Life in the Ring of Fire Part 42: Why Shouldn't Kids Play With Knives?
Tuesday I decided it was high time I started making a concerted effort to learn Tautu's local language. Almost everyone in my village speaks a very old, obscure, unwritten language that predates the arrival of Europeans to Vanuatu. Because of its disparate geography, Vanuatu has a lot of these native languages spread out across its 80-something islands and some of them are spoken by only a few people. Vanuatu, I believe, has the largest number of languages spoken per capita of any country in the world. Because of the communication difficulties this causes, almost everyone speaks Bislama as well, a pidgin of English and French that's ridiculously fun to speak, but also almost impossible to express yourself in. Peace Corps taught us Bislama during our training, and I've been pretty lucky live in a village where it's the main language of discourse (in some of the more remote villages, Bislama isn't spoken on a daily basis), thus making it easy for me to communicate and understand people. It's also been kind of a deterrent to learning the local language, as Bislama is so easy and effective. I'd been wanting to learn Tautu's local language for a while, both because it would make me a more integrated and respected member of the community and also it would be cool to show off at parties in the US that I can speak an obscure language spoken by only a few hundred people living in the north-eastern region of the small island of Malekula, and hopefully get people to buy me some beers. So, Tuesday afternoon I took a notebook and sat down with Linda and grilled her on language. It was (and still is) a little overwhelming, but by the end of the week I was beginning to get a very, very rudimentary hold on it, but a hold nonetheless. It is challenging for several reasons. First of all, there are no texts that you can refer to for definitions and pronunciations, meaning that you have to rely on asking people, a very uncertain method, as everyone has a slightly different take on how to say words and what they mean. Second, the lack of a written form means that standardization is a little lacking; you get different answers to your questions about the language depending on who you ask. Third, the sounds are quite different; they don't distinguish certain sounds that we do and do distinguish ones that we don't. For example, “no,” “na,” and “ne” all seem to be taken as the same sound, but there's a huge different between na and nga. Finally, you have to conjugate verbs, something I'd gotten used to not doing in Bislama. Anyway, I'm hoping that I'll stick with the project and be fluent by the time I finish my service, but we'll see. In the mean time, I'm going to start putting up words of the week in language on the blog for my amusement (that's right, my amusement, not yours). Unfortunately, I can't pronounce them for you in writing, but I'll be using the same transliteration system that they us for Bislama, which works as follows:
1)All consonants make their basic, English sounds. Consonants don't change sound because of spelling (ie. ci would make same sound as ki, the c doesn't become soft because it's next to the i). The only exceptions to this are “ch” and “sh” diphthongs, which aren't in Bislama, but I'm going to keep them because I like them.
2)Each vowel makes only one sound. “A” makes the short a sound, like in “apple.” “E” makes the long a sound, so “shake” would be spelled “shek” or “bake” “bek.” “I” makes the long e sound, so “meat” becomes “mit” and “greet” becomes “grit.” “O” makes the sound of its name, so “coat” would be “cot” and “boat” “bot.” “U” makes the double-o sound, so “boot” becomes “but.”
3)There are four vowel diphthongs: “ei” makes the “ay” sound, so day is spelled “dei.” “oe” makes the “oy” sound, so boy is spelled “boe.” “ae” makes the long i sound, so time is spelled “taem.” “ao” makes the “ow” sound, so now is spelled “nao.”
OK, the word of the week this week is “ares,” which means “good.” It's very versatile, however, because it can also be used to mean please, thank you, yes, cool, OK, fine, etc. Use it around town.
Wednesday I got a call from a number I didn't recognize while teaching class and was left with a mysterious, incomprehensible voice mail. Brushing it off as a wrong number, I went about my daily business. A couple hours later, they called back and I picked up. Like I've mentioned before, Bislama is a difficult language to communicate in if you don't have any context, which makes answering the phone particularly difficult, because you don't really have anything to go on to form an understanding of what the person on the other end is trying to communicate. Thus, I patiently listened to the guy on the phone ramble on about something involving water, not really having any clue what was going on. After a good ten minutes of back and forth, I was able to hammer out that he'd gotten a hold of a grant application from the EU for building rural water systems and that it somehow required the involvement of a Peace Corps volunteer so he wanted me to come to his village for the evening for some vaguely related reason. Not sure if I was up for picking up and heading to some random village for the night, I told him I'd call him back. After about ten minutes, however, I realized I didn't really have anything else to do and the idea of an adventure sounded pretty appealing, so I called back and told him I was in. He asked me to meet him at the LTC, and told me to describe myself so he'd be able to recognize me when I arrived. I told him that it really shouldn't be a problem because I'm likely to be the only white person at the LTC.
It ended up being a very uncomfortable three-ish hour truck ride to the other side of the island to a small village called Leviamb. I had to admit, they'd chosen a great location for a village. Right on a spacious river, with a long stretch of sandy beach conveniently placed on the west side of the island so that you could catch the sunsets. Unfortunately, they'd totally trashed the place. All the grass and other greenery had been removed or trodden down, so the whole place was dirt. Discarded cans, wrappers, bags, and other junk was littered everywhere. In other words, they were in serious need of a village beautification program. The guy who'd called me, Wilfred, filled me in on the situation during the drive. They were looking to get some grant money to repair their village water system which had been broken for a few years now. He seemed to be pretty on top of things, which was a surprising change, and, as far as I could tell, all he wanted from me was my signature on the grant form and for me to be signatory on the bank account they were going to set up to receive the grant money, which left me kind of wondering why they were driving me halfway across the island to see their village. He seemed to think it very important that I witness their broken water system for some reason.
We had a quick snack upon arrival and then the two of us began hiking up to their water source. Just before we cleared the village, I heard someone calling out my name. I turned around and saw someone waving excitedly, but he was too far away for me to make out his face.
“Do you know him?” asked Wilfred.
“I don't think so,” I replied as I waved back, but then he began walking towards us and I realized I did know him. If you'll remember, back in issue 36 of the blog, I ran into some guy I didn't recognize in Lakatoro who seemed to think that we were old friends and who insisted that I meet him the following Friday for something involving kava and then didn't show. Well, guess what? It was THAT GUY. I still have no idea how I knew him from before, but I definitely recognized him as the random kava dude. We exchanged pleasantries. I established that he lived in Leviamb, but frequently came into Lakatoro to sell copra. He invited me to drink kava at his nakamal that evening and I accepted. As Wilfred and I hiked on, Wilfred, showing himself to be the first Ni-Van I'd ever met to appreciate the fact that it's freaking impossible to remember everyone's names around these parts, filled me in that random kava dude's name was Sake and that he owned the main village kava bar.
