I'm going to kick off this blog entry with a few words of praise for chocolate. Chocolate is awesome. Occasionally one of the lecturers that come to talk to us bring chocolate to hand out to win our love and affection. We swarm a bag of fun-size snickers bars like ants attacking a cake crumb. In what's undoubtedly a sad state of affairs, Vanuatu has quite a number of cocoa plantations. In fact, it's one of their main exports. Unfortunately, it's not refined in country, so all chocolate candy has to be imported and thus is ungodly expensive. So yeah, chocolate is awesome. Especially ENORMOUS amounts of it. Incidentally, my mailing address is:
Daniel Moser, PCV
Peace Corps Vanuatu
PMB 9097
Port Vila
Vanuatu, South Pacific ;-).
Up to this point, I'd been quite lucky. Aside from a minor cold when I got to country, I'd been in more or less perfect health. That night I finally got what was coming to me. I woke up at around 1 in the morning knowing that I was about to hurl. I booked it out to my outhouse and let loose. I gotta say, as unappealing as the thought of throwing up into an outhouse might sound, it does make it a lot easier to get everything out in one go. The next day, Monday, I had a fever and was nausea and so spent most of the day sleeping. I felt a lot better by evening and by Tuesday I was more or less 100% again. I'm not really sure what set me off, but if I had to guess I'd say it was probably the fried Spam I'd been given for dinner Sunday night (no joke).
Tuesday Kevin George came out to give us a talk, which was a welcome change as he is actually good at giving presentations. He started off by reminding us that we shouldn't be afraid to talk to him if we were having second thoughts about our service (so far no one in our training group has bailed). This prompted one of us to ask “Are you getting worried because none of us have left yet?” “Yeah, kinda.”
Kevin's lecture was about law (or the lack thereof in Vanuatu). Police really only exist in Vila and Luganville and so the power of the central government is somewhat limited. On the outer islands, disputes are generally settled by the local chiefs. This actually works surprisingly well. He told us one story though about how Peace Corps needed the police to make an arrest on one of the outer islands, and so they had to pay for the airline tickets of the officers to fly out there. Not only that, but they also needed to book an extra seat on the return trip for the convict. He also talked about the prison in Vila. He described the building and we realized we'd walked by it several times while we'd been in the city. The fences around the prison only come up to about waist height and so one could easily hop them. Apparently a little while ago there was a mass walk out where 80 or so prisoners just strolled on out. Fortunately, they were all apprehended a short time later at a nearby kava bar. You see, they weren't actually trying to escape, they were just going for a kava run.
On Wednesday I went into Vila to teach another couple lessons at Pango school. We pulled up to find all the kids out in the schoolyard playing various games. I walked into the office and one of the teachers that I'd been working with previously greeted me. “We have a small problem today. That's why all the kids are outside,” she said. Apparently feeling like she'd fully filled me in on the situation, she instructed me to sit down in the office and wait. I did as I was told and she wandered out of the office. A few minutes later the word had gotten around that I was at the school and most of the kids in the class that I'd taught the week before showed up in the office and started talking to me. I asked them why they weren't having class. They explained that the day before one of the teachers had hit one of the students. The kid had gone home and told his family about this. His parents, obviously, weren't happy, but being mature adults they decided that the best course of action would be to have the father go punch the teacher in the face. The teachers, obviously, weren't happy about that and so they decided to go on strike until the family decided to apologize. “Does this happen often?” I asked. “Third time this year.” Ah.
The kids invited me to play soccer with them and I took them up on it. We played for about a half and hour and then the bell was rung calling the students together. They were arranged in lines according to class and made to sit down outside. A very angry looking woman who I'd never seen at the school before came out and started to talk to them. You know the old saying that you shouldn't scowl otherwise your face will freeze like that? Well, that actually happened to this lady. I honestly don't think she would have been capable of smiling if she'd wanted to. She gave a fairly long speech in Bislama, which I was actually quite proud of myself for understanding most of. She went on an on about how hard it is to be a teacher and how much they were trying to help the community and then started scolding the students for taking their problems with their teachers home to their parents – where, according to her, they get blown way out of proportion -- as opposed to coming to talk to the headmaster. It was all very strange. If I'd been giving the speech I think the take home message probably would have been “can we please stop hitting each other?” But this point didn't really even seem to be covered at all. Lizzie, the other volunteer at the school with me, talked some with the teacher she'd been working with and discovered that these strikes can sometimes go on for weeks, with both the teachers and the family being to stubborn to apologize to each other.
Thursday I finally got a chance to break out my machete. We were tasked with clearing a patch of bush in order to start a community garden. The entire area was covered with thick creepers and the occasional small tree. The clearing process goes something like this: someone grabs a stick and uses it to tug up a patch of creepers, exposing the roots. A second person hacks at the roots with a machete until they come loose. You continue doing this until you have a huge pile of loose creepers, which you discard. You repeat the process until all the desired bush has been cleared. If you encounter a tree, you let loose with a machete somewhere close to the base until it falls over. It was actually a lot of fun, even if it did tear up my hands. After the bush was cleared, we needed to put posts to make a fence. I was sent out into the bush to fell trees with my machete. Needless to say, I felt quite the bad-ass. We set about building the fence, ramming the posts into the ground with brute force and lashing cross beams to them using the bark of a local tree as rope. An hour or so in, we realized that we didn't have enough wood to complete the project. It was getting late and we were all for putting it off until tomorrow, but the two Ni-Vans who were supervising wanted to finish that evening. They did a quick appraisal of the situation and concluded we needed 8 more cross-pieces. They struck off into the bush by themselves. We settled in to wait for a while, but a short 20 minutes or so they both returned, each carrying 4 perfectly straight, perfectly shaped, logs. I took a look around at the assortment of crocked, haphazardly-sized logs that we'd been using and had to laugh. I guess experience counts for something.
Friday was to be our last Friday in Mangaliliu before we all headed out to walkabout to visit our sites for a week, so we decided it was time for a party. It being Peace Corps, we had to kick things off with a round of yoga. It was actually pretty cool. It was a nice, clear night on the beach with a brilliant full moon. We were sitting on mats in a circle in the sand, each with our kerosene lantern in front of us. It was quite the scene. The yoga mood was all but ruined, however, when someone let loose with a huge fart during meditation and we all cracked up. We got a huge bonfire going and two people did fire dancing with pois, which are chains with burning brands on the ends that you swing around in cool patterns. I ended up staying up until 3am hanging out, a first since coming to Vanuatu.
Saturday afternoon was spent sleeping at Mangas, our beach of choice, and recovering from the night before. Mangas is definitely the nicest beach that we've found in walking distance, and it's an excellent place to sleep out the heat of the day. The one thing that bothers me about going to Mangas, though is that there are no bathrooms. Now, I have no trouble peeing in the woods, no, the problem arises more from the fact that the beach drops off into an archaeological site, the remains of the village of chief Roi Mata. Unfortunately, all the artifacts, be they taboo stones or remains of the ancient wall that used to encircle the village, look, at least to my ignorant western eyes, more or less like rocks. So I can never really be quite sure that the rock that I'm pissing on isn't in fact some powerful artifact, imbued with black magic capable of traveling up my urine stream and turning me into a coconut crab, like some hapless bum getting electrocuted by peeing on the third rail in the New York subway.
Sunday was another slow day playing cards on the beach. In the evening however, the DVDs of Survivor: Vanuatu were finally found (they had been on loan to somebody or something for the past few weeks) and we were all eager to watch it. It was hugely entertaining. In the opening scene a lot the villagers from our village paddle out in outrigger canoes to meet the contestants. They were all decked out in kustom garb and generally scared the shit out of the contestants. “They're actually really nice!” I wanted to shout out “And most of them speak English!” Another funny aspect is that they kept splicing footage from other islands into the show. They'll show everyone doing there thing out on the beach, and then pan inland and suddenly a volcano some hundreds of miles away will appear. It's also just awesome to see them trying to deal with island life: trying to open coconuts, complaining about the rain, drinking kava, eating island cabbage, because we've all done all of that at this point. And the Survivors only have to put up with it for 39 days. What wimps. Although we do get treated a little nicer. I guess there's something to be said for coming to a country to help out as opposed to trying to win a million dollars. Anyway, if any of you all get the chance, I'd suggest checking it out. All the beaches were the contestants live, the tribal meeting place, and the games are all within walking distance of my village, Mangaliliu. The volcano they keep showing is actually on Tanna, and a lot of the shots of the wildlife are also from different islands because most of the wildlife around here has already been hunted out.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Life in the Ring of Fire Part 4: Fowl Play
We kicked off the week with a lesson in chicken killing. Personally, I think it was just arranged just to give the rest of the village a chance to laugh at us. In Vanuatu, you don't keep your chickens in a pen or anything, you just let them wander around. This means that when you want to catch them, you have to run them down. This is a lot harder than it seems. I always had this mental image of chickens as fat stupid birds which had somehow narrowly avoided the evolutionary chopping block. This lesson quickly dissuaded me of that notion, because, while in the US chickens that you see may be fat and dim, wild chickens are FAST, and they can fly. Yes, chickens can fly. You guys may already be aware of this, but I certainly wasn't. They can't fly very high, or very far, but they can certainly fly over your head as you try to corner them against a house. So, imagine 23 Peace Corps volunteers running around the village chasing some frantically squawking chickens and failing miserably at catching them while all the villagers stood by doubled over in laughter. We had about 3 false starts where our chickens got completely away from us and booked it for the bush and we had to wait for them to wander back. Finally, some of the village kids took pity on us and caught them for us. Next obstacle was killing the chickens. When I first heard about this exercise, I was a little doubtful of my willingness to kill a chicken, but a few days prior I was trying to walk to class and was attacked by a chicken that got it my way. It was screaming and flapping its wings and trying to peck me and I instantly lost all sympathy for chickens. It also doesn't help their cause that the roosters wake me up every morning at 5am. Anyway, I actually did pretty well killing my chicken, unlike some members of my group, and after one good smack against a tree it was over. One particularly unfortunate volunteer tried to break his chicken's neck with a windmilling motion but he didn't do it hard enough or something, so he ended up with a squawking, flailing, bleeding ball of feathers that escaped and had to be re-run down. I de-feathered mine, which was an enormous pain, but I missed the gutting process as I had to go to my placement interview.
