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.