We toured the village water system, which seemed to be in pretty good shape except for the fact that their water tank could use a little maintenance. They had a pipe that carried water, through the use of gravity only, from a pool at the base of a waterfall up in the bush down to a collecting tank on a hill just above the village. From there it ran down into the village and was distributed to a number of faucets at people's houses. The problem, as Wilfred explained, was that there were rocks growing in the pipes. I was puzzled by this for a while. Initially I thought he was trying to say that the pipes were clogged by dirt and sediment from the stream, but he insisted that this wasn't the case. It wasn't until we hiked up to the source that I realized what he was talking about. I noticed that stalactites were growing down the face of the waterfall that fed the pool, meaning that the water had limestone in it which was depositing on the interior of their pipes causing, as he put it, rocks to grow. I agreed to look into a way to combat the problem
That evening I joined Sake for kava at his nakamal. Unlike in Lakatoro and Tautu, where kava roots have to be imported from other parts of the island to make the drink, Leviamb grows their own kava, thus meaning it was about half as expensive and twice as good. Although there's no getting rid of the horrid kava taste, theirs wasn't as pungent and you could drink a shell without needing to spend the next five minutes removing the taste from your mouth. It was also possible to drink a lot of it without feeling sick, which was good because everyone in the village wanted to buy me a shell, so I was in for a bit of a rough night. It was fun though, as I was very much the center of attention because, as they explained, they usually only get one white man through per year. I was proud to be filling their quota. It was also a nice reminder of how much I've become at home in Vanuatu. I remembered back to my trip to Southwest bay with my uncle, Jonasi, more than half a year ago and how uncomfortable I'd felt from the very start to be away from Tautu and how difficult it was to socialize with people. Now, after being in Leviamb for all of three hours, I was totally comfortable chewing the fat with the guys at the nakamal. The next morning, as promised, I was awoken early and driven back to Tautu in time for me to teach my morning class.
Saturday I followed Duncan to the garden to help him dry copra. On the way up, I passed a group of boys, who looked to be between the ages of seven and twelve, clearing bush with machetes. I'd grown so used to seeing small kids wielding giant knives that it hardly gave me pause, but it made me think about the difference between the way kids are raised in Vanuatu and in the States. Here, pretty much from the age of five, kids are making and tending fires, preparing food to cook, working the bush with machetes, chopping firewood, holding their parent's rifles, going spear fishing, scaling trees for fruit, and pretty much doing every single dangerous task you can think of. Compare that to “OH MY GOD! Little Johnnie has a PLASTIC BAG! Get that away from him! Call the paramedics!” It makes us look kind of pathetic, doesn't it? I mean, we can send robots to mars, but we have to worry about our kids asphyxiating themselves with grocery bags. Kind of weird, don't you think?
I closed the week with another grilling experiement, this time for Duncan and my host family. It went over quite well, with both hamburgers and fajitas. It's difficult to predict what kind of American food they'll like sometimes, as evidenced by the fact that the biggest hit was the salsa I made, which they ate by itself with spoons. Not quite the point, but you take what you can get.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Life in the Ring of Fire Part 41: Cheers to American Independence
Monday was one of those glorious moments in a Peace Corps volunteer's service when he receives TWO packages from the US on the same day. It was amazing. One was from my family and contained a lot of snack food, which was awesome, except that I realized the problem with getting snack food as opposed to candy is that I can sit down and eat the entire package in one sitting, whereas with candy I'm limited by the fact that if I eat too much at once I get sick. Oh well, the mustard pretzels were glorious for the eight seconds that they lasted. The second package was a little more mysterious. It was from a couple of good friends of mine from college. It was large and had been packed into a beaten-up looking Weber grill box. At first, I assumed that they'd simply recycled an old box they had lying around the house to send me something, but then I noticed that the customs declaration (those things really take the surprise out of getting a package, by the way) listed the contents as a charcoal grill. I was still skeptical, thinking that, really, there was no way that they'd sent me a BBQ all the way to Vanuatu. It was only when I opened it and saw assorted pieces of metal and screws that it finally dawned on me that, yes, I had received a Weber grill. I was pretty stoked about this, mainly because the forth of July was coming up on Friday and I was looking forward to rolling in to our Malekula forth of July party sporting a legitimate BBQ. Duncan was also excited about the grill. He's very much aware of the fact that, when I leave Vanuatu in about a year and a half, I'll be leaving most of my belongings behind and that, more than likely, he'll be the one that they're given to. Thus, he tends to look at anything that I get as something that will be his in the near future. It makes me fell kind of like a really rich dying relative that everyone is nice to in the hopes of being included in the will. It is kind of nice, however, as having a large and intimidating man with a vested interest in your belongings makes them a lot less likely to be stolen. I'd described the concept of BBQing to Duncan previously, and he'd been intrigued by it, especially by my claims that one could preserve meat for long periods of time by smoking it, and that smoke can be a powerful meat tenderizer, capable of transforming a cheap, tough, and chewy cut of beef into a soft, juicy delicacy.
On Tuesday I swung by the Digicel office in Lakatoro to pick up a new SIM card so I could try out the new mobile phone service. Can I just say that our cell phone system in the US is completely and totally insane. Two year contracts, night and weekend minutes, an allotted number of replacement phones, rollover, roaming, insurance, family plans, unlocking codes, all kinds of random garbage. Ni-Vanuatu may not always be the best at finding the area of triangles, but they've really got this cell phone thing down. If you already have a phone, you pay about five bucks for a SIM card to stick in your phone. You buy refill cards with codes on them to type in to add money to your account, which is used up when you make calls. If you don't have a phone, you can pick one out to buy. They have models available from $20 to $200. No contract, no monthly bills, you don't even have to give them your name. Anyway, I was interested in trying out the new service because you can use it to send text messages to the US, which you were not able to do with the old company. I got my SIM card and immediately realized that, except for my parents, I had absolutely no one's cell number from the States written down anywhere. After about forty five minutes of trying to load people's Facebook pages, I also realized that almost no one had their cell numbers listed on Facebook. Still not a total loss, however, as I could text my parents, although I soon realized that they couldn't text me back. Thus, the whole thing was of somewhat limited usefulness. However, if any of you Stateside are interested in receiving random texts from me which, given the time difference, will probably arrive at really inconvenient times AND that you won't be able to respond to, feel free to email me your cell number.
Friday was forth of July. Or, as the Ni-Vanuatu refer to it, American independence. I have yet to be around to witness it, but everything that I've heard seems to indicate that Vanuatu goes absolutely crazy for their independence celebration (on July 30th). Perhaps it's just since it happened so recently that it seems like a bigger deal, but “namba tirti julae” (number thirty July) is, by far, the biggest holiday of the year, easily overtaking Christmas, New Years, and all other contenders. They go more for independence week, as opposed to independence day. And they naturally assume that, since Vanuatu independence is such a big deal, US independence must be HUGE. I didn't really have the heart to explain to them that, in the US, 4th of July is pretty low key. Most people just have small, family BBQs during the afternoon and then sit on blankets to watch fireworks which, because of city regulations, can only be set off by certified officials in the presence of the entire fire brigade and aren't allowed to run past 7:30 at night for fear of keeping people awake. I also, actually, couldn't really think of a good explanation for why the 4th of July is so lame in the States. I mean, come on, we make a bigger deal about the Super Bowl. This is our independence, man, we should be ROCKING it. At any rate, we volunteers realized we couldn't allow Ni-Vans to be more excited about the 4th than we were and that we'd somehow gained a reputation for throwing sweet independence day parties which we would now be forced to live up to. Also, the fact that it was American independence seemed to be taken as an acceptable excuse for us to do basically anything. My headmaster was surprised and a little concerned that I showed up to teach my class on Friday. I ordered a couple of cases of beer from Duncan and he expressed his worry that we wouldn't have enough. People saw me walking around Tautu in the morning and reminded me that I needed to get to Lakatoro to celebrate with the other volunteers. It ended up being a lot of fun, and I highly recommend that everyone reading this blog make it a point to totally cut loose for the next 4th of July. We're going to start a trend here. It's going to be epic.