During my interview I learned that I am almost certainly going to Malakula, to a little village called Tautu near Norsup, which is where the island's main airport is. While my village may not exactly be NYC, it's a short (and cheap) truck ride into a nearby small town, which has a bank, post office, internet cafe, and supermarket. My village even has cell coverage. I'll also have 24 hour electricity at my school. I'll be living the first 2 months with my host family, the mother of which is the headmistress of the school where I'll be working. They live sort of on the outskirts of town, but after the first 2 months I'll be moving to a house close to the school and more in the main village. There will be at least one other volunteer less than 1/2 hour away from me, and there are about 10 volunteers total on the island, and getting around to everyone's sites is supposed to not be too big a hassle. I've met some of the current Malakula volunteers and they're all very positive about it, so I'm feeling very good about my site. Going in, I was kind of hoping for a more rural experience where I could learn the ways of the bush and how to hollow out tree trunks to make outrigger canoes. During my first few weeks here, however, I gained a new appreciation for a few modern niceties, especially grocery stores. As I mentioned before, Vanuatu does sport a plethora of fruits and vegetables, some of which are quite delicious, but I'm definitely excited to be able to have easy access to things like cheese, meat, and cold drinks. On the other hand, I'm hoping my site won't be too city-like, as I still want to be able to do such things as go bushwhacking, plant my own garden, and learn how to make cool stuff, which are experiences which volunteers posted in the capitol miss out on. I'm optimistic that my site will be a good mix of the modern and the rural.
Tuesday was the 5th day after the volunteer death and, according to the custom of our village, it was the end of the period of mourning. On some islands, mourning can last up to 100 days after a death, but Efate cuts things a little short. According to custom people are not supposed to work, shave, or bathe during the mourning period, so for some of the longer waiting periods you can image things can get a little rank. Anyway, the end of the mourning period is cause for a feast, and thus we were able to experience our first pig roasting. Me and a couple other volunteers took a quick break from training to go to the chief's house and watch them kill the pig. It wasn't pretty, as they clubbed it to death with a log, and then de-haired it with a machete. We cooked the pig in the traditional style with hot rocks in an underground oven, much like a Hawaiian luau. It was REALLY good, and a welcome break from the usual tinned fish and corned beef that all too often passes for meat in the village. Unfortunately, although many people fish and hunt and raise animals, the fresh meat is usually sold in Vila to get money to buy imported canned goods. Also, while meat is a common additive to many dishes, it's only rarely that you get just straight-up meat, or a predominately meat dish, and I was really starting to miss my animal flesh.
On Wednesday I got to teach my first class. It was at Pango school, which is where I've been observing classes every Wednesday for the past few weeks. Like I've talked about before, school here is shockingly haphazard. Teachers will wander in and out of classrooms without a second thought about the kids. I told the headmaster that I wanted to team teach part of a class today and he told me “Great,” handed me the lesson book and told me to get to it. I was reminded of School of Rock, when one of the parents asks the principle "do you just let anyone walk in off the streets and teach here?!" In Vanuatu, the answer is yes. Anyway, instead of getting to do a 15 minute lesson or something I got recruited to teach for 3 hours to cover some other teachers that weren't there. I taught 7th grade English and Math. In English class I taught a lesson on tourism and in Math I gave a lesson on lines of symmetry. It was a very rewarding experience and the kids really seemed to like it. My teaching style I think was something of a shock to them, as most teachers here just put stuff on the board for kids to copy or make them do exercises out of activity books. They're also very passive and don't raise their voices or try and control their classrooms. Just speaking in a loud and assertive voice was enough to keep the class in line and the kids seemed to really like something as simple as having them come up to the board to draw lines of symmetry or answering questions out loud. Granted of course, I'm new (not to mention white) and thus something of an object of interest and that probably gave me an easier time that I would have gotten otherwise, but I did feel very positive about the experience.
Towards the end of last week we saw our first tropical depression. It formed over the Solomon Islands and dumped a lot of rain on Vanuatu all through the weekend. We were all kind of hoping/fearing that it might develop into a cyclone and we'd all get to weather our first cyclone together, but this was not to be. The storm fizzled into a tropical breeze and it just rained a lot. On the plus side, however, this meant that our weekend trip to one of the volcanic islands off of Efate was able to proceed as planned. I was a little skeptical waiting, shivering and soaked, under my umbrella for a truck that was several hours late to pick us up and take us to the wharf, but the trip ended up being a lot of fun. When the pickup finally pulled up, we all piled into the back, which had been outfitted with a metal cage covered in a tarp that made the whole affair look something like a troop transport. We barely all fit in, with a few people having to lean out the back, hanging on precariously. The benefits of us being under a tarp, and thus being protected from the rain, were soon outweighed by the fact that the temperature inside soon exceeded a bajillion degrees. We had the driver stop and remove the covering, which actually made the rest of the ride a lot more pleasant, as we had a nice breeze working through the back and we could lean out the sides and try to pull our heads back in before they were smacked by trees.
The truck ride took about an hour and a half and then we were deposited on a concrete wharf. Two small motor boats were waiting to carry us across to the island. The sea looked threateningly ominous, as if it had already eaten several such small boats earlier that morning and was eagerly awaiting a second helping. The Ni-Van boat drivers seemed unconcerned, however, and urged us all to pile in. We set off at a good clip and apparently the seas weren't nearly as rough as I thought because I spent most of the ride taking a nap. We pulled up on a beach some 45 minutes later and the boats departed. The wind had picked up considerably since we'd struck out and we all had to shout at each other to be heard. The volunteer that was hosting us took the lead and lead us up a path away from the beach. The word was handed down that the village was about a 30 minute walk up the hill. Although the rest of the people in my group will probably want to kill me for writing this, it was actually a pretty nice hike. The wind was nice and cooling and the rain had let up, and so I was able to use my umbrella as a walking stick. It wasn't terribly steep or terribly far and I got up it without even having to breath hard. Apparently I still have something left from my AT trek and haven't been completely ruined by weeks of sitting on the beach.
The village we were to stay at was quite nice. It was a lot cleaner than our training village, where people more or less just chuck their trash to the side whenever they're done with it. And it had a lot of nice grassy areas to hang out. We were welcomed to the village and given leis and then lunch was served. For the first time since I've gotten to Vanuatu, I got to have pineapple, which I was very excited about. It was wonderfully delicious, but unfortunately I was only able to nab one slice since we were splitting a pineapple between all 20 or so of us. It was nice to spend the afternoon hanging out and doing nothing. Granted, this is generally what we do in our training village as well, but it was good to get away from our host families for a bit and let our culturally-sensitive guard down and just hang out with Americans.
That night we had a barbecue, which, to be honest, was the only reason I'd signed up for the whole expedition. Like I mentioned, I was missing my meat. We grilled up chicken wings with ginger and soy sauce and steak with barbecue sauce (think a couple cuts below Masterpiece, but I wasn't about to complain). It was all wonderfully delicious and for only the second time since I'd gotten to training village I ate myself to contentment.
That night it stormed like nothing else, and I was quite glad they we'd all elected to stay inside the community center instead of setting up outside, as was our other option. I'd brought my hammock and managed to string it up between two rafters, but quickly discovered that trying to sleep in a hammock is monstrously uncomfortable. It would be natural to conclude that, since hammocks are good for stretching out in to relax, they should be good for sleeping as well. The fact is however, that if you move at all in our sleep you will get hopelessly tangled and wake up to discover that your dream about being caught in a giant spider web was closer to the truth than you would have thought possible.
The next morning was rainy and dreary. and we had the option of climbing up to the summit of the volcano. Our host advised that it would probably be really windy and cloudy and thus that we wouldn't be able to see much, and so I opted out in favor of trying to catch up on some sleep that I had not gotten the night before in the hammock. Around noon the volcano away team returned and we all headed back down to the beach. The return journey was more or less the mirror of the outbound journey: bumpy boat ride to bumpier truck ride. I got back to the village and crashed out, thus drawing bringing my fourth week in Vanuatu to a close.
