Life in the Ring of Fire Part 33: Emerging from the Bush

**NOTE: OK, so I've tacked on an ending to my previous post "Adding Insult to Injury." I didn't actually mean to leave you hanging, somehow the end just got chopped off. Sorry.**

Monday was the day I thought I was scheduled to fly into Port Vila to attend an in-service training before our all-volunteer conference at the end of the week. I called in to retrieve my ticket from the Peace Corps office and discovered that, due to some sort of miscommunication, they had me marked down for a training the following week instead. However, since basically every volunteer on my island had either already left for Vila or was leaving Monday, I decided that I wasn't about to be left behind and went about trying to get my ticket changed. First, I stopped in at the Air Vanuatu office in Lakatoro where I was told by the lady behind the counter that every single flight from Norsup to Vila was booked solid from now until approximately the time when Earth's sun can no longer sustain fusion and begins to balloon outward, enveloping us all in a giant ball of flame, and that if I wanted to get to Vila during my lifetime I would have no choice but to wait until my scheduled flight on Saturday. I didn't find this particularly surprising, as this is what everyone who tries to change their flight reservations is told. Not to be deterred, however, I told Duncan what had happened with my ticket and expressed my desire to fly to Vila on Monday. He put a call through to one of his friends working at the airport, who assured us that it would be no problem for me to get on the flight. Thus, the two of us trekked over to the airport Monday morning. To my surprise, I discovered that the lady in the airline office wasn't exaggerating as much as I had at first thought: the airport was indeed jam-packed with people trying to get on the flight to Vila. A dauntingly large line snaked out of the tiny corrugated tin shack that served as the check-in counter. Just then McKenzie, who was actually booked on the flight, but would still need to go through the line in order to check-in, showed up in a truck from Lakatoro. “Give me your tickets,” Duncan said to us “I'll take care of this. You go sit down.” Obediently, we both handed him our tickets, watched as he violently busted his way through the line, haphazardly shoving other passengers out of the way, and then headed over to one of the benches and took a seat. About five minutes later, Duncan re-emerged from the shack, smiling and holding two boarding passes (well, not really, they're actually laminated pieces of paper that say “BOARDING PASS” on them that you have to return when you get on the plane so they can re-use them for the next flight), which he presented to us. “You're confirmed for the flight,” he told me. McKenzie and I both thanked him and settled in to wait for the flight, me wondering what hapless soul had been booted off the plane at Duncan's urging so that I could get on. I felt somewhat bad, but I really wanted to go to Vila that day, and I rationalized by thinking that, really, no Ni-Vanuatu would actually care about having to wait another day or two to get to where they were going. In fact, most had probably left lap-laps in the oven at home in anticipation of not getting on the flight. A little while later, Ben and Thad, two volunteers from the south of the island, joined us on the bench. They were both drenched in sweat and looked quite pissed off. “I f**king hate flying in this country,” Thad said, in lieu of a greeting, and then proceeded to launch into an explanation of all the trouble he'd had trying to get his luggage checked and how much he hated it when people cut in front of him in the check-in line. “Yeah,” I agreed, purposely looking away from him and trying not to laugh, “flying here sucks.” McKenzie rolled her eyes at me.

A short plane flight later, the four of us were in Vila. It was my first time back in civilization since training, almost six moths earlier and, needless to say, I felt very out of place. For instance, the first thing I did upon stepping out of the airport was to start climbing into a pickup tuck parked right outside the door before realizing that, this being an actual city, I couldn't just impose on any random motorist for a ride (and, might I say, this makes absolutely no sense. The difference in fuel cost incurred by carrying an extra passenger is basically insignificant and we could really cut down on gasoline consumption if more people were amenable to hitchhiking). Eventually, we found a bus to carry us to the hotel, where we deposited our belongings before starting the walk over to the Peace Corps office to use the internet. “This place is weird,” I commented to McKenzie as we stepped out into the street. Just then, a go-cart came careening around the corner and zoomed past us, its driver hooting wildly. “Yeah,” she agreed.

