I was booked on an afternoon flight back to Malekula, leaving me with some time Monday morning to run around Luganville, picking up some key items I wanted to take back with me. Actually, two key items really: an electric fan and several bottles of Jameson Irish whiskey. McKenzie’s house, when she moved into it, had been equipped with a small fan which had been left behind by Caryn, the volunteer she was replacing. It was quickly discovered that this fan was the one and only thing that made being inside tolerable during the heat of the afternoon and was in fact the key to being able to sleep past seven in the morning. Needless to say, I instantly decided to procure one for myself. Unfortunately, Malekula is not a major electric fan supplier (read, there are no electric fans on the island), so I’d been waiting for this opportunity for a while.
As far as the whiskey goes, Vanuatu levies essentially no taxes (I know that doesn’t really seem relevant to whiskey at the moment, but stay with me). There’s no property tax (people wouldn’t be able to pay it), income tax (most people don’t make any income), or sales tax (no way to enforce it), and so the government makes more or less all of its money charging ridiculously high import duties, especially on alcohol and tobacco products. This means, for example, that a liter of cheap, imported liquor might go for upwards of $40 in Vila or Luganville. This price is, of course, marked up substantially when the product hits one of the outer islands, such as Malekula. Thus the bottom line for us is that, unless you’re a wealthy plantation owner, you’re not drinking imported booze. Fortunately, a company called Vanuatu Beverage (VB for short) tries to pick up the slack by peddling locally produced liquors (they also make soft drinks called Splash, or Splashe, depending on who was printing out the labels that day, that come in your standard flavors, such as Cola or Orange, but also flair out into the somewhat more exotic, such as Squash Lemon, which I’m pretty sure is just a typo, but you never know. Unfortunately, all Splash(e) drinks somehow manage to taste warm and flat no matter how long you put them in the freezer for), which try to mimic popular imported brands with names like South Pacific Comfort (a knock off of Southern Comfort), or Sctoch Whiskey, or Mele Ruhm. The fine folks at VB have also branched into the pre-bottled mixed drink market; hence, it’s possible to pick up a bottle of pre-mixed Rum & Cola or Gin & Tonic at the LTC (and no, I haven’t had the courage to go there yet). I think it’s fair to say that, without exception, basically everything produced by VB is gross and overpriced. It’s kind of like how movie theaters sell disgusting, expensive popcorn because they know people will buy it as you can’t bring in your own food. Anyway, this is all a very long-winded way of saying that when I saw bottles of Jameson going for $33 at a Chinese store, it seemed mighty appealing, and I promptly bought several.
I’d arranged to fly home on Monday because I’d already missed teaching two of my classes, and I couldn’t really afford to miss any more. McKenzie, however, was staying on for another day or so to do some work for her non-profit and had decided to try for a ship back (you know, because that worked out so well on the way over). She had her puppy, Bruiser, with her, who had been acquired several weeks before when she and Elin had gone to Matanvat to visit Laura. Elin had decided that she wanted to take home a pair of puppies from one of the village dogs that had just had a litter. This decision was quickly regretted, however, when she realized what a pain in the ass it is to look after puppies. When she left on a trip to Vila, she left the dogs with McKenzie. One promptly got worms and died, but the other got along fairly well and Elin gave up ownership of it to McKenzie when she got back from Vila. Since she didn’t want to take the dog on a ship, McKenzie asked me to take him back with me. For reasons that escape me at the moment, I agreed.