During my interview I learned that I am almost certainly going to Malakula, to a little village called Tautu near Norsup, which is where the island's main airport is. While my village may not exactly be NYC, it's a short (and cheap) truck ride into a nearby small town, which has a bank, post office, internet cafe, and supermarket. My village even has cell coverage. I'll also have 24 hour electricity at my school. I'll be living the first 2 months with my host family, the mother of which is the headmistress of the school where I'll be working. They live sort of on the outskirts of town, but after the first 2 months I'll be moving to a house close to the school and more in the main village. There will be at least one other volunteer less than 1/2 hour away from me, and there are about 10 volunteers total on the island, and getting around to everyone's sites is supposed to not be too big a hassle. I've met some of the current Malakula volunteers and they're all very positive about it, so I'm feeling very good about my site. Going in, I was kind of hoping for a more rural experience where I could learn the ways of the bush and how to hollow out tree trunks to make outrigger canoes. During my first few weeks here, however, I gained a new appreciation for a few modern niceties, especially grocery stores. As I mentioned before, Vanuatu does sport a plethora of fruits and vegetables, some of which are quite delicious, but I'm definitely excited to be able to have easy access to things like cheese, meat, and cold drinks. On the other hand, I'm hoping my site won't be too city-like, as I still want to be able to do such things as go bushwhacking, plant my own garden, and learn how to make cool stuff, which are experiences which volunteers posted in the capitol miss out on. I'm optimistic that my site will be a good mix of the modern and the rural.
Tuesday was the 5th day after the volunteer death and, according to the custom of our village, it was the end of the period of mourning. On some islands, mourning can last up to 100 days after a death, but Efate cuts things a little short. According to custom people are not supposed to work, shave, or bathe during the mourning period, so for some of the longer waiting periods you can image things can get a little rank. Anyway, the end of the mourning period is cause for a feast, and thus we were able to experience our first pig roasting. Me and a couple other volunteers took a quick break from training to go to the chief's house and watch them kill the pig. It wasn't pretty, as they clubbed it to death with a log, and then de-haired it with a machete. We cooked the pig in the traditional style with hot rocks in an underground oven, much like a Hawaiian luau. It was REALLY good, and a welcome break from the usual tinned fish and corned beef that all too often passes for meat in the village. Unfortunately, although many people fish and hunt and raise animals, the fresh meat is usually sold in Vila to get money to buy imported canned goods. Also, while meat is a common additive to many dishes, it's only rarely that you get just straight-up meat, or a predominately meat dish, and I was really starting to miss my animal flesh.
On Wednesday I got to teach my first class. It was at Pango school, which is where I've been observing classes every Wednesday for the past few weeks. Like I've talked about before, school here is shockingly haphazard. Teachers will wander in and out of classrooms without a second thought about the kids. I told the headmaster that I wanted to team teach part of a class today and he told me “Great,” handed me the lesson book and told me to get to it. I was reminded of School of Rock, when one of the parents asks the principle "do you just let anyone walk in off the streets and teach here?!" In Vanuatu, the answer is yes. Anyway, instead of getting to do a 15 minute lesson or something I got recruited to teach for 3 hours to cover some other teachers that weren't there. I taught 7th grade English and Math. In English class I taught a lesson on tourism and in Math I gave a lesson on lines of symmetry. It was a very rewarding experience and the kids really seemed to like it. My teaching style I think was something of a shock to them, as most teachers here just put stuff on the board for kids to copy or make them do exercises out of activity books. They're also very passive and don't raise their voices or try and control their classrooms. Just speaking in a loud and assertive voice was enough to keep the class in line and the kids seemed to really like something as simple as having them come up to the board to draw lines of symmetry or answering questions out loud. Granted of course, I'm new (not to mention white) and thus something of an object of interest and that probably gave me an easier time that I would have gotten otherwise, but I did feel very positive about the experience.
Towards the end of last week we saw our first tropical depression. It formed over the Solomon Islands and dumped a lot of rain on Vanuatu all through the weekend. We were all kind of hoping/fearing that it might develop into a cyclone and we'd all get to weather our first cyclone together, but this was not to be. The storm fizzled into a tropical breeze and it just rained a lot. On the plus side, however, this meant that our weekend trip to one of the volcanic islands off of Efate was able to proceed as planned. I was a little skeptical waiting, shivering and soaked, under my umbrella for a truck that was several hours late to pick us up and take us to the wharf, but the trip ended up being a lot of fun. When the pickup finally pulled up, we all piled into the back, which had been outfitted with a metal cage covered in a tarp that made the whole affair look something like a troop transport. We barely all fit in, with a few people having to lean out the back, hanging on precariously. The benefits of us being under a tarp, and thus being protected from the rain, were soon outweighed by the fact that the temperature inside soon exceeded a bajillion degrees. We had the driver stop and remove the covering, which actually made the rest of the ride a lot more pleasant, as we had a nice breeze working through the back and we could lean out the sides and try to pull our heads back in before they were smacked by trees.
The truck ride took about an hour and a half and then we were deposited on a concrete wharf. Two small motor boats were waiting to carry us across to the island. The sea looked threateningly ominous, as if it had already eaten several such small boats earlier that morning and was eagerly awaiting a second helping. The Ni-Van boat drivers seemed unconcerned, however, and urged us all to pile in. We set off at a good clip and apparently the seas weren't nearly as rough as I thought because I spent most of the ride taking a nap. We pulled up on a beach some 45 minutes later and the boats departed. The wind had picked up considerably since we'd struck out and we all had to shout at each other to be heard. The volunteer that was hosting us took the lead and lead us up a path away from the beach. The word was handed down that the village was about a 30 minute walk up the hill. Although the rest of the people in my group will probably want to kill me for writing this, it was actually a pretty nice hike. The wind was nice and cooling and the rain had let up, and so I was able to use my umbrella as a walking stick. It wasn't terribly steep or terribly far and I got up it without even having to breath hard. Apparently I still have something left from my AT trek and haven't been completely ruined by weeks of sitting on the beach.
The village we were to stay at was quite nice. It was a lot cleaner than our training village, where people more or less just chuck their trash to the side whenever they're done with it. And it had a lot of nice grassy areas to hang out. We were welcomed to the village and given leis and then lunch was served. For the first time since I've gotten to Vanuatu, I got to have pineapple, which I was very excited about. It was wonderfully delicious, but unfortunately I was only able to nab one slice since we were splitting a pineapple between all 20 or so of us. It was nice to spend the afternoon hanging out and doing nothing. Granted, this is generally what we do in our training village as well, but it was good to get away from our host families for a bit and let our culturally-sensitive guard down and just hang out with Americans.
That night we had a barbecue, which, to be honest, was the only reason I'd signed up for the whole expedition. Like I mentioned, I was missing my meat. We grilled up chicken wings with ginger and soy sauce and steak with barbecue sauce (think a couple cuts below Masterpiece, but I wasn't about to complain). It was all wonderfully delicious and for only the second time since I'd gotten to training village I ate myself to contentment.
That night it stormed like nothing else, and I was quite glad they we'd all elected to stay inside the community center instead of setting up outside, as was our other option. I'd brought my hammock and managed to string it up between two rafters, but quickly discovered that trying to sleep in a hammock is monstrously uncomfortable. It would be natural to conclude that, since hammocks are good for stretching out in to relax, they should be good for sleeping as well. The fact is however, that if you move at all in our sleep you will get hopelessly tangled and wake up to discover that your dream about being caught in a giant spider web was closer to the truth than you would have thought possible.
The next morning was rainy and dreary. and we had the option of climbing up to the summit of the volcano. Our host advised that it would probably be really windy and cloudy and thus that we wouldn't be able to see much, and so I opted out in favor of trying to catch up on some sleep that I had not gotten the night before in the hammock. Around noon the volcano away team returned and we all headed back down to the beach. The return journey was more or less the mirror of the outbound journey: bumpy boat ride to bumpier truck ride. I got back to the village and crashed out, thus drawing bringing my fourth week in Vanuatu to a close.
Life in the Ring of Fire Part 3: A Death in the Family
By my second week in the village, as these things tend to go, my life was settling into a routine. Every morning I get up at around 5:30 or 6 to the sounds of roosters crowing. Now, it is a common misconception that roosters crow at dawn. This is patently untrue. Roosters crow whenever the hell they feel like it. This can be in the middle of the afternoon, when it was largely unnoticed, or it can happen in the middle of the night. For some reason, whenever one rooster crows, all of them need to crow, so one rooster will usually kick off a crowing session with a bunch of others following suit a little later. It's actually kind of funny when this happens in the middle of the night, because the crows sound noticeably unenthusiastic. One rooster will wake up and let out a drowsy crow and a chorus of tired crows will follow. You can almost hear them mumbling. “Oh God, Jimmy's out there crowing again.” “You've gotta be kidding me, what time is it?” “Christ, it's 3am!” “Well, nothing for it, we gotta join it.” “*Sigh*, well here it goes.” Around 5 or so the sounds of the roosters are joined by the sounds of the many village dogs beating the stuffing out of each other. The village is literally crawling with dogs, all of whom hate each other and love nothing better than to frequent the ultimate dog fighting arena which is located right outside my window. Needless to say, it's impossible to sleep in in this country. After getting out of bed, I head down to the beach to go for a morning snorkel with a couple of other volunteers. I go back, get dressed, eat breakfast, and head to class. We have 2 hours of Bislama lessons in the morning followed by (for the most part) boring and/or irrelevant lectures throughout the rest of the day. At lunchtime we get a game of Ultimate Frisbee going. On Tuesday it was funny because a group of Australian faith healers showed up at the village pedaling their wares. They seemed quite shocked to find 12 or so Americans playing Frisbee right out front of what they'd expected to be some primitive tribal village. One of them offered to heal a cut one of the volunteers had on their foot. Sadly, we had to inform them that faith healing was not a Peace Corps approved medical treatment. I invited them to come back some lunchtime so we could get a Peace Corps vs Australian Faith Healers Ultimate game going, but so far they haven't taken me up on the offer. After class finishes, I usually hang out with whatever volunteers are around down by the beach and then head home for dinner. I "storian" (hang out and talk) with my family for a while and then go for a small walk about around the village and hang out with whatever Peace Corps people are still up. We usually turn in around 9 or 10.
