The Tautu language feature will be taking a brief hiatus while I am in the US. Yes, I know I'm still writing about stuff in Vanuatu, but I'm a little behind, meaning I'm actually in the States while I'm writing this, and I find it a little hard to think about Tautu language while sitting in a climate controlled house on a comfortable chair in front of a wide screen computer monitor with a cold beverage. Apologies.
Monday kicked off my last week in Malekula before my two month-long vacation (and, in my opinion, much deserved vacation). Although school would not be officially closing until the end of the week, students had long ago stopped attending classes and teachers had recently given up the charade of pretending to teach to no one, so I really hadn't had anything to do for a while and I was getting pretty bored. It was also getting absurdly hot, as summer was kicking into full gear, and so most of my days were spent down at the beach sleeping. Needless to say, I was very much looking forward to escaping to Texas, were it would be winter and thus much colder. As an added perk there would also be TV, Mexican food, movie theaters, beer, margaritas, and takeout. I'd kind of checked out mentally from Vanuatu and was really hoping to just coast through the week, but Vanuatu, as it often does, had other plans.
On Tuesday I went to Lakatoro to lend McKenzie my laptop, as the one she usually uses to check her email had been misbehaving, and afterward the two of us headed to the post office and the bank to hang out (I mean, where else would you hang out on a dusty Tuesday afternoon?), when a white truck with three Ni-Vans pulled up in front of us. One of it's occupants I recognized as a employee of the provincial government.
“Hey!” Yelled one of them, “You need to bring the fridge back to the house on top!”
Jesus, I thought, you've got to be kidding me.
“I told you you could come pick it up,” I explained “it's sitting at my house. I've been waiting for you all weekend.”
“No!” Shouted the guy, “you took it, you come put it back.”
I sensed a long, pointless back-and-forth coming on. Earlier in the year I probably would've taken the polite route and just done what was asked without arguing. Earlier in the year I was concerned with making a good impression on everyone I met and being a model volunteer. But now, to be quite honest, I was fed up. I was tired of the inefficiency and the general uselessness of everyone around me, I was tired of the passive-aggressiveness, the long arguments about nothing, the say-one-thing-but-do-another attitude. I was tired of the excuses and the ridiculous, pointless lies and the inability of everyone to say what they mean. In short, I was ready for a vacation and in absolutely no mood to be accommodating.
“No,” I said “You already told me you'd come pick it up. So come pick it up.”
“Come put it back on top by tomorrow, or we're going to the police,” replied my shouting match partner.
With a great effort, I choked back a laugh. The police? Did they mean my uncle and the two other guys I drink kava with on Fridays? Those police? They want to get them to arrest me? Really?
“The police?” I asked, still not really believing that he'd just said that word.
“Yes, so bring the fridge back by tomorrow!”
“Look,” I said, “if you want me to take the fridge back on top, you're going to have to wait. Maybe I can do it Friday, maybe later.”
The two of us glared at each other for a few seconds and then they drove off. As is typical of arguments in Vanuatu, absolutely nothing had been resolved. I considered my options. The reasonable thing to do, of course, would have been to deliver the fridge, as requested, sometime later in the week because, really, it wasn't that big a deal. Or I could go petty and make the guy-who'd-just-yelled-at-me's life really uncomfortable. I decided to go petty. I headed back to Tautu and went to see Duncan. I explained what had happened to him and, of course, he was totally incensed and said he'd go up to the Provincial offices the next day to yell at people. Childish? Yes. Totally unnecessary? Yes. But I was annoyed. The police threat had really gotten me riled up. The fact that I knew it was complete nonsense made it somehow more irksome. We all have our breaking points I suppose.
The thing about Duncan is that it's totally impossible to argue with him. It's like arguing with a pre-schooler: all of your arguments, no matter how well-reasoned or eloquent they may be, are just met with indifference and loud noises. The next morning two of us found Jimmy's (the man who I'd had it out with the previous day) office and sat down in front of his desk. Jimmy immediately began moving around and clicking his computer's mouse and typing on his keyboard to avoid making eye contract with either of us, despite the fact that his computer was not turned on. Duncan and him went back and forth for a while, I mostly just sat there. In the end, we ended up back where we started: the Province agreed to send a truck for the fridge. But I was pretty sure that none of them would be bothering me at the bank again. In Vanuatu, disputes are resolved entirely by who you know.
Wednesday, things started looking up. I was on the home stretch, I'd be leaving for Vila and then Austin at the end of the week, but first we had a Thanksgiving party to host. Simon, a New Zealand volunteer and a friend of Laura's, was scheduled to fly in sometime during the afternoon for the occasion and Laura had come down from Matanvat to meet him. I met the two of them on the beach near the airport and we surveyed what goodies Simon had brought from Vila. He'd done a fairly good job, bringing several bottles of South Pacific Comfort and a selection of fruit juices to use as mixers. He also brought a couple boxes of coconut milk, knowing that we were in possession of a blender and thus could make pinya-coladas. All of us Malekula volunteers thought that this was very funny. We'd all come to think of coconuts and all coconut-derived products as being free for the taking. I mean, all you have to do is walk outside, find a coconut, remove its husk with a sharpened wooden stake, split it in half with a machete, scrape out the meat with a jagged metal ring, mix the shavings with a bit of water, ring them out and, bingo, coconut milk. How hard is that? Who'd be crazy enough to actually spend money on purchasing coconut milk in a box? People who live in Vila, apparently. Actually, we all ended up admitting that it did make the process of drink production significantly less time consuming.
McKenzie joined us later that evening bringing with her ten plastic, 50ml packets of tequila which her family had sent her earlier that week. She explained that the plastic pouches were designed to be slipped into one's pocket, bra, or pants for sneaking alcohol into concerts. I was pleased that the long-overlooked needs of under-boozed concert-goers were finally being addressed. Fortunately, they were equally useful for slipping past customs officials and thus we were able to make frozen margaritas for the second time in a month, which has got to be some sort of record for Peace Corps Vanuatu.
Thursday Chris came up to join us for Thanksgiving, a day that was devoted entirely to cooking and eating (it goes without saying, my kind of day). We'd decided to go with the theme of a midwest thanksgiving, a idea inspired by the fact that Elin had left behind three packets of instant mashed potatoes that we hadn't gotten around to eating yet. Laura had also purchased some cranberry sauce the last time she'd been in Vila (unfortunately the cranberry sauce came in a jar, not a can, thus meaning that we would not be able to enjoy our cranberries in gelatinous, can-shaped form), which fit in reasonably well. We rounded out the meal with green beans (going against the theme a little bit, we were only able to get our hands on fresh green beans. Chris and I had discussed how one might make fresh green beans taste like canned green beans, but eventually had decided against doing such things as grossly overcooking them and marinating them in salt water overnight), tuna helper from a box, and mashed sweet potatoes with marshmallows melted on top. We were, of course, missing the crucial ingredient: a butterball turkey. On a suggestion from Laura, we decided to make a meatloaf instead. I was a little shocked to discover that the principal ingredient of meatloaf was, in fact, ketchup, but it actually turned out pretty well. We had a bit of a crisis early in the afternoon when it was discovered that the market that day had no pumpkins for sale, seriously threatening our evening's pumpkin pie. Fortunately, McKenzie come through for us by persistently pestering the Ni-Vans at the market until someone agreed to sell her a pumpkin. One pumpkin produces a surprisingly large amount of mashed pumpkin goop, however, so we ended up making a pumpkin soup in addition to the pie to use up the excess. The whole meal was topped off with some not-so-midwestern pinya-coladas made from boxed coconut milk. So, not quite a Thanksgiving at home, but pretty good nonetheless.
Friday was the official closing for my school. There were speeches, of course, and various awards given out to kids for excelling in such important categories as penmanship and being quiet in class (the competition for this award must have been pretty intense, the kids in my class rarely raise their voices above the stealthy-nighttime-bank-heist level). I was somewhat pleased, however, that I was asked to fill the role of the useless guy who stands next to the person announcing the awards and shakes hands with everyone as they come up to collect their prize. We also celebrated the fourteenth consecutive month of our new school building's opening being delayed.
Sunday was my last day in Malekula and, since Duncan and Linda were pretty sure there was at least a fifty percent chance that I wouldn't be coming back from my vacation in the US (volunteers kind of have a history of going back to their home counties for a holiday and not returning), they decided to throw me a going away party, just in case. Duncan had procured two pigs for the occasion, one for the going away, and one to keep in reserve on the off-chance that I'd come back and they'd need to throw a welcome back party. Duncan's pig roasting skills had improved significantly since I'd explained to him how slow-cooking meat could make it significantly more tender. The previous night, they'd fired (literally, it's just a stone box that you heat up by building a fire in and then use to bake) up my uncle's big bread oven and put the pig in. By lunchtime, it had been cooking for a solid sixteen hours or so and was fall-off-the-bone tender. We stuffed ourselves with meat and the usual assortment of carbohydrates: rice, sweet potatoes and yams, and then passed out underneath a tree to nap through the heat of the afternoon. That evening, I had my last kava with my relatives and said my goodbyes. I reflected that it would be almost two months before I'd be watching the stars at Duncan's nakamal, an activity which had easily consumed the majority of my time during the last year. Still, I was glad for the upcoming break and, unlike my Ni-Van friends and family, I was absolutely certain I'd be back.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Friday, December 12, 2008
Life in the Ring of Fire Part 61: About an Ice Box
This week's Tautu language word is “kupan.” It's the second person conjugation of “go,” thus meaning “you go.” “Kupan ape?” is a common phrase to hear on the paths of the village meaning, literally, “you go where?,” where are you going?
Monday was McKenzie's birthday. This was a little odd, as I remembered the same time the previous year, when we were still in training. McKenzie and Chris share a birthday and all of our training group happened to be in Port Vila for school visits that day. Much to the annoyance of our training staff, we talked our country director into allowing us to stay in town for the evening so we could all go to a restaurant to eat, drink, and celebrate. Much later we learned, from the two training groups entering Vanuatu after us, that we were the last group to be allowed weekly visits to Vila, and that the staff had taken steps to prevent future groups from partying as much as we had. In essence, we had so much fun we ruined it for everyone else. This is something of a source of pride. Anyway, it was just another reminder of how much time had managed to slip by while I'd been busy lounging on the beach. Strange.
While undertaking out second ship ride a few weeks ago, Laura and I had hatched a plan for a surprise party, of sorts. Granted, McKenzie, Laura, Chris, (different Chris, not the one in our training group mentioned in the paragraph above) and I were the only volunteers on the island at that particular moment, owing to the fact that Mindi had disappeared mysteriously, Ben had finished his service, Jack was in Vila doing training for the new group, and Noah was trapped by a flooding river, so the surprise party was relatively small compared to what one might expect in the US, but it was still something of a challenge to pull off because it required getting Chris and Laura to Lakatoro without McKenzie realizing they'd come. This was difficult because, being the only four white people on the island, when one of us goes somewhere, people tend to notice, and Ni-Vanuatu are perhaps the most gossipy people on the face of the planet. Whenever Laura comes into town, for example, I usually get at least six people coming around my house to tell me about it: the truck driver who brought her down, the three guys in my village that saw her pass on the road, the woman who sold her a coconut at the market, and the guy standing behind her in the bank line. Thus, when I went to fetch McKenzie from work and bring her back to Mindi's house (which we were using as a vacation home due to the fact that it had the fridge), I fully expected her to say something along the lines of: “Hey, I heard Laura and Chris are in town, have you seen them?” By some random fluke, however, she'd not been informed of their arrival by anyone, and thus was duly surprised when the two of them were waiting at the house for us, beers in hand. Overall, a far more successful event than I could've expected.
As the week went on, it slowly became apparent that we had a problem. With Mindi being gone and unlikely to be replaced for another year, it was only a matter of time before we lost control of the house that had been in Peace Corps volunteer hands since we'd arrived on Malekula. The house offered several advantages that all of us were somewhat upset about the prospect of losing. First of all, it was in Lakatoro, away from all of our respective villages, thus giving us a small measure of privacy when there to do things such as party without being scrutinized by members of our communities. It also sported running water (a rarity in Malekula) and an indoor shower and toilet. But really, the jewel in the crown was the ice box (or refrigerator, in America-speak). In a land where the temperature rarely dips below the mid-seventies, even in winter, and 100% humidity is considered dry, a device able to move heat from cold to hot (with the application of a bit of work) in such a flagrant mockery of the principles of entropy is worth its weight in gold (actually, that's a bit of an understatement, as gold isn't nearly valuable enough. Unfortunately, the phrase “worth its weight in weapons-grade uranium” hasn't caught on yet). According to Chris, whose been on Malekula six months longer than myself, and thus had had the pleasure of meeting a few of the volunteers who'd already left when I'd arrived, the fridge had been purchased by an Australian volunteer a few years back and had been left in the care of us Peace Corps volunteers when she departed. Thus, it was decided that we would remove the fridge to my house in order to keep this most treasured of appliances in the Malekula Peace Corps community. I informed Duncan of this plan, who was pleased that (in addition to the deep freezer at his house) we would now have two ice boxes in the family. On Wednesday, we hired and truck into which Duncan and I loaded the fridge and then struck out for my house. In route, the fridge, which had been loaded upright into the truck bed, was clotheslined by an overhanging tree limb. With little regard for my own safety, I flew from my seat on the opposite side of the truck bed to break the fall of the precious appliance. I caught most of it's weight on my left shoulder, leaving me with a nasty bruise for a few days, but I considered this quite a small price to pay. We unloaded the fridge at my house and I promptly filled it with my collection of home-brewed beer, pineapples, and mangoes. I then filled up as many discarded plastic cracker trays as I could find with water and placed them in the upper freezer compartment in lieu of ice trays. Then I plugged in the fridge and listened contentedly as the compressor hummed to life. It was like Christmas come early.
Unfortunately, it was not to be that easy. The following day, I was waiting in line at the bank when a woman working for the provincial government walked up to me and asked to talk to me. The two of us sat down on a bench and she launched into a long and quite mind-numbingly boring history of the house Mindi had just vacated, detailing every volunteer that had lived there for the past ten years, which country each had been from, who each one had worked with, what each of their jobs had entailed, what each one's favorite nakamal was, how much each had liked lap-lap, and which ones had been regular church-goers. She finally finished by explaining that the fridge needed to remain with the house so it could be used by any future volunteers that happened to come work for the province. I tried explaining that A) there weren't going to be any more volunteers working for the province in the near future, B) the fridge did not even belong to the province in any case, and C) they (the provincial government) were just pissed that I had taken the fridge for my house before they had had a chance to take it for one of theirs. Each point I brought up, however, was countered with a repetition of the house history story in an application of the classic Ni-Van arguing technique of being so soul-crushingly inane and repetitive that you have to agree with them just so they'll stop boring you to death. Helpless against such a strategy (and feeling kind of silly about starting a fight with the government over a fridge), I told the lady that if they wanted to send a truck to Tautu to pick up the ice box, they were welcome to do so. Of course, I knew full well that it would probably take them months, if not years, to get their act together enough to come get the fridge, so I was fairly confident that it would remain in my possession at least until May of the following year. And so it was that I spent the weekend enjoying cold beers and wrapping ice-cube filled towels around my neck to beat the crippling heat of the November afternoons. Really, I couldn't have asked for anything more.
This week's Tautu language word is “kupan.” It's the second person conjugation of “go,” thus meaning “you go.” “Kupan ape?” is a common phrase to hear on the paths of the village meaning, literally, “you go where?,” where are you going?
Monday was McKenzie's birthday. This was a little odd, as I remembered the same time the previous year, when we were still in training. McKenzie and Chris share a birthday and all of our training group happened to be in Port Vila for school visits that day. Much to the annoyance of our training staff, we talked our country director into allowing us to stay in town for the evening so we could all go to a restaurant to eat, drink, and celebrate. Much later we learned, from the two training groups entering Vanuatu after us, that we were the last group to be allowed weekly visits to Vila, and that the staff had taken steps to prevent future groups from partying as much as we had. In essence, we had so much fun we ruined it for everyone else. This is something of a source of pride. Anyway, it was just another reminder of how much time had managed to slip by while I'd been busy lounging on the beach. Strange.
While undertaking out second ship ride a few weeks ago, Laura and I had hatched a plan for a surprise party, of sorts. Granted, McKenzie, Laura, Chris, (different Chris, not the one in our training group mentioned in the paragraph above) and I were the only volunteers on the island at that particular moment, owing to the fact that Mindi had disappeared mysteriously, Ben had finished his service, Jack was in Vila doing training for the new group, and Noah was trapped by a flooding river, so the surprise party was relatively small compared to what one might expect in the US, but it was still something of a challenge to pull off because it required getting Chris and Laura to Lakatoro without McKenzie realizing they'd come. This was difficult because, being the only four white people on the island, when one of us goes somewhere, people tend to notice, and Ni-Vanuatu are perhaps the most gossipy people on the face of the planet. Whenever Laura comes into town, for example, I usually get at least six people coming around my house to tell me about it: the truck driver who brought her down, the three guys in my village that saw her pass on the road, the woman who sold her a coconut at the market, and the guy standing behind her in the bank line. Thus, when I went to fetch McKenzie from work and bring her back to Mindi's house (which we were using as a vacation home due to the fact that it had the fridge), I fully expected her to say something along the lines of: “Hey, I heard Laura and Chris are in town, have you seen them?” By some random fluke, however, she'd not been informed of their arrival by anyone, and thus was duly surprised when the two of them were waiting at the house for us, beers in hand. Overall, a far more successful event than I could've expected.
As the week went on, it slowly became apparent that we had a problem. With Mindi being gone and unlikely to be replaced for another year, it was only a matter of time before we lost control of the house that had been in Peace Corps volunteer hands since we'd arrived on Malekula. The house offered several advantages that all of us were somewhat upset about the prospect of losing. First of all, it was in Lakatoro, away from all of our respective villages, thus giving us a small measure of privacy when there to do things such as party without being scrutinized by members of our communities. It also sported running water (a rarity in Malekula) and an indoor shower and toilet. But really, the jewel in the crown was the ice box (or refrigerator, in America-speak). In a land where the temperature rarely dips below the mid-seventies, even in winter, and 100% humidity is considered dry, a device able to move heat from cold to hot (with the application of a bit of work) in such a flagrant mockery of the principles of entropy is worth its weight in gold (actually, that's a bit of an understatement, as gold isn't nearly valuable enough. Unfortunately, the phrase “worth its weight in weapons-grade uranium” hasn't caught on yet). According to Chris, whose been on Malekula six months longer than myself, and thus had had the pleasure of meeting a few of the volunteers who'd already left when I'd arrived, the fridge had been purchased by an Australian volunteer a few years back and had been left in the care of us Peace Corps volunteers when she departed. Thus, it was decided that we would remove the fridge to my house in order to keep this most treasured of appliances in the Malekula Peace Corps community. I informed Duncan of this plan, who was pleased that (in addition to the deep freezer at his house) we would now have two ice boxes in the family. On Wednesday, we hired and truck into which Duncan and I loaded the fridge and then struck out for my house. In route, the fridge, which had been loaded upright into the truck bed, was clotheslined by an overhanging tree limb. With little regard for my own safety, I flew from my seat on the opposite side of the truck bed to break the fall of the precious appliance. I caught most of it's weight on my left shoulder, leaving me with a nasty bruise for a few days, but I considered this quite a small price to pay. We unloaded the fridge at my house and I promptly filled it with my collection of home-brewed beer, pineapples, and mangoes. I then filled up as many discarded plastic cracker trays as I could find with water and placed them in the upper freezer compartment in lieu of ice trays. Then I plugged in the fridge and listened contentedly as the compressor hummed to life. It was like Christmas come early.
