Life in the Ring of Fire Part 35: Death by Cattle

Monday was the first day of the second school term (Vanuatu is on the trimester system) or, rather, it should have been the first day of the second term. As things actually panned out, maybe twenty of the hundred and eighty kids that should have come showed up, and myself and the headmaster were the only teachers to attend. I knew that this was frequently a problem at the larger boarding schools throughout Vanuatu, as kids tend to go back to their home islands for the break and the ships to bring them back to school are often late or don't come at all. However, my school isn't really a boarding school (we only have eight borders) and most of our students come from Tautu, Norsup, or Lakatoro. Additionally, all of our teachers live within a half hour's travel of the school. This point was driven home when the headmaster and I decided to cancel class that day and I walked down to the village. Along the way, I ran into a bunch of kids that should have been in the lower years at school. “Why didn't you come to school?” I asked them. “None of the teachers are back,” they answered. A few minutes later, I ran into one of the absent teachers. “Why didn't you come to school?” I asked. “None of the kids came,” she answered. Right.

That afternoon I went into Lakatoro, which was an especially exciting trip as I'd purchased a bicycle while I was in Vila and this was to be my trial run on it. It's a cheap, Chinese made, piece of junk (the kind of thing you'd pick up at a Wal-Mart for forty bucks) except, this being Vanuatu, it cost WAY too much money, so really it's an expensive, Chinese made, piece of junk. However, given Peace Corps' ban on us operating any kind of motorized vehicle, a bike was really my only option for upgrading my transportational situation past the era of cave drawings and woolly mammoths. It felt good to be setting out with a set of wheels underneath me once again, but this brief pleasure was quickly offset by the realization that the roads in Vanuatu really, really, really suck. Of course, I'd known this all along, as I'd spent the past few months walking and being driven around on them (Peace Corps' policy on us not driving cars is inspired out of concern for our own safety. I fail to see, however, how it can possibly be safer for us to precariously balance ourselves on the edges of truck beds than to drive a truck), but being at the helm of a wheeled transportation device really drove the point home. A fact that's often forgotten is that there were actually two important components to that most basic of inventions: wheel. The first is the circular shape of the wheel itself, which is cool because the circle's constant radius always gives a smooth ride on, and this is the second key component, a flat surface (interestingly enough – well, interesting if you're a dork like me – you can actually design a road on which vehicles with, let's say, square wheels can run on smoothly). Thus, the bike's circular tires rode anything but smoothly on the boulder-field of a road that leads to Lakatoro and after a couple of minutes my butt was sore beyond imagining. Making matters worse, it had just rained that morning and so the road was pocketed with mud pits which sucked in my wheels and made it difficult to pedal. This also meant that there was a steady stream of mud, rocks, dirt, sand, and other debris being sprayed in my face throughout the ride. I arrived in Lakatoro looking like I'd spent the morning frolicking with the pigs in the muck. “Daniel, what happened to you?” Asked the post man as I walked into the Post Office. “Did truck throw mud up at you?” No, no, I was just riding my bike, thanks.

My class population slowly increased over the course of the week, reaching the halfway mark around Thursday. I felt sorry for the four or so that had been coming the entire week, as I couldn't in good conscience start any new material while so much of the class was absent, so I had to occupy them with what was, essentially, busywork. And, of course, the kids that actually came to class were the ones in least need of extra practice with last term's material.