We had a very surreal moment during class this week. One of the volunteers pulled out a travel solar panel and hooked it up to his battery charger to charge some camera batteries. He put the panel out in the sun on the beach and let it sit. A few minutes later one of the village dogs wandered over. It sniffed at the panel for a bit, lifted a leg, and proceeded to urinate all over it. I totally lost it. There was just something so perfect about the image of a mangy dog taking a leak on some expensive piece of technology. Only in Vanuatu.
Wednesday we headed into Vila again for another school observation. I went to the same school as the previous week and observed the same scene of disorder. I was slated to teach a lesson the next week and wasn't really sure about my ability to deal with such a chaotic classroom. We'll have to see how that goes. The plus side of doing classroom and observation and teaching every Wednesday, is that it usually only goes until around 11am and we never head back to the village until around 6, leaving us lots of time to get things done in Vila. I felt like a rugged frontiersman, only able to access the niceties and services of civilization once a week and forced to make the most of every opportunity. Every volunteer has different priorities for their time in Vila. There's always the obvious: email and internet, that most of us take advantage of. Some go shopping for things that they'd found lacking in prior weeks at the village, some head to the cafes and take down some cold Tuskers (the national beer of Vanuatu). We're prohibited from having alcohol in the training village, and cold beverages are non-existent, so cold beers are always a valuable commodity. Personally, my priorities in Vila generally revolve around food. Village food, or “island kakae,” is pretty bland, and it's not really because they don't have spices available. Wild onions and ginger grow well here, but I guess the tradition just isn't there. Plain white rice is a very popular dish because is has to be imported and thus is kind of a status symbol if you can serve a lot of it. I've been eating a lot of rice and manioc/yam/taro (I can't tell the difference myself), bananas (you can guess how much I've been digging that), and coconut. The national dish of Vanuatu is lap-lap. It's made by mashing manioc, yam, taro, or banana into a paste, maybe adding some water of coconut milk, and baking it wrapped in leaves until it turns into sort of a congealed goop. I can't stand lap-lap. It tastes kind of like plain oatmeal that you've let sit in the bowl overnight and has turned into a squishy oatmeal brick. It's the sort of thing you eat because you know, in the back of your mind, that you need to eat in order to sustain life, but at the same time you keep reminding yourself to be sure to double check that fact on Wikipedia next time in Vila, just in case. I'm not sure if this has been made official yet, but in my experience burning lap-lap is the national smell of Vanuatu. I've come to dread the stench of roasting lap-lap, especially in the vicinity of my house, as it inevitably means that I'll be soon be forced to eat lap-lap. What's worse is that a lot of people here have wood burning fires to cook lap-lap over, and whenever I catch a whiff of wood smoke I keep thinking I'm in Lockhart and about to get some delicious, greasy brisket, before being cruelly yanked back to reality. I've also been missing really greasy barbacoa tacos and frozen margaritas. I'm actually kind of looking forward to cooking for myself in a few months because I can actually experiment and find things I like instead of just eating what my family makes. Hence, when I come into Vila, scoring some real food is high on my to-do list. I've found Jill's American Cafe is always a good choice. They do good hamburgers and chili dogs, which are epically satisfying and, more importantly, not at all like lap-lap. After lunch I like to head to the supermarket to blow my weekly spending allowance on snacks to take back to the village. I try to hit the four basic food groups: chocolate, cheese, crackers, and cookies.
On Thursday, things took a turn for the somber. For the first time in Peace Corps Vanuatu, we had a volunteer death. A volunteer stationed on the outer island of Erromango was hit by a falling tree while working in one of the community gardens. Because we'd just arrived, my training group had never had a chance to meet him. Regardless, given that they are only about 80 Americans in the entire country, most of them Peace Corps, you get something of a sense of family. On top of that, our training village had also hosted the training group of the volunteer that had passed, so many of the villagers knew him. We were all taken into Vila on Saturday for the funeral. Ni-Vans are very intense at funerals. Most of the mamas wailed, which involves a lot of crying and screaming. It was actually probably more distressing watching them grieve than the actual funeral was. However, the service was quite nice. The President and Prime Minister as well as Kevin George gave speeches. Lots of Ni-Vans turned out for the service, at it was actually really touching to see how well everyone thought of Peace Corps in Vanuatu. While we were walking around Vila after the funeral, all the bus drivers and store owners that we talked to knew about the incident and gave their condolences (people can usually tell we're Peace Corps because we're the only white people that smell bad and at least try to speak Bislama).
Sunday I went to the village of Lelepa with my family, which is just off the coast of Efate, about a 30 minute boat ride. Mangaliliu is actually a offshoot village of Lelepa, founded just a few decades ago because there wasn't enough water on Lelepa for the growing population and because of some kind of land dispute. Anyway, the Presbyterian church there was having a "green kakae" (literally, raw food) sale to raise money for an upcoming event. It was kind of like a church bake sale in the US, where everyone donates something to sell and then buys stuff that other people have donated, except that instead of everyone bringing baked goods, they bring fresh fruits and veggies from their gardens. My mama bought us a bag of fresh mangoes, which were awesome. Now, as you all may know, I've never been much of a fan of the organic food movement in the US, and the food here just makes the whole things seem laughably absurd. Both "organic" and un-organic foods in the US are so far removed from how foods actually grow naturally in the wild that the difference between organic and un-organic is negligible. Not only are things like pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers literally unheard of here, but people don't even water their gardens. You plant something and then come back a few months later to pick the fruit. I'm not sure if this is because everything is grown naturally, or simply because all food is basically eaten right after it is picked, but everything is just so much more flavorful here. Local mangoes, papayas, bananas, etc, just make the ones sold in the US seem bland and tasteless.
While we were on Lelepa, my papa gave me and some other volunteers a tour of the cave on the island, which was quite spectacular. The floorspace of the cave was probably about the size of 3 or 4 houses in the US, but the ceiling was upwards of 40 meters high. You could literally throw a rock as hard as you could and not graze the top. The coolest thing though, was that the whole cave seemed to be made out of sand. You could rub your hand along the walls and just scrape off material; it seemed to be as fragile as a sand castle.
Another week gone by in Vanuatu. Despite the fact that the days move so slowly, the weeks seem to fly by.
We had a very surreal moment during class this week. One of the volunteers pulled out a travel solar panel and hooked it up to his battery charger to charge some camera batteries. He put the panel out in the sun on the beach and let it sit. A few minutes later one of the village dogs wandered over. It sniffed at the panel for a bit, lifted a leg, and proceeded to urinate all over it. I totally lost it. There was just something so perfect about the image of a mangy dog taking a leak on some expensive piece of technology. Only in Vanuatu.
Wednesday we headed into Vila again for another school observation. I went to the same school as the previous week and observed the same scene of disorder. I was slated to teach a lesson the next week and wasn't really sure about my ability to deal with such a chaotic classroom. We'll have to see how that goes. The plus side of doing classroom and observation and teaching every Wednesday, is that it usually only goes until around 11am and we never head back to the village until around 6, leaving us lots of time to get things done in Vila. I felt like a rugged frontiersman, only able to access the niceties and services of civilization once a week and forced to make the most of every opportunity. Every volunteer has different priorities for their time in Vila. There's always the obvious: email and internet, that most of us take advantage of. Some go shopping for things that they'd found lacking in prior weeks at the village, some head to the cafes and take down some cold Tuskers (the national beer of Vanuatu). We're prohibited from having alcohol in the training village, and cold beverages are non-existent, so cold beers are always a valuable commodity. Personally, my priorities in Vila generally revolve around food. Village food, or “island kakae,” is pretty bland, and it's not really because they don't have spices available. Wild onions and ginger grow well here, but I guess the tradition just isn't there. Plain white rice is a very popular dish because is has to be imported and thus is kind of a status symbol if you can serve a lot of it. I've been eating a lot of rice and manioc/yam/taro (I can't tell the difference myself), bananas (you can guess how much I've been digging that), and coconut. The national dish of Vanuatu is lap-lap. It's made by mashing manioc, yam, taro, or banana into a paste, maybe adding some water of coconut milk, and baking it wrapped in leaves until it turns into sort of a congealed goop. I can't stand lap-lap. It tastes kind of like plain oatmeal that you've let sit in the bowl overnight and has turned into a squishy oatmeal brick. It's the sort of thing you eat because you know, in the back of your mind, that you need to eat in order to sustain life, but at the same time you keep reminding yourself to be sure to double check that fact on Wikipedia next time in Vila, just in case. I'm not sure if this has been made official yet, but in my experience burning lap-lap is the national smell of Vanuatu. I've come to dread the stench of roasting lap-lap, especially in the vicinity of my house, as it inevitably means that I'll be soon be forced to eat lap-lap. What's worse is that a lot of people here have wood burning fires to cook lap-lap over, and whenever I catch a whiff of wood smoke I keep thinking I'm in Lockhart and about to get some delicious, greasy brisket, before being cruelly yanked back to reality. I've also been missing really greasy barbacoa tacos and frozen margaritas. I'm actually kind of looking forward to cooking for myself in a few months because I can actually experiment and find things I like instead of just eating what my family makes. Hence, when I come into Vila, scoring some real food is high on my to-do list. I've found Jill's American Cafe is always a good choice. They do good hamburgers and chili dogs, which are epically satisfying and, more importantly, not at all like lap-lap. After lunch I like to head to the supermarket to blow my weekly spending allowance on snacks to take back to the village. I try to hit the four basic food groups: chocolate, cheese, crackers, and cookies.