Our 4th of July party was also my first attempt at using the grill I'd received on Monday. It was an interesting experience, as I lacked such things as charcoal, lighter fluid, BBQ chimneys, and other such tools that make grilling so straightforward in the States. Fortunately, Vanuatu also lacks such hindrances to grilling as fire regulations, so you can basically start a fire anywhere and burn anything you want and no one will say anything. I ended up getting a fire going on the ground first, letting it burn down a bit, and then transferring some of the embers to the grill. It worked... OK, although future attempts would definitely require some refinement of technique. It was also a funny reminder of how inept I am at working with fire. Ni-Vanuatu are masters of the element of fire. They don't have a choice. I'd say about 99% of the country has to start a fire every day just to cook their food, so they get a lot of practice. It's pretty amazing actually, it could be raining for three months straight and Duncan or Linda (or, like, a six year old) will sit down to get a fire going, stack some soaking wood and leaves and stuff together, light a match and, before I can even blink, there's a giant roaring fire which, somehow, manages not to burn down the bamboo and thatch house it's made in. I, on the other hand, take a stack of bone-dry wood and paper, spend half an hour putting a lighter to it, and end up with a pitiful little blaze that goes out in about twenty seconds and only serves to give me a face full of smoke. In the end, though, I did get a fire going for the 4th. I'd forgotten how nice it is to bite into a nice, smoky, BBQed burger. I'll definitely be busting out the grill again in the future, but maybe after Duncan has given me some fire-starting lessons.
Monday was one of those glorious moments in a Peace Corps volunteer's service when he receives TWO packages from the US on the same day. It was amazing. One was from my family and contained a lot of snack food, which was awesome, except that I realized the problem with getting snack food as opposed to candy is that I can sit down and eat the entire package in one sitting, whereas with candy I'm limited by the fact that if I eat too much at once I get sick. Oh well, the mustard pretzels were glorious for the eight seconds that they lasted. The second package was a little more mysterious. It was from a couple of good friends of mine from college. It was large and had been packed into a beaten-up looking Weber grill box. At first, I assumed that they'd simply recycled an old box they had lying around the house to send me something, but then I noticed that the customs declaration (those things really take the surprise out of getting a package, by the way) listed the contents as a charcoal grill. I was still skeptical, thinking that, really, there was no way that they'd sent me a BBQ all the way to Vanuatu. It was only when I opened it and saw assorted pieces of metal and screws that it finally dawned on me that, yes, I had received a Weber grill. I was pretty stoked about this, mainly because the forth of July was coming up on Friday and I was looking forward to rolling in to our Malekula forth of July party sporting a legitimate BBQ. Duncan was also excited about the grill. He's very much aware of the fact that, when I leave Vanuatu in about a year and a half, I'll be leaving most of my belongings behind and that, more than likely, he'll be the one that they're given to. Thus, he tends to look at anything that I get as something that will be his in the near future. It makes me fell kind of like a really rich dying relative that everyone is nice to in the hopes of being included in the will. It is kind of nice, however, as having a large and intimidating man with a vested interest in your belongings makes them a lot less likely to be stolen. I'd described the concept of BBQing to Duncan previously, and he'd been intrigued by it, especially by my claims that one could preserve meat for long periods of time by smoking it, and that smoke can be a powerful meat tenderizer, capable of transforming a cheap, tough, and chewy cut of beef into a soft, juicy delicacy.
On Tuesday I swung by the Digicel office in Lakatoro to pick up a new SIM card so I could try out the new mobile phone service. Can I just say that our cell phone system in the US is completely and totally insane. Two year contracts, night and weekend minutes, an allotted number of replacement phones, rollover, roaming, insurance, family plans, unlocking codes, all kinds of random garbage. Ni-Vanuatu may not always be the best at finding the area of triangles, but they've really got this cell phone thing down. If you already have a phone, you pay about five bucks for a SIM card to stick in your phone. You buy refill cards with codes on them to type in to add money to your account, which is used up when you make calls. If you don't have a phone, you can pick one out to buy. They have models available from $20 to $200. No contract, no monthly bills, you don't even have to give them your name. Anyway, I was interested in trying out the new service because you can use it to send text messages to the US, which you were not able to do with the old company. I got my SIM card and immediately realized that, except for my parents, I had absolutely no one's cell number from the States written down anywhere. After about forty five minutes of trying to load people's Facebook pages, I also realized that almost no one had their cell numbers listed on Facebook. Still not a total loss, however, as I could text my parents, although I soon realized that they couldn't text me back. Thus, the whole thing was of somewhat limited usefulness. However, if any of you Stateside are interested in receiving random texts from me which, given the time difference, will probably arrive at really inconvenient times AND that you won't be able to respond to, feel free to email me your cell number.
Friday was forth of July. Or, as the Ni-Vanuatu refer to it, American independence. I have yet to be around to witness it, but everything that I've heard seems to indicate that Vanuatu goes absolutely crazy for their independence celebration (on July 30th). Perhaps it's just since it happened so recently that it seems like a bigger deal, but “namba tirti julae” (number thirty July) is, by far, the biggest holiday of the year, easily overtaking Christmas, New Years, and all other contenders. They go more for independence week, as opposed to independence day. And they naturally assume that, since Vanuatu independence is such a big deal, US independence must be HUGE. I didn't really have the heart to explain to them that, in the US, 4th of July is pretty low key. Most people just have small, family BBQs during the afternoon and then sit on blankets to watch fireworks which, because of city regulations, can only be set off by certified officials in the presence of the entire fire brigade and aren't allowed to run past 7:30 at night for fear of keeping people awake. I also, actually, couldn't really think of a good explanation for why the 4th of July is so lame in the States. I mean, come on, we make a bigger deal about the Super Bowl. This is our independence, man, we should be ROCKING it. At any rate, we volunteers realized we couldn't allow Ni-Vans to be more excited about the 4th than we were and that we'd somehow gained a reputation for throwing sweet independence day parties which we would now be forced to live up to. Also, the fact that it was American independence seemed to be taken as an acceptable excuse for us to do basically anything. My headmaster was surprised and a little concerned that I showed up to teach my class on Friday. I ordered a couple of cases of beer from Duncan and he expressed his worry that we wouldn't have enough. People saw me walking around Tautu in the morning and reminded me that I needed to get to Lakatoro to celebrate with the other volunteers. It ended up being a lot of fun, and I highly recommend that everyone reading this blog make it a point to totally cut loose for the next 4th of July. We're going to start a trend here. It's going to be epic.