At the Peace Corps office I re-united with a number of volunteers who I hadn't seen since training, as well as a marvelous invention called broadband internet. As it got on toward lunch time, a bunch of us headed downtown to Jill's American Cafe because it was Cinco de Mayo and there were rumors that tacos were being served. On the way down, we crossed paths with a couple of JICA volunteers (JICA is Japan's version of Peace Corps) stationed on Malekula, also in for some sort of conference. “Where you headed?” I asked them. “The Japanese restaurant,” they answered, “you?” “The American restaurant.” As it turned out, the taco rumors were unfounded, but I was able to procure a big plate of chili-cheese fries, a chicken burrito, and a chocolate fudge brownie sunday. That afternoon I fondly remembered the days when I used to be able to eat large amounts of cheese and ice cream without spending the next four hours in the bathroom.

That night one of the volunteers stationed in Vila was hosting a Cinco de Mayo party, which we all went to. On the way back, we ran into a group of four French tourists who turned out to be staying at the same hotel as us. We hung out with them in the lobby of the hotel for a while and things began to get exponentially stranger. None of the French spoke very good English, and only one of our group knew any French at all, so communications were difficult from the beginning. One of the Frenchmen sat down next to the one French speaker among us and launched into a very impassioned monologue in French that, we were later told, was mostly him expounding on his philosophy of living life to the fullest. Two others sat down on either side of one of the girls in our group, Lizzie, and very animately tried to explain something to her in very broken English. For the longest time neither her, nor any of us sitting nearby, had any idea what they were saying, yet they kept insisting “You KNOW what we are talking about!” After about half an hour, we put together the fact that they were discussing an old video game, Sonic the Hedgehog, and wanted to know the name of one of the characters in it. After this issue was resolved, the four of them got into a very heated argument, in French, which left us all looking, open mouthed, from one to the other, trying to figure out what in god's name was going on. It was like they were living parodies of themselves, like they'd gotten together beforehand and decided that they were going to act really, preposterously and stereotypically French in order to mess with us Americans. Eventually, we decided that the night had gotten weird enough and we all turned in.

The next day, those volunteers that were scheduled to attend trainings were whisked away to the north of the island leaving me, and a few others who'd decided to fly in early, to our own devices in Vila. This proved to be an excellent opportunity for me to take care of all the errands requiring the use of technology that had been piling up for the past six months I'd been on Malekula. I spent most of the rest of the week alternating between scurrying around town trying to get things done and curling up in the fetal position in my hotel bed, exhausted and convinced that it was only a matter of time before I was killed by a speeding automobile.

Sunday was the first day of our conference, and so we all went to check in at Iririkki Resort, located just off the coast of Vila on its own island. I'd been to Iririkki before a few times to hang out at their pool and take advantage of their happy hour, but never as a guest. It's the kind of place frequented by well-to-do Australians and New Zealanders looking for a vacation consisting mostly of sitting around on the beach being waited on. In other words, basically the polar opposite of all of our experiences as Peace Corps volunteers up until that point. McKenzie and I had gotten tied up eating pizza and drinking margaritas at a restaurant in Vila, and so we ended up checking in an hour or so later than everyone else. Upon giving our names to the lady at the front desk, we were instantly handed enormous, colorful, tropical juice drinks (complete with decorative flower garnishes) and two bellmen appeared to take our bags and escort us to our rooms. Dazed and bewildered by such treatment, we each tried to insist that we could carry our own luggage. When this failed, we obediently followed the bellmen into the resort. Not willing to let go of our Peace Corps personas completely, however, we were both soon deep in Bislama conversations with the Ni-Vanuatu staff. Along the way, we crossed paths with a very sunburned middle-aged Australian couple. Noting that one of the bellmen was carrying my hiking backpack, she turned to me and said “Now, that's the only way to do backpacking!” I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at her as she continued on her way and then turned to the guy carrying my luggage and asked him to give me my bag back.