On Thursday, things took a turn for the somber. For the first time in Peace Corps Vanuatu, we had a volunteer death. A volunteer stationed on the outer island of Erromango was hit by a falling tree while working in one of the community gardens. Because we'd just arrived, my training group had never had a chance to meet him. Regardless, given that they are only about 80 Americans in the entire country, most of them Peace Corps, you get something of a sense of family. On top of that, our training village had also hosted the training group of the volunteer that had passed, so many of the villagers knew him. We were all taken into Vila on Saturday for the funeral. Ni-Vans are very intense at funerals. Most of the mamas wailed, which involves a lot of crying and screaming. It was actually probably more distressing watching them grieve than the actual funeral was. However, the service was quite nice. The President and Prime Minister as well as Kevin George gave speeches. Lots of Ni-Vans turned out for the service, at it was actually really touching to see how well everyone thought of Peace Corps in Vanuatu. While we were walking around Vila after the funeral, all the bus drivers and store owners that we talked to knew about the incident and gave their condolences (people can usually tell we're Peace Corps because we're the only white people that smell bad and at least try to speak Bislama).
Sunday I went to the village of Lelepa with my family, which is just off the coast of Efate, about a 30 minute boat ride. Mangaliliu is actually a offshoot village of Lelepa, founded just a few decades ago because there wasn't enough water on Lelepa for the growing population and because of some kind of land dispute. Anyway, the Presbyterian church there was having a "green kakae" (literally, raw food) sale to raise money for an upcoming event. It was kind of like a church bake sale in the US, where everyone donates something to sell and then buys stuff that other people have donated, except that instead of everyone bringing baked goods, they bring fresh fruits and veggies from their gardens. My mama bought us a bag of fresh mangoes, which were awesome. Now, as you all may know, I've never been much of a fan of the organic food movement in the US, and the food here just makes the whole things seem laughably absurd. Both "organic" and un-organic foods in the US are so far removed from how foods actually grow naturally in the wild that the difference between organic and un-organic is negligible. Not only are things like pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers literally unheard of here, but people don't even water their gardens. You plant something and then come back a few months later to pick the fruit. I'm not sure if this is because everything is grown naturally, or simply because all food is basically eaten right after it is picked, but everything is just so much more flavorful here. Local mangoes, papayas, bananas, etc, just make the ones sold in the US seem bland and tasteless.
While we were on Lelepa, my papa gave me and some other volunteers a tour of the cave on the island, which was quite spectacular. The floorspace of the cave was probably about the size of 3 or 4 houses in the US, but the ceiling was upwards of 40 meters high. You could literally throw a rock as hard as you could and not graze the top. The coolest thing though, was that the whole cave seemed to be made out of sand. You could rub your hand along the walls and just scrape off material; it seemed to be as fragile as a sand castle.
Another week gone by in Vanuatu. Despite the fact that the days move so slowly, the weeks seem to fly by.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Life in the Ring of Fire Part 2: Village Life
Initially I was skeptical that Mangaliliu, which is a mere 15 miles or so away from Vila, would take almost an hour to get to by truck, but one look at the mud road that shot up straight up a cliff and seemed more suited for mountain goats than for vehicles quickly put my doubts aside. We chugged upward, feeling every bump and pothole in the road, and wondering when our luggage, which was strapped precariously to the top of the truck, was going to tumble out and go rolling back down the hill. In the end, we did make it with no casualties, human or otherwise. We were deposited on a grassy field in front of a pink cement house with a tin roof and told to wait while the chief prepared to meet us. The weather was gorgeous, sunny and warm with a light breeze to cool things down. So far I had seen no sign of the supposed oppressive heat and humidity. After about 15 minutes we were taken down the main road towards the entrance to the village. Walking through the gate to the village, we were ambushed by a group of men wearing grass skirts and sporting big wooden clubs and escorted the rest of the way. The village community center is a row of benches underneath a big mango tree and there we sat while various village elders and then the chief gave speeches. The chief and Kevin George, the country director, exchanged mats, which is kind of the equivalent of bringing wine to a party back in the US.
The chief's spokesman read out each of our names so we could each stand and meet our host families. My host mama and papa (all married women are "mamas" and all married men are "papas") took me to sit with them and more speeches were given. All the volunteers drank/choked down a bowl of kava with the chief and then we ate. After dinner I went with my host family to what would be my house for the next 2 months. It's a 4 room cement house with a tin roof. There's a big porch area out front covered by a palm-leaf roof. There's a separate kitchen shack, outhouse, and shower-hut. I have my own room with a small table, bed, and bench all lit by a kerosene lap. We do have a generator and electric lights, but petrol is expensive and they only run it for special occasions (like if we want to watch TV). I have 2 host brothers ages 10 and 19 and 3 host sisters, only one of whom lives with us as one is married and one goes to boarding school in Vila. I was also given a "kustom nem" (custom name), Kalmala, which everyone in the village calls me. According to my host papa, it is a type of hawk, and apparently a pretty popular name because Dennis, another volunteer, was given the same one. The village itself is very nice. The living conditions are somewhat primitive, but it's right on a beautiful beach were we go swimming in the morning before class and before dinner. Just a short swim out from shore there's a nice coral reef with some good snorkeling and lots of fish (the area is taboo for fishing). Coconut trees are abundant along with bananas, papayas, and mangoes. Our training center is a wall-less palm leaf roof structure just a few yards from the beach. The Peace Corps does have an office building in the village as well but, for obvious reasons, we don't really use it.
I actually have somewhat flush accommodations compared with the rest of the village, as most houses are made with local materials as opposed to the more expensive cement and metal. A “kustom” house, as they are called, is made with a dried woven leaf roof and walls. The floor is covered with crushed coral covered by woven mats. There are upsides and downsides to each type of house. The raised cement floors mean much fewer insects, as centipedes and other critters like to hang out underneath the mats in a kustom house. They're also sturdier and less likely to leak. Conversely, having four cement walls is somewhat of a drag and the kustom houses I've seen are definitely more homey. Also kustom houses are supposed to stay cooler during the summer, although so far the heat has not been a problem. My toilet is a long-drop, which just means a deep hole that you let loose in, which actually doesn't take as long to get used to as you might think. My shower is a patch of coral with four wooden posts driven into the ground to wrap a tarp around. I have a big orange bucket which I fill with water and spoon over myself with a bowl. There's no roof on the shower, and so I asked what you do if it's raining. “If it's raining, you don't need the bucket.” Of course. Bucket showers actually work better than you might think. You boil a pot of water and empty it into the bucket. Then you top off with cold water until you get the desired temperature. I've found that it's best to stand inside the bucket, that way when you scoop water over yourself, most of it falls back into the bucket for re-use.
My Papa is a village elder and used to work at a resort, which means we're fairly well off (hence the cement house and the generator). All the “wealthier” villagers either have regular jobs in Vila or have small vans and work as bus drivers in Vila. We'd had occasion to experience the bus system during our time in Vila, and I gotta say, it's pretty amazing. Registered buses all have a B in front of their license plate numbers, making them easy to spot. Nod, glance at, wave at, walk close to, or wiggle or toes at any bus and it will instantly screech to a halt in front of you, completely disregarding all other traffic on the road. Hop in and tell the driver where you want to go. Going anywhere in the greater Vila area costs about a dollar and you're dropped off right at your destination. The only catch is that if the driver has other people to drop off you might be in for a tour of the city before finally arriving at your requested location. If you really need to get there on time you can hail a cab, but it's never necessary to get anywhere on time in Vanuatu, so I really can't see the point. Interestingly enough, Vila is dotted with bright blue “Bus Stop” signs, which seem to be more or less ignored by all bus drivers in the city.
Most people in the village, however, don't have regularly paying jobs, and their main source of income is selling vegetables or fish in Vila. Needless to say, this is not a terribly lucrative business. Vanuatu is sort of in an interesting place right now with regards to its economy. The majority of the population of the country is self-sufficient, able to live indefinitely off of food grown in personal gardens. Additionally, outside of Vila very few people have access to currency. For the most part, this isn't really a problem because there's not really anything to buy anyway, and trading goods is a fairly common means of commerce. It becomes an issue, though, when it comes to things like paying school fees. A lot of families, that otherwise would have no pressing need for currency, have to try to scrape together money in order to send their kids to school. A lot of times this just isn't possible and kids simply stay home. On the upside, the largely traditional economy of Vanuatu means that there isn't really any unemployment. A lot of people don't have jobs, but basically everyone can support themselves. Homelessness is also non-existent, as everyone has at least thirty relatives that would be willing to take them in and set them up with a house in their village. It's actually kind of surprising initially that a lot of social issues that are big problems in the US simply don't exist in Vanuatu because the culture doesn't allow for them. Sprawling extended families with close ties and a strong sense of responsibility provide a “safety net” a thousand times better than anything the US government can offer. House blown over in a cyclone? Your entire village will turn out to rebuild it. Low on food? Just head over to your brother's house for dinner. Teenage pregnancy? No worries, there will be at least fifteen people more than willing to look after the baby. Sometimes it's hard to believe that these are the people we've been sent to help. You see a community living on a beautiful piece of land right on the beach with lots of local fruits and vegetables lying around and plenty of fish and seafood in the ocean, with people who are always friendly, where crime is minor and almost non-existent, and everyone is always willing to help out with anything, and you wonder if maybe we really should fly some of them over to New York or LA so they can show us how things ought to be done. It's true that the somewhat idyllic exterior does mask major problems (inadequate medical services -- Peace Corps volunteers are basically the best equipped and trained medical personnel in the country, substance abuse, hap-hazard education and opportunities for youth, repression of women, and of course, over-development has the potential to destroy a lot of natural beauty and traditional culture, which often times seems like the only thing that's holding the place together), but it does make you think.