Our 4th of July party was also my first attempt at using the grill I'd received on Monday. It was an interesting experience, as I lacked such things as charcoal, lighter fluid, BBQ chimneys, and other such tools that make grilling so straightforward in the States. Fortunately, Vanuatu also lacks such hindrances to grilling as fire regulations, so you can basically start a fire anywhere and burn anything you want and no one will say anything. I ended up getting a fire going on the ground first, letting it burn down a bit, and then transferring some of the embers to the grill. It worked... OK, although future attempts would definitely require some refinement of technique. It was also a funny reminder of how inept I am at working with fire. Ni-Vanuatu are masters of the element of fire. They don't have a choice. I'd say about 99% of the country has to start a fire every day just to cook their food, so they get a lot of practice. It's pretty amazing actually, it could be raining for three months straight and Duncan or Linda (or, like, a six year old) will sit down to get a fire going, stack some soaking wood and leaves and stuff together, light a match and, before I can even blink, there's a giant roaring fire which, somehow, manages not to burn down the bamboo and thatch house it's made in. I, on the other hand, take a stack of bone-dry wood and paper, spend half an hour putting a lighter to it, and end up with a pitiful little blaze that goes out in about twenty seconds and only serves to give me a face full of smoke. In the end, though, I did get a fire going for the 4th. I'd forgotten how nice it is to bite into a nice, smoky, BBQed burger. I'll definitely be busting out the grill again in the future, but maybe after Duncan has given me some fire-starting lessons.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Life in the Ring of Fire Part 40: It's a Slightly Smaller World After All
Monday Duncan requested that I go up to the bush to hunt with him after may class was finished, so midway through the morning I boarded my bicycle and pedaled up the road leading to our garden. I found Duncan, Kalo, and Kingsley waiting for me near the turnoff that led into the bush. Kingsley had brought a pot of rice and the plan was to shoot four narwimba before lunch time, roast and eat them along with the rice, and then hike up to a nest of flying fox located on top of a hill deep in the bush. We fanned out along the river which I knew from our trip hunting prawns, keeping our eyes peeled. Narwimba are small birds that very closely resemble the common pigeons you find in larger cities. In fact, they so closely resemble them that I was beginning to suspect that they are, in fact, the same bird, except, since there are no cities on Malekula, that they instead live in the woods here (an animal living in the woods, imagine that). Regardless, since they live in the bush and eat mainly fruit they're OK to eat and actually taste quite good. They've got an unusual amount of fat on them for a game animal and, in a country where nice, fatty meats are hard to find, that makes them pure gold.
I'm just going to go right out and say it: I suck at hunting. It seems like something I'd be good at. I like being in the woods (a common place to find animals), I like meat of all varieties, including game meat, I have no ethical problems with killing animals to eat them, and (perhaps most importantly) I have absolutely no problem carrying around bloody animal carcases, and I can spend half an hour de-feathering (or de-furring, depending) said carcases, skinning them, removing their innards and still be excited to eat them when they're done cooking. Of course, I don't really know how to handle a gun, which is part of the problem, but I'd say really only 10% (or less) of hunting actually involves shooting. The hard work and, at least it seems to me, the skill comes in the lead-up. You, see you have to first FIND the animals before you can shoot them. Thus, the real skill comes in being able to locate the animals, not in the actual shooting of them, and this is what I'm really awful at. Duncan had been up to this particular part of the bush a few days before and had reported that it was “stacked” (actual Bislama word) with narwimba. After our expedition that day, both Kalo and Kingsley agreed. Myself, I didn't see a single one that wasn't already dead. The bush on Malekula isn't like the woods in the States. Most of the forests in the US aren't really *dense*. Oh sure, there are a lot of trees and other plants and what-not, but they're generally at least somewhat spaced out. They almost look downright orderly compared to the bush here. We're talking solid wall of green: trees, vines, creepers, and bushes taking up every bit of available space. The soil's rich, there's plenty of sun and water, so things grow fast and they grow big. This is the kind of forest that, as you look at it from the edge, you think, there's absolutely no way I'm even getting six inches into that without a chainsaw, simply because there physically isn't any space for me to move through. Occasionally you run across a patch of bush that is only marginally impenetrable, something akin to the wilderness in the US, a lot of trees and plants but not so many that you can't pick you way through them. These patches are people's farms and gardens, or places where people used to have farms and gardens. Anyway, in order to hunt narwimba, you have to somehow, out of that tangled mess of bush, pick out a bird the size of a small pigeon. Really the only thing you have going for you is that, every once in a while, the narwimba will call out to each other (a tune which, to me, sounds pretty much like the noise made by every other bird in the bush, but I guess that's why I'm no good at this), thus giving away their position to the observant hunter. To me this seems like an impossible task. I followed the others through bush, eyes and ears peeled as much as humanly possible, but not once did I spot a single narwimba. I guess I'm just not patient or observant enough. Duncan, as it turned out, was the master, somehow adept at picking out little patches of gray amongst the sea of green, and after about twenty minutes we had four downed narwimba. I was impressed.
We got a fire going by the river (which, as it was now dry season, had been reduced to stream status), and we got to work plucking our respective birds. I remembered when I first had to pluck a chicken back in training and it was a huge pain in the ass. Now, who knows how many chickens and narwimba later (although I haven't gotten any better at actually catching either of them), it came naturally. I had mine cleaned in just a few minutes, right along with everyone else. We spread-eagled them and stuck them on sticks to put over the fire. As mine cooked, I watched the melted grease pool in the little wells formed by the bird's broken rib cage. After it was done cooking, I lapped up the grease greedily (trust me, it doesn't seem that weird when everyone else is doing it too). When we'd all finished we regretted our plan to continue up the hill to the flying fox nest, as we were all full of rice and meat and ready for a nap. Duncan however, his eyes still on his goal of shooting 200 flying fox, pushed us onwards and soon we were hiking again. The section we were hiking through was part of someone's garden, so they bush wasn't as dense as it could have been, but none of my bush walks have ever borne any similarity to any of the hiking I've done in the US. There are sometimes trails to walk on, but they're usually only barely discernible from the rest of the bush, and often Ni-Vanuatu don't both to follow them. You really are bush walking. There's no guidance, no path to follow, usually not even any sign of other humans haven been through before. You're just wandering through the bush. Needless to say, if I hadn't been with Duncan and the others, I would've been hopelessly lost. After a little bit of a walk, we found ourselves at the base of a steep hill. The weather had been relatively dry for the past couple of weeks, but the bush never really seems to dry out, no matter how little rain there is. Thus, the hill in front of us was not only steep, but also covered with mud. Not to be deterred, we started up it. I was quickly brought to all fours, and pretty soon all of us were using roots and vines as hand holds to progress up the hill. We made it to the top covered in muck and grime and sweating profusely. After a brief pause at the top to catch our breaths, we set off down the other side and immediately were able to smell flying fox. Flying fox have a very distinctive musky oder that absolutely drives dogs insane (they'll go to great length to get at a flying fox that's been injured or killed), and is actually strong enough that humans can find them by scent fairly effectively, which is kind of cool. A few more minute's walk and we were standing under a tree with a large number of black bulges hanging from it. Duncan let loose with his .22 and downed five before the noise of the gun woke up the swarm and the woods were awash with circling, crying flying fox. After a few minutes, they settled down on a tree a little farther down the hill and Duncan started shooting again. We spent the better part of two hours herding them down the hill like this. By the time we reached the bottom, dusk was beginning to fall and so most of the flying fox abandoned their roosts to go out and find food. We made our way through a coconut and cocoa plantation, eyes searching the coconut trees of feeding flying foxes.
