Life in the Ring of Fire Part 44: Dante's Inferno

This week's Tautu language word is “mle” (see issue 42 for pronunciation). It means kava. I think that's kind of self explanatory.

Monday McKenzie and I woke up early to catch a truck back from Laura's village to Lakatoro. Unfortunately, apparently there are many more people trying to get to Lakatoro from Matanvat than trying to get to Matanvat from Lakatoro, and so we would not be getting a repeat of the nice, pleasant ride we'd had on the way up. By eight o'clock in the morning, two out of the three trucks had already passed being too full to carry us. When the third one rolled up, we quickly saw that it was even more full than the previous two had been, but we were determined, so McKenzie crammed into the cabin and I stuffed myself into the back. Literally every cubic angstrom of available space was filled by either cargo or people. The whole truck drove like an overloaded airport luggage cart and seemed ready to spill over at any moment, especially given the unevenness of the terrain. Of course, this had become so much the MO for Vanuatu that I no longer felt the least bit unsafe. It was, however, one of the most uncomfortable truck rides to date. Just a little past Elin's old village the truck broke down. I'm not really sure what was wrong with it, but it seemed to be able to be fixed with (no joke) a machete, a piece of bamboo, and a bottle of vegetable oil.

I arrived home at the school to find that, as predicted, class had been canceled in favor of volleyball. I took the opportunity to give my house a much-needed deep cleaning in preparation for my parent's visit in a couple weeks. That evening as I was drinking kava with Duncan I received a text from McKenzie informing me that Elin would be going back to the US. Kenzie told me she would try and get in touch with Laura and that the two of them would probably try to get into Vila as soon as possible to say one last goodbye, if I was interested in coming along. Laura was down in Lakatoro the following day and that evening we all got kava in Lakatoro to discuss plans for getting to Vila. I already had a plane ticket to Vila, as I had been planning on going in about a week to meet my parents, and so I could easily change my departure date to get in earlier. The two girls, however, were interested in conserving money and thus wanted to take a ship. We called the Fresh Cargo, the new ship providing faster, more reliable, service between Malekula and Vila. Unfortunately, they weren't scheduled to depart until Saturday, and we were looking to get in sooner. Laura had gotten word that the Moaika, a typical cargo ship, was supposed to be arriving the following day, Wednesday, in Litz-Litz and should be getting to Vila Thursday morning. This sounded as good an option as any and Laura agreed to come down to Tautu the next day to help me pack up Elin's stuff and get it to the ship to deliver it to her before her departure for the US. True to her word, Laura was at my house in the morning and the two of us chartered a truck and loaded up with Elin's baggage. We had just dropped everything off at the dock when we were informed that the Moaika would be delayed and would not be in until Thursday early in the morning. We were not particularly surprised by this, being Vanuatu veterans, and so McKenzie and Laura moved Elin's stuff to McKenzie's house for the night and I went back to Tautu to have one last kava with Duncan.

The next day, Thursday, I was literally shocked to receive a call from Laura at around 6:30 in the morning. “The Moaika's here,” she informed me. “W-What?” I said, not really believing my ears. “The Moaika's here,” Laura repeated, “get down to Litz-Litz as soon as you can.” I rode my bike down to McKenzie's house and the three of us boarded the ship. At this point, we were feeling optimistic about our situation. The ship had actually come, which was miracle enough, and it was only a day late. The captain assured us that'd we be making only three stops on our way to Vila: Rensari, Lemap, and Akam, and should be reaching Vila by Friday morning. We watched the crew load the largest collection of watermelons I'd ever seen, an entire lorry-full. I found this comforting, as I knew that if we should become lost at sea, we could survive for years off of this stockpile of watermelons. We set off from Litz-Litz wharf at about 9 o'clock in high spirits. It was a gorgeous morning, the ocean looked beautiful and inviting, the gentle rolling of the boat was calling up pleasant memories of sailing in college, and we were all happy to be embarking on our first extended boat journey in Vanuatu. We should have known better. We really should have. Writing this now, I want to shout back at my previous self. “Don't do it! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NO! GET OUT! GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN! JUMP OFF THE BOAT AND SWIM BACK TO SHORE IF YOU HAVE TO!” It wasn't as if we weren't warned. Every old volunteer you meet has one, and only one piece of advice to offer you, and that is “Don't get on a boat.” During our first few months we found this quite obnoxious. There we were, starry-eyed newbies fresh from the States, eager to get helpful pointers from our older, wiser brothers, and that's all they'd give us. “But what's it like learning the language?” We'd ask. “Don't worry about that, just DON'T GET ON A SHIP!” “Right, OK, but what about integrating into the...” “DON'T GET ON A SHIP!” The sad fact of the matter is that no one can warn you enough. “How bad could it really be?” You find yourself asking, “I'm a tough guy, I'm sure I can succeed where others have failed.”