I've been doing my best to learn Bislama, but it's still frustratingly difficult to communicate with people. My papa speaks English, but tries not to so I can learn. No one else in the family speaks English. My host parents usually talk slowly and carefully enough for me to understand them, but with anyone else in the village I'm pretty much lost. When the Ni-Vans speak in Bislama, it sounds like a real language, but when I speak it I feel like I'm a cowboy trying to talk to an Indian in a bad western movie and feel silly saying things like: "Me like-em mango", which means exactly what you think it means. I think the trick is all in the accent and speed with which you talk, but I haven't gotten it down yet.
I Wednesday we were all driven into Vila in order to do classroom observations of some of the local school, and my God was that an eye-opener. The word chaotic does not even begin to describe the school that I went to. I was sent to observe a 7th grade math lesson. I think they were learning about how to read coordinates off a compass, but I honestly can't be sure because I couldn't hear the teacher over the deafening din of the classroom. There were probably about 35 students in the class, and maybe 5 of them were paying attention. The rest were running around, wandering outside, hitting each other, throwing things, or just talking with one another. The teacher seemed rather un-phased by his disorderly classroom and quietly continued his lesson up front as if nothing were amiss. After his lesson was over, he walked out of the classroom, leaving the students completely unattended, and gestured for me to follow him. “The French teacher didn't show up today,” he explained, forcing me to lean in closer to hear him over the sound of kids slapping each other with rulers. There doesn't seem to be much of a sense of responsibility for the kids in the schools. The teachers give their lessons but don't really think of themselves as needing to take care of the kids.
The weekend was a lot of fun. We went to Survivor beach, which, as the name implies, is where the survivor Vanuatu series was filmed. It was a pretty nice beach, and there are still some survivor artifacts lying around, such as the nicely marked and labeled parking lot in the middle of the dense bush. The whole Survivor saga, I think, is hilarious. First of all, forget about being on a deserted island, as the show likes to suggest. Efate is the most populous island in the country, and the beach is about an hour drive from Vila and a 20 minute walk from the village of Mangaliliu. A lot of the villagers got hired to work security, which was essentially making sure the contestants didn't kill themselves. The catch is that they couldn't be seen by the contestants, so they had to be prepared to hide behind a tree or something if one of them got too close. Now, not only is Vanuatu an incredibly rich place when it comes to food, with edible things literally littering the ground, but Survivor beach is conveniently situated right next to the village gardens, so there were some nicely planted and maintained gardens for them to wander into. Talk about contrived. However, the beach was quite nice, although all the beaches around here are coral, which is a bit tough on the feet so you have to wear sandals all the time. On the way back from Survivor beach we were told about a waterfall near the trail and got the brilliant idea to get a closer look at it. Unfortunately, there's no trail that goes there so we pulled out our machetes and started hacking away. We were guided by a couple 8 year old boys from the village and I felt like I was in the movie "Jurassic Park" or something and that at any moment a T-Rex was gonna start chasing us. Long story short, almost an hour and a lot of sweat later, we get a good enough look at the waterfall to realize that there's no water running down it. Perfect.
Sunday was church day, and more or less the entire village of Mangalilu was crammed into the small community center for the mass. We sang hymns in the local language, which is completely incomprehensible, so that was interesting. The service itself was very short, but a lot of time was devoted to making various announcements about village events. At the end of mass they had all the new volunteers stand up and introduce themselves. The village actually has 3 masses on Sunday, and you're supposed to go to all of them, but most of our families told us that the service we'd already been to was the more important one, and so packed us all off to another beach for the day. The beach is called Mangas, and is under consideration as a world heritage site by UNESCO because it is the site of the famous chief Roi Mata's village, who supposedly unified and brought peace to the island of Efate. The story goes that he called together all the major families on the island for an island-wide potluck, and then whatever food item each family happened to show up with, that became their tribe (ie. everyone that brought coconuts were part of the coconut tribe), and the law became that if you wanted to get married, you had to marry someone not of your tribe, and that the kids would be the same tribe as their mother, thus all the feuding families on the island were forced to intermarry. There isn't much left of the village, just a few "tabu stones" which are large stones that are supposed to have magical properties and be used when making spells. Unfortunately, the method and ceremony of these traditional magics has been lost. In any case, the beach was very nice and there was a huge mango tree growing right on the shore that creates this nice shaded clearing where we threw down our mats and napped out the heat of the day. Man, village life is tough.
The chief's spokesman read out each of our names so we could each stand and meet our host families. My host mama and papa (all married women are "mamas" and all married men are "papas") took me to sit with them and more speeches were given. All the volunteers drank/choked down a bowl of kava with the chief and then we ate. After dinner I went with my host family to what would be my house for the next 2 months. It's a 4 room cement house with a tin roof. There's a big porch area out front covered by a palm-leaf roof. There's a separate kitchen shack, outhouse, and shower-hut. I have my own room with a small table, bed, and bench all lit by a kerosene lap. We do have a generator and electric lights, but petrol is expensive and they only run it for special occasions (like if we want to watch TV). I have 2 host brothers ages 10 and 19 and 3 host sisters, only one of whom lives with us as one is married and one goes to boarding school in Vila. I was also given a "kustom nem" (custom name), Kalmala, which everyone in the village calls me. According to my host papa, it is a type of hawk, and apparently a pretty popular name because Dennis, another volunteer, was given the same one. The village itself is very nice. The living conditions are somewhat primitive, but it's right on a beautiful beach were we go swimming in the morning before class and before dinner. Just a short swim out from shore there's a nice coral reef with some good snorkeling and lots of fish (the area is taboo for fishing). Coconut trees are abundant along with bananas, papayas, and mangoes. Our training center is a wall-less palm leaf roof structure just a few yards from the beach. The Peace Corps does have an office building in the village as well but, for obvious reasons, we don't really use it.
I actually have somewhat flush accommodations compared with the rest of the village, as most houses are made with local materials as opposed to the more expensive cement and metal. A “kustom” house, as they are called, is made with a dried woven leaf roof and walls. The floor is covered with crushed coral covered by woven mats. There are upsides and downsides to each type of house. The raised cement floors mean much fewer insects, as centipedes and other critters like to hang out underneath the mats in a kustom house. They're also sturdier and less likely to leak. Conversely, having four cement walls is somewhat of a drag and the kustom houses I've seen are definitely more homey. Also kustom houses are supposed to stay cooler during the summer, although so far the heat has not been a problem. My toilet is a long-drop, which just means a deep hole that you let loose in, which actually doesn't take as long to get used to as you might think. My shower is a patch of coral with four wooden posts driven into the ground to wrap a tarp around. I have a big orange bucket which I fill with water and spoon over myself with a bowl. There's no roof on the shower, and so I asked what you do if it's raining. “If it's raining, you don't need the bucket.” Of course. Bucket showers actually work better than you might think. You boil a pot of water and empty it into the bucket. Then you top off with cold water until you get the desired temperature. I've found that it's best to stand inside the bucket, that way when you scoop water over yourself, most of it falls back into the bucket for re-use.
My Papa is a village elder and used to work at a resort, which means we're fairly well off (hence the cement house and the generator). All the “wealthier” villagers either have regular jobs in Vila or have small vans and work as bus drivers in Vila. We'd had occasion to experience the bus system during our time in Vila, and I gotta say, it's pretty amazing. Registered buses all have a B in front of their license plate numbers, making them easy to spot. Nod, glance at, wave at, walk close to, or wiggle or toes at any bus and it will instantly screech to a halt in front of you, completely disregarding all other traffic on the road. Hop in and tell the driver where you want to go. Going anywhere in the greater Vila area costs about a dollar and you're dropped off right at your destination. The only catch is that if the driver has other people to drop off you might be in for a tour of the city before finally arriving at your requested location. If you really need to get there on time you can hail a cab, but it's never necessary to get anywhere on time in Vanuatu, so I really can't see the point. Interestingly enough, Vila is dotted with bright blue “Bus Stop” signs, which seem to be more or less ignored by all bus drivers in the city.
Most people in the village, however, don't have regularly paying jobs, and their main source of income is selling vegetables or fish in Vila. Needless to say, this is not a terribly lucrative business. Vanuatu is sort of in an interesting place right now with regards to its economy. The majority of the population of the country is self-sufficient, able to live indefinitely off of food grown in personal gardens. Additionally, outside of Vila very few people have access to currency. For the most part, this isn't really a problem because there's not really anything to buy anyway, and trading goods is a fairly common means of commerce. It becomes an issue, though, when it comes to things like paying school fees. A lot of families, that otherwise would have no pressing need for currency, have to try to scrape together money in order to send their kids to school. A lot of times this just isn't possible and kids simply stay home. On the upside, the largely traditional economy of Vanuatu means that there isn't really any unemployment. A lot of people don't have jobs, but basically everyone can support themselves. Homelessness is also non-existent, as everyone has at least thirty relatives that would be willing to take them in and set them up with a house in their village. It's actually kind of surprising initially that a lot of social issues that are big problems in the US simply don't exist in Vanuatu because the culture doesn't allow for them. Sprawling extended families with close ties and a strong sense of responsibility provide a “safety net” a thousand times better than anything the US government can offer. House blown over in a cyclone? Your entire village will turn out to rebuild it. Low on food? Just head over to your brother's house for dinner. Teenage pregnancy? No worries, there will be at least fifteen people more than willing to look after the baby. Sometimes it's hard to believe that these are the people we've been sent to help. You see a community living on a beautiful piece of land right on the beach with lots of local fruits and vegetables lying around and plenty of fish and seafood in the ocean, with people who are always friendly, where crime is minor and almost non-existent, and everyone is always willing to help out with anything, and you wonder if maybe we really should fly some of them over to New York or LA so they can show us how things ought to be done. It's true that the somewhat idyllic exterior does mask major problems (inadequate medical services -- Peace Corps volunteers are basically the best equipped and trained medical personnel in the country, substance abuse, hap-hazard education and opportunities for youth, repression of women, and of course, over-development has the potential to destroy a lot of natural beauty and traditional culture, which often times seems like the only thing that's holding the place together), but it does make you think.