After shooting a few more we paused to rest and snack on some fresh cocoa. To borrow a phrase from a favorite novel of mine, fresh cocoa tastes almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the processed cocoa you're used to eating (ie. chocolate). Cocoa grows in little egg-shaped pods about the size of your fist. Oddly enough, the pods grow mostly on the trunk of the cocoa tree as opposed to the branches, like with most fruits. When the cocoa ripens, the pods turn bright orange. You can crack them open against a tree to reveal a cylindrical clump of seeds held loosely together by a stringy membrane and covered in a white mucus. If you have a dryer and a grinder you can dry the seeds, roast them, grind them, and mix the resulting paste with cocoa butter and sugar to make chocolate. In a pinch, however, the membrane and mucus can be eaten without additional preparation. You simply grab a handful of seeds, suck off the mucus, and spit them out. The mucus has a sweet, tangy, citrus-y taste, kind of like a sweet tart. Ni-Vans claim it's good for cleansing your digestive tract but, since these are the same people who claim that taking Tylenol keeps you from feeling cold, I'm a little skeptical of this claim. It was dark by the time we made it back to Tautu with our catch, totaling somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty flying fox. We stuffed them in plastic bags and put them in the freezer along with the previous night's haul, meaning that Duncan's freezer was now almost halfway full with bloody, black, furry balls. Delicious.
On Wednesday the world got a little bit smaller. I'm sure you've heard the expression “it's a small world.” Well, that's a lie. The world is not, in fact, small. The world is enormous. People who say otherwise probably grew up on Pluto. Of course, most will argue that the small world expression refers not to the Earth's physical size, but to the fact that things like phones, the internet, Google Earth, etc, make it possible for us to find out information about and communicate with all corners of the globe whilst sitting in our houses. This is also untrue. Before coming to Vanuatu, I'd firmly held to the belief the any and all information that one might seek to find is available online. And so, when I got my Peace Corps assignment package telling me I'd be spending my next two years in Vanuatu, I Googled the place. Guess what I found? Well, basically, nothing. Yeah, there's a Wikipedia page that has some general history and basic statistics. There are a few photographs, most of them aerial, showing some islands in the middle of the ocean. There are even a few blogs belonging to various other Peace Corps volunteers. But, honestly, not much at all. Even Google Earth could only resolve Vanuatu to the level of a green, pixel-y, blob. Take a minute and appreciate how cool that is. Choose any place, ANY place, in the US (or any western country) like, say, Bloomington, Illinois, and, after a few minutes of poking around on the internet, you could tell me its exact population, the current weather conditions, the phone number of every local heat and air conditioning repair company, and the best place to get a burger. You could print off pictures of the high school football team and give me directions to the local Kinko's precise to within a few hundred feet. Now try this: Google Tautu. Tell me its population. Tell me what the weather's like here. Find me pictures of it (besides the ones on this blog). Tell me what “kupan ape” means in the local language. Tell me how many nakamals there are and which ones have the best kava. Well, here's the thing, you can't. To the rest of the world, Tautu is a blurry, pixelated green blob. The only way to find out about it is to get your butt over here and see for yourself (no, I'm not answering any of the questions I posed for you. I happen to think a little mystery is a good thing).
Of course, what is true is that the world is getting smaller. I realize I'm part of the process. Every word I write here about Vanuatu is slowly bringing the place more into focus. Sometimes I feel like perhaps I should be leaving more to the imagination, so as not to spoil it for you guys, but what good is having adventures if you can't tell people about them? At any rate, ever since I've been here, there's been a cell phone company working to build cell towers all over the country (Luis and our other Bolivian friends were contracted to work on this project) and open a new mobile phone service offering coverage to something like 70% of Vanuatu (as opposed to the, maybe, 15% currently covered), and on Wednesday they finally had their launching. Digicel, as the company is called, now covers the entire eastern coast of Malekula and is offering cell phones for about $20 a piece, which come complete with solar chargers for those living in areas without electricity. People from all over the island were coming into Lakatoro to buy phones. People who use drums to announce village meetings and don't have a written language now had caller ID. It's nice for us, as volunteers, I suppose. Elin and Laura have cell phones now so, whereas in the past I've spent hours working to get messages to them to warn them of approaching cyclones, I can now text them to let them know that I happen to be eating an especially delicious papaya. Still, I felt a little sad. I wasn't entirely convinced that a little blurriness is all that bad a thing.
As part of the opening, on Thursday the Digicel truck came to my school. Digicel had rented a lorry and done it up in red and white banners and signs. They'd set up a generator in the back hooked up to a speaker system and had hired a guy from Vila to stand up with a mic and DJ and give promotional speeches. They parked in the middle of my school's courtyard during morning break and gave a little rally, handing out free candy and pamphlets to the kids. It was kind of like running into the Snapple truck in New York City, except a lot more of the nearby building were made out of bamboo (and, unfortunately, they weren't giving out free cold drinks). I secretly sort of hoped that some of my students would purchase Digicel cell phones and try to fiddle with them during my class so that I could confiscate them, as I'd always thought that confiscating stuff would be one of the more fun parts of being a teacher and, as of yet, I haven't had a chance to do it. I was also looking forward to trying out the new service myself, as I hear that you can use it to text to the States, but, as of yet, the lines at the Digicel store have been prohibitively long, so stay tuned.
Monday Duncan requested that I go up to the bush to hunt with him after may class was finished, so midway through the morning I boarded my bicycle and pedaled up the road leading to our garden. I found Duncan, Kalo, and Kingsley waiting for me near the turnoff that led into the bush. Kingsley had brought a pot of rice and the plan was to shoot four narwimba before lunch time, roast and eat them along with the rice, and then hike up to a nest of flying fox located on top of a hill deep in the bush. We fanned out along the river which I knew from our trip hunting prawns, keeping our eyes peeled. Narwimba are small birds that very closely resemble the common pigeons you find in larger cities. In fact, they so closely resemble them that I was beginning to suspect that they are, in fact, the same bird, except, since there are no cities on Malekula, that they instead live in the woods here (an animal living in the woods, imagine that). Regardless, since they live in the bush and eat mainly fruit they're OK to eat and actually taste quite good. They've got an unusual amount of fat on them for a game animal and, in a country where nice, fatty meats are hard to find, that makes them pure gold.
I'm just going to go right out and say it: I suck at hunting. It seems like something I'd be good at. I like being in the woods (a common place to find animals), I like meat of all varieties, including game meat, I have no ethical problems with killing animals to eat them, and (perhaps most importantly) I have absolutely no problem carrying around bloody animal carcases, and I can spend half an hour de-feathering (or de-furring, depending) said carcases, skinning them, removing their innards and still be excited to eat them when they're done cooking. Of course, I don't really know how to handle a gun, which is part of the problem, but I'd say really only 10% (or less) of hunting actually involves shooting. The hard work and, at least it seems to me, the skill comes in the lead-up. You, see you have to first FIND the animals before you can shoot them. Thus, the real skill comes in being able to locate the animals, not in the actual shooting of them, and this is what I'm really awful at. Duncan had been up to this particular part of the bush a few days before and had reported that it was “stacked” (actual Bislama word) with narwimba. After our expedition that day, both Kalo and Kingsley agreed. Myself, I didn't see a single one that wasn't already dead. The bush on Malekula isn't like the woods in the States. Most of the forests in the US aren't really *dense*. Oh sure, there are a lot of trees and other plants and what-not, but they're generally at least somewhat spaced out. They almost look downright orderly compared to the bush here. We're talking solid wall of green: trees, vines, creepers, and bushes taking up every bit of available space. The soil's rich, there's plenty of sun and water, so things grow fast and they grow big. This is the kind of forest that, as you look at it from the edge, you think, there's absolutely no way I'm even getting six inches into that without a chainsaw, simply because there physically isn't any space for me to move through. Occasionally you run across a patch of bush that is only marginally impenetrable, something akin to the wilderness in the US, a lot of trees and plants but not so many that you can't pick you way through them. These patches are people's farms and gardens, or places where people used to have farms and gardens. Anyway, in order to hunt narwimba, you have to somehow, out of that tangled mess of bush, pick out a bird the size of a small pigeon. Really the only thing you have going for you is that, every once in a while, the narwimba will call out to each other (a tune which, to me, sounds pretty much like the noise made by every other bird in the bush, but I guess that's why I'm no good at this), thus giving away their position to the observant hunter. To me this seems like an impossible task. I followed the others through bush, eyes and ears peeled as much as humanly possible, but not once did I spot a single narwimba. I guess I'm just not patient or observant enough. Duncan, as it turned out, was the master, somehow adept at picking out little patches of gray amongst the sea of green, and after about twenty minutes we had four downed narwimba. I was impressed.
