovered that there was a rat eating my sandals. Turns out that leather sandals are a tasty snack for the rats who lived in our house. I had to keep finding new hiding places for my shoes because everywhere I thought up seemed to not be as rat proof as I thought. I didn’t wear my sandals for the most part anyway. My thongs broke in Mangaliliu and it took a lot to explain why I didn’t wear shoes, so I needed my sandals to stay in one piece for when I did need some form of protection.

Sunday dawned on us with excitement in the air and pig on our breakfast plates. We didn’t go to church because no one really knew when Terry and Phil would be arriving, instead we stayed on station and made banana pie. It amused everyone passing by as we were still fairly hopeless at making fires. My Mammy came past and gave us a hand with that. She also gave us taro and kumala. A lot of the local kids came with her and were intrigued by our cooking. The best part was baby Nikki holding my hand twice!

Terry and Phil arrived in style as Courtney and I were drinking tea. They were walked to the school from just outside the station, surrounded by a group of the men who were singing before they were presented with flowers and baskets. Many speeches were given by board members, Phil and Terry, Dad and a letter from a previous volunteer, Nikki, was read out. The year 1/2s sung the choruses very quietly but word perfect. We were all given morning tea and we presented Phil and Terry with the banana pie, topped with Nutella. Everyone laughed at the pie, not because it was funny but because they were proud of us and impressed that we had tried something like that. Phil was amazed we still had Nutella.

Lunch had the two of us eating out of banana leaves and not being treated as guests anymore, we sat with the women and kids after a bit of talking with the men. The mixing of the cultures was a bit funny. Shortly after lunch Phil and Terry had to leave and life returned to relative normal. The afternoon was spent painting nails, playing ukulele, painting Courtney’s ukulele and writing out the words to Christian songs we could remember so we could teach them to the kids. 

That evening all of our sisters started getting sick with coughs and shivers. They had been fine while the entire village system was about but they ended up falling asleep in the kitchen, poor things. It was a busy weekend for everyone so maybe they were just worn out, the kids were often sick though. Didn’t seem to stop them enjoying themselves for the most part.

Love from Me and My Backpack

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

Vanuatu Week One: Mangaliliu and Chasing Roosters

The day I went to Vanuatu for the first time started early and finished late. The easiest way to find a group of volunteers going to an island nation is to look for the people with long skirts, pillows, a large amount of carry on and, in my case, a ukulele.

The moment I stepped off the plane in Port Vila, I was slammed by a wall of hot and humid air. There were a lot of people we had to line up behind for customs. I later discovered that we could have been in the residents’ line because of our visas.  We all trooped out and were met by the New Zealand and Canadian volunteers, along with our coordinator, Terry and his wife Esline. Our first encounter with ni-Van culture was nothing short of the standard. We were hugged as soon as they could get their arms around to us.

Along with the 18 other volunteers, I stayed in Mangaliliu Village outside of Vila. We drove up a winding hill, through a jungle and then there was a village there. We were all immediately adopted by some of the local families. After a ceremony that involved having flowers put around our necks, we had our first lot of island kaekae (food). I was so impressed  by the spread that had been put out, there was so much food. What I hadn’t expected was not to like the taste of anything that was put out for aside from rice and biscuits. After the feast we were shown our new homes. My mama lives next door to her sister, so I stayed at Mama Louise’s with Tyler, another volunteer. Ni-Vans are now mostly Christians and this shows in their everyday life, Tyler and I would be sleeping in the same room. We were given a lecture by our papa about us being siblings, that he was a father to both of us and my mama was Tyler’s and vice-versa. We assured him that we understood completely. We had a lot of siblings, so we taught them uno, they all go to a francophone school, so it took a little bit.

The next morning, like all the others I would spend in Mangaliliu started with tea and bread of some sort. The day was spent learning Bislama and about the culture. Our classes were held outside under an enormous mango tree that provided the most amazing amount of shade. The roots were gnarled, like something from a story book and looking up into the branches made the tree’s height seem endless.  Passing children would giggle. We also had a few lessons down at the beach, the cyclone safety one was really short because they hadn’t had a big cyclone in years.

We all spent the afternoon at the beach from what I remember. All the local kids were excited to go swimming with the white people. Shoes had to be worn in the water because of the coral, it is rather sharp. I kid you not, the sea did sparkle, it was like living in a nature photography shoot. The pikinini (children) spent the whole time laughing; some of the guys would throw them into the deeper water which they thought was fantastic.

One day we went into to Port Vila for medical and safety briefings. The medical one was pretty gross in places and made me very wary about a few things, it seemed pretty easy to get sick in Vanuatu. Port Vila was unlike any other capital I had been to. It’s pretty much a big town, two real main streets with roads full of potholes. The centre of town is the Mama’s Markets, which sell fresh produce. I bought a drinking coconut, not to be confused with a coconut for eating, and then walked through the town looking for Air Vanuatu’s office drinking it. I failed to drink all the coconut water inside, I swear it was an endless supply. I didn’t like Vila as much as the village because it was far less pretty, definitely more westernised but the vibe was very friendly and the only time I didn’t feel 100% safe was when I had to cross the road.