I've been doing my best to learn Bislama, but it's still frustratingly difficult to communicate with people. My papa speaks English, but tries not to so I can learn. No one else in the family speaks English. My host parents usually talk slowly and carefully enough for me to understand them, but with anyone else in the village I'm pretty much lost. When the Ni-Vans speak in Bislama, it sounds like a real language, but when I speak it I feel like I'm a cowboy trying to talk to an Indian in a bad western movie and feel silly saying things like: "Me like-em mango", which means exactly what you think it means. I think the trick is all in the accent and speed with which you talk, but I haven't gotten it down yet.
I Wednesday we were all driven into Vila in order to do classroom observations of some of the local school, and my God was that an eye-opener. The word chaotic does not even begin to describe the school that I went to. I was sent to observe a 7th grade math lesson. I think they were learning about how to read coordinates off a compass, but I honestly can't be sure because I couldn't hear the teacher over the deafening din of the classroom. There were probably about 35 students in the class, and maybe 5 of them were paying attention. The rest were running around, wandering outside, hitting each other, throwing things, or just talking with one another. The teacher seemed rather un-phased by his disorderly classroom and quietly continued his lesson up front as if nothing were amiss. After his lesson was over, he walked out of the classroom, leaving the students completely unattended, and gestured for me to follow him. “The French teacher didn't show up today,” he explained, forcing me to lean in closer to hear him over the sound of kids slapping each other with rulers. There doesn't seem to be much of a sense of responsibility for the kids in the schools. The teachers give their lessons but don't really think of themselves as needing to take care of the kids.
The weekend was a lot of fun. We went to Survivor beach, which, as the name implies, is where the survivor Vanuatu series was filmed. It was a pretty nice beach, and there are still some survivor artifacts lying around, such as the nicely marked and labeled parking lot in the middle of the dense bush. The whole Survivor saga, I think, is hilarious. First of all, forget about being on a deserted island, as the show likes to suggest. Efate is the most populous island in the country, and the beach is about an hour drive from Vila and a 20 minute walk from the village of Mangaliliu. A lot of the villagers got hired to work security, which was essentially making sure the contestants didn't kill themselves. The catch is that they couldn't be seen by the contestants, so they had to be prepared to hide behind a tree or something if one of them got too close. Now, not only is Vanuatu an incredibly rich place when it comes to food, with edible things literally littering the ground, but Survivor beach is conveniently situated right next to the village gardens, so there were some nicely planted and maintained gardens for them to wander into. Talk about contrived. However, the beach was quite nice, although all the beaches around here are coral, which is a bit tough on the feet so you have to wear sandals all the time. On the way back from Survivor beach we were told about a waterfall near the trail and got the brilliant idea to get a closer look at it. Unfortunately, there's no trail that goes there so we pulled out our machetes and started hacking away. We were guided by a couple 8 year old boys from the village and I felt like I was in the movie "Jurassic Park" or something and that at any moment a T-Rex was gonna start chasing us. Long story short, almost an hour and a lot of sweat later, we get a good enough look at the waterfall to realize that there's no water running down it. Perfect.
Sunday was church day, and more or less the entire village of Mangalilu was crammed into the small community center for the mass. We sang hymns in the local language, which is completely incomprehensible, so that was interesting. The service itself was very short, but a lot of time was devoted to making various announcements about village events. At the end of mass they had all the new volunteers stand up and introduce themselves. The village actually has 3 masses on Sunday, and you're supposed to go to all of them, but most of our families told us that the service we'd already been to was the more important one, and so packed us all off to another beach for the day. The beach is called Mangas, and is under consideration as a world heritage site by UNESCO because it is the site of the famous chief Roi Mata's village, who supposedly unified and brought peace to the island of Efate. The story goes that he called together all the major families on the island for an island-wide potluck, and then whatever food item each family happened to show up with, that became their tribe (ie. everyone that brought coconuts were part of the coconut tribe), and the law became that if you wanted to get married, you had to marry someone not of your tribe, and that the kids would be the same tribe as their mother, thus all the feuding families on the island were forced to intermarry. There isn't much left of the village, just a few "tabu stones" which are large stones that are supposed to have magical properties and be used when making spells. Unfortunately, the method and ceremony of these traditional magics has been lost. In any case, the beach was very nice and there was a huge mango tree growing right on the shore that creates this nice shaded clearing where we threw down our mats and napped out the heat of the day. Man, village life is tough.
Life in the Ring of Fire Part 1: Welcome to the Beach Corps
OK, so, I'm getting so far behind in this blogging thing that I figured I'd better just skip ahead to Vanuatu for now and go back and catch up my AT stories when I have the time. So, sorry if things are a little choppy from here on out, but I figure that's better than having no blog posts at all.
Oddly enough, my Peace Corps experience was to begin in the greater LA airport area, where we were slated to have staging. “Staging” is a Peace Corps euphemism for “an excuse for us to get everyone to leave for Vanuatu from the same airport to save us some money.” Looking back, though I really can't complain. I got put up for 2 nights at a nice hotel and a hefty $160 to use at my discretion. My flight out of Austin was at 11am which put me into LA just a little after noon. I was told by the hotel receptionist that checked me in that I was the first one of my group to arrive and that I was to have a room mate named Evan. I used the opportunity to check my email, seeing as it had been a full 4 hours since I'd last done so, got bored with that and went exploring on foot. This ended in failure as the only thing in walking distance seemed to be other hotels. Finally I settled on passing the time by sitting in the lobby, looking at arriving guests, and trying to guess which ones were soon-to-be Peace Corps volunteers. The hotel had a steady influx of people in expensive business suits who didn't really seem to fit the bill and by dinner time I was starting to wonder if I'd accidentally gone to the wrong hotel. I opted for a meal at the hotel bar, as I didn't really seem to have any other option for food, and thus ended up spending $12 for a hamburger. I considered this an odd welcome to Peace Corps. However, realizing that my American money would soon become useless to me and that I might be living in a grass hut for the next 2 years, I decided to go all out. The bartender was from Texas and he mixed a passable margarita, which I had a couple of. He also seemed unaware that there was a Peace Corps event taking place, further increasing my anxiety that I had gone to the wrong place. A little later a girl took a seat next to me. In stark contrast to everyone else in the hotel, she was wearing quick-dry pants and a t-shirt. She ordered a vegetarian burger for dinner. That did it, she had to be Peace Crops.
I had guessed correctly, and we got to talking for a bit. Her name was Evelyn and was headed to Vanuatu for teacher training. Another group of volunteers found their way to the bar later that evening, bring our total to about 10 people. We all shared some beers, swapped some introductions, and talked about our upcoming departure for the South Pacific. The next day we checked in with the Peace Corps staff, met the rest of our group, and had to attend some very long lectures were we all grew increasingly frustrated by the fact that no one was giving us any specific information about Vanuatu or what we'd be doing there. That evening we all hit the hotel bar again to live up our last night in the states. Much later, we were kicked out of the hot tub because the pool area was closing and we were forced to call it a night.
The next day started early with some more lectures and finished at noon to give us time to get ready for our flight at 5. Me and several other volunteers decided that this meant hitting an at least halfway decent restaurant, and thus we all made our way to In-N-Out Burger for what was to be my first and as-of-yet only visit to the esteemed establishment. At 5 we were picked up from the hotel and deposited at the airport. The Peace Corps staff that had up until then been looking out for us said farewell and we were left on our own. There were 23 of us headed for Vanuatu in training group 20B. Our first adventure was not long in coming, as one of the volunteers instantly got their dress caught in the escalator and caused a massive pileup in which several pieces of luggage suffered casualties. We also had a few people who ran into problems fitting under the 80lb baggage limit, including one volunteer who'd brought (among other things) 2 surf boards, a spear gun, a guitar, and a ukulele. I slept through most of the flight to New Zealand. Upon deplaning one of our number somehow persuaded the NZ customs officials that we qualified as diplomats and thus could bypass the enormous immigration line and use the “Diplomatic Personnel Only” line.