We got a fire going by the river (which, as it was now dry season, had been reduced to stream status), and we got to work plucking our respective birds. I remembered when I first had to pluck a chicken back in training and it was a huge pain in the ass. Now, who knows how many chickens and narwimba later (although I haven't gotten any better at actually catching either of them), it came naturally. I had mine cleaned in just a few minutes, right along with everyone else. We spread-eagled them and stuck them on sticks to put over the fire. As mine cooked, I watched the melted grease pool in the little wells formed by the bird's broken rib cage. After it was done cooking, I lapped up the grease greedily (trust me, it doesn't seem that weird when everyone else is doing it too). When we'd all finished we regretted our plan to continue up the hill to the flying fox nest, as we were all full of rice and meat and ready for a nap. Duncan however, his eyes still on his goal of shooting 200 flying fox, pushed us onwards and soon we were hiking again. The section we were hiking through was part of someone's garden, so they bush wasn't as dense as it could have been, but none of my bush walks have ever borne any similarity to any of the hiking I've done in the US. There are sometimes trails to walk on, but they're usually only barely discernible from the rest of the bush, and often Ni-Vanuatu don't both to follow them. You really are bush walking. There's no guidance, no path to follow, usually not even any sign of other humans haven been through before. You're just wandering through the bush. Needless to say, if I hadn't been with Duncan and the others, I would've been hopelessly lost. After a little bit of a walk, we found ourselves at the base of a steep hill. The weather had been relatively dry for the past couple of weeks, but the bush never really seems to dry out, no matter how little rain there is. Thus, the hill in front of us was not only steep, but also covered with mud. Not to be deterred, we started up it. I was quickly brought to all fours, and pretty soon all of us were using roots and vines as hand holds to progress up the hill. We made it to the top covered in muck and grime and sweating profusely. After a brief pause at the top to catch our breaths, we set off down the other side and immediately were able to smell flying fox. Flying fox have a very distinctive musky oder that absolutely drives dogs insane (they'll go to great length to get at a flying fox that's been injured or killed), and is actually strong enough that humans can find them by scent fairly effectively, which is kind of cool. A few more minute's walk and we were standing under a tree with a large number of black bulges hanging from it. Duncan let loose with his .22 and downed five before the noise of the gun woke up the swarm and the woods were awash with circling, crying flying fox. After a few minutes, they settled down on a tree a little farther down the hill and Duncan started shooting again. We spent the better part of two hours herding them down the hill like this. By the time we reached the bottom, dusk was beginning to fall and so most of the flying fox abandoned their roosts to go out and find food. We made our way through a coconut and cocoa plantation, eyes searching the coconut trees of feeding flying foxes.
After shooting a few more we paused to rest and snack on some fresh cocoa. To borrow a phrase from a favorite novel of mine, fresh cocoa tastes almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the processed cocoa you're used to eating (ie. chocolate). Cocoa grows in little egg-shaped pods about the size of your fist. Oddly enough, the pods grow mostly on the trunk of the cocoa tree as opposed to the branches, like with most fruits. When the cocoa ripens, the pods turn bright orange. You can crack them open against a tree to reveal a cylindrical clump of seeds held loosely together by a stringy membrane and covered in a white mucus. If you have a dryer and a grinder you can dry the seeds, roast them, grind them, and mix the resulting paste with cocoa butter and sugar to make chocolate. In a pinch, however, the membrane and mucus can be eaten without additional preparation. You simply grab a handful of seeds, suck off the mucus, and spit them out. The mucus has a sweet, tangy, citrus-y taste, kind of like a sweet tart. Ni-Vans claim it's good for cleansing your digestive tract but, since these are the same people who claim that taking Tylenol keeps you from feeling cold, I'm a little skeptical of this claim. It was dark by the time we made it back to Tautu with our catch, totaling somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty flying fox. We stuffed them in plastic bags and put them in the freezer along with the previous night's haul, meaning that Duncan's freezer was now almost halfway full with bloody, black, furry balls. Delicious.
On Wednesday the world got a little bit smaller. I'm sure you've heard the expression “it's a small world.” Well, that's a lie. The world is not, in fact, small. The world is enormous. People who say otherwise probably grew up on Pluto. Of course, most will argue that the small world expression refers not to the Earth's physical size, but to the fact that things like phones, the internet, Google Earth, etc, make it possible for us to find out information about and communicate with all corners of the globe whilst sitting in our houses. This is also untrue. Before coming to Vanuatu, I'd firmly held to the belief the any and all information that one might seek to find is available online. And so, when I got my Peace Corps assignment package telling me I'd be spending my next two years in Vanuatu, I Googled the place. Guess what I found? Well, basically, nothing. Yeah, there's a Wikipedia page that has some general history and basic statistics. There are a few photographs, most of them aerial, showing some islands in the middle of the ocean. There are even a few blogs belonging to various other Peace Corps volunteers. But, honestly, not much at all. Even Google Earth could only resolve Vanuatu to the level of a green, pixel-y, blob. Take a minute and appreciate how cool that is. Choose any place, ANY place, in the US (or any western country) like, say, Bloomington, Illinois, and, after a few minutes of poking around on the internet, you could tell me its exact population, the current weather conditions, the phone number of every local heat and air conditioning repair company, and the best place to get a burger. You could print off pictures of the high school football team and give me directions to the local Kinko's precise to within a few hundred feet. Now try this: Google Tautu. Tell me its population. Tell me what the weather's like here. Find me pictures of it (besides the ones on this blog). Tell me what “kupan ape” means in the local language. Tell me how many nakamals there are and which ones have the best kava. Well, here's the thing, you can't. To the rest of the world, Tautu is a blurry, pixelated green blob. The only way to find out about it is to get your butt over here and see for yourself (no, I'm not answering any of the questions I posed for you. I happen to think a little mystery is a good thing).