Unfortunately, it was not to be that easy. The following day, I was waiting in line at the bank when a woman working for the provincial government walked up to me and asked to talk to me. The two of us sat down on a bench and she launched into a long and quite mind-numbingly boring history of the house Mindi had just vacated, detailing every volunteer that had lived there for the past ten years, which country each had been from, who each one had worked with, what each of their jobs had entailed, what each one's favorite nakamal was, how much each had liked lap-lap, and which ones had been regular church-goers. She finally finished by explaining that the fridge needed to remain with the house so it could be used by any future volunteers that happened to come work for the province. I tried explaining that A) there weren't going to be any more volunteers working for the province in the near future, B) the fridge did not even belong to the province in any case, and C) they (the provincial government) were just pissed that I had taken the fridge for my house before they had had a chance to take it for one of theirs. Each point I brought up, however, was countered with a repetition of the house history story in an application of the classic Ni-Van arguing technique of being so soul-crushingly inane and repetitive that you have to agree with them just so they'll stop boring you to death. Helpless against such a strategy (and feeling kind of silly about starting a fight with the government over a fridge), I told the lady that if they wanted to send a truck to Tautu to pick up the ice box, they were welcome to do so. Of course, I knew full well that it would probably take them months, if not years, to get their act together enough to come get the fridge, so I was fairly confident that it would remain in my possession at least until May of the following year. And so it was that I spent the weekend enjoying cold beers and wrapping ice-cube filled towels around my neck to beat the crippling heat of the November afternoons. Really, I couldn't have asked for anything more.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Life in the Ring of Fire Part 60: Chewing Kava
This week's Tautu language word is “no.” It means “I” or “me.”
On Monday, I received and odd text from McKenzie, it read:
“Did you know Mindi quit Peace Corps? Because I sure didn't.”
I was significantly perplexed by this that I decided to spring for the extra $2 and put through a call to get to the bottom of things. After a few minute long conversation with McKenzie I discovered that Mindi had mysteriously taken a job in Vila without telling any of us, quit Peace Corps and had left on a plane that morning. This was odd for several reasons. First and foremost, we'd all been hanging out at her house over the weekend, which would have seemed like the perfect opportunity for mentioning something like the fact that you're leaving Peace Corps. On top of that, Mindi was involved with a Master's Degree program which treats Peace Corps service as sort of a practical course in international development, thus meaning that, after writing a paper about what you did, you wind up with a degree when you finish your service, and we kind of doubted the school she was corresponding with would look too fondly on her dropping out of Peace Corps to take a job. Mostly though, it was just weird to have a volunteer on our island disappear so mysteriously. There aren't very many of us, so you'd think it'd be easy to keep track of everyone. We were informed that the key to Mindi's house had been left for us and we agreed to go up there on Wednesday to investigate.
On a more positive note, I'd last week made what was possibly one of the best moves in my entire Peace Corps service, teaching Duncan how to make pineapple-mango smoothies, and was reaping the benefits. I'd brought back a blender from Australia, but I hadn't been able to get all that much use out of it due to the fact that I don't have a freezer and smoothie friendly fruits such as pineapples and mangoes can be difficult to obtain on short notice (while it's not unusual to have some kid show up randomly at my house and give me a couple pineapples, this is by no means a reliable source. Sometimes I'll just be flooded with pineapples and sometimes I'll go weeks without seeing one. There's just no way to tell. Same thing with mangoes, sometimes they're just falling from the trees left and right and sometimes there are just none to be found. It makes you appreciate how awesome grocery stores are. In Vanuatu, food may be abundant and free, but the selection is never as good as at the local supermarket). Duncan, however, had taken an interest in the blender as soon as he saw it in my house due to the fact that it was fancy-looking, obviously from outside of Vanuatu, and needed to be plugged. I explained how one makes smoothies and he asked to borrow the blender so that he could give it a shot. Assuming that he'd probably lose interest in it rather quickly, I handed it over. To my surprise, however, that evening I arrived at his house for kava and was presented with an icy pineapple-mango smoothie. It was probably one of the best moments I'd had in a long time. Even better though, was that it actually ended up being something of a tradition. Three o'clock or so became dubbed as smoothie time and the whole family would gather around a mat while Duncan doled out his latest frozen concoction. He even got into experimenting: trying mangoes from different trees and pineapples from different patches to try and figure out which ones made the best smoothie. The best part, of course, was that he did all the work involved in smoothie production (procuring pineapples and mangoes, freezing them, blending them, cleaning the blender, the list just goes on and on) and I got to reap all the benefits as I'd been the one to front the thirty bucks for a blender. Isn't capitalism brilliant?
Wednesday, McKenzie and I headed up to Mindi's newly vacated house to clean and see if there was anything worth taking. Unfortunately, Mindi had done a pretty good job of removing anything that might have been useful, including, to our chagrin, the electric fan and the seven leftover beers from our Mexican party the previous weekend. Given the mysterious circumstances surrounding Mindi's departure, we began to speculate wildly as to why she'd left without telling us and how she'd been able to pack everything up that weekend without any of us noticing. Our imaginations ran wild with theories of her feeling from loan sharks, participating in a complicated con, and, finally, being accomplice to a murder. At this point, we began to creep ourselves out and everything in the house became a potential clue in a homicide case. Baking soda spilled on the floor became cocaine, puddles of water were regarded with suspicion, and both of us literally jumped in surprise when my cell phone went off indicating the arrival of a text. I opened it, fully expecting it to contain a cryptic messages along the lines of “check under the stairs,” but it was just Laura seeking confirmation of the news that Mindi had left. At this point, McKenzie and I decided that we were getting a little jumpy and we headed down to a nakamal for some kava in order to unwind.
Saturday, McKenzie was invited by one of her friends in Litz Litz to chew kava and asked me along for moral support. I'd read about chewed kava on Wikipedia before coming to Vanuatu. The Wikipedia article had made it seem like the standard method of preparing kava in the country and explained that the chewing was usually done by pre-pubescent boys. Kava comes out of the ground as a large root, about the size and shape of an adult octopus. In order to prepare the drink, the root has to be chopped into small pieces and ground up. Kava preparation methods differ in the chosen technique for grinding the kava. In the chewing technique, as you might imagine, the kava is ground by chewing it in one's mouth. However, chewed kava is something of a rarity, only really common on the island of Tanna in the south of the country and, contrary to the Wikipedia article, grown men and women are usually permitted to chew kava as well, a good thing because pre-pubescent boys can sometimes be hard to come by. On Malekula, the standard grinding method is running the kava chunks through a meat grinder. This is probably the fastest method, and the easiest when large amounts of kava need to be prepared (like if you're selling it at a nakamal). The downside is that kava from a grinder is supposed to be the worst tasting and the most likely to make you sick to your stomach if you drink too much of it. Other common grinding techniques include stone grinding and ramming (where the kava is placed in a tube and rammed into a pulp with wooden rods). Everyone who's had chewed kava, however, swears that it is by far the smoothest and easiest on the belly, thus I was excited to finally have a chance to try it out. I was under the impression that McKenzie's friend would be doing the actual chewing for us, but when we arrived at the appointed location, we found a collection of cut kava chunks laid out on an empty rice bag, waiting to be ground. A young Ni-Van woman took charge as our instructor. “So, you take the kava,” she explained, grabbing a chunk of kava, “and chew it until it's soft, and then spit it out into your bowl. Be careful not to swallow it or you might throw up.” To me, that didn't sound like a promising start. McKenzie and I each took hold of a piece of kava and stared at it skeptically. I sniffed mine. It smelled suspiciously like the kava drink, but I told myself that it probably didn't taste nearly as bad, since there are people in the world who prepare kava this way nightly. With that comforting thought in mind, I gamely shoved the piece of kava into my mouth. It was... awful. Drinking kava is, of course, awful, which is why one drinks it as quickly as possible to minimize the time spent actually tasting it. Chewing kava is kind of like taking a mouthful of kava and swishing it around for a while like it was Listerine. If you think this sounds bad, believe me, it's actually, much, much, worse than you're imagining. I made a face usually reserved for people suddenly faced with the loss of all their loved ones, worldly possessions, hopes, dreams, pride and dignity. I quickly masticated the kava in my mouth and spit it into a glass bowl, where I discovered that, actually, the most difficult part of the whole procedure was suppressing the gag reflex whilst disgorging one's chewed kava so as not to vomit all over the place. I surveyed the large pile of kava still waiting to be chewed and a deep sense of despondency began to settle in. I looked over at McKenzie and saw, by the look on her face, that similar emotions were going through her head. I still don't know how we did it, but eventually the pile of un-chewed kava in front of us began to diminish, and finally disappear. I was just about to begin celebrating the end of a decidedly awful experience when our Ni-Van instructor once again caught our attention and explained “Now, what you have to do is shape your chewed kava into little balls and chew it again.” I think I honestly almost cried. In the end, couldn't tell whether or not chewed kava goes down smoother than kava put through a meat grinder. By the time we finished chewing our kava for the second time, added water, squeezed out the juice, and strained it, I was so glad for the experience to be over that my bowl of kava tasted like heaven. However, I think this was entirely due to the fact that the thirty minutes leading up to the final experience of drinking had been pure hell. I decided to mark down “chewing kava” on my list of things to never, ever do again.
This week's Tautu language word is “no.” It means “I” or “me.”
On Monday, I received and odd text from McKenzie, it read:
“Did you know Mindi quit Peace Corps? Because I sure didn't.”
I was significantly perplexed by this that I decided to spring for the extra $2 and put through a call to get to the bottom of things. After a few minute long conversation with McKenzie I discovered that Mindi had mysteriously taken a job in Vila without telling any of us, quit Peace Corps and had left on a plane that morning. This was odd for several reasons. First and foremost, we'd all been hanging out at her house over the weekend, which would have seemed like the perfect opportunity for mentioning something like the fact that you're leaving Peace Corps. On top of that, Mindi was involved with a Master's Degree program which treats Peace Corps service as sort of a practical course in international development, thus meaning that, after writing a paper about what you did, you wind up with a degree when you finish your service, and we kind of doubted the school she was corresponding with would look too fondly on her dropping out of Peace Corps to take a job. Mostly though, it was just weird to have a volunteer on our island disappear so mysteriously. There aren't very many of us, so you'd think it'd be easy to keep track of everyone. We were informed that the key to Mindi's house had been left for us and we agreed to go up there on Wednesday to investigate.
On a more positive note, I'd last week made what was possibly one of the best moves in my entire Peace Corps service, teaching Duncan how to make pineapple-mango smoothies, and was reaping the benefits. I'd brought back a blender from Australia, but I hadn't been able to get all that much use out of it due to the fact that I don't have a freezer and smoothie friendly fruits such as pineapples and mangoes can be difficult to obtain on short notice (while it's not unusual to have some kid show up randomly at my house and give me a couple pineapples, this is by no means a reliable source. Sometimes I'll just be flooded with pineapples and sometimes I'll go weeks without seeing one. There's just no way to tell. Same thing with mangoes, sometimes they're just falling from the trees left and right and sometimes there are just none to be found. It makes you appreciate how awesome grocery stores are. In Vanuatu, food may be abundant and free, but the selection is never as good as at the local supermarket). Duncan, however, had taken an interest in the blender as soon as he saw it in my house due to the fact that it was fancy-looking, obviously from outside of Vanuatu, and needed to be plugged. I explained how one makes smoothies and he asked to borrow the blender so that he could give it a shot. Assuming that he'd probably lose interest in it rather quickly, I handed it over. To my surprise, however, that evening I arrived at his house for kava and was presented with an icy pineapple-mango smoothie. It was probably one of the best moments I'd had in a long time. Even better though, was that it actually ended up being something of a tradition. Three o'clock or so became dubbed as smoothie time and the whole family would gather around a mat while Duncan doled out his latest frozen concoction. He even got into experimenting: trying mangoes from different trees and pineapples from different patches to try and figure out which ones made the best smoothie. The best part, of course, was that he did all the work involved in smoothie production (procuring pineapples and mangoes, freezing them, blending them, cleaning the blender, the list just goes on and on) and I got to reap all the benefits as I'd been the one to front the thirty bucks for a blender. Isn't capitalism brilliant?
Wednesday, McKenzie and I headed up to Mindi's newly vacated house to clean and see if there was anything worth taking. Unfortunately, Mindi had done a pretty good job of removing anything that might have been useful, including, to our chagrin, the electric fan and the seven leftover beers from our Mexican party the previous weekend. Given the mysterious circumstances surrounding Mindi's departure, we began to speculate wildly as to why she'd left without telling us and how she'd been able to pack everything up that weekend without any of us noticing. Our imaginations ran wild with theories of her feeling from loan sharks, participating in a complicated con, and, finally, being accomplice to a murder. At this point, we began to creep ourselves out and everything in the house became a potential clue in a homicide case. Baking soda spilled on the floor became cocaine, puddles of water were regarded with suspicion, and both of us literally jumped in surprise when my cell phone went off indicating the arrival of a text. I opened it, fully expecting it to contain a cryptic messages along the lines of “check under the stairs,” but it was just Laura seeking confirmation of the news that Mindi had left. At this point, McKenzie and I decided that we were getting a little jumpy and we headed down to a nakamal for some kava in order to unwind.
Saturday, McKenzie was invited by one of her friends in Litz Litz to chew kava and asked me along for moral support. I'd read about chewed kava on Wikipedia before coming to Vanuatu. The Wikipedia article had made it seem like the standard method of preparing kava in the country and explained that the chewing was usually done by pre-pubescent boys. Kava comes out of the ground as a large root, about the size and shape of an adult octopus. In order to prepare the drink, the root has to be chopped into small pieces and ground up. Kava preparation methods differ in the chosen technique for grinding the kava. In the chewing technique, as you might imagine, the kava is ground by chewing it in one's mouth. However, chewed kava is something of a rarity, only really common on the island of Tanna in the south of the country and, contrary to the Wikipedia article, grown men and women are usually permitted to chew kava as well, a good thing because pre-pubescent boys can sometimes be hard to come by. On Malekula, the standard grinding method is running the kava chunks through a meat grinder. This is probably the fastest method, and the easiest when large amounts of kava need to be prepared (like if you're selling it at a nakamal). The downside is that kava from a grinder is supposed to be the worst tasting and the most likely to make you sick to your stomach if you drink too much of it. Other common grinding techniques include stone grinding and ramming (where the kava is placed in a tube and rammed into a pulp with wooden rods). Everyone who's had chewed kava, however, swears that it is by far the smoothest and easiest on the belly, thus I was excited to finally have a chance to try it out. I was under the impression that McKenzie's friend would be doing the actual chewing for us, but when we arrived at the appointed location, we found a collection of cut kava chunks laid out on an empty rice bag, waiting to be ground. A young Ni-Van woman took charge as our instructor. “So, you take the kava,” she explained, grabbing a chunk of kava, “and chew it until it's soft, and then spit it out into your bowl. Be careful not to swallow it or you might throw up.” To me, that didn't sound like a promising start. McKenzie and I each took hold of a piece of kava and stared at it skeptically. I sniffed mine. It smelled suspiciously like the kava drink, but I told myself that it probably didn't taste nearly as bad, since there are people in the world who prepare kava this way nightly. With that comforting thought in mind, I gamely shoved the piece of kava into my mouth. It was... awful. Drinking kava is, of course, awful, which is why one drinks it as quickly as possible to minimize the time spent actually tasting it. Chewing kava is kind of like taking a mouthful of kava and swishing it around for a while like it was Listerine. If you think this sounds bad, believe me, it's actually, much, much, worse than you're imagining. I made a face usually reserved for people suddenly faced with the loss of all their loved ones, worldly possessions, hopes, dreams, pride and dignity. I quickly masticated the kava in my mouth and spit it into a glass bowl, where I discovered that, actually, the most difficult part of the whole procedure was suppressing the gag reflex whilst disgorging one's chewed kava so as not to vomit all over the place. I surveyed the large pile of kava still waiting to be chewed and a deep sense of despondency began to settle in. I looked over at McKenzie and saw, by the look on her face, that similar emotions were going through her head. I still don't know how we did it, but eventually the pile of un-chewed kava in front of us began to diminish, and finally disappear. I was just about to begin celebrating the end of a decidedly awful experience when our Ni-Van instructor once again caught our attention and explained “Now, what you have to do is shape your chewed kava into little balls and chew it again.” I think I honestly almost cried. In the end, couldn't tell whether or not chewed kava goes down smoother than kava put through a meat grinder. By the time we finished chewing our kava for the second time, added water, squeezed out the juice, and strained it, I was so glad for the experience to be over that my bowl of kava tasted like heaven. However, I think this was entirely due to the fact that the thirty minutes leading up to the final experience of drinking had been pure hell. I decided to mark down “chewing kava” on my list of things to never, ever do again.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Life in the Ring of Fire Part 59: Meet the Newbies
This week's Tautu language word is “nik.” It means “you.”
While Laura and I were in the Maskelynes, the new group of Peace Corps volunteers, who'd arrived in Vanuatu back in September and been in training, went on wokaboat (walkabout), a week-long visit to the villages where they'd be spending their next two years. We were slated to get two new volunteers in Malekula, one in Norsup and one in Wowo, a village in the north near Laura. I was somewhat concerned about the volunteer to be placed in Norsup, because Norsup is only about a fifteen minute walk from me, and I'd actually been informed the previous week that, while they'd be working in Norsup, they'd actually be living in Tautu. Having been the only white person in Tautu for almost a year, I'd become somewhat territorial and was not really sure how to respond to the information that I'd now be sharing my site with someone. Laura and I were somewhat disappointed at not having been at the airport to greet the new arrivals, so Sunday afternoon we called McKenzie from the Maskelynes to get the scoop.
“They seem pretty cool,” McKenzie informed us.
“That's not very helpful,” I said.
“Hey, what do except,” she replied “I'm sitting in the same room as them.”
“Well, go outside,” I suggested.
“Ah, Jesus, really?”
“Come on, this is important. These people are our future.”
“Fine. Hold on.”
--pause--
“Right,” McKenzie said, finally, “I think we're going to be OK.”
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Marie claims that margaritas are her favorite drink,” she continued.
“Well, that's promising,” I agreed.
“And Karen's a little older, but she seems like she's still down for partying. She's the one going to Norsup.”
“Alight,” I said.
“Also, they both claim that they can cook.”
“OK. Good. That's good.”
“Yeah. Can I go back inside now?”
We spent Sunday night in Lemap, and hoped that the river had gone down enough over the weekend to allow a truck to take us up to Lakatoro the following day. Jack's host family drives the trucks that run between Lemap and Lakatoro and Jack's host brother told us he'd be by Jack's house to pick us up at 4:30am Monday morning. This being Vanuatu, we naturally assumed that 4:30 meant more like 6 or 7, so we were pretty shocked when the truck actually showed up on schedule. Standing in the back of a pickup as it sped its way north to Lakatoro through the morning dimness, I experienced a sensation I hadn't felt for a long time: cold. I was actually, legitimately cold. Not kind of cold, or passingly cold, but, with the crisp morning air slicing its way through my t-shirt, actually cold. I wasn't entirely sure how to respond to this, so I decided to just roll with it and that it would probably go away in half an hour or so. Speculations began amongst our fellow passengers as we neared the river as to whether or not it would be passable. Word was the they'd tied to go up on Sunday but had had to turn back, which didn't bode particularly well. About an hour and a half into the ride, I saw what all the fuss was about, the river was pretty formidable. Well, OK, not really formidable, I mean we're not exactly talking about the Mississippi (and yes, I did sing the M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i song when I wrote that. And now you are too). The river was about fifty meters wide and maybe two feet deep. Not exactly a journey-ending obstacle for the traveler on foot, but I sure wouldn't have been comfortable driving a truck through it. The driver got out and stumped up and down the river a few times, frowning and muttering periodically. “We're good,” he announced at last. It was no longer a mystery as to why trucks rarely last longer than couple years on Malekula. We forded the river successfully (no oxen or party members lost... What's that a reference to? Anyone?), although the truck did seem on the verge of being torqued over in the middle of the river.
“They should building a bridge already,” Laura said.
“Yeah,” I concurred.