Now, those of you that know me well know that I’m not much of an animal person and tend to be of the opinion that most animals are useful only in that they can be turned into delicious cuts of meat which can then be grilled. Fortunately, Vanuatu is a country that more or less agrees with me on this point. Here, animals tend to be categorized into one of two groups: food (to be killed and eaten) and pests (to be killed and not eaten). There is no SPCA or PETA equivalent around these parts. You see, most animals may be cute and lovable in theory, but when you have to live in close proximity to large numbers of them on a daily basis (and try to keep them from eating your food, for example), your opinions of them tend to go toward the negative. Dogs are sort of a special case, in that they fall into both categories; most people don’t want to be near them (hence, pests), but they’re eaten in some parts of the country (hence, food). Additionally, they're somewhat useful in and of themselves and most families keep at least a couple around as guard dogs and for running wild chickens and pigs, but they're never allowed in, or even near, the house during the day and they mostly eat the garbage that the family throws away. Ni-Vanuatu tend to think of Westerns as somewhat nuts for keeping dogs as pets and pampering them as much as we do (think of that crazy old person who thinks pigeons are cute and always sits on park benches feeding them bread crumbs -- that’s what you look like to a Ni-Van when you pet dogs and give them food off your plate). Vanuatu is utterly chocked full of dogs, who become objects of abuse of all varieties, ranging from kicks to thrown rocks to (sometimes) being hacked at with machetes. When you live here, you quickly fall into the habit of giving a dog a good kick whenever one gets in your way and, in some places around Lakatoro, it's all but necessary to carry a large rock at night to throw at any dogs that try and bite you. I heard a story from Amanda, who'd just gone home to the US a couple weeks before, that the first thing she did when she got back to her house was give her mom's new dog the boot for blocking the door. Needless to say, this did not go over well.
Despite having lived here for almost six months now, however, it's still a little disconcerting to be walking down the road, puppy happily trotting along in tow, only to watch as someone, very purposely, walks up and punts it into the bushes. This happened more or less daily while Bruiser was staying with me, and, to be honest, I wasn't entirely sure whether to laugh or get angry. In the end, I decided the little guy needed to toughen up at some point, so I let it slide. I also instituted a strict no urine and feces policy in the house, which I enforced by making him mostly an outside dog. All in all, the whole experience was significantly less painful than I had initially anticipated. As it turns out, animals are pretty damn good at looking after themselves. Who would've thought?
McKenzie ended up being stuck in Luganville until Wednesday night due to the sporadic-ness of the ships. What's frustrating about trying to catch a ship is that it's more or less impossible to know when one's going to come. There's no set schedule and there's no toll-free hot-line you can call for information, you just have to show up at the dock at the same time as the ship and then get on it. Of course, you don't want to just wait at the dock, because you might be waiting for days, so you generally end up having to rely on asking Ni-Vans whether or not they've heard of a ship showing up. The problem with this is that Ni-Vans are notoriously difficult to get a straight answer out of. You've probably heard the expression: “ask six different people the same question and get six different answers.” In Vanuatu, if you ask six different people the same question, you're lucky to get six different answers, as each person will most likely give two to three (often contradicting) answers to a question during a single conversation. So, ask around about a ship and you'll discover that:
1) The ship is arriving in the afternoon
2) The ship is at the dock
3) The ship is coming tomorrow
4) The ship came and left already
5) The ship is going to Port Vila and not coming to Luganville
6) The ship is broken
7) The ship is in New Caledonia
8) The ship has been sunk by German U-boats
While some answers can be easily discarded as outright lies, you're still left with three or four plausible, yet mutually exclusive, possibilities (this doesn't just happen when asking about ships, of course, and I've gotten to the point where I just ignore about %60 of what people tell me). This means a lot of running back and forth to the docks to check for ships and a lot of waiting impatiently and wanting to strangle people. Then, of course, after you've managed to catch a ship, there's the uncomfortable eight hour ride at half a mile an hour to deal with. Thus, when McKenzie finally made it back to Lakatoro to collect her dog, she looked like she'd spent the week wrestling with a lot of very large and incredibly ferocious crocodiles. Needless to say, I was eager to give ship travel a shot myself, but I knew I'd have to wait until a school break as I couldn't afford to be missing that much class.
That weekend was St. Patrick's day, which is as good an excuse to have a party as any (actually, a better excuse than most, if I do say so myself), and it somehow worked out that almost every volunteer on the island was in Lakatoro, which was pretty cool as I there were a couple of the more remote people in the south that I hadn't met yet. As an added perk, one of the volunteers was on his way back from Vila and so a request was put in for a few cans of Guinness. They go for about seven dollars a piece, a luxury item by any definition of the word, but it was good to enjoy a beer that one actually might choose to purchase in the States for a change. Green food coloring (which, fortunately enough, is the only color of food coloring stocked in this country) was also procured from Luganville for the occasion. To top everything off, Jack, a volunteer from our group posted down in the south, decided that he was in intense need of chicken wings and so purchased 4 kilos, which were then deep fried and enjoyed by all. Not a bad way to spend a weekend.
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