Of course, what is true is that the world is getting smaller. I realize I'm part of the process. Every word I write here about Vanuatu is slowly bringing the place more into focus. Sometimes I feel like perhaps I should be leaving more to the imagination, so as not to spoil it for you guys, but what good is having adventures if you can't tell people about them? At any rate, ever since I've been here, there's been a cell phone company working to build cell towers all over the country (Luis and our other Bolivian friends were contracted to work on this project) and open a new mobile phone service offering coverage to something like 70% of Vanuatu (as opposed to the, maybe, 15% currently covered), and on Wednesday they finally had their launching. Digicel, as the company is called, now covers the entire eastern coast of Malekula and is offering cell phones for about $20 a piece, which come complete with solar chargers for those living in areas without electricity. People from all over the island were coming into Lakatoro to buy phones. People who use drums to announce village meetings and don't have a written language now had caller ID. It's nice for us, as volunteers, I suppose. Elin and Laura have cell phones now so, whereas in the past I've spent hours working to get messages to them to warn them of approaching cyclones, I can now text them to let them know that I happen to be eating an especially delicious papaya. Still, I felt a little sad. I wasn't entirely convinced that a little blurriness is all that bad a thing.
As part of the opening, on Thursday the Digicel truck came to my school. Digicel had rented a lorry and done it up in red and white banners and signs. They'd set up a generator in the back hooked up to a speaker system and had hired a guy from Vila to stand up with a mic and DJ and give promotional speeches. They parked in the middle of my school's courtyard during morning break and gave a little rally, handing out free candy and pamphlets to the kids. It was kind of like running into the Snapple truck in New York City, except a lot more of the nearby building were made out of bamboo (and, unfortunately, they weren't giving out free cold drinks). I secretly sort of hoped that some of my students would purchase Digicel cell phones and try to fiddle with them during my class so that I could confiscate them, as I'd always thought that confiscating stuff would be one of the more fun parts of being a teacher and, as of yet, I haven't had a chance to do it. I was also looking forward to trying out the new service myself, as I hear that you can use it to text to the States, but, as of yet, the lines at the Digicel store have been prohibitively long, so stay tuned.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Life in the Ring of Fire Part 39: Bullets Galore
Duncan had gone to Vila on Saturday and was supposed to come back on Monday but, not surprisingly, this didn't happen. I was actually pretty surprised to learn how much I missed him. He is generally the one that includes me in all the weird and crazy adventures that I end up getting into, so without him things moved a little slowly. I chewed through a lot of books. The brief foray we'd had into cooler weather came to an abrupt halt, with the sun brazenly blazing it's way through the clouds once more, as if trying to show off the fact that, even during the dead of winter, it can still cause sweat stains.
On Tuesday, the lemon tree outside of my house died for some unknown reason. All of its leaves abruptly fell off and the trunk turned and unhealthy shade of black. I was somewhat saddened by the loss, because I really enjoyed being able to wake up in the morning and walk outside to the lemony-fresh scent of my very own citrus tree. Much more annoying, however, was the fact that all the kids at the school decided that they needed to grab as many lemons as possible from my dying tree, as it would no longer be producing more. This meant that my front yard was filled with screaming, shouting, kids throwing rocks and sticks at my lemon tree, trying to knock lemons loose. Of course, most of the thrown objects missed and clattered loudly onto my tin roof. So basically the noise level in my house never dropped below that of a jet engine operating at full power for the entire week. I felt a sudden kinship with crazy old men who wave shotguns around in the air and shout at kids to get off their lawns.
Friday McKenzie and I headed to the airport early in order to meet a new addition to our Malekula family. A new group of volunteers had arrived in Vanuatu in April and was finishing up training and getting ready to head to their sites. Peace Corps, however, had snuffed us Malekulans and not assigned us any new volunteers, meaning that such inferior islands as Tanna and Ambae were now rivaling us for having the most volunteers. Fortunately, a volunteer that had left Vanuatu a few years ago had decided to re-enlist as part of a master's degree program (I guess it bodes well that someone would like Vanuatu enough to come back after returning to the States), and was being sent to work with the tourism office in Lakatoro. She'd be taking over McKenzie's house in Lakatoro (as McKenzie was slated to move one village over, to Litz-Litz, in order to be closer to her office), which was good, because McKenzie's house had become our official party house and is home to our only refrigerator, a crucial component in the production of frosty brews.
Mindi, our newest addition, arrived at the airport on the 7:30am flight with a familiar vacant, exhausted expression on her face, a sign of having spent the previous night taking full advantage of the Vila party scene before heading out to the islands. The three of us headed back to Lakatoro to take naps because, well, that's just what you do on a Friday afternoon.
On Saturday Duncan returned from Vila. According to him, he'd gone to open an account with a new international bank that had just launched a few weeks earlier. Upon his return, however, he informed me that he had not, in fact, gone to the bank, but what he had done was purchase 450 bullets for his .22 rifle. Vanuatu gun control laws focus more on controlling bullets rather than controlling the guns that fire them. I'm not entirely sure, but I think the reason for this is that the primary concern is, in the absence of park rangers, cutting down on the amount of hunting that people are able to do. Thus, everyone with a gun license is entitled to purchase a certain amount of bullets every month which, I believe, ranges somewhere between 50 to 200, depending on the type of license. Duncan explained to me that, in order to be able to buy 450 bullets, he'd had to purchase gun licenses held by two deceased individuals from the police in Vila. He was on a mission. The owner of a French restaurant in Vila was offering $1000 dollars and 1200 bullets to anyone who could catch 200 flying fox. Flying fox, as I've mentioned in previous blogs, aren't actually flying foxes, but rather a kind of fruit bat that are common in Vanuatu. The French prize them as a delicacy (but, honestly, name a single bizarre, unappetizing animal that the French DON'T prize as a delicacy), and I happened to know that the particular French restaurant that had commissioned Duncan to hunt for them charges a little over $30 for their flying fox dish. Quite a tidy markup, if I do say so myself. I'm something of a fan of flying fox as well, although I have yet to taste it cooked in red wine – like the French serve it – which is supposed to be particularly good. If you can get over the fact that you're eating a leathery bat, flying fox has a very strong, unique, game flavor that goes well with a spicy curry (being extraordinary tough, it has to be stewed for a long time before it becomes edible). Of course, I have the advantage of being friends with the Ni-Vanuatu who hunt the things, so I get to eat them for free, which is a much friendlier price than $30 per. Because they can be sold at such a good price to French tourists, flying fox have basically been hunted to extinction on Efate. They are, however, still quite plentiful on all the other islands of Vanuatu, and so all the restaurants in Vila have to import them. Flying fox can be seen in abundance flying between the fruit trees in Tautu once it gets on towards dusk and actually make a pretty continuous racket late into the night outside my house. Hunting them requires a flashlight powerful enough to spot them hanging in the taller coconut trees, a favorite haunt of theirs. Fortunately, my family had sent me such a flashlight from the States a few months before, which I had loaned to Duncan on the grounds that he allow me to take a flying fox for myself every now and then. Thus, on Saturday night Duncan and I took a shell of kava together to commemorate his return and then he abruptly announced that we were going to go shoot. It briefly crossed my mind that handling firearms while intoxicated is probably dangerous and a bad idea, but then I realized that basically everything I do in my day-to-day life in Vanuatu is dangerous and a bad idea, so I let it go. The two of us walked up and down the road connecting Tautu and Norsup, Duncan's flashlight constantly roving between the coconut trees looking for small, black, ball-shaped figures hanging from the leaves. When he spotted one he'd shout “Dan!” and I'd run over and take a position about a foot in front of him and stand as still as humanly possible. He'd then balance his rifle on my head, take aim through his scope, and shoot the flying fox. Despite the fact that this sounds unbelievably dumb, we actually were able to shoot a lot of them quite quickly. As it turns out, the actual shooting of the flying fox isn't really the hard part about hunting them. They're kind of sitting ducks up in the trees, and will stand perfectly still for minutes on end, just waiting to take a bullet. The problem, though, is that they're bats and are thus really good at hanging onto things, even when they're dead, so what happened is that only about 10% of the foxes that Duncan shot would fall out of the tree upon being hit. For the rest we either had to sit underneath the tree for a while waiting for the wind to knock them loose, try to knock them loose ourselves by throwing sticks or rocks, try and shoot out their legs so that they'll fall down, or give up and try to shoot another one. Thus, for the most part, the 10-15 minutes after shooting a flying fox was taken up by us trying to recover it, slowing us down significantly. I was still surprised as how many we were able to bring in, though. At the end of the night we had about 20 bagged and in the freezer, putting Duncan well on his way to the 200 mark.