We both agreed that we would be angry about the lack of a bridge for the remainder of our service. I mean, look, we're not talking about the Golden Gate here people. All you need is your standard length of stone/metal/wood spanning a void of the variety that could have been built by, for example, the Romans over two thousand years ago. In the end, however, we did make it back to Lakatoro that morning and got to meet the two new volunteers before they headed off to their respective sites. They did, indeed, seem “pretty cool.”
On Tuesday I got giardia. Well, actually, I don't know what the incubation period for giardia is, so I might have contracted it sometime before, but on Tuesday symptoms of giardia became apparent. I was actually pretty stoked. Up until that point I hadn't contracted any kind of bizarre disease/parasite, and I was a little upset that I would be going back to the US in December and would be forced to tell friends and family that the most exotic aliment I'd wrestled with while in Vanuatu was the common cold. Giardia is an intestinal parasite transmitted through contaminated drinking water. Those of you outdoors-y types are no doubt familiar with giardia, as it is a common concern when camping, hiking, or backpacking. You know how when you eat a really big, greasy meal from some dive diner and a little while later your stomach informs you that it is not terribly pleased with you at the moment and you spend the next hour or so on the john? Having giardia is kind of like that, except it just doesn't go away. All in all, it's a pretty good disease to contract because it sounds really hardcore to say that you've had it, but having it is really more of an annoyance than anything else. Also, to treat it, you just take four pills all at once and, a few hours later, magically you're better. They really need to work on more medicines like that.
On Friday we put on a party for our newbies. They both came into Lakatoro on Friday and reported to have had enjoyable walkabout experiences, which was good because we were counting on them committing to two years here, as we're in desperate need of new volunteers to replenish our diminishing numbers. We decided to go with a Mexican night theme in celebration of the fact that one of our local stores, The Consumer, had started carrying tequila (well, it's not ACTUALLY tequila because it's not made with 100% agave, but it does have “Tequila” written on the bottle and says “Hecho en Mexico,” which is about as much authenticity as you can hope for around these parts). This, combined with ice from Mindi's freezer and the blender I purchased in Australia allowed us, for the first time, to make frozen margaritas in Vanuatu (suggested listening: “Margaritaville” by Jimmy Buffett), which was simply amazing. We also had chips and salsa which, in Vanuatu, requires a three hour long process to prepare. First, you have to make tortillas then cut and fry them to make chips. Then you have to chop tomatoes, onions, peppers, garlic, and squeeze limes for the salsa and either mash it all together or throw it in the blender. I find it hard to believe now that chips and salsa are given away, free of charge, at most Mexican restaurants. We followed this up with fajitas and tacos which, due to the fact that they were prepared after most of the margaritas had been drunk, were a little haphazardly put together. All and all though, fun times were had by all and we closed the week optimistic about our new blood.
This week's Tautu language word is “nik.” It means “you.”
While Laura and I were in the Maskelynes, the new group of Peace Corps volunteers, who'd arrived in Vanuatu back in September and been in training, went on wokaboat (walkabout), a week-long visit to the villages where they'd be spending their next two years. We were slated to get two new volunteers in Malekula, one in Norsup and one in Wowo, a village in the north near Laura. I was somewhat concerned about the volunteer to be placed in Norsup, because Norsup is only about a fifteen minute walk from me, and I'd actually been informed the previous week that, while they'd be working in Norsup, they'd actually be living in Tautu. Having been the only white person in Tautu for almost a year, I'd become somewhat territorial and was not really sure how to respond to the information that I'd now be sharing my site with someone. Laura and I were somewhat disappointed at not having been at the airport to greet the new arrivals, so Sunday afternoon we called McKenzie from the Maskelynes to get the scoop.
“They seem pretty cool,” McKenzie informed us.
“That's not very helpful,” I said.
“Hey, what do except,” she replied “I'm sitting in the same room as them.”
“Well, go outside,” I suggested.
“Ah, Jesus, really?”
“Come on, this is important. These people are our future.”
“Fine. Hold on.”
--pause--
“Right,” McKenzie said, finally, “I think we're going to be OK.”
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Marie claims that margaritas are her favorite drink,” she continued.
“Well, that's promising,” I agreed.
“And Karen's a little older, but she seems like she's still down for partying. She's the one going to Norsup.”
“Alight,” I said.
“Also, they both claim that they can cook.”
“OK. Good. That's good.”
“Yeah. Can I go back inside now?”
We spent Sunday night in Lemap, and hoped that the river had gone down enough over the weekend to allow a truck to take us up to Lakatoro the following day. Jack's host family drives the trucks that run between Lemap and Lakatoro and Jack's host brother told us he'd be by Jack's house to pick us up at 4:30am Monday morning. This being Vanuatu, we naturally assumed that 4:30 meant more like 6 or 7, so we were pretty shocked when the truck actually showed up on schedule. Standing in the back of a pickup as it sped its way north to Lakatoro through the morning dimness, I experienced a sensation I hadn't felt for a long time: cold. I was actually, legitimately cold. Not kind of cold, or passingly cold, but, with the crisp morning air slicing its way through my t-shirt, actually cold. I wasn't entirely sure how to respond to this, so I decided to just roll with it and that it would probably go away in half an hour or so. Speculations began amongst our fellow passengers as we neared the river as to whether or not it would be passable. Word was the they'd tied to go up on Sunday but had had to turn back, which didn't bode particularly well. About an hour and a half into the ride, I saw what all the fuss was about, the river was pretty formidable. Well, OK, not really formidable, I mean we're not exactly talking about the Mississippi (and yes, I did sing the M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i song when I wrote that. And now you are too). The river was about fifty meters wide and maybe two feet deep. Not exactly a journey-ending obstacle for the traveler on foot, but I sure wouldn't have been comfortable driving a truck through it. The driver got out and stumped up and down the river a few times, frowning and muttering periodically. “We're good,” he announced at last. It was no longer a mystery as to why trucks rarely last longer than couple years on Malekula. We forded the river successfully (no oxen or party members lost... What's that a reference to? Anyone?), although the truck did seem on the verge of being torqued over in the middle of the river.
“They should building a bridge already,” Laura said.
“Yeah,” I concurred.
We both agreed that we would be angry about the lack of a bridge for the remainder of our service. I mean, look, we're not talking about the Golden Gate here people. All you need is your standard length of stone/metal/wood spanning a void of the variety that could have been built by, for example, the Romans over two thousand years ago. In the end, however, we did make it back to Lakatoro that morning and got to meet the two new volunteers before they headed off to their respective sites. They did, indeed, seem “pretty cool.”
On Tuesday I got giardia. Well, actually, I don't know what the incubation period for giardia is, so I might have contracted it sometime before, but on Tuesday symptoms of giardia became apparent. I was actually pretty stoked. Up until that point I hadn't contracted any kind of bizarre disease/parasite, and I was a little upset that I would be going back to the US in December and would be forced to tell friends and family that the most exotic aliment I'd wrestled with while in Vanuatu was the common cold. Giardia is an intestinal parasite transmitted through contaminated drinking water. Those of you outdoors-y types are no doubt familiar with giardia, as it is a common concern when camping, hiking, or backpacking. You know how when you eat a really big, greasy meal from some dive diner and a little while later your stomach informs you that it is not terribly pleased with you at the moment and you spend the next hour or so on the john? Having giardia is kind of like that, except it just doesn't go away. All in all, it's a pretty good disease to contract because it sounds really hardcore to say that you've had it, but having it is really more of an annoyance than anything else. Also, to treat it, you just take four pills all at once and, a few hours later, magically you're better. They really need to work on more medicines like that.
On Friday we put on a party for our newbies. They both came into Lakatoro on Friday and reported to have had enjoyable walkabout experiences, which was good because we were counting on them committing to two years here, as we're in desperate need of new volunteers to replenish our diminishing numbers. We decided to go with a Mexican night theme in celebration of the fact that one of our local stores, The Consumer, had started carrying tequila (well, it's not ACTUALLY tequila because it's not made with 100% agave, but it does have “Tequila” written on the bottle and says “Hecho en Mexico,” which is about as much authenticity as you can hope for around these parts). This, combined with ice from Mindi's freezer and the blender I purchased in Australia allowed us, for the first time, to make frozen margaritas in Vanuatu (suggested listening: “Margaritaville” by Jimmy Buffett), which was simply amazing. We also had chips and salsa which, in Vanuatu, requires a three hour long process to prepare. First, you have to make tortillas then cut and fry them to make chips. Then you have to chop tomatoes, onions, peppers, garlic, and squeeze limes for the salsa and either mash it all together or throw it in the blender. I find it hard to believe now that chips and salsa are given away, free of charge, at most Mexican restaurants. We followed this up with fajitas and tacos which, due to the fact that they were prepared after most of the margaritas had been drunk, were a little haphazardly put together. All and all though, fun times were had by all and we closed the week optimistic about our new blood.
Life in the Ring of Fire Part 58: Dante's Inferno Revisited
This week's Tautu language word is “bemblen.” It means “a little bit.”
One of my favorite things about Vanuatu is the strange meld of modern technology and western culture with 3000 year old customs, technologies, and traditions. For example, a hut made of woven bamboo and natangora thatch, building materials that have been used in basically the same way for thousands of years, housing a five foot long sub woofer and a speaker setup that would be the envy of a hip-hop club in California. Or a picture of the vice President, done up in an expensive business suit, using a wooden club to beat a pig to death (better watch the pig's blood splatter on that one). Or the guy that boards the plane to Vila with a live chicken and bow and arrow as carry-on. Or the group in Southwest Bay that, in response to an archeologist's find suggesting that Ni-Vanuatu were originally from Taiwan, wrote a letter in to the newspaper politely explaining that, while some Ni-Vanuatu may have indeed come from Taiwan, they were in fact begotten by Kabat, the rock-god (rock in the geologic sense, not the musical genre, although that would actually be a lot funnier), and inviting the archaeologist to come to Southwest Bay so that he might see for himself the truth of this. Or the representatives to the national council of chiefs that showed up to the national assembly wearing only penis sheathes. Or, my personal favorite, the guy who was accused, charged, tried in court, convicted and imprisoned for making it rain during a festival.
I had my own such moment on Wednesday evening when I got a call from my host-uncle asking if I could come to Norsup to help him with a computer issue. My host uncle, Jonasi, is what passes for a computer geek in Vanuatu, meaning that he understands that computers require electricity to operate (in all seriousness, some people can not quite grasp this concept. I'm involved in a computer project that's selling refurbished computers from the US to people and organizations here in Vanuatu for a very low price, and I continually get orders from people from remote villages in the middle of the bush who I know have no electricity to speak of, and I'm always having to explain that the computer that they're purchasing will not work unless hooked up to a generator. What's even better though is the people who tell me that they understand their computer won't be able to be turned on, they just want it as a decoration). Actually, Jonasi is pretty computer savvy, especially considering Tautu has only had electricity for about five years. He can take apart and reassemble computers, for example, and understands what an operating system is and how to install one, both fairly advanced skills, even in the US. At any rate, he makes a bit of money fixing computers for people who, for some reason, happen to have them (usually the reason is to play solitaire). He's taken to calling me whenever he gets stumped, however, and I usually go help him out because Vanuatu is almost entirely a favor-based economy and I've found that generally the more people that feel like they owe me favors, the easier it is to get things done. I rode up to Norsup and ducked inside a little concrete and tin shack and felt like I'd just walked into some gear-head's basement in the US. Every available surface was covered in computer parts. There were a couple tables covered with computers in various stages of assembly, some running with their cases open and IDE cables snaking out of them to attach to hard drives and CD drives sitting on stacks of newspapers. The floor was covered with cables, circuit boards and unused drives. I was stunned. I'd never felt more at home anywhere else in Vanuatu. I was introduced to the owner for the computer shack, who'd hired Jonasi to help him resolve some computer issues. He explained to me that the building I was in was actually his internet cafe which, due to some technical difficulties, had not had internet access for many months. Fortunately, internet cafes in Vanuatu generally don't make their money by providing internet access, but rather by copying and selling bootleg DVDs, printing documents, fliers, and digital photos, and uploading new ring tones to people's cell phones. He and Jonasi were trying to install Windows on a new hard drive, but were having some difficulties. The problem ended up being fairly simple, and I fixed it quickly, but I stayed around to supervise the install because it was mentioned that kava would probably be involved. About twenty feet outside the internet cafe is a bamboo and natangora nakamal, and once they finished making their kava, the three of us had a few shells while we waited for the install to finish. A woman from Norsup came by a little after the nakamal opened and dropped off a covered tray of food to be sold along with the kava. I watched as the cloth covering the dish was removed to reveal about fifteen enormous lobsters. “How much are those?” I asked in disbelief. “Hundred vatu for one,” replied the woman. About a dollar. I bought two. Holding a lobster in each hand, and enjoying the effects of kava, I followed Jonasi and the internet cafe owner back inside his computer shack and the three of us watched the install progress. Since we were surrounded by so many computer parts, and since were probably the three most knowledgeable people on the island about computers, it was inevitable that we started talking shop. And so there I was, drinking a traditional tribal beverage derived from the root of a pepper plant out of a coconut shell, munching on fresh-caught lobster, and discussing motherboards, BIOS settings, boot orders, operating systems, LiveCDs, and how to circumvent activation codes. It was a strange night.
Thursday, Laura and I were planning on heading down to Lemap, on the southern tip of the island, and then chartering a speedboat to go to the Maskelynes, a group of islands off the southern coast of Malekula known for their excellent snorkeling. A volunteer stationed in the Maskelynes, Ben, was finishing his service and so was having a going away party. However, it had rained heavily the previous night and I was skeptical that we'd be able to get a truck down. There's a large river about an hour's drive south of Lakatoro that's shallow enough for a truck to drive through when the weather's been dry, but after any kind of significant rain, it becomes impassable (keep in mind that Vanuatu gets A LOT of rain, so the river is impassable for about six months out of the year, effectively cutting Malekula in half. Since the commercial center is in Lakatoro, anyone from the southern half of the island who wants to conduct business – sell copra, kava, cocoa, etc, is unable to do so for half the year. Although it's trendy now among international donors to provide millions of dollars in funding for things like bio fuels, they're hesitant to invest the ten grand or so it would take to build a decent bridge across the river which, although not exactly a “sustainable” project, would be a big step towards increasing the amount of revenue coming out of the island). Sure enough, after my class on Thursday Laura showed up at the school to inform me that none of the trucks from Lemap had been able to cross the river. Then a mischievous smile lit up her face as she told me that we would be taking the Moiaka the Lemap. Yes, the Moiaka, the hell-boat responsible for the worst 48 hours of my life spent in route to Vila several months before. “You've got to be freaking kidding me,” I said.
It actually wasn't nearly as bad as before. We knew what we were in for and thus could prepare accordingly. We packed plenty of snacks, so as not to be reliant on the measly plates of rice we knew the ship would be providing. I also made sure to bring my fleece, knowing it would be cold on the boat once the sun went down. Most importantly, however, we brought a couple bottles of wine to alleviate what we knew would be a soul-crushingly boring 12 hour start-and-stop journey down the coast of Malekula. Also, they'd cleaned the bathroom since we were last on the ship, which was a definite plus. I'll re-iterate: I still don't know how ships can make any money. They've got to be using more money on fuel burned by stopping and idling every thirty feet than they're taking in to transport a single watermelon to Vila. A few glasses of wine later, however, and I decided that such time and fuel budgeting problems were quite happily somebody else's, and I actually kind of enjoyed the journey. We arrived in Lemap around midnight and made our way to Jack's (a volunteer from my group based in Lemap) house. Surprisingly, he was still awake and got out mattresses for us to sleep on. After a short session of complaining about how difficult it is to teach Ni-Van kids, we all went to sleep.
The next day as we were waiting for the boat to go the Maskelynes, we wandered around Lemap. Lemap was a French controlled village which means that it's attractively laid out and not covered with garbage (not sure how the French pulled it off, but, even twenty years after leaving, all the areas that were controlled by them are still kept immaculately clean). Lemap is also known for being overcast and getting a lot of rain, which was actually awesome because it meant it was about ten degrees cooler than Lakatoro, which had become unbearably hot. I was even almost cold at night. Probably the most distinctive fact about Lemap, however, is that it's completely covered with pigs. There are pigs everywhere. Literally, everywhere. I probably tripped over pigs three or four times while walking around. Despite their lousy reputation, pigs are probably the most pleasant animal to live in close quarters with. Unlike their wild brethren, domesticated pigs are very friendly and quite harmless. They don't bark insanely like dogs, or crow at odd hours of the night like roosters, or try to peck you to death like hens, or leave giant piles of poop all over the place like cows. Plus, they eat almost anything and so are great for keeping a place nice and clean. Also, they're probably the most delicious animal. I'm seriously considering taking up pig farming after Peace Corps. Pigs are awesome. At any rate, Jack ordered us a pig to take over to the Maskelynes, which was delivered to us a few hours later, tied up in a rice sack. We met up with Julie, Chris, and Noah, volunteers form the south also heading down for the party. While motoring along in the speedboat, Jack let out a fishing line and, about five minutes later, was wrestling with a large tuna. After a bit of a struggle, he hauled it into the boat and our Ni-Van captain drove a pocket knife into its brain. It was probably about two and a half to three feet long and looked like it would make excellent sushi. We arrived in the Maskelynes in the late afternoon and lounged around until evening, when the festivities were set to begin. Although not that much to look at, the small island we were on did boast an excellent climate: a strong breeze worked its way through the village the whole time we were there and kept the temperature decidedly pleasant.
That night, the seven of us volunteers and Ben's village gathered around a trash can full of kava, which disappeared surprisingly quickly. We listened to a number of speeches given by various people in the village while eating lap-lap and then headed of sleep. The next day, I was fairly devastated to discover that the tuna we'd caught was an albacore, and thus wouldn't make good sushi. Thus, we surrendered it to Ben's host family to put in a curry. I was expecting mediocre results, because, when Ni-Vans make soup, they generally start with a bland, flavorless broth, add some small bits of overcooked meat or fish and then top it off with some slimy island cabbage served on a disproportionately large mountain of rice. However, I was surprised to find that Ben's host family were particularly good cooks and we were presented with steaming, reasonable portions of rice topped with satisfyingly large hunks of tuna covered in a nice curry sauce. It was very good. After lunch, we piled into a fiberglass canoe to check out the snorkeling. The Lonely Planet, the only guidebook that covers Vanuatu, raves about the snorkeling in the Maskelynes. I guess we should have anticipated that a lot of it was hype, as it also talks up, for example, the excellent cuisine options in Lakatoro (where there are exactly zero restaurants). It actually seemed like it might have once been a pretty spectacular sight, but the sad fact was that about half of their reef was dead and the rest was dying. I'm not a marine biologist, so I don't know what's generally responsible for killing coral. They don't exactly get a lot of large boat traffic in the Maskelynes, so pollution doesn't really seem particularly likely, although if the village was dumping their waste into the ocean from shore, I guess that might do the trick. Or maybe climate change is responsible, or some sort of coral disease (is there such a thing?), or maybe it was all the crown-of-thorns that I noticed, which I think kill coral, I don't know. Whatever the reason, the brilliant blues, greens, pinks, and yellows of the reef were too often interrupted by large patches of lifeless gray. I wondered how long it had taken for that much of the reef to die and how long it would be until the rest of the reef went with it.
We returned to shore to see our pig being butchered and dressed by Ben's host family in preparation for dinner. After the pig was cleaned and de-furred, Chris miraculously produced a bottle of Stubb's BBQ rub which he'd brought back from the States a few months before. I was particularly shocked by this because Chris isn't even from Texas. I guess it's possible, although unlikely, for people from other states of have good taste in BBQ as well. I was elected the resident meat expert and given task of seasoning the meat for roasting. I instructed Ben's host brother to make some lacerations in the pig's skin to expose the meat, and into these I rubbed the spice mixture. I wasn't entirely sure the rub would take, as I'd never had to season a whole pig (skin and all) before. When this was done, Ben's family got a fire going and cut wood to fashion a spit. They dug two y-shaped branches into the ground on either side of the fire, drove a long stick through the pig, and rested it in the nooks of the y-branches to cook. It turned out quite good (of course it did, pigs are awesome, see above), with the rub actually adding a nice touch to the meat. Chris also produced a tube of spicy mustard, which we applied liberally. In a country where meat is considered a delicacy, not a routine part of a meal, the pleasure of stuffing oneself with nothing but meat is truly unbeatable. I went to sleep happy that night.