Trying kava was something I knew I would have to do. I was intrigued by it. Kava is a plant, the root of which can be used to make a drink. The drink itself is a narcotic of sorts and slows you down and makes you happy for the most part. It’s much better for communities than alcohol in terms of violence but as with everything, it has its downsides. For me, the downside was the entire experience. It’s like drinking muddy water with random herbal medicine thrown in, gag inducing, but I managed to down my whole shell in one go. The strangest thing about it was eating pineapple afterwards and being able to taste but not feel the fruit in my mouth. The volunteers seemed to fall in two groups, those who like kava and those who do not like it at all, don’t bring that stuff anywhere near me thank you.

We spent Friday morning at a local school, doing some practise teaching. Courtney and I did word searches, played bingo and wrote sentences with the kids who ended up in our “classroom”. They were gorgeous kids, although they were super shy. We ended up doing a very intense of heads, shoulders, knees and toes. We did it forwards, backwards, with words missing, fast, faster, superfast and with our eyes shut. I was exhausted afterwards, we were drenched in sweat and it was only before lunch. That’s what you get for playing in direct sunlight.

The last night in Mangalilu was interesting to say the least. The afternoon was spent learning about island kaekae and helped cook a feast for that night. It took all 19 of us to chase down two roosters, my proudest moment in that was nearly catching one of them, the bird got away though. The people who did catch them deserve a prize. Two of the guys had to kill and feather them when they were caught. I couldn’t watch that but I did help with preparing the manioc for simporo rolls. Manioc is a tree root which has to be peeled to remove the bark. We then washed and grated it. The white slime is plopped onto island cabbage leaves and rolled up like a rice paper roll. Island cabbage is nothing like cabbage. We ate a lot of coconut that afternoon because we had to grate them to milk them.

That first week I really did not like island kaekae. It might have been because I wasn’t used to the flavours, perhaps it was the texture, but whatever it was, it just didn’t set right. I ate a lot of rice that week, something I now regret because most island kaekae I love. The other thing that was difficult that week was the hygiene situation. The toilet we had did flush but you needed to pour water into the bowl for it to work. The door didn’t lock and I was always worried about being walked in on because it was in the middle of my family’s area. The family had a shower but somehow I spent a lot of time going to shower and discovering other people had beat me to it. So my mama lead me away from the houses and to a small stream and that was where I washed, skirt pulled up to my shoulders, gasping at the cold.

Aside from the feast, two things happened on the last night. We were all given island dresses or shirts made from the same blue flowered fabric. Our mamas had made them without us knowing, without taking our measurements and they were perfect. Mine has been worn so much the fabric is fading and wearing out. The other was far less pleasant and featured in many an English class. I slept in a room that had an open window above my bed and one above Tyler’s. We’d put our mozzie nets up, so we were not getting malaria. One the last night I heard this sound outside the window, tapping and footsteps. We had learnt about creeping, which is when a guy or girl will hang around someone’s house because they are interested in them. This had me terrified and I was freaking out. It took me half an hour of lying in the dark, listening to what I thought was a person outside, before I managed to get out of bed and wake Tyler up. We shone torches outside, the noise stopped for a bit and then it started again. Tyler went outside, I locked the door, and he walked around our room. He came back thinking that the footsteps had headed for the stream. He went back to bed and I spent the night smack bang in the middle of the floor, which earned me two sore shoulders, sore knees and not a lot of sleep, along with a visit from a coconut crab and a cat.

I would later discover that what had kept me up all night was a pig. I still cannot believe I lost sleep over a pig. That being said, I lost a lot of sleep because a lot of critters but those are stories for later.

Love from Me and My Backpack 

Vanuatu: Preparation

Hi there,

As most of the posts on this blog mention, I went to Vanuatu, in case you didn’t know that before, you do now. I kept a journal while I was over there of the things that happened to me on a mostly day to day basis. Now I’m home for awhile and thought I could use all my tiny detailed notes to share my Vanuatu with other people.

A blog post will go up about Vanuatu regularly. For the most part, each post will be about one week in Vanuatu, in a week one through to week whatever it was style. There will be some posts that break this trend because some events are just too big to be sharing a post with others. I’ll try to include photos, funny stories, things that you think really can’t happen to you and anything else that comes to mind while I’m working on them.

I suppose I should start with an introduction to how I got to the point of me and my backpack getting on a plane bound for a tiny island nation I knew very little about. At some point in year 12, I woke up one morning and decided that I could not go through with my life plan to become a vet. Years of dreaming about this job and knowing exactly what I was going to do with my life suddenly seemed useless and I had no idea what on earth I was going to do with myself after graduation. My mum and I went to the careers office and long story short; I decided to take a gap year.

