Life in the Ring of Fire Part 36: Mail and Vegetable Peelers

Monday my class size was once again restored to normal, except that one of students had vanished and been mysteriously replaced by another student who'd never attended my class up until that point. It's probably a testament to how much I've accepted the randomness of Vanuatu that I never once questioned this switch-up and simply continued teaching as if nothing had changed (and in what is perhaps a poor reflection on my teaching abilities, this girl who hasn't been coming to my class for the past three months is now one of my best students). Monday is also mail day. I rent a PO box at the Lakatoro post office for the hefty fee of about $6 a year. Conveniently, all the boxes have doors attached to them that open to the outside, thus allowing a renter to, using a key, instantly access their mailbox even if the post office is closed or if the line is too long at the counter. What's less convenient is that basically all the keys have been lost over the years, and there's no one around that knows how to make new ones, so to get your mail you have to go up to the counter and ask the post guy to check your box for you. The Lakatoro postman is perhaps the slowest human being on the planet which, especially in Vanuatu, is saying something, because the competition here is quite fierce (fiercely slow). A request for something as simple as, say, a stamp may take upwards of half an hour to be processed. And god help you if there's someone in front of you wanting to make a Western Union money transfer; those can take weeks. I've also heard stories that the postmen on the outer islands are prone to becoming drunk on power, instituting harsh reigns of terror where all mail is denied to those who displease them. One of the other volunteers on the island told me that this happened to him once, and he was unable to get mail for weeks, despite the fact that he could clearly see packages addressed to him sitting behind the counter. Another volunteer also told me a story of a conversation he'd had with the mail guy which went something like this:
“Do I have any mail?”
“Mail didn't come today.”
“Oh, well, what about that big stack of mail over there in the corner?”
“It's not sorted yet.”
“Are you going to sort it?”
“It got wet on the way over from the airport. I'm letting it dry first.”
“Then you're going to sort it?”
“No, then I'm going to burn it.”
Anyway, I, fortunately, have managed to remain on the postman's good side, and so he usually goes to pull my mail out of the box as soon as he sees me walk in the door, which is nice (also, by some miracle, I have yet, to my knowledge, not to receive a package sent to me from the US). If I don't have any mail, however, he gives me a long, forlorn look and sadly shakes his head no, as if conveying his very deepest sympathy that no postal communications have arrived for me. Needless to say, this is a little depressing, so I try to go for my mail only once a week, thus ensuring that I usually have mail when I check it, as Peace Corps thoughtfully sends me weekly shipments of notices and forms and other such things, which I use in my class as scrap paper. This week was a package week (a week where I get a package from the States, perhaps the single greatest joy a volunteer can experience), however, so I was spared the forlorn stare and, upon opening the package, I experienced the odd and yet gratifying sensation of now having almost too much chocolate. The rate at which candy bars were arriving from the US had finally begun to outstrip the rate at which I was devouring them, leaving me with a projected surplus. I resisted the temptation to blow the surplus on tax rebates, and instead began a stockpile in the hopes of being able to outlast any time of famine I might encounter in the future (sort of Joseph in Egypt style). As an added plus, this was a birthday package and came equipped with a musical greeting card from my little brother. My villagers thought this was the greatest thing next to LED flashlights (a good LED flashlight is regarded as the highest possible technological achievement of this age, even beating out such things as the moon landing and the internet), and the card's batteries were quickly exhausted.