This week's Tautu language word is “bemblen.” It means “a little bit.”
One of my favorite things about Vanuatu is the strange meld of modern technology and western culture with 3000 year old customs, technologies, and traditions. For example, a hut made of woven bamboo and natangora thatch, building materials that have been used in basically the same way for thousands of years, housing a five foot long sub woofer and a speaker setup that would be the envy of a hip-hop club in California. Or a picture of the vice President, done up in an expensive business suit, using a wooden club to beat a pig to death (better watch the pig's blood splatter on that one). Or the guy that boards the plane to Vila with a live chicken and bow and arrow as carry-on. Or the group in Southwest Bay that, in response to an archeologist's find suggesting that Ni-Vanuatu were originally from Taiwan, wrote a letter in to the newspaper politely explaining that, while some Ni-Vanuatu may have indeed come from Taiwan, they were in fact begotten by Kabat, the rock-god (rock in the geologic sense, not the musical genre, although that would actually be a lot funnier), and inviting the archaeologist to come to Southwest Bay so that he might see for himself the truth of this. Or the representatives to the national council of chiefs that showed up to the national assembly wearing only penis sheathes. Or, my personal favorite, the guy who was accused, charged, tried in court, convicted and imprisoned for making it rain during a festival.
I had my own such moment on Wednesday evening when I got a call from my host-uncle asking if I could come to Norsup to help him with a computer issue. My host uncle, Jonasi, is what passes for a computer geek in Vanuatu, meaning that he understands that computers require electricity to operate (in all seriousness, some people can not quite grasp this concept. I'm involved in a computer project that's selling refurbished computers from the US to people and organizations here in Vanuatu for a very low price, and I continually get orders from people from remote villages in the middle of the bush who I know have no electricity to speak of, and I'm always having to explain that the computer that they're purchasing will not work unless hooked up to a generator. What's even better though is the people who tell me that they understand their computer won't be able to be turned on, they just want it as a decoration). Actually, Jonasi is pretty computer savvy, especially considering Tautu has only had electricity for about five years. He can take apart and reassemble computers, for example, and understands what an operating system is and how to install one, both fairly advanced skills, even in the US. At any rate, he makes a bit of money fixing computers for people who, for some reason, happen to have them (usually the reason is to play solitaire). He's taken to calling me whenever he gets stumped, however, and I usually go help him out because Vanuatu is almost entirely a favor-based economy and I've found that generally the more people that feel like they owe me favors, the easier it is to get things done. I rode up to Norsup and ducked inside a little concrete and tin shack and felt like I'd just walked into some gear-head's basement in the US. Every available surface was covered in computer parts. There were a couple tables covered with computers in various stages of assembly, some running with their cases open and IDE cables snaking out of them to attach to hard drives and CD drives sitting on stacks of newspapers. The floor was covered with cables, circuit boards and unused drives. I was stunned. I'd never felt more at home anywhere else in Vanuatu. I was introduced to the owner for the computer shack, who'd hired Jonasi to help him resolve some computer issues. He explained to me that the building I was in was actually his internet cafe which, due to some technical difficulties, had not had internet access for many months. Fortunately, internet cafes in Vanuatu generally don't make their money by providing internet access, but rather by copying and selling bootleg DVDs, printing documents, fliers, and digital photos, and uploading new ring tones to people's cell phones. He and Jonasi were trying to install Windows on a new hard drive, but were having some difficulties. The problem ended up being fairly simple, and I fixed it quickly, but I stayed around to supervise the install because it was mentioned that kava would probably be involved. About twenty feet outside the internet cafe is a bamboo and natangora nakamal, and once they finished making their kava, the three of us had a few shells while we waited for the install to finish. A woman from Norsup came by a little after the nakamal opened and dropped off a covered tray of food to be sold along with the kava. I watched as the cloth covering the dish was removed to reveal about fifteen enormous lobsters. “How much are those?” I asked in disbelief. “Hundred vatu for one,” replied the woman. About a dollar. I bought two. Holding a lobster in each hand, and enjoying the effects of kava, I followed Jonasi and the internet cafe owner back inside his computer shack and the three of us watched the install progress. Since we were surrounded by so many computer parts, and since were probably the three most knowledgeable people on the island about computers, it was inevitable that we started talking shop. And so there I was, drinking a traditional tribal beverage derived from the root of a pepper plant out of a coconut shell, munching on fresh-caught lobster, and discussing motherboards, BIOS settings, boot orders, operating systems, LiveCDs, and how to circumvent activation codes. It was a strange night.
Thursday, Laura and I were planning on heading down to Lemap, on the southern tip of the island, and then chartering a speedboat to go to the Maskelynes, a group of islands off the southern coast of Malekula known for their excellent snorkeling. A volunteer stationed in the Maskelynes, Ben, was finishing his service and so was having a going away party. However, it had rained heavily the previous night and I was skeptical that we'd be able to get a truck down. There's a large river about an hour's drive south of Lakatoro that's shallow enough for a truck to drive through when the weather's been dry, but after any kind of significant rain, it becomes impassable (keep in mind that Vanuatu gets A LOT of rain, so the river is impassable for about six months out of the year, effectively cutting Malekula in half. Since the commercial center is in Lakatoro, anyone from the southern half of the island who wants to conduct business – sell copra, kava, cocoa, etc, is unable to do so for half the year. Although it's trendy now among international donors to provide millions of dollars in funding for things like bio fuels, they're hesitant to invest the ten grand or so it would take to build a decent bridge across the river which, although not exactly a “sustainable” project, would be a big step towards increasing the amount of revenue coming out of the island). Sure enough, after my class on Thursday Laura showed up at the school to inform me that none of the trucks from Lemap had been able to cross the river. Then a mischievous smile lit up her face as she told me that we would be taking the Moiaka the Lemap. Yes, the Moiaka, the hell-boat responsible for the worst 48 hours of my life spent in route to Vila several months before. “You've got to be freaking kidding me,” I said.
It actually wasn't nearly as bad as before. We knew what we were in for and thus could prepare accordingly. We packed plenty of snacks, so as not to be reliant on the measly plates of rice we knew the ship would be providing. I also made sure to bring my fleece, knowing it would be cold on the boat once the sun went down. Most importantly, however, we brought a couple bottles of wine to alleviate what we knew would be a soul-crushingly boring 12 hour start-and-stop journey down the coast of Malekula. Also, they'd cleaned the bathroom since we were last on the ship, which was a definite plus. I'll re-iterate: I still don't know how ships can make any money. They've got to be using more money on fuel burned by stopping and idling every thirty feet than they're taking in to transport a single watermelon to Vila. A few glasses of wine later, however, and I decided that such time and fuel budgeting problems were quite happily somebody else's, and I actually kind of enjoyed the journey. We arrived in Lemap around midnight and made our way to Jack's (a volunteer from my group based in Lemap) house. Surprisingly, he was still awake and got out mattresses for us to sleep on. After a short session of complaining about how difficult it is to teach Ni-Van kids, we all went to sleep.
The next day as we were waiting for the boat to go the Maskelynes, we wandered around Lemap. Lemap was a French controlled village which means that it's attractively laid out and not covered with garbage (not sure how the French pulled it off, but, even twenty years after leaving, all the areas that were controlled by them are still kept immaculately clean). Lemap is also known for being overcast and getting a lot of rain, which was actually awesome because it meant it was about ten degrees cooler than Lakatoro, which had become unbearably hot. I was even almost cold at night. Probably the most distinctive fact about Lemap, however, is that it's completely covered with pigs. There are pigs everywhere. Literally, everywhere. I probably tripped over pigs three or four times while walking around. Despite their lousy reputation, pigs are probably the most pleasant animal to live in close quarters with. Unlike their wild brethren, domesticated pigs are very friendly and quite harmless. They don't bark insanely like dogs, or crow at odd hours of the night like roosters, or try to peck you to death like hens, or leave giant piles of poop all over the place like cows. Plus, they eat almost anything and so are great for keeping a place nice and clean. Also, they're probably the most delicious animal. I'm seriously considering taking up pig farming after Peace Corps. Pigs are awesome. At any rate, Jack ordered us a pig to take over to the Maskelynes, which was delivered to us a few hours later, tied up in a rice sack. We met up with Julie, Chris, and Noah, volunteers form the south also heading down for the party. While motoring along in the speedboat, Jack let out a fishing line and, about five minutes later, was wrestling with a large tuna. After a bit of a struggle, he hauled it into the boat and our Ni-Van captain drove a pocket knife into its brain. It was probably about two and a half to three feet long and looked like it would make excellent sushi. We arrived in the Maskelynes in the late afternoon and lounged around until evening, when the festivities were set to begin. Although not that much to look at, the small island we were on did boast an excellent climate: a strong breeze worked its way through the village the whole time we were there and kept the temperature decidedly pleasant.
That night, the seven of us volunteers and Ben's village gathered around a trash can full of kava, which disappeared surprisingly quickly. We listened to a number of speeches given by various people in the village while eating lap-lap and then headed of sleep. The next day, I was fairly devastated to discover that the tuna we'd caught was an albacore, and thus wouldn't make good sushi. Thus, we surrendered it to Ben's host family to put in a curry. I was expecting mediocre results, because, when Ni-Vans make soup, they generally start with a bland, flavorless broth, add some small bits of overcooked meat or fish and then top it off with some slimy island cabbage served on a disproportionately large mountain of rice. However, I was surprised to find that Ben's host family were particularly good cooks and we were presented with steaming, reasonable portions of rice topped with satisfyingly large hunks of tuna covered in a nice curry sauce. It was very good. After lunch, we piled into a fiberglass canoe to check out the snorkeling. The Lonely Planet, the only guidebook that covers Vanuatu, raves about the snorkeling in the Maskelynes. I guess we should have anticipated that a lot of it was hype, as it also talks up, for example, the excellent cuisine options in Lakatoro (where there are exactly zero restaurants). It actually seemed like it might have once been a pretty spectacular sight, but the sad fact was that about half of their reef was dead and the rest was dying. I'm not a marine biologist, so I don't know what's generally responsible for killing coral. They don't exactly get a lot of large boat traffic in the Maskelynes, so pollution doesn't really seem particularly likely, although if the village was dumping their waste into the ocean from shore, I guess that might do the trick. Or maybe climate change is responsible, or some sort of coral disease (is there such a thing?), or maybe it was all the crown-of-thorns that I noticed, which I think kill coral, I don't know. Whatever the reason, the brilliant blues, greens, pinks, and yellows of the reef were too often interrupted by large patches of lifeless gray. I wondered how long it had taken for that much of the reef to die and how long it would be until the rest of the reef went with it.
We returned to shore to see our pig being butchered and dressed by Ben's host family in preparation for dinner. After the pig was cleaned and de-furred, Chris miraculously produced a bottle of Stubb's BBQ rub which he'd brought back from the States a few months before. I was particularly shocked by this because Chris isn't even from Texas. I guess it's possible, although unlikely, for people from other states of have good taste in BBQ as well. I was elected the resident meat expert and given task of seasoning the meat for roasting. I instructed Ben's host brother to make some lacerations in the pig's skin to expose the meat, and into these I rubbed the spice mixture. I wasn't entirely sure the rub would take, as I'd never had to season a whole pig (skin and all) before. When this was done, Ben's family got a fire going and cut wood to fashion a spit. They dug two y-shaped branches into the ground on either side of the fire, drove a long stick through the pig, and rested it in the nooks of the y-branches to cook. It turned out quite good (of course it did, pigs are awesome, see above), with the rub actually adding a nice touch to the meat. Chris also produced a tube of spicy mustard, which we applied liberally. In a country where meat is considered a delicacy, not a routine part of a meal, the pleasure of stuffing oneself with nothing but meat is truly unbeatable. I went to sleep happy that night.
Life in the Ring of Fire Part 57: I Just Know the Chinese Are Up to No Good
This week's Tautu language word is “nesib.” It means “knife.”
This was a good week for strange nakamal experiences. It all started on Sunday. I'd gone to Duncan's early to hang out while the kava was being made. Myself, Duncan, and five other guys from the village were milling around talking. Some of the guys started complaining about sore arm and leg muscles from working in the garden and, before I knew what was happening, I was surrounded by six guys all giving each other massages. I was seated on a wooden bench, legs and arms tucked in as tight as possible, while on either side of me a guy was lying on his back being massaged by another guy. On top of that, Duncan was lying down on the next bench over getting a massage from a visiting family member from Southwest Bay. It was one of those moments when I really wished there was someone with me who could appreciate just how strange the whole scene was. Now, I'm not sure if I've covered male-female relations in Vanuatu yet, so I'll give a brief overview. I think everyone probably goes through that phase in middle school or high school when it becomes incredibly awkward to be around the opposite sex. In Vanuatu, however, it was apparently decided that, instead of getting over it after a couple years, it would be a much better idea to make said awkwardness part of the culture. Thus, you often see guys in their mid thirties who still get tongue-tied around women and thirty-something mothers of three who can't talk about guys without giggling. Remember in middle school how, when you liked a guy/girl but were too shy to go talk to them, you'd send one of your friends instead to try and find out if they like you? Yeah, well they do that here well into their twenties. Sometimes people get married based on such indirect social encounters. Even after they get married, the awkwardness persists. I've seen married couples who rarely speak to each other and yet live in the same house and have five kids. Physical contact between men and women in public is strictly forbidden. I've been living with Duncan and Linda for a year now and I have not once seen them touch each other. Not a hug, a pat on the back, nothing. If it weren't for the fact that they somehow managed to produce my younger sister, Tracey, I'd probably be willing to wager that the most intimate contact they'd had was a handshake. To make up for the fact that they're not allowed to touch their significant others/spouses, both men and women are incredibly hands-y when they're around people of the same sex. It's pretty common to see two guys walking along holding hands. Often I'll be shaking hands with someone, only to have my hand trapped for the entirety of our conversation. I've gotten kind of used to this, but I'm still pretty disconcerted if they start petting the top of my hand. Worse still are guys who talk to me at the nakamal with their hand resting on my thigh. No joke. It makes it kind of difficult to focus on what they're saying. Anyway, the point is that group massages aren't all that unusual thing to happen around here. Still though.
On Tuesday, Duncan's nakamal was host to one of the Lakatoro area's resident crazy people. There are three of four crazy people around that I see on a regular basis. I know it's probably not politically correct to refer to people as “crazy” these days in the States. We prefer phrases like “mentally disabled” and we've got all kinds of mental disorders, most of them acronyms, that we like to label people with. I think this is because in the US we're all so high strung and on the verge of going nuts that we want to be sure that other people don't make fun of us when we do. In Vanuatu the sane-insane boundary is a lot more black and white: if you can carry on a coherent conversation (and keep in mind that the standards for what constitutes a coherent conversation are a lot lower around here) for at least a minute, you're fine. So, when we say someone is crazy it doesn't mean they're bi-polar, or ADD, or learning disabled, or autistic, or agoraphobic, or anything-phobic, or OCD – people with these disorders can function normally under some circumstances, they just have some quirks. Crazy means that the person is totally and absolutely bat-shit insane: not a single thing they say or do makes the slightest bit of sense. The first crazy guy I met in Malekula is named Cesar. He hangs out at the LTC a lot and wears these great striped pajama pants with alphabet blocks on them (if anyone happens to run across any while out shopping, grab me a pair). The Digicel (Vanuatu's mobile phone company) folks sometimes set up speakers at the LTC as a promotion and on such days it's fairly common to see Cesar with the microphone stomping his feet wildly and singing “LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!” not quite in time with the music. At first I wondered why it was that there were so many outright crazy people in Vanuatu, but then I realized that we probably have an equal percentage of them in the US, it's just that in the States we keep them locked up, whereas here they're free to wander around. I don't know the name of the guy who was hanging out at Duncan on Tuesday, but I call him ukulele guy because he's most commonly seen walking up and down the street wearing a blindly-bright yellow shirt and a giant hibiscus flower in his hair strumming a ukulele and singing incomprehensibly. He usually has such a giant smile on his face, however, that I sometimes wonder if perhaps the whole sanity thing is a bit overrated and that maybe he has the right idea. A popular pastime among the Ni-Vanuatu is messing with the crazy people (this may seem cruel but, like I said before, in the US we keep our crazies locked up in mental hospitals. Which one seems worse? Hard to say. Or, perhaps a more relevant question, can crazy people tell the difference? Also, hard to say), this usually this consists of giving them things and seeing what they do with them (ie. what would happen if we give Cesar the microphone?), which is probably how ukulele guy got his ukulele in the first place. Thus, the patrons at Duncan's undertook a project to see what would happen when they got ukulele guy to drink a lot of kava. He gamely took down three or four shells in a row, which seemed to have no discernible effect on him. They then switched to giving him cigarettes and finally beer before it was concluded that he was immune to mind-altering substances. At this point they got bored and ukulele guy wandered off.
Thursday I got a text from McKenzie instructing me to meet her for kava in Lakatoro because Yoshi had asked her to come meet his Chinese friend and she wanted some backup. Yoshi is a volunteer from Japan who works for the Fisheries Department in Lakatoro. There are four Japanese volunteers (with a program called JICA, similar to Peace Corps. No, I don't know what it stands for) near me. They all seem very nice, although it's always difficult to carry on a conversation with them. None of them speak English and, although their program does give them Bislama training, it's monstrously difficult to learn Bislama if you don't know English first. And, given that it's difficult enough to communicate with someone who speaks Bislama well, it's all but impossible to communicate with someone who speaks Bislama poorly. Thus, all of our conversations with the JICA volunteers tend to be a little strained and short lived. Thus, when were introduced to Yoshi's friend, who'd flown in from Vila for a vacation, we were pleasantly surprised to learn that she spoke both English and Bislama quite well. We had a few shells of kava and she explained that she was employed by the Chinese Ministry of Education to teach Chinese in a number of schools in Vila. She seemed pleasant enough at first but, about a third of the way through the evening, things took a turn for the bizarre. She cornered McKenzie and I and started running us over the coals with questions that sounded like they'd come, verbatim, from some kind of questionnaire. Questions like: “What are the top three reasons American join Peace Corps?” or “What percentage of Peace Corps volunteers end their service early?” or “What percentage of volunteers get married while in Peace Corps?” It honestly sounded like she was going to be reporting statistics back to some sort of Chinese intelligence agency. I don't think McKenzie and I were particularly helpful in answering her questions, not so much because our fierce loyalty to the US made us wary of cooperating with foreign intelligence agents, but more because we both get really, really annoyed whenever anyone tries to talk to us about anything serious over kava. We kept trying to move the conversation on to lighter topics such as, for example, how exciting it was that watermelon season had started, or, when this failed, cutting her out of the conversation entirely. She was remarkably persistent, however, and had absolutely no qualms about busting into the middle of a conversation to continue asking her questions. Eventually, we both claimed to have to go to work early the following day and headed home before we started getting asked questions along the lines of “How many patriot missiles does your government have deployed in the Pacific region?” or “Can you give an overview of the technologies involved in producing MIRVs?” Needless to say, a very unusual night. We wondered why Yoshi had been so insistent on us meeting his strange Chinese friend, but we finally concluded that she'd probably spent the whole day grilling him with similar questions about Japan and he wanted a break.
This week's Tautu language word is “nesib.” It means “knife.”