I had never considered a gap year before but I knew one thing, I didn’t just want to be at home for my gap year, I wanted to travel, but I also wanted to help people. I went looking for ways to do that and was given some information about Lattitude Global Volunteering. Lattitude had programs in different countries that sent volunteers off to do different things, some placements were teaching, some were sports coaching and others helping with medical care. There was a pretty big list of countries to choose from and I had my heart set on teaching in India. One of the things that might have helped me make that decision was that I love the way Indian women dress and I would have a really good reason to wear such beautiful clothes.

So, I filled out the forms and went to an interview. Turned out there were problems with getting visas, the guy I met at the interviews warned me they might not be able to send people to India and took down other preferences. Vanuatu wasn’t a place I knew much about, I knew it was near Fiji, was tiny and that French was one of the official languages. Everything I knew, I had learnt from the Wikipedia page. I speak French and the opportunity to use it made me list Vanuatu as a possibility.

Several weeks later, I was at the careers expo with my friends, trying to find myself a new university course to pursue and eating free jelly beans when my phone went off. I had a text that said something along the lines of “Congratulations, your suggested country is: VANUATU”.  I was excited at the time; I now knew what I was doing once I finished school. At the moment, I didn’t realise just how much that tiny country would change my life, or how much was going to happen to me in the next year. That one text message may have been the thing that started my mad adventure that ended with me crying for half an hour on a flight away from an island without power and running water for the general population.

The next few months were spent preparing to go to Vanuatu. I had to get a full medical and my injections were up to date, get anti malaria tablets, make sure I had enough medical supplies for a small army and that the clothes I was packing were culturally appropriate. Somehow I managed all of that, finished year 12, had my appendix out and not get completely overwhelmed with everything.

I thought I was ready. I’d talked to my placement partner, Courtney from New Zealand, and we had done some plotting for when we got to Level Mission Primary School, which we were fairly certain was in the middle of the middle of nowhere. I had skirts in my backpack, soccer balls in my carry on and a ukulele under my arm. I felt like I knew what I was in for. I was not as prepared as I thought. Life has a funny way of getting you all settled and pulling the rug out from under your sandals.

Vanuatu really changed that for me and taught me a lot. I am now proud to call Vanuatu one of my homes and a lot of the lovely ni-Van people family. Stay tuned for what happened when I got there and just how different things were. Here’s a hint, there were rats and nothing can prepare a person for some of the toilets I have seen.

Love From Me and My Backpack

Homesickness

Long time, no blog, I get it. I have been rather busy, travelling the world and keeping an extraordinarily detailed journal. My Europe trip covers five notebooks. I've been home in Australia for a week and a half now and it's absolutely lovely to see my family and my friends. I'm mostly back in the swing of things, already working again and doing things I have neglected while I was away. My backpack is hulking in the corner, there's a pile of woven baskets in another and life continues as "normal".

When I say I'm home, I mean I am home to the people who raised me and have loved me my whole life, I'm back in the city and country I grew up in, around people I have known for a long time. These are people I love in a place I know quite well. The tricky thing about travelling though is that you can create more than one home for yourself, so even when you are at what most people will call your home and you call home, you can still be homesick. It's something I didn't know was possible until I went to Vanuatu.

Vanuatu for me is also a home. There are people there who love me and are my family. As much as I joke about it, those people "re-raised" me. They taught me how to follow their way of life and live in their home. As the old saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child, except here the villages were given an adult who is already grown up for the most part and still managed to teach her something new. They taught me a lot.

Homesickness cannot be limited to one place and one set of people. One day, I will miss my Australian family, my real parents and blood family, the friends I went to school and youth group with, another day, I might not miss them but I miss my Level family, the people who taught me to use a bush knife and kept me safe in a cyclone. Other days, it'll be the Atavtabanga family, who spent far too much time laughing at my reaction to rats, giving me lots of tea and teaching me to cook. Some days I don't feel a huge absence of any of them and some days, when I am away from all of the people I call family, it hits me more that the humidity does when you get off the plane in Vila.

As much as feeling like that sucks, it makes me realise how lucky I am to have that many people to call family, that many mums, dads, brothers and sisters. I think it's a rare thing to be loved by so many people in so many places just because I was there. My families are all different, they follow different religions, they are from different backgrounds and lead different lives. That does not affect the way they love though, nor does it change how I love them or how much I do.

Homesickness is a strange beast, never to be tamed I guess, and maybe it shouldn't be. Some times we need a reminder of where we have come from and what we have to go back to. Whether we are homesick for a person, a group of people, a place or a mixture of the three, it means that there is something special that we might be apart from in person, but it's never far from our thoughts. I think that is pretty special.

Today, I am home in one place and missing another, which is a strange feeling. Love to all of my families who have made so many places home for me.

Love From Me and My Backpack