Saturday I headed off for my triumphant return to the gardens after a two weekend long absence. We were actually doing something a little different this time, instead of going up to the copra dryer, we were headed for the river than ran through our coconut plantation to try and catch freshwater prawns (or naora, as they're call here, pronounced “now-ra”). During the rainy season, the rivers and streams fill up and the prawns breed like crazy because of the abundant water and food washed in from the banks. However, as the rivers dry up, the prawns get stuck in smaller and smaller pools with fewer and fewer places to hide when you go to catch them. We were equipped with prawn spears: metal prongs fixed to the end of a bamboo pole with an elastic band connected to the opposite end. You tie the elastic to your thumb and hold the spear between your pointer and middle fingers. When you see a naora, you use your other hand to pull back the spear, thus stretching the elastic and sort of making a slingshot, and then release, hopefully spearing the target prawn on the metal prongs. We started where the river came out to the road and followed it up stream, going from pool to pool taking turns donning snorkels and masks and paddling around shooting prawns until the water was too murky and then moving on. The whole thing seemed like a nasty injury waiting to happen, actually, as we were all carrying these sharp metal spears and haphazardly hopping from slippery stone to slippery stone and I was just waiting for someone to mess up and trip a take a spear in the side. Fortunately, the day was accident free, and the fresh-caught prawns were delicious. We were planning on stopping at lunch time to roast the prawns we'd caught but, in the mean time, we ate them raw. You break off their heads and peel their shells off to reveal a small lump of translucent flesh. This you put on a piece of coconut and cover it in lemon juice to make a surprisingly satisfying appetizer. After a couple of hours of slowly working our way upstream through the bush, we came out at a gorgeous cascade waterfall. Probably about thirty feet wide, it sported level after level of deep pools and trickles and streams of water falling down through the rocks. It continued upstream out of eyesight. We settled in next to the largest pool, which was deep enough in some places that I couldn't stand up. I hadn't had a go trying to spear prawns yet, and so I decided to give it a shot. It was actually surprisingly easy. The key is patience. Prawns tend to just kind of sit around doing nothing, making excellent targets for the elastic spear, unless they're startled, in which case the shoot off backward at incredible into the twisted roots of the bank and are never seen again. Thus, you have to move slowly and deliberately enough to not startle them. The hard part about this was that the water was ice cold and sitting still for long periods of time in it was quite painful. I'd been offered Tylenol which, my companions claimed, made it so you didn't feel the cold. I had politely refused, however, not wanting to encourage the rampant overuse of over-the-counter pain killers that goes on in Vanuatu by taking part in it (no joke, they take Tylenol for everything: coughs, colds, stomach aches, gas, toenail fungus, whatever is bothering you). I was only able to stand the water for about fifteen minutes before calling it quits (although I did manage to bag four or five prawns, which I was proud of, but looked a little poultry next to the thirty or so each everyone else had brought in). As I emerged from the water, I saw Duncan, who'd run off earlier hunting a wild pig, standing by the edge of the water holding a large, bloody, side of meat and smiling broadly. Fresh pig and fresh prawns; I knew it was going to be a good afternoon.

We cut up the pig and put the pieces inside bamboo tubes and threw them on the fire. While we waited for it to cook, we ate prawns raw or roasted them on sticks over the fire. When it was done, the bamboo roasted pig was amazing. It was tender and juicy and spectacularly greasy and salty. We even ate the straight fat right beneath the skin (you see, when most of your diet consists of rice, you have something of a different perspective on the nutritional content of fat). When we were finished, we headed back to the village. We followed a different route than when we'd came that put us on an overgrown dirt road running alongside a field of cattle. The rest of the group was pushing on to another part of the river to try and catch more naora before nightfall, but Duncan, Frank, and I were going in early to help Linda cook. After about fifteen minutes of walking along the road, Duncan looked across the cow pasture and said “I think we should cut across, this road puts us out too fat away.” Not really giving it too much thought, I agreed and we struck out across the field. We were about a quarter of the way across when Frank started crying “Daddy! Daddy!” Duncan kept staring straight ahead and urging him to hurry up. At first I didn't realize what was going on, but then I looked back and saw that there were two bulls, each almost as tall as me, following us on either side and eying us. Now I was terrified and I picked up the pace along with everyone else. The bulls began to trot along beside us. Duncan started shouting at them, which checked them briefly, but they were still fixed on us. The field stretched on for a ways ahead and I knew that if they started running at us there'd be no way we'd make it to the edge in time. I started walking even faster when a cry of “Dan!” brought me up short. I looked to my left and saw that a third bull had joined the first two and was making pace with and angling toward me. Duncan and I both started shouting and waving our bush knives in the air. The bull checked, but now there were three following us. My heart was in my throat when the tension was broken by the sound of one of our dogs running to catch up to us. The appearance of the speeding, barking dog drew the bulls' attention, who all immediately started following it. The dog led them off perpendicular to our course and we were able to clear the pasture.

The adventure, however, was not yet over, as the cow pasture was immediately followed by a swamp. Initially, we tried to search for firm patches of ground that would carry us, but eventually we gave up on this and just trudged through the ankle deep mud. Following the swamp was a boggy river which, fortunately, we were able to avoid walking through by balancing along and hopping between fallen trees. Finally, all that stood between us and the road was a few yards of dense brush. My legs were bleeding and itching from the broken twigs and stinging needles as we pushed our way through and at last emerged to safety. A short walk later this road fed us back onto the main road leading to Tautu. I glanced behind me as we turned and saw the entrance to the dirt road we'd abandoned in favor of the short cut. The whole ordeal had saved us about 100 yards.