This was a good week for strange nakamal experiences. It all started on Sunday. I'd gone to Duncan's early to hang out while the kava was being made. Myself, Duncan, and five other guys from the village were milling around talking. Some of the guys started complaining about sore arm and leg muscles from working in the garden and, before I knew what was happening, I was surrounded by six guys all giving each other massages. I was seated on a wooden bench, legs and arms tucked in as tight as possible, while on either side of me a guy was lying on his back being massaged by another guy. On top of that, Duncan was lying down on the next bench over getting a massage from a visiting family member from Southwest Bay. It was one of those moments when I really wished there was someone with me who could appreciate just how strange the whole scene was. Now, I'm not sure if I've covered male-female relations in Vanuatu yet, so I'll give a brief overview. I think everyone probably goes through that phase in middle school or high school when it becomes incredibly awkward to be around the opposite sex. In Vanuatu, however, it was apparently decided that, instead of getting over it after a couple years, it would be a much better idea to make said awkwardness part of the culture. Thus, you often see guys in their mid thirties who still get tongue-tied around women and thirty-something mothers of three who can't talk about guys without giggling. Remember in middle school how, when you liked a guy/girl but were too shy to go talk to them, you'd send one of your friends instead to try and find out if they like you? Yeah, well they do that here well into their twenties. Sometimes people get married based on such indirect social encounters. Even after they get married, the awkwardness persists. I've seen married couples who rarely speak to each other and yet live in the same house and have five kids. Physical contact between men and women in public is strictly forbidden. I've been living with Duncan and Linda for a year now and I have not once seen them touch each other. Not a hug, a pat on the back, nothing. If it weren't for the fact that they somehow managed to produce my younger sister, Tracey, I'd probably be willing to wager that the most intimate contact they'd had was a handshake. To make up for the fact that they're not allowed to touch their significant others/spouses, both men and women are incredibly hands-y when they're around people of the same sex. It's pretty common to see two guys walking along holding hands. Often I'll be shaking hands with someone, only to have my hand trapped for the entirety of our conversation. I've gotten kind of used to this, but I'm still pretty disconcerted if they start petting the top of my hand. Worse still are guys who talk to me at the nakamal with their hand resting on my thigh. No joke. It makes it kind of difficult to focus on what they're saying. Anyway, the point is that group massages aren't all that unusual thing to happen around here. Still though.
On Tuesday, Duncan's nakamal was host to one of the Lakatoro area's resident crazy people. There are three of four crazy people around that I see on a regular basis. I know it's probably not politically correct to refer to people as “crazy” these days in the States. We prefer phrases like “mentally disabled” and we've got all kinds of mental disorders, most of them acronyms, that we like to label people with. I think this is because in the US we're all so high strung and on the verge of going nuts that we want to be sure that other people don't make fun of us when we do. In Vanuatu the sane-insane boundary is a lot more black and white: if you can carry on a coherent conversation (and keep in mind that the standards for what constitutes a coherent conversation are a lot lower around here) for at least a minute, you're fine. So, when we say someone is crazy it doesn't mean they're bi-polar, or ADD, or learning disabled, or autistic, or agoraphobic, or anything-phobic, or OCD – people with these disorders can function normally under some circumstances, they just have some quirks. Crazy means that the person is totally and absolutely bat-shit insane: not a single thing they say or do makes the slightest bit of sense. The first crazy guy I met in Malekula is named Cesar. He hangs out at the LTC a lot and wears these great striped pajama pants with alphabet blocks on them (if anyone happens to run across any while out shopping, grab me a pair). The Digicel (Vanuatu's mobile phone company) folks sometimes set up speakers at the LTC as a promotion and on such days it's fairly common to see Cesar with the microphone stomping his feet wildly and singing “LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!” not quite in time with the music. At first I wondered why it was that there were so many outright crazy people in Vanuatu, but then I realized that we probably have an equal percentage of them in the US, it's just that in the States we keep them locked up, whereas here they're free to wander around. I don't know the name of the guy who was hanging out at Duncan on Tuesday, but I call him ukulele guy because he's most commonly seen walking up and down the street wearing a blindly-bright yellow shirt and a giant hibiscus flower in his hair strumming a ukulele and singing incomprehensibly. He usually has such a giant smile on his face, however, that I sometimes wonder if perhaps the whole sanity thing is a bit overrated and that maybe he has the right idea. A popular pastime among the Ni-Vanuatu is messing with the crazy people (this may seem cruel but, like I said before, in the US we keep our crazies locked up in mental hospitals. Which one seems worse? Hard to say. Or, perhaps a more relevant question, can crazy people tell the difference? Also, hard to say), this usually this consists of giving them things and seeing what they do with them (ie. what would happen if we give Cesar the microphone?), which is probably how ukulele guy got his ukulele in the first place. Thus, the patrons at Duncan's undertook a project to see what would happen when they got ukulele guy to drink a lot of kava. He gamely took down three or four shells in a row, which seemed to have no discernible effect on him. They then switched to giving him cigarettes and finally beer before it was concluded that he was immune to mind-altering substances. At this point they got bored and ukulele guy wandered off.
Thursday I got a text from McKenzie instructing me to meet her for kava in Lakatoro because Yoshi had asked her to come meet his Chinese friend and she wanted some backup. Yoshi is a volunteer from Japan who works for the Fisheries Department in Lakatoro. There are four Japanese volunteers (with a program called JICA, similar to Peace Corps. No, I don't know what it stands for) near me. They all seem very nice, although it's always difficult to carry on a conversation with them. None of them speak English and, although their program does give them Bislama training, it's monstrously difficult to learn Bislama if you don't know English first. And, given that it's difficult enough to communicate with someone who speaks Bislama well, it's all but impossible to communicate with someone who speaks Bislama poorly. Thus, all of our conversations with the JICA volunteers tend to be a little strained and short lived. Thus, when were introduced to Yoshi's friend, who'd flown in from Vila for a vacation, we were pleasantly surprised to learn that she spoke both English and Bislama quite well. We had a few shells of kava and she explained that she was employed by the Chinese Ministry of Education to teach Chinese in a number of schools in Vila. She seemed pleasant enough at first but, about a third of the way through the evening, things took a turn for the bizarre. She cornered McKenzie and I and started running us over the coals with questions that sounded like they'd come, verbatim, from some kind of questionnaire. Questions like: “What are the top three reasons American join Peace Corps?” or “What percentage of Peace Corps volunteers end their service early?” or “What percentage of volunteers get married while in Peace Corps?” It honestly sounded like she was going to be reporting statistics back to some sort of Chinese intelligence agency. I don't think McKenzie and I were particularly helpful in answering her questions, not so much because our fierce loyalty to the US made us wary of cooperating with foreign intelligence agents, but more because we both get really, really annoyed whenever anyone tries to talk to us about anything serious over kava. We kept trying to move the conversation on to lighter topics such as, for example, how exciting it was that watermelon season had started, or, when this failed, cutting her out of the conversation entirely. She was remarkably persistent, however, and had absolutely no qualms about busting into the middle of a conversation to continue asking her questions. Eventually, we both claimed to have to go to work early the following day and headed home before we started getting asked questions along the lines of “How many patriot missiles does your government have deployed in the Pacific region?” or “Can you give an overview of the technologies involved in producing MIRVs?” Needless to say, a very unusual night. We wondered why Yoshi had been so insistent on us meeting his strange Chinese friend, but we finally concluded that she'd probably spent the whole day grilling him with similar questions about Japan and he wanted a break.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Life in the Ring of Fire Part 56: World Food Day
This week's Tautu language word is “nanen”. It means “food.”
So, this was a pretty slow week, so I'm just going to skip to the weekend (don't you wish you could do that in life? Just skip right to the weekend? That'd be pretty awesome). Friday had been deemed World Food Day by, I don't know, I guess the UN or whoever is in charged of declaring world awareness days. This year's focus was the challenges to food security from climate change. Specifically, the increased demand for crops to be turned into fuels as well as more generally the problems related to possible drastic changes in weather patterns ruining crops. Now, I don't get a lot of chances to catch up on news of the rest of the world, but I have heard that there have been some international stirs with regards to rising food prices, so maybe such a day of awareness would make sense in the US or in Europe or whatever, I don't know. Also, I'm not sure who, exactly, was responsible for suggesting/deciding that the Vanuatu government should take steps to raise awareness of these issues within Vanuatu. Perhaps it was an entirely Ni-Van initiated program, but I doubt it. I think it's considerably more likely that some representative from the Australian or New Zealand or other western government came over and suggested the idea and the Vanuatu government, ever polite and obliging, especially to governments whose aid is their largest source of revenue, agreed. A similar thing happened four or five months ago regarding smoking. I discussed this in a previous blog, but basically the government of Vanuatu, responding to a UN Department of Health recommendation, outlawed smoking in public places. This was ridiculous firstly because, due to a generally poor understanding of concepts such as private property or trespassing, basically all places in Vanuatu are public. Secondly, it's not like there are a lot of restaurants or bars or theaters around to get filled with second-hand smoke, most places are outside. Finally, and most practically, the majority of the country is so remote as to make sending police to arrest people for murder difficult, much less sending police to fine people for smoking at the beach. We also observed World Population Day, which focused on how to reduce the birthrate to prevent overpopulation. That's all well and good for China, but Vanuatu is an UNDER-populated country. It's current population is about one fifth of what it was before the Europeans arrived with smallpox. World Food Day struck me as a similar imposition: some committee thousands of miles away deciding that they know what's best for some country they've never been too or, even worse, a lot of countries they've never been too.
Here's the thing: there is no food shortage in Vanuatu. There's not going to be one for a very, very long time. Walking around, you have to be careful not to get beaned by falling food. I mean this literally. I was hit by a falling mango the other day. I've had a couple near misses with papayas. And a few times a year people are seriously injured by having coconuts fall on them (no joke. Image having that listed as your cause of death in an obituary). Bananas, mangoes, papayas, cucumbers, pumpkins and coconuts rot on the ground. Like I said before, Vanuatu used to support five times its current population in hunter-gatherer societies with no imports. Asking Vanuatu to worry about food security is, quite simply, absurd. But absurd is OK I suppose, I've gotten used to absurd. What was downright insulting, however, was bringing bio fuels into the picture. With some urging from the EU, the Vanuatu government is starting to look into producing fuel from coconut oil. The EU has even donated something like $3 million Euro towards setting up production facilities. OK, well, let's put aside for a moment the fact that the idea of producing fuels from food crops is inherently unsustainable because we don't grow enough food to offset any substantial fraction of our energy consumption, and we REALLY don't grow enough food to do this while still feeding ourselves, and focus more on the problems with this particular project. First off, in order to extract oil from coconuts, the coconuts have to, one by one, be split open with and ax and the meat scooped out with a knife (and it takes a lot of coconuts to make even a little bit of oil). Then the meat has to be dried over a fire for several days, being turned regularly. This whole process is done by hand. As far as I know, there are no machines in existence to mechanize the procedure. In other words, there's a reason why coconut oil is expensive at the grocery store: it's a pain to make. Secondly, from my understanding, in order for the coconut oil fuel to be cheaper than gasoline, the current fuel of choice for both stationary and mobile power generation, the production facilities would have to be buying dried coconuts (copra) for less than private buyers offer for the same product. So, either the coconut oil fuel would be more expensive than gas, or they'd be relying on people being willing to sell their copra at a lower price than they can get elsewhere. But even that's all more or less OK, I suppose. The EU is free to waste its money as it sees fit. The insult is this: Vanuatu imports a tiny amount of gasoline each year. They pay exorbitant prices to have it carried, in 55 gallon drums, on ships across thousands of miles of ocean so it can be used to power three power plants (and when I say power plant, that's kind of an exaggeration, they're just collections of two or three large diesel generators running constantly), maybe some thousand cars and boats (probably less), and perhaps a few hundred private generators. They do this for the oh-so-opulent privilege of having electric lights in their bamboo huts. And now, a group of western governments is telling them that, because of global warming, a problem which they (the western governments) are ENTIRELY responsible for and, because they are the largest consumers of energy, entirely responsible for handling, Ni-Vans have to spend thousands of man hours splitting coconuts with an ax to make an alternative fuel that COSTS MORE than gasoline. Personally, I think all of Vanuatu would be completely justified in telling the EU to go stuff it. But I'm just ranting. I guess I don't really have a right to get mad on behalf of my Ni-Van friends and family. They seem content to (at least pretend) to go along with whatever Australia or New Zealand or the US or Japan tells them to do. I feel like I know something that they don't, but maybe they know something that I don't. I guess we'll see.
OK, now that I'm done raving, let's move on the various humorous particulars of the event itself. It was being hosted at the market, which made sense because that's where all the food is sold. They were giving agriculture show style award for people bring in the best yam, watermelon, manioc, etc. Since there isn't anyone on the island that actually knows anything about how to judge produce, McKenzie was made the judge on the grounds that she's white and works for an organization that has something vaguely to do with agriculture. Most people who showed up for the market, of course, had no idea that the event was taking place, but they generally agreed to have their produce judged when they were told there was a chance to win 1000 Vatu (about $10). McKenzie circulated through the competing fruits, vegetables and root crops, nodding thoughtfully and scribbling on a piece of paper. When she was finished she sat down next to me. “How did you choose the winners?” I asked.
“I just went with the bigger ones,” she replied “but not the biggest, because you know, like, how sometimes the really big watermelons don't taste as good?”
I agreed with the wisdom of this scheme. After the judging, there were speeches. It's impossible to have any sort of event in Vanuatu without speeches. Speeches in Bislama tend to consist of several impassioned rants connected together by long, unnecessary ramblings (kind of like this blog entry). They also tend to go on a lot longer they need to (again, kind of like this blog entry). Most of the speeches tended to focus on how Ni-Vans need to stop eating imported foods and return to eating locally grown crops (this is actually a pretty relevant point to cover. A lot of Ni-Vans prefer rice over their various local root crops. You actually can't really blame them. With rice, you open the bag, dump it in the pot, boil it for 10 minutes and it's done. With root crops, the first step is generally digging them out of the ground). Most of the speakers also touched briefly on the use of bio fuels in a way that suggested that they had absolutely no idea what a bio fuel was or why they were being given money to produce them. The highlight however was someone working themselves up into a very passionate rant that ended with the shouting of “China is not going to feed us any more! We don't need their food and we don't want their food! China is not going to be feeding us any more!” Enthusiastic applause followed. Now, I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure the Chinese are unaware of both the fact that they were supposed to be feeding Vanuatu and of the amount of resentment that this was creating.
The whole event was finished off by a display and sampling of a number of baked goods made with locally produced manioc flour (manioc, or cassava as it is known in some places, can be ground up to produce a flour which many Americans might recognize as tapioca flour) instead of imported wheat flour. Apparently, the ministry of agriculture had been running a large grinder capable of making said flour and interested Ni-Vans could bring in their manioc to have it ground for them. The whole point of the show was to publicize the existence of the grinder and the service they were offering with it, as well as showcase the fact that it's possible to make many of people's favorite baked goods (breads, cookies, pastries, etc) using manioc flour instead of conventional flour. Many of the goods on display were indeed quite good, and I probably wouldn't have been able to tell that they were made with a different flour had I not known in advance. All in all, it would have been quite an effective publicity move had the bake show not been immediately followed by the announcement that, due to the fact that not enough people were coming to use it, the manioc flour grinder was going to be removed to Vila. Such is life in Vanuatu I supposed.
This week's Tautu language word is “nanen”. It means “food.”
So, this was a pretty slow week, so I'm just going to skip to the weekend (don't you wish you could do that in life? Just skip right to the weekend? That'd be pretty awesome). Friday had been deemed World Food Day by, I don't know, I guess the UN or whoever is in charged of declaring world awareness days. This year's focus was the challenges to food security from climate change. Specifically, the increased demand for crops to be turned into fuels as well as more generally the problems related to possible drastic changes in weather patterns ruining crops. Now, I don't get a lot of chances to catch up on news of the rest of the world, but I have heard that there have been some international stirs with regards to rising food prices, so maybe such a day of awareness would make sense in the US or in Europe or whatever, I don't know. Also, I'm not sure who, exactly, was responsible for suggesting/deciding that the Vanuatu government should take steps to raise awareness of these issues within Vanuatu. Perhaps it was an entirely Ni-Van initiated program, but I doubt it. I think it's considerably more likely that some representative from the Australian or New Zealand or other western government came over and suggested the idea and the Vanuatu government, ever polite and obliging, especially to governments whose aid is their largest source of revenue, agreed. A similar thing happened four or five months ago regarding smoking. I discussed this in a previous blog, but basically the government of Vanuatu, responding to a UN Department of Health recommendation, outlawed smoking in public places. This was ridiculous firstly because, due to a generally poor understanding of concepts such as private property or trespassing, basically all places in Vanuatu are public. Secondly, it's not like there are a lot of restaurants or bars or theaters around to get filled with second-hand smoke, most places are outside. Finally, and most practically, the majority of the country is so remote as to make sending police to arrest people for murder difficult, much less sending police to fine people for smoking at the beach. We also observed World Population Day, which focused on how to reduce the birthrate to prevent overpopulation. That's all well and good for China, but Vanuatu is an UNDER-populated country. It's current population is about one fifth of what it was before the Europeans arrived with smallpox. World Food Day struck me as a similar imposition: some committee thousands of miles away deciding that they know what's best for some country they've never been too or, even worse, a lot of countries they've never been too.
Here's the thing: there is no food shortage in Vanuatu. There's not going to be one for a very, very long time. Walking around, you have to be careful not to get beaned by falling food. I mean this literally. I was hit by a falling mango the other day. I've had a couple near misses with papayas. And a few times a year people are seriously injured by having coconuts fall on them (no joke. Image having that listed as your cause of death in an obituary). Bananas, mangoes, papayas, cucumbers, pumpkins and coconuts rot on the ground. Like I said before, Vanuatu used to support five times its current population in hunter-gatherer societies with no imports. Asking Vanuatu to worry about food security is, quite simply, absurd. But absurd is OK I suppose, I've gotten used to absurd. What was downright insulting, however, was bringing bio fuels into the picture. With some urging from the EU, the Vanuatu government is starting to look into producing fuel from coconut oil. The EU has even donated something like $3 million Euro towards setting up production facilities. OK, well, let's put aside for a moment the fact that the idea of producing fuels from food crops is inherently unsustainable because we don't grow enough food to offset any substantial fraction of our energy consumption, and we REALLY don't grow enough food to do this while still feeding ourselves, and focus more on the problems with this particular project. First off, in order to extract oil from coconuts, the coconuts have to, one by one, be split open with and ax and the meat scooped out with a knife (and it takes a lot of coconuts to make even a little bit of oil). Then the meat has to be dried over a fire for several days, being turned regularly. This whole process is done by hand. As far as I know, there are no machines in existence to mechanize the procedure. In other words, there's a reason why coconut oil is expensive at the grocery store: it's a pain to make. Secondly, from my understanding, in order for the coconut oil fuel to be cheaper than gasoline, the current fuel of choice for both stationary and mobile power generation, the production facilities would have to be buying dried coconuts (copra) for less than private buyers offer for the same product. So, either the coconut oil fuel would be more expensive than gas, or they'd be relying on people being willing to sell their copra at a lower price than they can get elsewhere. But even that's all more or less OK, I suppose. The EU is free to waste its money as it sees fit. The insult is this: Vanuatu imports a tiny amount of gasoline each year. They pay exorbitant prices to have it carried, in 55 gallon drums, on ships across thousands of miles of ocean so it can be used to power three power plants (and when I say power plant, that's kind of an exaggeration, they're just collections of two or three large diesel generators running constantly), maybe some thousand cars and boats (probably less), and perhaps a few hundred private generators. They do this for the oh-so-opulent privilege of having electric lights in their bamboo huts. And now, a group of western governments is telling them that, because of global warming, a problem which they (the western governments) are ENTIRELY responsible for and, because they are the largest consumers of energy, entirely responsible for handling, Ni-Vans have to spend thousands of man hours splitting coconuts with an ax to make an alternative fuel that COSTS MORE than gasoline. Personally, I think all of Vanuatu would be completely justified in telling the EU to go stuff it. But I'm just ranting. I guess I don't really have a right to get mad on behalf of my Ni-Van friends and family. They seem content to (at least pretend) to go along with whatever Australia or New Zealand or the US or Japan tells them to do. I feel like I know something that they don't, but maybe they know something that I don't. I guess we'll see.