Duncan had gone to Vila on Saturday and was supposed to come back on Monday but, not surprisingly, this didn't happen. I was actually pretty surprised to learn how much I missed him. He is generally the one that includes me in all the weird and crazy adventures that I end up getting into, so without him things moved a little slowly. I chewed through a lot of books. The brief foray we'd had into cooler weather came to an abrupt halt, with the sun brazenly blazing it's way through the clouds once more, as if trying to show off the fact that, even during the dead of winter, it can still cause sweat stains.
On Tuesday, the lemon tree outside of my house died for some unknown reason. All of its leaves abruptly fell off and the trunk turned and unhealthy shade of black. I was somewhat saddened by the loss, because I really enjoyed being able to wake up in the morning and walk outside to the lemony-fresh scent of my very own citrus tree. Much more annoying, however, was the fact that all the kids at the school decided that they needed to grab as many lemons as possible from my dying tree, as it would no longer be producing more. This meant that my front yard was filled with screaming, shouting, kids throwing rocks and sticks at my lemon tree, trying to knock lemons loose. Of course, most of the thrown objects missed and clattered loudly onto my tin roof. So basically the noise level in my house never dropped below that of a jet engine operating at full power for the entire week. I felt a sudden kinship with crazy old men who wave shotguns around in the air and shout at kids to get off their lawns.
Friday McKenzie and I headed to the airport early in order to meet a new addition to our Malekula family. A new group of volunteers had arrived in Vanuatu in April and was finishing up training and getting ready to head to their sites. Peace Corps, however, had snuffed us Malekulans and not assigned us any new volunteers, meaning that such inferior islands as Tanna and Ambae were now rivaling us for having the most volunteers. Fortunately, a volunteer that had left Vanuatu a few years ago had decided to re-enlist as part of a master's degree program (I guess it bodes well that someone would like Vanuatu enough to come back after returning to the States), and was being sent to work with the tourism office in Lakatoro. She'd be taking over McKenzie's house in Lakatoro (as McKenzie was slated to move one village over, to Litz-Litz, in order to be closer to her office), which was good, because McKenzie's house had become our official party house and is home to our only refrigerator, a crucial component in the production of frosty brews.
Mindi, our newest addition, arrived at the airport on the 7:30am flight with a familiar vacant, exhausted expression on her face, a sign of having spent the previous night taking full advantage of the Vila party scene before heading out to the islands. The three of us headed back to Lakatoro to take naps because, well, that's just what you do on a Friday afternoon.
On Saturday Duncan returned from Vila. According to him, he'd gone to open an account with a new international bank that had just launched a few weeks earlier. Upon his return, however, he informed me that he had not, in fact, gone to the bank, but what he had done was purchase 450 bullets for his .22 rifle. Vanuatu gun control laws focus more on controlling bullets rather than controlling the guns that fire them. I'm not entirely sure, but I think the reason for this is that the primary concern is, in the absence of park rangers, cutting down on the amount of hunting that people are able to do. Thus, everyone with a gun license is entitled to purchase a certain amount of bullets every month which, I believe, ranges somewhere between 50 to 200, depending on the type of license. Duncan explained to me that, in order to be able to buy 450 bullets, he'd had to purchase gun licenses held by two deceased individuals from the police in Vila. He was on a mission. The owner of a French restaurant in Vila was offering $1000 dollars and 1200 bullets to anyone who could catch 200 flying fox. Flying fox, as I've mentioned in previous blogs, aren't actually flying foxes, but rather a kind of fruit bat that are common in Vanuatu. The French prize them as a delicacy (but, honestly, name a single bizarre, unappetizing animal that the French DON'T prize as a delicacy), and I happened to know that the particular French restaurant that had commissioned Duncan to hunt for them charges a little over $30 for their flying fox dish. Quite a tidy markup, if I do say so myself. I'm something of a fan of flying fox as well, although I have yet to taste it cooked in red wine – like the French serve it – which is supposed to be particularly good. If you can get over the fact that you're eating a leathery bat, flying fox has a very strong, unique, game flavor that goes well with a spicy curry (being extraordinary tough, it has to be stewed for a long time before it becomes edible). Of course, I have the advantage of being friends with the Ni-Vanuatu who hunt the things, so I get to eat them for free, which is a much friendlier price than $30 per. Because they can be sold at such a good price to French tourists, flying fox have basically been hunted to extinction on Efate. They are, however, still quite plentiful on all the other islands of Vanuatu, and so all the restaurants in Vila have to import them. Flying fox can be seen in abundance flying between the fruit trees in Tautu once it gets on towards dusk and actually make a pretty continuous racket late into the night outside my house. Hunting them requires a flashlight powerful enough to spot them hanging in the taller coconut trees, a favorite haunt of theirs. Fortunately, my family had sent me such a flashlight from the States a few months before, which I had loaned to Duncan on the grounds that he allow me to take a flying fox for myself every now and then. Thus, on Saturday night Duncan and I took a shell of kava together to commemorate his return and then he abruptly announced that we were going to go shoot. It briefly crossed my mind that handling firearms while intoxicated is probably dangerous and a bad idea, but then I realized that basically everything I do in my day-to-day life in Vanuatu is dangerous and a bad idea, so I let it go. The two of us walked up and down the road connecting Tautu and Norsup, Duncan's flashlight constantly roving between the coconut trees looking for small, black, ball-shaped figures hanging from the leaves. When he spotted one he'd shout “Dan!” and I'd run over and take a position about a foot in front of him and stand as still as humanly possible. He'd then balance his rifle on my head, take aim through his scope, and shoot the flying fox. Despite the fact that this sounds unbelievably dumb, we actually were able to shoot a lot of them quite quickly. As it turns out, the actual shooting of the flying fox isn't really the hard part about hunting them. They're kind of sitting ducks up in the trees, and will stand perfectly still for minutes on end, just waiting to take a bullet. The problem, though, is that they're bats and are thus really good at hanging onto things, even when they're dead, so what happened is that only about 10% of the foxes that Duncan shot would fall out of the tree upon being hit. For the rest we either had to sit underneath the tree for a while waiting for the wind to knock them loose, try to knock them loose ourselves by throwing sticks or rocks, try and shoot out their legs so that they'll fall down, or give up and try to shoot another one. Thus, for the most part, the 10-15 minutes after shooting a flying fox was taken up by us trying to recover it, slowing us down significantly. I was still surprised as how many we were able to bring in, though. At the end of the night we had about 20 bagged and in the freezer, putting Duncan well on his way to the 200 mark.
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