The 6 hours we spent in the Auckland airport waiting for our connection to Air Vanuatu seemed like an eternity, but finally we were on our way. Flying over Efate (the island which is home to Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu) on the approach was very exciting. The ocean and beaches were gorgeous and the interior countryside looked like some dense tropical jungle straight out of Jurassic Park or King Kong. We landed in Vila and deplaned to the tarmac where we were greeted by a bunch of current volunteers that had come out for the occasion. Kevin George, the Peace Corps Vanuatu country director, had even somehow gotten a pass through immigration and customs and was able to meet and talk with us while we waited in the immigration line and at baggage claim. Once we got out of the airport all the current volunteers decked us out in lava-lavas (kind of like sarongs), leis, and gave us each a coconut with a straw in it so we could partake of fresh coconut milk. Someone had even brought a machete to crack them open for us. As I was soon to learn, these were green coconuts, which Vanuatu is completely infested with. Unlike the meat of the dry coconuts that you're probably all familiar with from the US, green coconut flesh is thin and gooey with a consistency kind of like Jello. The novelty of being handed a fresh coconut which was then opened with a machete quickly wore thin as I realized that I really did not like green coconuts very much at all. Later on I would find out that they're part of almost every dish cooked here.
We were loaded onto buses and taken for a tour of Vila, and then taken to our hotels. Our group was split into three and I stayed with 3 other guys at a sort of bed and breakfast which is basically just this Korean guy's house that he lets people stay in. It was actually pretty nice, we had a TV and air-conditioning, although all of the settings were in Korean. We dropped off our bags in our room and were immediately escorted to a Nakamal by a group of current volunteers. A Nakamal is literally just a gathering place, a hang-out, if you will, and a beautiful one it was. We got there just at sunset, and we were situated on top of a hill overlooking a small bay, so we were all treated to a wonderful view of the sun taking a plunge into the ocean. We marveled at the beautiful place to which we had been sent for 2 years and considered ourselves to be infinitely more lucky than, say, those joining Peace Corps Ukraine.
In addition to being a great place to chill, the Nakamal that we were taken to (as is often the case of Nakamals these days in Vanuatu) also served kava, and so we all had our first encounter with this most pervasive of Ni-Vanuatu traditions. Kava, in a word, is disgusting. Drinking kava is kind of like taking down a bowl of grassy mud into which you've accidentally sprayed mosquito repellent. Kava is sold in units of “shells” which, traditionally, are coconut halves but these days are more often cereal bowls, and cost about one dollar. For obvious reasons, the custom is to drink your shell as fast as humanly possible. This is usually followed by a lot of drinking water and spitting. In fact, most kava Nakamals have designated spitting areas so you don't accidentally spit your kava refuse on someone's feet. Why would anyone put themselves through such an ordeal, you may ask. A couple of shells of kava has a noticeable calming effect that makes it significantly easier to sit around and chill, talk, and stare into space, which is more or less the national pastime. In Vanuatu, business of almost every variety is conducted at a Nakamal. Need to get someone to vote your way on an upcoming piece of legislation? Break out the Kava. Caught in a land dispute with your neighbor? A few shells will do wonders to smooth things out. To be quite honest, I'm not entirely sold that the pros of kava entirely outweigh the fact that you have to down a few mud slurpees to experience them. Regardless, kava abounds in Vanuatu. Port Vila alone has 143 kava Nakamals for a population about as large as my sub-division's in Austin. Interestingly enough, kava used to be reserved only for special ceremonies and was not downed regularly. According to what I've heard, alcohol used to be a major problem in Vanuatu. People would drink to get drunk and would generally not be held responsible for things they did under the influence. Violence and sexual assault were not uncommon as a result. Noticing the problem, a shrewd businessman suggested that kava bars be introduced as an alternative. The idea soon took off, with the vastly cheaper kava quickly surpassing alcohol as the narcotic of choice, dramatically reducing alcohol related-problems. Not that kava doesn't cause problems of its own, mind, but all-in-all I'd have to classify it as a good move.
After Kava, we went to a French restaurant that was supposed to be “just around the corner” which I guess in Vanuatu translates to a 45 minute walk. I had pizza, which was surprisingly good. I didn't eat much, however, as kava is also an appetite suppressant. The next day, Sunday, we had off. On the recommendation of a current volunteer, we took a little ferry to an island resort just off the coast of Vila. It was quite beautiful, with nice beaches and 4 swimming pools and they let us all use their facilities for free. We spent the day hanging out by the pool and playing beach volleyball. By the end of the day, most of us were feeling like we were on vacation, which left us all wondering when the other foot was going to fall.
The answer came the next day as we started training. I've talked to a few volunteers here in Vanuatu from Australia and Japan, who both have programs that offer almost no training before beginning service, and I definitely appreciate the lengths to which Peace Corps goes to prepare us for service, but the timing of some of the training could definitely be done better. Take, for example, the fact that we would not receive our first lesson in Bislama, the local language, until almost a week after our arrival and so would be forced to wander Vila tourist-fashion trying to find people who spoke English. Given this, being cooped up in a classroom watching PowerPoint presentations when I wanted nothing more than to go explore the city and hang out at the beach was quite frustrating. However, there were definitely some highlights, including our first medical session which we later renamed “All the Ways in Which This Country Can Kill You or Make You Incredibly Miserable.” These ways include Malaria, Dengue Fever, slug-borne vegetable parasites, giant killer centipedes, and Cigautera -- some disease contracted from infected fish which is impossible to detect or kill via cooking and which leaves you feeling more or less god awful for anywhere from a couple of days to a couple months.
In order to combat all these myriad of threats to our well being, we were equipped with humongous medical kits filled with more medical supplies than I even knew existed. It felt quite odd to be handed about seven or eight prescription drugs in little baggies and to be told to use them at our discretion. As if we needed further reminders that we were not in the US anymore, we were given malaria slide kits so we could make our own samples out at site to be sent to a lab. The process includes pricking your own finger and dripping blood on a glass slide. This was demonstrated for us by our medical officer and then all of us had to do it. People were spilling blood on the floor and on desks. The word “glove” was never even mentioned. Those of you who have had medical or first aid training can imagine just how weird this felt. Granted, the likelihood of contracting a blood-borne disease from spilled blood is quite low, but in the US people would definitely have a hissy-fit about it. We also all started taking our anti-malarial meds, mefloquine. According to our medical officer, mef has a history among volunteers of causing very bizarre dreams: either really intensely sexual or gruesomely bloody and violent. So far, I have yet to experience either variety, which I find to be vaguely disappointing.
Towards the end of our week in Vila, the Vanuatu cultural center hosted a music festival. The first night was reserved for local music and the remainder of the festival branched out into “international music” which basically means Reggae. All Ni-Vanuatu music sounds the same. It's called string band, and more or less every string band is made up of about 6 guys all wearing bring Hawaiian shirts. Now, when I say all local music sounds the same, I mean it literally. The tune of every string band song is exactly the same, the only difference between the songs is the lyrics and, since we don't speak Bislama, this means that we really have no way of telling songs apart. I actually heard one notable exception to this the other day on the radio. Some artist had taken the lyrics from 50 Cent's “In da Club” and set it to string band music. I was laughing so hard I almost cried. Anyway, the first night of the festival was fairly uneventful, but the second night a fairly famous Australian Reggae band was playing. The outdoor venue packed, but it was funny because all the Ni-Vans were sitting on the grass staring stoically at the stage. They didn't really clap or whistle or shout or respond to anything the bands said. At one point, some Peace Corps volunteers broke the mold and stood up and started dancing. We all joined them and after about half an hour basically every single white person on the island was up front dancing while the Ni-Vans all continued to sit stoically and occasionally point and laugh at us. It was a lot of fun. As an added plus, after the band finished a local dance group went on started in on some intense roboting. All in all, quite the night.
As my first week in Vanuatu drew to a close we were handed a packing list for things to take to our training village, where we would be spending the majority of our next 9 weeks. One of the items mentioned was a “bush knife.” I asked what this was. “Bigfala knife” responded one of my trainers, a machete. Sweet. As I'd already gleaned, the machete is the accessory of choice in Vanuatu. I generally try not to be racist, but there's just something about seeing a big crowd of black people idly carrying foot-and-a-half knives while strolling down the street that would make any American initially uneasy. However, while in, say, Chicago, you might start running for your life, in Vanuatu the thing to do is stop, shake hands, and maybe linger for a while discussing the weather and answering questions about America. A few days before departing Vila, I headed to the hardware store with some other volunteers to purchase my own bigfala knife. Choosing a machete is kind of like choosing a wand in Harry Potter. You don't chose the machete, the machete chooses you. And so I stood in the hardware store picking through a variety of differently-sized machetes and taking practice swings at the nearby wrenches. I selected one with the best feel and headed for the checked out. I passed on the offer to wrap my newly purchased blade in newspaper, preferring instead to hack idly at low-hanging limbs on my way back to the Peace Corps office. My first swing severed a twig protruding from a nearby fence with a satisfying hum. I later learned that it's actually illegal to wander Vila with an open blade, but I sure wouldn't have guessed that from the responses I got. Most Ni-Vans seemed to think it a marvelous joke to see a white person hacking wildly at bushed around town. The door man at the hotel I was staying at even gave me a thumbs up.
We departed Vila for our training village of Mangaliliu, about a 40 minute drive away, on Sunday, and, quite honestly, I was glad to be going. Vila was nice, but all-in-all not THAT nice, and if I was going to be roughing it, I wanted to go whole-hog. After all, it sounds much more impressive to tell people that you spent two years living in a straw hut than to relate how difficult it was to try and decipher the Korean-language settings on your air conditioner. So, day pack on my back and bigfala knife in hand, I was ready to face the hardships of village life. I had packed light – only what I needed to survive: a couple changes of clothes, a selection of cookies and snacks, hot sauce, a frisbee and Uno deck, and, of course, a laptop complete with battery-op speakers and solar battery charger, because I'd be damned if I was going to let the fact that I was in the middle of the jungle prevent me from munching on potato chips whilst enjoying a showing of “Nacho Libre.”
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