OK, now that I'm done raving, let's move on the various humorous particulars of the event itself. It was being hosted at the market, which made sense because that's where all the food is sold. They were giving agriculture show style award for people bring in the best yam, watermelon, manioc, etc. Since there isn't anyone on the island that actually knows anything about how to judge produce, McKenzie was made the judge on the grounds that she's white and works for an organization that has something vaguely to do with agriculture. Most people who showed up for the market, of course, had no idea that the event was taking place, but they generally agreed to have their produce judged when they were told there was a chance to win 1000 Vatu (about $10). McKenzie circulated through the competing fruits, vegetables and root crops, nodding thoughtfully and scribbling on a piece of paper. When she was finished she sat down next to me. “How did you choose the winners?” I asked.
“I just went with the bigger ones,” she replied “but not the biggest, because you know, like, how sometimes the really big watermelons don't taste as good?”
I agreed with the wisdom of this scheme. After the judging, there were speeches. It's impossible to have any sort of event in Vanuatu without speeches. Speeches in Bislama tend to consist of several impassioned rants connected together by long, unnecessary ramblings (kind of like this blog entry). They also tend to go on a lot longer they need to (again, kind of like this blog entry). Most of the speeches tended to focus on how Ni-Vans need to stop eating imported foods and return to eating locally grown crops (this is actually a pretty relevant point to cover. A lot of Ni-Vans prefer rice over their various local root crops. You actually can't really blame them. With rice, you open the bag, dump it in the pot, boil it for 10 minutes and it's done. With root crops, the first step is generally digging them out of the ground). Most of the speakers also touched briefly on the use of bio fuels in a way that suggested that they had absolutely no idea what a bio fuel was or why they were being given money to produce them. The highlight however was someone working themselves up into a very passionate rant that ended with the shouting of “China is not going to feed us any more! We don't need their food and we don't want their food! China is not going to be feeding us any more!” Enthusiastic applause followed. Now, I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure the Chinese are unaware of both the fact that they were supposed to be feeding Vanuatu and of the amount of resentment that this was creating.
The whole event was finished off by a display and sampling of a number of baked goods made with locally produced manioc flour (manioc, or cassava as it is known in some places, can be ground up to produce a flour which many Americans might recognize as tapioca flour) instead of imported wheat flour. Apparently, the ministry of agriculture had been running a large grinder capable of making said flour and interested Ni-Vans could bring in their manioc to have it ground for them. The whole point of the show was to publicize the existence of the grinder and the service they were offering with it, as well as showcase the fact that it's possible to make many of people's favorite baked goods (breads, cookies, pastries, etc) using manioc flour instead of conventional flour. Many of the goods on display were indeed quite good, and I probably wouldn't have been able to tell that they were made with a different flour had I not known in advance. All in all, it would have been quite an effective publicity move had the bake show not been immediately followed by the announcement that, due to the fact that not enough people were coming to use it, the manioc flour grinder was going to be removed to Vila. Such is life in Vanuatu I supposed.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Life in the Ring of Fire Part 55: Malampa Day Week
This week's Tautu language word is “ewis.” It means “how much.”
Monday was constitution day. Apparently having just independence day was decided to be insufficient celebration for the establishment of Vanuatu as a country, so they also take a day off in honor of their constitution being signed. Actually, it's pretty impressive, given how slow everything moves around here, that they were able to win independence at the end of July and have a constitution together by the end of September. I would've though it'd be one of those things that everyone would just let slide for a while until it became absolutely critical. Although, now that I think about it, I guess I'm assuming (perhaps rashly) that independence and the constitution signing occurred in the same year, so maybe instead of it taking two months to get a constitution together, it actually took a year and two months, or a decade and two months. That would be more in character. At any rate, Monday was a holiday, which was good because I'd contracted a cold over the weekend and thus still wasn't feeling particularly thrilled by the idea of teaching. I (knock on wood) have been pretty lucky. Our third day in Vanuatu we were given a course by our medical staff on the plethora of bizarre diseases present in the country that can kill you or, at the very least, make your life really, really miserable, to the point of making you wish that said disease would just kill you and have done with it. So far, I've contracted exactly zero of these diseases. No malaria, no dengue fever, no giardia, no African snail induced viral meningitis, no scabies, not even a boil. My health state has been more or less exactly the same as it was for the past who-knows-how-many years in the States: fine except for some seasonal allergies and maybe a couple colds. So, really, I have no right to complain. That being said, I'm going to anyway, because there's nothing like an aliment or injury, not matter how minor, to make you really wish that you were home. The medical care in the US is stellar, of course, but this isn't really what I'm talking about, since one really doesn't rely heavily on the health care system when dealing with a cold. It's more just that being sick robs you of absolutely all patience and tolerance, so things that you long ago adjusted to dealing with start getting on your nerves again. My foam sleeping pad seemed suddenly monstrously uncomfortable, my fan a pathetic attempt to lessen the sweltering heat, doing nothing an unacceptable way to amuse myself, and the food disgusting and requiring of far too much effort. In short, I wanted a nice, comfortable sofa inside an air conditioned room with satellite TV and pizza delivery. Is that too much to ask? Although, really, the most frustrating part of being sick in Vanuatu is having to talk to Ni-Vans about it. Whenever I'm sick, I generally try my very hardest to hide in my house and avoid all contact with Ni-Vans until all obvious signs of illness have abated. Otherwise, I get involved in conversation like this:
Ni-Van: “You sick?”
Me: “Yes. I have a cold.”
Ni-Van: “ 'Cause of the wind, I think.”
Me: “Umm, no, it's a virus.”
Ni-Van: “Or the dust.”
Me: “No, dust doesn't cause colds. It's caused by a virus.”
Ni-Van: “Or maybe you ate too many coconuts.”
Me: “No. It's a virus. You catch it from other people. I probably caught it from you because you never wash your hands.”
*Long pause*
Ni-Van: “I think it's because you drink too much water.”
The truly frustrating thing about these exchanges is that, while I know viruses exist, you can SEE them, after all, with a good enough microscope, there's really absolutely no evidence that I can present to people here to back up this fact. Even if they do decide to take my word for it that tiny little organisms cause disease, this would be a belief held as irrationally as believing that the wind causes colds. They'd just be blindly believing what I tell them as opposed to blindly believing what the village witch doctor tells them (no, we don't actually have a village witch doctor, I'm just trying to make a point). In the end, I just end up being an unwilling anecdote backing up whatever they've already decided to unquestioningly believe (“Of course the wind causes colds. Remember that time when it was windy and Dan, the Peace Corp, got a cold?”). It makes me feel so used.
On a more positive note, we were in the middle of the lead up to Malampa Day, which was supposed to be on Friday. Not being satisfied with having only one holiday this particular week, it had been decided that Malampa province (where I live) really needed to have its own public holiday commemorating it. Of course, then it was decided that, since Monday and Friday were holidays anyway, it'd probably be a good idea to just take the whole week off. Thus, Malampa “Day” had started the previous Friday and was slated to run throughout the week. Malampa Day Week was celebrated, as all holidays are celebrated around here, by everyone going to the football (soccer, not that sport big men with speech impediments play in the States which is so ungainly and complicated that it actually requires more referees than players) stadium in Lakatoro to play football (soccer), drink kava and beer, and eat lap-lap. Duncan had set up a kava and food stall at the stadium and had spent the whole weekend working at it. On Tuesday, finally feeling well enough to be out and about without people asking me if I'm sick, I joined him in Lakatoro. “We're going to Bushman's Bay to kill a cow.” He told me, immediately upon my arrival “you want to come?” Well, yeah.
I piled into the back of a truck with some other guys from Tautu and we set off. Bushman's Bay is a village just a little bit south of Lakatoro where, I gathered during the truck ride, there was a cattle plantation whose French owner was currently absent, thus meaning, I guess, that the cows were up for grabs. We'd come for a couple cows for the five day feast for the dead the previous Friday. Duncan had brought his .22 rifle and two bullets, which seemed to me to be cutting it a little close because I was pretty sure a one .22 round wasn't going to be adequate to take down a cow. We crawled through the barbed wire fence surrounding the plantation and struck out across the field. The more intelligent cows quickly scattered and hid in the bush but a few of the slow learners just watched us curiously.
**OK, I'm going to take a moment here and warn any particularly squeamish readers that you might want to skip over the next paragraph. Things get a little messy**
Duncan purposely walked up to one such cow and shot it in the head. As I predicted, this did not kill the cow, but it did fall over and lie on the ground, mooing unhappily and flailing its legs. However, it did not seem all that inclined to get up and run away, which was good. At this point it was noticed that no one had bothered to bring a machete with which to cut the cow's throat or, for that matter, butcher it once it was successfully killed. Between the eight or so of us assembled, the only cutting implement we had was a small knife about the size and sharpness of a steak knife. One of our team was sent off in search of someone to borrow a machete from while the rest of us tried to make do with this tool. The bravest of our group went in in an attempt to cut the cow's throat with the steak knife, while at the same time avoid the violently kicking hooves. He tried restraining the cow's front legs with one hand while cutting with the other, which is kind of like a mosquito deciding it's going to try and hold you down with its antennae while sucking your blood. The restraining strategy was quickly abandoned in favor of crouching as far away from the cow's hooves as possible while still being able to reach the throat. Surprisingly, he was actually able to make a small incision, and a stream of blood fountained from the throat onto the ground. This didn't really seem to do much to hasten the dying process however, as the only discernible difference was that the cow's frantic mooing now had a sort of rasping quality to it. A few more guys took a turn at sawing at the cow's throat with the steak knife and after a bit of work blood was pouring from the wound at an appreciable rate and the cow's kicks grew weaker and weaker. After a few minutes, it was dead. Then it was time for the gross part. Myself and three others each grabbed a leg and pulled it away from the cow, spread eagling it, stomach up, on the ground. Two others worked with the knife to make a cut all the way from the throat to the rump, thus exposing the cow's gut. Then, one of them grabbed the tough and rubbery (despite what you see in movies, cutting something's, or someone's, throat isn't all that easy. Throats are built to last) esophagus and pulled really hard. You see, conveniently enough, the entire digestive tract, the throat, stomach, and intestines (ie. all the parts of the cow that no one really wants to eat) is connected together so, in theory, you can rip the whole thing out all at once. Of course, at the moment, the rib cage was getting in the way, and it didn't seem to me that we were going to have very much luck cutting through a cow's sternum with a steak knife. Fortunately, it was about then that one of the guys showed up with a machete, which we were able to use to split the rib cage. Now, it was just a matter of muscling the cow's insides out. This ended up being quite a chore however, because the insides were 1) really heavy, 2) slippery, 3) covered in blood. It took all six of us heaving and hawing for a good twenty minutes to lift and push everything out. During the process, we ruptured the abdominal wall and got to watch the gray, slimy small intestines worm their way out into the open. That was pretty cool. Afterwards we all looked like we'd taken part in a particularly grizzly murder (perhaps certain animal rights activist would argue that we HAD taken part in a particularly grizzly murder. However, I've adopted the ethical stance of not having any qualms about inflicting harm/death on any species of animal that has attacked me. So far in Vanuatu I've been attacked by chickens, cows, goats, pigs, crabs, a variety of fish, and dogs, so I've got most of the basic meat groups covered). A truck had pulled up to us while we were working, and, after laying down a bed of coconut leaves, we hoisted the gutted cow into the bed. We also recovered the heart and liver from the discarded guts and tossed those in as well. Just as we were finishing, Duncan (who'd gone off to shoot and help butcher the second cow) walked up to me holding a cow heart, which he thrust at me. “Here,” he said “hold this and give it to your mom [Linda] when we get back.” Thus it was that I rolled into our food and kava stall in Lakatoro, covered in blood, clutching a dripping, bloody cow's heart by the aorta. I think that's probably the most badass I've ever felt in my life.
Thursday, a boxing match had been arranged in honor of Malampa Day. The match was supposed to actually be on Friday, Malampa Day, but the SDA Church complained that since they begin observing the sabbath Friday at sundown, their members would be unable to attend the event because it was taking place in the evening. McKenzie, Laura (who'd come down for the occasion), and I all agreed that if you get that worked up about the practice of your faith preventing you from seeing a boxing match, it's perhaps time to re-examine the principles underlying your faith. This is Vanuatu, however, so the provincial government politely obliged and moved the day of the match. The headlining fight was between a boxer from Southwest Bay, Malekula, Kali, who was apparently accomplished enough to have taken part in a number of matches in Australia and New Zealand, and a Fijian. To warm up the crowd, however, a number of amateurs from all over the island boxed each other first. The MC kicked off the event by asking the crowd to give a big hand to the volunteers because, and I quote, “It's difficult to get up in front of so many people.” Only in Vanuatu would you sign up for boxing (a sport which involves getting the living daylights beaten out of you by someone determined to give you a concussion) and your biggest fear be stage fright. The fight right before the headliner was between two volunteers from New Zealand, who'd decided that they wanted to be part of the event and had been allowed to do so on the basis of being white. This caused quite a lot of excitement in the crowd. Given how much Ni-Vans love to watch white people when they're just sitting around, getting to watch TWO white people fight each other was no doubt the most exciting thing most people could possibly conceive of. I have to admit, it was pretty entertaining. In the end, however, the headlining fight was somewhat disappointing as Kali knocked out the Fijian in the second round of what was supposed to be a twelve round fight. Fortunately, I'm not all that into boxing anyway, so I just had a good time hanging out with everyone. All in all, I approved of Malampa Day Week.
This week's Tautu language word is “ewis.” It means “how much.”
Monday was constitution day. Apparently having just independence day was decided to be insufficient celebration for the establishment of Vanuatu as a country, so they also take a day off in honor of their constitution being signed. Actually, it's pretty impressive, given how slow everything moves around here, that they were able to win independence at the end of July and have a constitution together by the end of September. I would've though it'd be one of those things that everyone would just let slide for a while until it became absolutely critical. Although, now that I think about it, I guess I'm assuming (perhaps rashly) that independence and the constitution signing occurred in the same year, so maybe instead of it taking two months to get a constitution together, it actually took a year and two months, or a decade and two months. That would be more in character. At any rate, Monday was a holiday, which was good because I'd contracted a cold over the weekend and thus still wasn't feeling particularly thrilled by the idea of teaching. I (knock on wood) have been pretty lucky. Our third day in Vanuatu we were given a course by our medical staff on the plethora of bizarre diseases present in the country that can kill you or, at the very least, make your life really, really miserable, to the point of making you wish that said disease would just kill you and have done with it. So far, I've contracted exactly zero of these diseases. No malaria, no dengue fever, no giardia, no African snail induced viral meningitis, no scabies, not even a boil. My health state has been more or less exactly the same as it was for the past who-knows-how-many years in the States: fine except for some seasonal allergies and maybe a couple colds. So, really, I have no right to complain. That being said, I'm going to anyway, because there's nothing like an aliment or injury, not matter how minor, to make you really wish that you were home. The medical care in the US is stellar, of course, but this isn't really what I'm talking about, since one really doesn't rely heavily on the health care system when dealing with a cold. It's more just that being sick robs you of absolutely all patience and tolerance, so things that you long ago adjusted to dealing with start getting on your nerves again. My foam sleeping pad seemed suddenly monstrously uncomfortable, my fan a pathetic attempt to lessen the sweltering heat, doing nothing an unacceptable way to amuse myself, and the food disgusting and requiring of far too much effort. In short, I wanted a nice, comfortable sofa inside an air conditioned room with satellite TV and pizza delivery. Is that too much to ask? Although, really, the most frustrating part of being sick in Vanuatu is having to talk to Ni-Vans about it. Whenever I'm sick, I generally try my very hardest to hide in my house and avoid all contact with Ni-Vans until all obvious signs of illness have abated. Otherwise, I get involved in conversation like this:
Ni-Van: “You sick?”
Me: “Yes. I have a cold.”
Ni-Van: “ 'Cause of the wind, I think.”
Me: “Umm, no, it's a virus.”
Ni-Van: “Or the dust.”
Me: “No, dust doesn't cause colds. It's caused by a virus.”
Ni-Van: “Or maybe you ate too many coconuts.”
Me: “No. It's a virus. You catch it from other people. I probably caught it from you because you never wash your hands.”
*Long pause*
Ni-Van: “I think it's because you drink too much water.”
The truly frustrating thing about these exchanges is that, while I know viruses exist, you can SEE them, after all, with a good enough microscope, there's really absolutely no evidence that I can present to people here to back up this fact. Even if they do decide to take my word for it that tiny little organisms cause disease, this would be a belief held as irrationally as believing that the wind causes colds. They'd just be blindly believing what I tell them as opposed to blindly believing what the village witch doctor tells them (no, we don't actually have a village witch doctor, I'm just trying to make a point). In the end, I just end up being an unwilling anecdote backing up whatever they've already decided to unquestioningly believe (“Of course the wind causes colds. Remember that time when it was windy and Dan, the Peace Corp, got a cold?”). It makes me feel so used.
On a more positive note, we were in the middle of the lead up to Malampa Day, which was supposed to be on Friday. Not being satisfied with having only one holiday this particular week, it had been decided that Malampa province (where I live) really needed to have its own public holiday commemorating it. Of course, then it was decided that, since Monday and Friday were holidays anyway, it'd probably be a good idea to just take the whole week off. Thus, Malampa “Day” had started the previous Friday and was slated to run throughout the week. Malampa Day Week was celebrated, as all holidays are celebrated around here, by everyone going to the football (soccer, not that sport big men with speech impediments play in the States which is so ungainly and complicated that it actually requires more referees than players) stadium in Lakatoro to play football (soccer), drink kava and beer, and eat lap-lap. Duncan had set up a kava and food stall at the stadium and had spent the whole weekend working at it. On Tuesday, finally feeling well enough to be out and about without people asking me if I'm sick, I joined him in Lakatoro. “We're going to Bushman's Bay to kill a cow.” He told me, immediately upon my arrival “you want to come?” Well, yeah.
I piled into the back of a truck with some other guys from Tautu and we set off. Bushman's Bay is a village just a little bit south of Lakatoro where, I gathered during the truck ride, there was a cattle plantation whose French owner was currently absent, thus meaning, I guess, that the cows were up for grabs. We'd come for a couple cows for the five day feast for the dead the previous Friday. Duncan had brought his .22 rifle and two bullets, which seemed to me to be cutting it a little close because I was pretty sure a one .22 round wasn't going to be adequate to take down a cow. We crawled through the barbed wire fence surrounding the plantation and struck out across the field. The more intelligent cows quickly scattered and hid in the bush but a few of the slow learners just watched us curiously.