Going into Lakatoro is always kind of intimidating, as basically everyone on the island knows me, but I've been a little slow on getting to know everyone else (in my defense, Malekula has several thousand residents, but there's only one of me), so if anyone comes up to talk to me, I'm often not sure what kind of responses are appropriate. How do I know this person, for example? Am I on good terms with them? Have I helped them out with something before? Have they helped me out with something? Do they live next door to me? etc. Thus, to avoid embarrassing situations (such as asking my host uncle what village he's from), I generally have to bluff and speak as vaguely as possible until I can gather more information. This isn't so much a problem in Tautu, both because I've gotten to know a lot more people in Tautu, but also because I can at least safely assume that anyone that talks to me in Tautu is from Tautu, thus giving me a starting point. In Lakatoro, however, I'm totally lost. It also doesn't help that Bislama, given its lack of vocabulary, relies heavily on context to get its meaning across, so when the context of the conversation is uncertain, understanding can be difficult. For example, on Monday McKenzie and I were standing inside one of the stores when I lady I didn't recognize came up to me and said:
“I have some for you but I haven't brought it down yet, sorry”
“Uh, that's alright. No hurry.”
“OK, I think I'll today or tomorrow if you'll ”
“OK, sounds good.”
“Alright see you.”
After this rather confusing exchange, I turned to McKenzie and asked: “What'd you get out of that?”
“I think she wants you to come to her store to buy meat for your family.”
“Huh,” I said “I thought she wanted to sell me empty beer bottles.”
McKenzie wondered off to take care of some business in town and I settled onto one of the nearby benches to wait for her to finish so we could get lunch. I man sat down next to me, who looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite place how it was that I knew him. We talked for a good twenty minutes while McKenzie was gone and I was able to gather that 1)he seemed to think of me as a friend 2)he seemed to think that either he owed me a favor or I owed him a favor 3)he was under the impression we'd, at some point, agreed that said owed favor would be re-payed somehow in the form of kava, and that 4)he wanted me to meet him at the market Friday morning to do something involving kava. We parted with a friendly handshake just as McKenzie was returning and he shouted over his shoulder “see you Friday!”
“Who's that?” McKenzie asked.
“I don't know,” I replied. She nodded understandingly, as she has similar issues with not know who people are.
“What's happening Friday?” She asked.
“Not sure,” I told her “I'm meeting him here and he's either buying me kava or I'm buying him kava or he's selling me his kava or we're meeting with someone to buy their kava, but kava is definitely involved somehow, and whatever is happening is happening Friday.”

Tuesday I learned that classes 7 and 8 would be canceled for the rest of the week because all the teachers were going to a workshop, thus further diminishing my chances of making it to calculus by the end of the term. On the plus side, a representative from the village mama's group showed up at my door and presented me with two yams and a bunch of other assorted vegetables. Apparently they'd decided to go around and give all of the teachers a selection of foods. I appreciated the yams, which I could easily let sit in my house for months for use at my leisure. The problem with vegetables in Vanuatu, however, is that they come in quantities designed with families of 80 in mind. It's kind of like shopping at Sam's club except every single item is extremely perishable (although they don't have that annoying membership fee like at Sam's club. What is the deal with that?), so I knew that I'd end up having to either give 90% of it to my host family, or watch it rot in my house. I thanked them for it nonetheless, having to speak up slightly to talk over the sound of vegetables rotting in my kitchen. Now, I'd found out a few weeks ago that a new kind of yam was in season, a discovery that excited me more than you can probably imagine, and so I was eager to break into the new yam varietal in order to make french fries out of it (I have an ongoing project of trying to make french fries out of every root crop that enters my house in the hopes of one day stumbling upon one that actually tastes good). It was also an exciting moment because I'd picked up a vegetable peeler in Vila and had, as of yet, not been able to put it to use on a peeling job. Up until that point, I'd been doing all my peeling with my machete and I was looking forward to being able to peel a yam without fear of chopping my fingers off. Thus, I positioned my peeler and went at it. The blade dug into the tough skin of the yam and snapped in half. Yams, you see, have a thick, woody, inedible skin, not at all like the puny thin thing you find on a potato which, I guess, is why everyone peels them with a machete. Fortunately, the vegetable peeler had come as part of a two pack (why would you sell vegetable peelers in a two pack? I'd asked myself when I purchased it. I guess I found out), so I had a spare, but it seemed such a perfect Vanuatu moment to me: an exciting new piece of technology from the West, promising to make life that much simpler and easier, completely and totally failing.

Hmm, well, I'm kind of drawing a blank on any other interesting things that happened to me this week. Sorry for the short blog entry (and the fact that, really, the only stories I related were about checking my mail and peeling a yam, not exactly gripping literature). I'll work on getting into more adventures ASAP. Oh, and just so you all aren't kept in suspense, I showed up to meet the mysterious kava guy at the market Friday morning and couldn't find him, so I still have no idea what that was about.