**OK, I'm going to take a moment here and warn any particularly squeamish readers that you might want to skip over the next paragraph. Things get a little messy**
Duncan purposely walked up to one such cow and shot it in the head. As I predicted, this did not kill the cow, but it did fall over and lie on the ground, mooing unhappily and flailing its legs. However, it did not seem all that inclined to get up and run away, which was good. At this point it was noticed that no one had bothered to bring a machete with which to cut the cow's throat or, for that matter, butcher it once it was successfully killed. Between the eight or so of us assembled, the only cutting implement we had was a small knife about the size and sharpness of a steak knife. One of our team was sent off in search of someone to borrow a machete from while the rest of us tried to make do with this tool. The bravest of our group went in in an attempt to cut the cow's throat with the steak knife, while at the same time avoid the violently kicking hooves. He tried restraining the cow's front legs with one hand while cutting with the other, which is kind of like a mosquito deciding it's going to try and hold you down with its antennae while sucking your blood. The restraining strategy was quickly abandoned in favor of crouching as far away from the cow's hooves as possible while still being able to reach the throat. Surprisingly, he was actually able to make a small incision, and a stream of blood fountained from the throat onto the ground. This didn't really seem to do much to hasten the dying process however, as the only discernible difference was that the cow's frantic mooing now had a sort of rasping quality to it. A few more guys took a turn at sawing at the cow's throat with the steak knife and after a bit of work blood was pouring from the wound at an appreciable rate and the cow's kicks grew weaker and weaker. After a few minutes, it was dead. Then it was time for the gross part. Myself and three others each grabbed a leg and pulled it away from the cow, spread eagling it, stomach up, on the ground. Two others worked with the knife to make a cut all the way from the throat to the rump, thus exposing the cow's gut. Then, one of them grabbed the tough and rubbery (despite what you see in movies, cutting something's, or someone's, throat isn't all that easy. Throats are built to last) esophagus and pulled really hard. You see, conveniently enough, the entire digestive tract, the throat, stomach, and intestines (ie. all the parts of the cow that no one really wants to eat) is connected together so, in theory, you can rip the whole thing out all at once. Of course, at the moment, the rib cage was getting in the way, and it didn't seem to me that we were going to have very much luck cutting through a cow's sternum with a steak knife. Fortunately, it was about then that one of the guys showed up with a machete, which we were able to use to split the rib cage. Now, it was just a matter of muscling the cow's insides out. This ended up being quite a chore however, because the insides were 1) really heavy, 2) slippery, 3) covered in blood. It took all six of us heaving and hawing for a good twenty minutes to lift and push everything out. During the process, we ruptured the abdominal wall and got to watch the gray, slimy small intestines worm their way out into the open. That was pretty cool. Afterwards we all looked like we'd taken part in a particularly grizzly murder (perhaps certain animal rights activist would argue that we HAD taken part in a particularly grizzly murder. However, I've adopted the ethical stance of not having any qualms about inflicting harm/death on any species of animal that has attacked me. So far in Vanuatu I've been attacked by chickens, cows, goats, pigs, crabs, a variety of fish, and dogs, so I've got most of the basic meat groups covered). A truck had pulled up to us while we were working, and, after laying down a bed of coconut leaves, we hoisted the gutted cow into the bed. We also recovered the heart and liver from the discarded guts and tossed those in as well. Just as we were finishing, Duncan (who'd gone off to shoot and help butcher the second cow) walked up to me holding a cow heart, which he thrust at me. “Here,” he said “hold this and give it to your mom [Linda] when we get back.” Thus it was that I rolled into our food and kava stall in Lakatoro, covered in blood, clutching a dripping, bloody cow's heart by the aorta. I think that's probably the most badass I've ever felt in my life.
Thursday, a boxing match had been arranged in honor of Malampa Day. The match was supposed to actually be on Friday, Malampa Day, but the SDA Church complained that since they begin observing the sabbath Friday at sundown, their members would be unable to attend the event because it was taking place in the evening. McKenzie, Laura (who'd come down for the occasion), and I all agreed that if you get that worked up about the practice of your faith preventing you from seeing a boxing match, it's perhaps time to re-examine the principles underlying your faith. This is Vanuatu, however, so the provincial government politely obliged and moved the day of the match. The headlining fight was between a boxer from Southwest Bay, Malekula, Kali, who was apparently accomplished enough to have taken part in a number of matches in Australia and New Zealand, and a Fijian. To warm up the crowd, however, a number of amateurs from all over the island boxed each other first. The MC kicked off the event by asking the crowd to give a big hand to the volunteers because, and I quote, “It's difficult to get up in front of so many people.” Only in Vanuatu would you sign up for boxing (a sport which involves getting the living daylights beaten out of you by someone determined to give you a concussion) and your biggest fear be stage fright. The fight right before the headliner was between two volunteers from New Zealand, who'd decided that they wanted to be part of the event and had been allowed to do so on the basis of being white. This caused quite a lot of excitement in the crowd. Given how much Ni-Vans love to watch white people when they're just sitting around, getting to watch TWO white people fight each other was no doubt the most exciting thing most people could possibly conceive of. I have to admit, it was pretty entertaining. In the end, however, the headlining fight was somewhat disappointing as Kali knocked out the Fijian in the second round of what was supposed to be a twelve round fight. Fortunately, I'm not all that into boxing anyway, so I just had a good time hanging out with everyone. All in all, I approved of Malampa Day Week.
Life in the Ring of Fire Part 54: A Dead
This week's Tautu language word is “des.” It means “ocean.”
So, I hate alarm clocks. It's a hatred that's had a long time to grow and mature. It began perhaps ten to twelve years ago when one of these insidious contraption first appeared on my bedside table and was programmed to emit obnoxious loud noises at 6:30 every morning so that I could get up for school. Ten years is a pretty sizable chunk of time for a hatred to develop, so by this point it's pretty sophisticated. It's well thought through and has a lot of facets. When I left for Vanuatu a little more than a year ago, one of the things I was looking forward to was ridding myself of the evil little gizmo that is is alarm clock for a couple years. Thus, it was with some chagrin that I discovered that, although there are indeed no alarm clocks here, they're replaced my something that I now hate even more: people bent on waking you up at ridiculously early hours of the morning. And the thing about people is that they're so much more creative, cunning, and annoying in the ways that they go about waking you up than any alarm clock could ever dream of being. I now respect this about alarm clocks. Alarm clocks are predictable. You set an alarm clock to go off at 6:30 and it will, invariably, go off at 6:30. It won't decide that some mornings it's going to go off at 6:24 and then the next morning it's going to go off at 6:32, etc. No, 6:30, every morning, on the dot. Also, it will always make the same noise every morning. It may be a beep, a bell, a buzzer, or whatever, but it's always the same. The same volume, the same tone, the same timing. It's almost... soothing. After a while you get so used to the same pattern of noise at the same time every morning that you begin to be able to tune it out (some may argue that this is actually a bad thing because the whole point of having an alarm clock is so that you can wake up at a certain time each day. This is wrong. The point of having an alarm clock is so that you can claim to have made an honest effort to wake up at a certain time, so that, no matter when you actually do wake up, you can truthfully say, to whoever is mad at you for not waking up, that you tried your best). People though, man, they can really get under your skin.
First off, there's the school bell. I think I've probably talked about this particular bane of mine before, but I think it bears repeating. There's a large, empty, laboratory compressed gas cylinder resting against a tree in the school yard about a hundred meters from my house. Every morning when school's in session, it's the job of one unfortunate kid to go beat the hell out of this cylinder with a metal rod at around 6:30, 7:00, and 7:30. I say unfortunate because close up exposure to the loud noise produced by ringing this improvised bell has got be at least as damaging to the ear drums as, say, attending ten Children of Bodom concerts, with front row seats, back to back. Just as teenagers are unfazed by loud concerts, however, these kids seem to actually enjoy making themselves go deaf and go at the bell with what can only be described as masochistic zeal. The sound produced by the gas cylinder is similar to that made by taking a mallet to an enormous gong, of the variety that always seem to be hanging all over the place in Kung-Fu movies. It's a sound that's heard, not only by the ear, but by the entire body. It hits you like a shock wave of a sort that totally unwelcome at 6:30 in the morning. But that's not really what bothers me about the bell. Yes, it's loud, it's obnoxious, it's invasive, but I can deal with all that. What's torturous is how freaking RANDOM the thing is. Of course, keeping accurate time isn't exactly all the rage around these parts, so, although the bell is supposed to be rung at 6:30, in practice it's rung anywhere between 6:15 and 6:45. My brain has decided that it'll be damned if it's going to be woken up every morning by this thing. So, what generally happens is that I've been trained to wake myself up at around 6:10, to be sure to beat the bell, and I lie in my bed, wincing in anticipation for anywhere between five and thirty-five minutes. It's like Chinese water torture: it's not that the event that your dreading is really all that bad, it's that you never know exactly when it's coming. And then there's the pattern in which the bell is rung. It's never a consistent one-two-three-four kind of beat. They'll wail on it really fast for the first five hits, pause for a few seconds, give it three slow hits, then a short pause followed by two quick hits and then a long pause and a last, sharp hit at the end for good measure. Or something random like that. And the thing is that it's different every morning, so there's no getting used to it. I think by the end of my service, I'm going to be so scarred by the sound of metal beating on metal that the accidental clanking of, say, a fork and a knife together, will make my fly into a murderous rage and strangle the person daft enough to make such a noise.
But the bell's not really the worst of it. The bell is designed to wake up everyone, indiscriminately. What's worse is when someone decides that they need to wake up you, specifically. In the US we have what I think is a wonderful custom. It's my favorite custom, actually. It's, in my opinion, the one and only custom required for a civilized society. This custom is both necessary and sufficient for a culture to be deemed sophisticated and advanced. It work's like this: when someone is sleeping, YOU DO NOT WAKE THEM UP, unless it's a matter of life and death and, even then, only if you've put in an honest effort to resolve the issue without disturbing the sleeper. In Vanuatu the custom goes more like this: if someone is sleeping, don't wake them up unless you feel like it. So what will happen is that someone will decide, at six in the morning, that it would be a really good time to ask me if I have any DVDs they can borrow. So they start knocking on my door and, of course, I don't respond, because it's six o'clock in the freaking morning, and I know it's not a matter of life and death, because there are no matters of life and death in Vanuatu. So they knock harder, and then the start calling “Daniel! Daniel!” And, of course, I still ignore them. So then they start screaming “DANIEL! DANIEL!” or, even better, screaming incoherently. If I'm still ignoring them at this point, they'll come around to my bedroom window and start banging on it and screaming. And, although I've never made it to this phase, I'm sure the next move would be putting a brick through my window and climbing in to dump a bucket of water on me. Or sometimes they'll be too lazy to come wake me up in person because, I suspect, somebody woke them up that morning way too early as well, so they'll try to wake me up via phone. They'll adopt a strategy of random calling patterns apparently adapted from the bell ringers: put in a few calls in quick succession, follow it up with a pause of random duration, and then put in some more back to back calls. By the time I cave in, there's usually about fifteen or sixteen missed calls on my phone. Of course, the kicker, the part that really gets me, is that this whole process, of waking me up at some ungodly hour, was initiated so that I could do THEM a favor. There is no justice in this world.
On a slightly less whiny note, Friday there was a dead in the village. A dead, obviously, occurs whenever someone in the village dies. This happens fairly frequently. While the medical system here is reasonable at dealing with things like infectious diseases, injuries, and other health problems commonly encountered in life, it's not really up to the task of combating the ailments brought on by old age. Thus, old people in Vanuatu tend to die young, so to speak. Ni-Vanuatu have something of a different perspective on death than we do in the US. In the States, I think, we tend to remove ourselves from the processes surrounding death. A family member dies and we put in a call to a funeral home and they basically do everything for us: prepare the body for burial/cremation/whatever, get a coffin ready, dig the grave, etc. All the family has to do is show up to the funeral to grieve and be solemn. The distance that we put between ourselves and the various chores involved when someone dies gives a funeral a certain sense of mystery and even discomfort. I tend to feel awkward at funerals, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. In Vanuatu, of course, this kind of distance from the dead is impossible. There's no one to outsource anything to, so the Ni-Vans have a sort of practiced ease when dealing with death. For example, you might hop in the back of a pickup truck and have one of the other passengers tell you, straight-faced and matter-of-factly, “careful not to step on the dead guy.”
There's a very well laid out ritual that's followed whenever a family member dies. On the day of the death, the body is left in the family's house. All the relatives come by and “wail,” which is kind of an exaggerated crying. They howl and scream and sometimes pound the body. It can be quite disconcerting to those unused to the practice. The next day (or the day after, depending on timing), there's a funeral service at the church and a burial. The grave and coffin and everything are prepared, of course, by people in the village. Starting the day the death occurred, the immediate family of the deceased is forbidden, by custom, to do any kind of work until thirty days have passed. They can't cook, clean, hunt, fish, go to the gardens, or even bathe. Since it's basically impossible to survive without doing these things in Vanuatu, the extended family, and the community in general, is obligated to take care of them. Families take turns bringing them food and doing any housework that needs to be done. There are also four feasts that are put on in honor of the dead: one five days after the death, one ten days after, one after thirty days, and one after one hundred days. The five day feast is the largest and they get progressively smaller after that. The thirty day has special significance because it means that the immediate family can one again take care of themselves and is officially done grieving. Sometimes the men in the family will mark the occasion by all shaving their beards together, something they'd been unable to do up until that point. The hundred day feast is a simple, small affair of remembrance. Now, not working for thirty days after a family member dies probably seems a little excessive for those of us from the States, but remember that time has a bit of a different meaning here in Vanuatu. Also, it's not like there's all that much work that needs to be done around these parts anyway. The time periods involved aren't really that relevant, the point is that there's a very specific ritual to be followed. Every time there's a death, exactly the same process is followed. Everyone knows exactly what's expected of them, depending on their relation to the deceased. Everyone goes through the steps, takes the appropriate actions, and then it's done. Closure is guaranteed. No one dwells on the death after the alloted time has passed, it's water under the bridge.
So anyway, Friday was the funeral and burial service for some distant relative of mine. The church was so crowded for the service that I had to sit outside, which I actually kind of preferred since I knew it had to be at least three million degrees inside. Afterwards, the coffin was carried out by a group of the village men and we followed them to a small cemetery just outside the village proper. Duncan, of course, was in charged of the actual burial (he has a tendency to put himself in charged of anything involving the use of tools, in this case a shovel). After the ceremony, everyone in the village shook hands with everyone else in the village (this took about three times as long as the actual ceremony), and I headed home. Not the most uplifting way to start your weekend, but actually far less depressing than one might think. There might be something to this more familiar relationship with death.
This week's Tautu language word is “des.” It means “ocean.”
So, I hate alarm clocks. It's a hatred that's had a long time to grow and mature. It began perhaps ten to twelve years ago when one of these insidious contraption first appeared on my bedside table and was programmed to emit obnoxious loud noises at 6:30 every morning so that I could get up for school. Ten years is a pretty sizable chunk of time for a hatred to develop, so by this point it's pretty sophisticated. It's well thought through and has a lot of facets. When I left for Vanuatu a little more than a year ago, one of the things I was looking forward to was ridding myself of the evil little gizmo that is is alarm clock for a couple years. Thus, it was with some chagrin that I discovered that, although there are indeed no alarm clocks here, they're replaced my something that I now hate even more: people bent on waking you up at ridiculously early hours of the morning. And the thing about people is that they're so much more creative, cunning, and annoying in the ways that they go about waking you up than any alarm clock could ever dream of being. I now respect this about alarm clocks. Alarm clocks are predictable. You set an alarm clock to go off at 6:30 and it will, invariably, go off at 6:30. It won't decide that some mornings it's going to go off at 6:24 and then the next morning it's going to go off at 6:32, etc. No, 6:30, every morning, on the dot. Also, it will always make the same noise every morning. It may be a beep, a bell, a buzzer, or whatever, but it's always the same. The same volume, the same tone, the same timing. It's almost... soothing. After a while you get so used to the same pattern of noise at the same time every morning that you begin to be able to tune it out (some may argue that this is actually a bad thing because the whole point of having an alarm clock is so that you can wake up at a certain time each day. This is wrong. The point of having an alarm clock is so that you can claim to have made an honest effort to wake up at a certain time, so that, no matter when you actually do wake up, you can truthfully say, to whoever is mad at you for not waking up, that you tried your best). People though, man, they can really get under your skin.
First off, there's the school bell. I think I've probably talked about this particular bane of mine before, but I think it bears repeating. There's a large, empty, laboratory compressed gas cylinder resting against a tree in the school yard about a hundred meters from my house. Every morning when school's in session, it's the job of one unfortunate kid to go beat the hell out of this cylinder with a metal rod at around 6:30, 7:00, and 7:30. I say unfortunate because close up exposure to the loud noise produced by ringing this improvised bell has got be at least as damaging to the ear drums as, say, attending ten Children of Bodom concerts, with front row seats, back to back. Just as teenagers are unfazed by loud concerts, however, these kids seem to actually enjoy making themselves go deaf and go at the bell with what can only be described as masochistic zeal. The sound produced by the gas cylinder is similar to that made by taking a mallet to an enormous gong, of the variety that always seem to be hanging all over the place in Kung-Fu movies. It's a sound that's heard, not only by the ear, but by the entire body. It hits you like a shock wave of a sort that totally unwelcome at 6:30 in the morning. But that's not really what bothers me about the bell. Yes, it's loud, it's obnoxious, it's invasive, but I can deal with all that. What's torturous is how freaking RANDOM the thing is. Of course, keeping accurate time isn't exactly all the rage around these parts, so, although the bell is supposed to be rung at 6:30, in practice it's rung anywhere between 6:15 and 6:45. My brain has decided that it'll be damned if it's going to be woken up every morning by this thing. So, what generally happens is that I've been trained to wake myself up at around 6:10, to be sure to beat the bell, and I lie in my bed, wincing in anticipation for anywhere between five and thirty-five minutes. It's like Chinese water torture: it's not that the event that your dreading is really all that bad, it's that you never know exactly when it's coming. And then there's the pattern in which the bell is rung. It's never a consistent one-two-three-four kind of beat. They'll wail on it really fast for the first five hits, pause for a few seconds, give it three slow hits, then a short pause followed by two quick hits and then a long pause and a last, sharp hit at the end for good measure. Or something random like that. And the thing is that it's different every morning, so there's no getting used to it. I think by the end of my service, I'm going to be so scarred by the sound of metal beating on metal that the accidental clanking of, say, a fork and a knife together, will make my fly into a murderous rage and strangle the person daft enough to make such a noise.
But the bell's not really the worst of it. The bell is designed to wake up everyone, indiscriminately. What's worse is when someone decides that they need to wake up you, specifically. In the US we have what I think is a wonderful custom. It's my favorite custom, actually. It's, in my opinion, the one and only custom required for a civilized society. This custom is both necessary and sufficient for a culture to be deemed sophisticated and advanced. It work's like this: when someone is sleeping, YOU DO NOT WAKE THEM UP, unless it's a matter of life and death and, even then, only if you've put in an honest effort to resolve the issue without disturbing the sleeper. In Vanuatu the custom goes more like this: if someone is sleeping, don't wake them up unless you feel like it. So what will happen is that someone will decide, at six in the morning, that it would be a really good time to ask me if I have any DVDs they can borrow. So they start knocking on my door and, of course, I don't respond, because it's six o'clock in the freaking morning, and I know it's not a matter of life and death, because there are no matters of life and death in Vanuatu. So they knock harder, and then the start calling “Daniel! Daniel!” And, of course, I still ignore them. So then they start screaming “DANIEL! DANIEL!” or, even better, screaming incoherently. If I'm still ignoring them at this point, they'll come around to my bedroom window and start banging on it and screaming. And, although I've never made it to this phase, I'm sure the next move would be putting a brick through my window and climbing in to dump a bucket of water on me. Or sometimes they'll be too lazy to come wake me up in person because, I suspect, somebody woke them up that morning way too early as well, so they'll try to wake me up via phone. They'll adopt a strategy of random calling patterns apparently adapted from the bell ringers: put in a few calls in quick succession, follow it up with a pause of random duration, and then put in some more back to back calls. By the time I cave in, there's usually about fifteen or sixteen missed calls on my phone. Of course, the kicker, the part that really gets me, is that this whole process, of waking me up at some ungodly hour, was initiated so that I could do THEM a favor. There is no justice in this world.
On a slightly less whiny note, Friday there was a dead in the village. A dead, obviously, occurs whenever someone in the village dies. This happens fairly frequently. While the medical system here is reasonable at dealing with things like infectious diseases, injuries, and other health problems commonly encountered in life, it's not really up to the task of combating the ailments brought on by old age. Thus, old people in Vanuatu tend to die young, so to speak. Ni-Vanuatu have something of a different perspective on death than we do in the US. In the States, I think, we tend to remove ourselves from the processes surrounding death. A family member dies and we put in a call to a funeral home and they basically do everything for us: prepare the body for burial/cremation/whatever, get a coffin ready, dig the grave, etc. All the family has to do is show up to the funeral to grieve and be solemn. The distance that we put between ourselves and the various chores involved when someone dies gives a funeral a certain sense of mystery and even discomfort. I tend to feel awkward at funerals, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. In Vanuatu, of course, this kind of distance from the dead is impossible. There's no one to outsource anything to, so the Ni-Vans have a sort of practiced ease when dealing with death. For example, you might hop in the back of a pickup truck and have one of the other passengers tell you, straight-faced and matter-of-factly, “careful not to step on the dead guy.”
There's a very well laid out ritual that's followed whenever a family member dies. On the day of the death, the body is left in the family's house. All the relatives come by and “wail,” which is kind of an exaggerated crying. They howl and scream and sometimes pound the body. It can be quite disconcerting to those unused to the practice. The next day (or the day after, depending on timing), there's a funeral service at the church and a burial. The grave and coffin and everything are prepared, of course, by people in the village. Starting the day the death occurred, the immediate family of the deceased is forbidden, by custom, to do any kind of work until thirty days have passed. They can't cook, clean, hunt, fish, go to the gardens, or even bathe. Since it's basically impossible to survive without doing these things in Vanuatu, the extended family, and the community in general, is obligated to take care of them. Families take turns bringing them food and doing any housework that needs to be done. There are also four feasts that are put on in honor of the dead: one five days after the death, one ten days after, one after thirty days, and one after one hundred days. The five day feast is the largest and they get progressively smaller after that. The thirty day has special significance because it means that the immediate family can one again take care of themselves and is officially done grieving. Sometimes the men in the family will mark the occasion by all shaving their beards together, something they'd been unable to do up until that point. The hundred day feast is a simple, small affair of remembrance. Now, not working for thirty days after a family member dies probably seems a little excessive for those of us from the States, but remember that time has a bit of a different meaning here in Vanuatu. Also, it's not like there's all that much work that needs to be done around these parts anyway. The time periods involved aren't really that relevant, the point is that there's a very specific ritual to be followed. Every time there's a death, exactly the same process is followed. Everyone knows exactly what's expected of them, depending on their relation to the deceased. Everyone goes through the steps, takes the appropriate actions, and then it's done. Closure is guaranteed. No one dwells on the death after the alloted time has passed, it's water under the bridge.
So anyway, Friday was the funeral and burial service for some distant relative of mine. The church was so crowded for the service that I had to sit outside, which I actually kind of preferred since I knew it had to be at least three million degrees inside. Afterwards, the coffin was carried out by a group of the village men and we followed them to a small cemetery just outside the village proper. Duncan, of course, was in charged of the actual burial (he has a tendency to put himself in charged of anything involving the use of tools, in this case a shovel). After the ceremony, everyone in the village shook hands with everyone else in the village (this took about three times as long as the actual ceremony), and I headed home. Not the most uplifting way to start your weekend, but actually far less depressing than one might think. There might be something to this more familiar relationship with death.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Life in the Ring of Fire Part 53: Rain Smoke
This week's Tautu language word is “tosalsal.” It means “white man.” Needless to say, I get called this a lot.
Mango season was starting. This was very exciting. Last year, to my dismay, I left out training village on Efate to come to Malekula before Efate's mango season and after Malekula's mango season, thus meaning I've been living in a tropical paradise for more than a year now and have eaten, maybe, a grand total of three mangoes. I considered this unacceptable. There are mango trees all around Tautu, big, towering behemoths with long slender leaves and tangles of branches. There's one right next to my house, actually. They make good shade trees. Their leaves are small, but there are a lot of them and so they generally provide a nice, dense canopy. I've actually taken to setting up something of an outdoor office underneath mine. There's a half-rotten (but still functional) wooden platform built of strips of coconut logs situated between the mango tree and a nangai (a kind of nut, sort of like an almond, but more oily) tree which is shaded all day long. Someone laid a long piece of timber across a couple of supports just behind the platform, meaning that I can sit on the platform and use the timber as a sort of table for my laptop. I generally have to vacate my house between the hours of noon and four these days. Spring is rolling in with a vengeance and is making me wonder how it was that I was able to deal with impending summer last year. The school also decided a few months ago that it needed to cut down a bunch of trees around my house, meaning that there are now no trees to keep the sun off my corrugated iron roof, thus turning my house into an excellent model of a solar oven. On top of all that, my fan, which has served me faithfully for so many months, is on the fritz (sometimes requiring me to give the blades a little nudge with a pencil in order to get them going). When I was in Vila last, I looked into upgrading to a more deluxe fan model, perhaps even one made in a country besides China, but discovered that such an upgrade would have cost about $100, which seemed like a lot then, but now is seeming like a very worthy investment. So anyway, bottom line, I now have to retreat to my office during the hottest parts of the day, giving me plenty of opportunity to watch the mangoes ripen. They start off as little, green, kidney-shaped buds and eventually grow into larger, green, kidney-shaped buds. Unfortunately for me, my tree is at the school which, for some reason, is always populated by a lot of kids. I'm not sure if it's impatience or custom or some gross misunderstanding of agriculture, but Ni-Vans (especially kids) NEVER let fruit ripen properly. For example, any fruit ripe enough to fall to the ground of its own accord from a tree is immediately deem inedible. So what generally happens, be it with mangoes, papayas, grapefruits, oranges, basically any fruit, really, is that before any of the fruit is really ripe, the tree is swarmed and picked clean by kids. The kids seem to have a special penchant for under ripe mangoes. They pick them while they're still hard and sour, use a knife to cut the flesh into little slivers and eat them. They call them mango apples. This practice was really getting on my nerves, as I'd purchased a blender when I was in Australia and was looking forward to making some smoothies, but so far the only fruit I'd been able to consistently get my hands on was bananas, and plain banana smoothies really left something to be desired. Oh well, perhaps I'll have better luck during pineapple season.
In another attempt to beat the heat, I'd taken to spending part of my afternoons down in the main part of the village, which is located right on the beach. Well, beach is perhaps the wrong word to use. It implies a nice, sandy swath bordering the ocean on which one can lay out on a blanket, play beach volleyball, frolic in the shallows, etc. Tautu's beach is only a beach in the sense that it is a piece of land directly adjacent to the ocean. It is sandy, farther inland, but the actual beach is a continuous stretch of sharp, craggy rock that I can't walk on without the aid of sandals (although the village kids don't seem to have a problem running on it in bare feet). The real draw of the beach, especially these days, is that there's almost always a strong breeze coming off the ocean that, if you kind of squint, can actually border on being cold. Tautu is situated on what is essentially a large bay. Looking straight out from the shore, you can see where the island curves back around near Lakatoro and Litz Litz, as well as a few small, offshore islands. It's a nice view, even on a bad day. If you're really lucky, however, and happen to be at the right place at the right time to catch a storm front rolling in off the ocean, well, things really can't get much better. Thursday afternoon, I headed down to the beach to find that the wind was coming in unusually strong. Although the sky above Tautu was pristinely cloudless, a shadow cast by a foreboding mass of incoming clouds was creeping over the ocean. It may seem a little counter-intuitive, but it's actually not bright, sunny days that bring out the ocean's colors the best. A sun that's too bright tends to wash out subtle differences in the ocean's color, making everything a dull, universal, blue-green. Of course, with no sun at all the ocean turns into an abyss, a deep and empty void that not even the brightest of artificial lights can cast adequate light upon. It takes the shadow of an impending storm to bring out the breathtaking potential of the Pacific Ocean, when the blanket of blue-green is lifted to show three, sharp, stark bands of color, as distinct as if painted. Closest to shore, the water takes on the yellowish brown of the craggy rock structure that makes up the beach. At about twenty meters out, it suddenly changes to a brilliant turquoise brought out by the coral reef beneath it. Another ten meters past that the reef disappears and the ocean floor suddenly drops, making the water above it turn a deep, imposing blue. This is the color which defines blue. It's upfront and simple, no undertones, no hints at even the possibility of the existence of another color. Just Blue. As the wind knives across this strangely dynamic and immutable landscape it brings to life brilliant slashes of white, frothing waves as unabashedly white as the ocean that birthed them is blue. How is it that water, plain, simple, clear, colorless, is able to take on such a myriad of hues? And how is it that they can be made to change so violently? Closer to shore, you can watch these frothing creations work their way along the surface and then dissolve back into the immensity of the ocean as they break upon things unseen, but farther out the waves seem not to move at all, they're frozen stark, white gashes carelessly drawn upon a canvas of blue.
Then comes the rain. Not from above me, at least not yet, it's a little ways off still, but its presence is given away by the appearance of a thick, smoky haze that envelops the offshore islands and blots out the lush green of their vegetation, changing all color to a drab gray. For once, Bislama succeeds in being more poetic than English. The haze of an approaching rain is so perfectly dubbed “smoke blong rain” -- rain smoke. Slowly this smoke creeps its away across the ocean until even the closest offshore island, so clearly visible on a sunny day that you can pick out the shapes off village houses on its beach, becomes nothing more than a faint outline. Everyone knows what's coming. Women and children scramble to collect clothes drying on lines and men out net fishing in the shallows make a beeline for their houses. And then the rain starts. No, rain is an inadequate word to describe a thing of this magnitude. It's like suddenly standing at the base of a waterfall. A wall of water pouring from the sky. A deluge. Yes, English once again comes to the rescue with its voluminous vocabulary. Smoke blong rain was good, Bislama, but you're still behind by a lot. Finally, the rain having blotted out all but the most trivial of views of the ocean, I headed back to my house.
Fortunately, I'd finally fixed my rain gutter just a few days before. Ever since I'd dismantled my water system for cleaning after returning from Australia, I'd been unable to keep the spout connecting the gutters with the water tank from falling down. I hadn't broken or lost any important connective piece or anything. Apparently, the entire setup had been held together by some variety of mystical force, which I'd been unable to re-invoke (or maybe the dirt which I'd removed during the cleaning had been playing a crucial role in supporting the structure). In any case, I finally fixed the problem with the generous application of duct tape, which I hoped would be able to retain its adhesiveness despite the fact that, since it was part of a water system, it would probably be getting wet a lot. When I got home, I was pleased to see that the tape appeared to be holding just fine and that a nice flow of water was entering my tank.
I don't think I can describe to you how awesome that rain was. We hadn't had a good rain for almost two months. Almost all the rain tanks in the village were dry. I had taken to getting water from a well near the school. Everything was choked with dust. I'd been coated in dust for weeks. Not even the longest and most through of showers could remove the thin film of dirt from my skin. Either that or it was instantly replaced with new dust upon emerging from the shower. I think one of the coolest things about living in Vanuatu is how happy a simple thing as rain can make you. I could just feel the rain pouring vitality back into the parched landscape. It was like every person, animal, and plant on the island was breathing a collective sigh of relief. And watching my gutters divert a veritable river of water into my water tank awakened a very primal and instinctive glee. I literally jumped with joy. I was bounding up and down across my floor, doing fist pumps and screaming “Yes!” to no one in particular. I felt suddenly indestructible, because, after all, what can anyone possibly do to hamper the spirits of someone who's made happy when it rains?
Thursday and Friday it rained all day. My early Friday afternoon, water was pouring out of my tank's overflow pipe and I couldn't have been more please. The rain was even considerate enough to stop right around kava time on Friday to allow me a nice walk to Duncan's through the pleasantly damp and cool evening. Of course, I knew that soon enough the dampness on the ground would transform into oppressive humidity and the sudden influx of water would probably mean a monster hatch of mosquitoes, but I tried not to think of such things. For the time being, all was right with the world.
This week's Tautu language word is “tosalsal.” It means “white man.” Needless to say, I get called this a lot.
Mango season was starting. This was very exciting. Last year, to my dismay, I left out training village on Efate to come to Malekula before Efate's mango season and after Malekula's mango season, thus meaning I've been living in a tropical paradise for more than a year now and have eaten, maybe, a grand total of three mangoes. I considered this unacceptable. There are mango trees all around Tautu, big, towering behemoths with long slender leaves and tangles of branches. There's one right next to my house, actually. They make good shade trees. Their leaves are small, but there are a lot of them and so they generally provide a nice, dense canopy. I've actually taken to setting up something of an outdoor office underneath mine. There's a half-rotten (but still functional) wooden platform built of strips of coconut logs situated between the mango tree and a nangai (a kind of nut, sort of like an almond, but more oily) tree which is shaded all day long. Someone laid a long piece of timber across a couple of supports just behind the platform, meaning that I can sit on the platform and use the timber as a sort of table for my laptop. I generally have to vacate my house between the hours of noon and four these days. Spring is rolling in with a vengeance and is making me wonder how it was that I was able to deal with impending summer last year. The school also decided a few months ago that it needed to cut down a bunch of trees around my house, meaning that there are now no trees to keep the sun off my corrugated iron roof, thus turning my house into an excellent model of a solar oven. On top of all that, my fan, which has served me faithfully for so many months, is on the fritz (sometimes requiring me to give the blades a little nudge with a pencil in order to get them going). When I was in Vila last, I looked into upgrading to a more deluxe fan model, perhaps even one made in a country besides China, but discovered that such an upgrade would have cost about $100, which seemed like a lot then, but now is seeming like a very worthy investment. So anyway, bottom line, I now have to retreat to my office during the hottest parts of the day, giving me plenty of opportunity to watch the mangoes ripen. They start off as little, green, kidney-shaped buds and eventually grow into larger, green, kidney-shaped buds. Unfortunately for me, my tree is at the school which, for some reason, is always populated by a lot of kids. I'm not sure if it's impatience or custom or some gross misunderstanding of agriculture, but Ni-Vans (especially kids) NEVER let fruit ripen properly. For example, any fruit ripe enough to fall to the ground of its own accord from a tree is immediately deem inedible. So what generally happens, be it with mangoes, papayas, grapefruits, oranges, basically any fruit, really, is that before any of the fruit is really ripe, the tree is swarmed and picked clean by kids. The kids seem to have a special penchant for under ripe mangoes. They pick them while they're still hard and sour, use a knife to cut the flesh into little slivers and eat them. They call them mango apples. This practice was really getting on my nerves, as I'd purchased a blender when I was in Australia and was looking forward to making some smoothies, but so far the only fruit I'd been able to consistently get my hands on was bananas, and plain banana smoothies really left something to be desired. Oh well, perhaps I'll have better luck during pineapple season.
In another attempt to beat the heat, I'd taken to spending part of my afternoons down in the main part of the village, which is located right on the beach. Well, beach is perhaps the wrong word to use. It implies a nice, sandy swath bordering the ocean on which one can lay out on a blanket, play beach volleyball, frolic in the shallows, etc. Tautu's beach is only a beach in the sense that it is a piece of land directly adjacent to the ocean. It is sandy, farther inland, but the actual beach is a continuous stretch of sharp, craggy rock that I can't walk on without the aid of sandals (although the village kids don't seem to have a problem running on it in bare feet). The real draw of the beach, especially these days, is that there's almost always a strong breeze coming off the ocean that, if you kind of squint, can actually border on being cold. Tautu is situated on what is essentially a large bay. Looking straight out from the shore, you can see where the island curves back around near Lakatoro and Litz Litz, as well as a few small, offshore islands. It's a nice view, even on a bad day. If you're really lucky, however, and happen to be at the right place at the right time to catch a storm front rolling in off the ocean, well, things really can't get much better. Thursday afternoon, I headed down to the beach to find that the wind was coming in unusually strong. Although the sky above Tautu was pristinely cloudless, a shadow cast by a foreboding mass of incoming clouds was creeping over the ocean. It may seem a little counter-intuitive, but it's actually not bright, sunny days that bring out the ocean's colors the best. A sun that's too bright tends to wash out subtle differences in the ocean's color, making everything a dull, universal, blue-green. Of course, with no sun at all the ocean turns into an abyss, a deep and empty void that not even the brightest of artificial lights can cast adequate light upon. It takes the shadow of an impending storm to bring out the breathtaking potential of the Pacific Ocean, when the blanket of blue-green is lifted to show three, sharp, stark bands of color, as distinct as if painted. Closest to shore, the water takes on the yellowish brown of the craggy rock structure that makes up the beach. At about twenty meters out, it suddenly changes to a brilliant turquoise brought out by the coral reef beneath it. Another ten meters past that the reef disappears and the ocean floor suddenly drops, making the water above it turn a deep, imposing blue. This is the color which defines blue. It's upfront and simple, no undertones, no hints at even the possibility of the existence of another color. Just Blue. As the wind knives across this strangely dynamic and immutable landscape it brings to life brilliant slashes of white, frothing waves as unabashedly white as the ocean that birthed them is blue. How is it that water, plain, simple, clear, colorless, is able to take on such a myriad of hues? And how is it that they can be made to change so violently? Closer to shore, you can watch these frothing creations work their way along the surface and then dissolve back into the immensity of the ocean as they break upon things unseen, but farther out the waves seem not to move at all, they're frozen stark, white gashes carelessly drawn upon a canvas of blue.
Then comes the rain. Not from above me, at least not yet, it's a little ways off still, but its presence is given away by the appearance of a thick, smoky haze that envelops the offshore islands and blots out the lush green of their vegetation, changing all color to a drab gray. For once, Bislama succeeds in being more poetic than English. The haze of an approaching rain is so perfectly dubbed “smoke blong rain” -- rain smoke. Slowly this smoke creeps its away across the ocean until even the closest offshore island, so clearly visible on a sunny day that you can pick out the shapes off village houses on its beach, becomes nothing more than a faint outline. Everyone knows what's coming. Women and children scramble to collect clothes drying on lines and men out net fishing in the shallows make a beeline for their houses. And then the rain starts. No, rain is an inadequate word to describe a thing of this magnitude. It's like suddenly standing at the base of a waterfall. A wall of water pouring from the sky. A deluge. Yes, English once again comes to the rescue with its voluminous vocabulary. Smoke blong rain was good, Bislama, but you're still behind by a lot. Finally, the rain having blotted out all but the most trivial of views of the ocean, I headed back to my house.
Fortunately, I'd finally fixed my rain gutter just a few days before. Ever since I'd dismantled my water system for cleaning after returning from Australia, I'd been unable to keep the spout connecting the gutters with the water tank from falling down. I hadn't broken or lost any important connective piece or anything. Apparently, the entire setup had been held together by some variety of mystical force, which I'd been unable to re-invoke (or maybe the dirt which I'd removed during the cleaning had been playing a crucial role in supporting the structure). In any case, I finally fixed the problem with the generous application of duct tape, which I hoped would be able to retain its adhesiveness despite the fact that, since it was part of a water system, it would probably be getting wet a lot. When I got home, I was pleased to see that the tape appeared to be holding just fine and that a nice flow of water was entering my tank.
I don't think I can describe to you how awesome that rain was. We hadn't had a good rain for almost two months. Almost all the rain tanks in the village were dry. I had taken to getting water from a well near the school. Everything was choked with dust. I'd been coated in dust for weeks. Not even the longest and most through of showers could remove the thin film of dirt from my skin. Either that or it was instantly replaced with new dust upon emerging from the shower. I think one of the coolest things about living in Vanuatu is how happy a simple thing as rain can make you. I could just feel the rain pouring vitality back into the parched landscape. It was like every person, animal, and plant on the island was breathing a collective sigh of relief. And watching my gutters divert a veritable river of water into my water tank awakened a very primal and instinctive glee. I literally jumped with joy. I was bounding up and down across my floor, doing fist pumps and screaming “Yes!” to no one in particular. I felt suddenly indestructible, because, after all, what can anyone possibly do to hamper the spirits of someone who's made happy when it rains?
Thursday and Friday it rained all day. My early Friday afternoon, water was pouring out of my tank's overflow pipe and I couldn't have been more please. The rain was even considerate enough to stop right around kava time on Friday to allow me a nice walk to Duncan's through the pleasantly damp and cool evening. Of course, I knew that soon enough the dampness on the ground would transform into oppressive humidity and the sudden influx of water would probably mean a monster hatch of mosquitoes, but I tried not to think of such things. For the time being, all was right with the world.
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