Well, actually, this optimistic, can-do attitude persisted throughout most of the first day. We didn't get seasick and there weren't that many people on the ship, so we had plenty of room to stretch out. We motored along for about an hour before making our first stop. It was Rensari, just as promised. Now, most villages in Malekula don't have wharves deep enough to allow a cargo ship to come up and dock at them, so what ends up happening is that the ship will idle a little ways off shore while a couple of the crew put out in a little motorboat for shore. They load up the little boat with cargo and passengers and bring them back to the ship, unload and, if necessary, head back to shore to pick up more stuff. The people of Rensari also had a large collection of watermelons that desperately needed to go to Vila, so the boat had to go out three times to pick up everything. This took about an hour, which was a little frustrating, but Rensari was a pretty good ways down the coast already, so I still felt like we were making good time. After Rensari, we motored for another half hour before once again stopping so the motor boat could bring in cargo. After that, things went exponentially downhill as the stops grew more and more frequent and the amount we moved between them grew less and less. By the end of the day things had fallen into a pattern of moving for approximately fifteen feet followed by stopping for about twenty minutes to allow the motor boat to go out come back carrying, say, a yam that someone was sending to a relative in Vila. I began to get pissed off at the number of ridiculous stops we were making to pick up a single piece of produce. “You don't need to send a freaking yam to Vila!” I wanted to shout. There are yams in Vila already, OK. I promise. In fact there's loads of yams. Too many yams. You know what? I'll buy you one. I'll buy you four. JUST PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP MAKING THIS SHIP STOP TO PICK UP YOUR GODDAMN VEGETABLES. Or, how about this, if you REALLY need to get your yam to Vila, why don't you and all of those with similarly idiotic root-crop transportation needs in all the nearby villages get all your yams TOGETHER in ONE PLACE so that the ship only has to stop ONCE. Is that so hard? For the life of me, I couldn't figure out how the crew of the ship could possibly be making money on these cargo expeditions. The ship's motor was never shut off, so it was constantly burning fuel, and the motor boat was obviously burning a lot fuel, which isn't cheap in Vanuatu, and they were really only getting about $2 a pop to go in and pick up someone's yam. Go figure.

By nightfall we had made it to Lemap, on the southern point of the island. Although we didn't know it at the time, this was to prove to be the highlight of the journey. Lemap actually had a wharf, in a manner of speaking. There were three parallel, horizontal concrete beams running out from the shore that the boat moored to. It looked like there used to be wooden planks laid across these concrete beams to make a dock, but most of the planks had either rotted or were missing. Thus, in order to reach shore from the boat, one had to walk across one of these slippery, 6-inch wide beams for about 50 meters. We were actually told later that the Lemap wharf is known for an unusually high incidence of shark attacks, due to the fact that there used to be a meat packing plant nearby. Regardless, after a whole day on a boat we were all eager to spend a couple hours on shore, so McKenzie and I disembarked and headed out to try and find Jack, a volunteer from our group stationed in Lemap, as well as some kava. It was about a fifteen minute walk into the village where, after a bit of asking around, we located Jack's house. He actually had quite a nice setup. He'd set himself up a solar lighting system and crammed his house full of more western goods than I'd seen in a long time. There were crates of soy milk, soda, canned iced coffee, snacks, instant noodles, and electronic equipment. The three of us went out and had a few shells of kava. We'd been told by one of the crew that the ship would be departing around midnight, so after kava we headed back to the ship and I stretched out on one of the benches and fell asleep. I woke up the next day at around 9am (that's 24 hours in transit so far) to find that the ship was still moored in Lemap. I really should have known better, but I was still clinging to hope at this point. Lemap's at the very south of Malekula, I reasoned, and there's really only a few small islands off the southern coast, so, really, there's only a couple more stops that it would even be possible to make before heading out to Vila. Man was I wrong.

The second day was a complete repeat of the afternoon of the previous day: move eight feet, spend half an hour loading a watermelon, move eight more feet, etc. I began to dread the sound of the ship engine powering down to idle like a tortured prison inmate fears the approaching footsteps of his captor. Every time that devilish little motorboat headed out towards shore, it took a little piece of my sanity with it. I began to develop a nervous twitch every time I felt the ship slowing down. My shoulders and fists were shore from being clenched and tense, but I was unable to relax. I lost my ability to communicate, unable to answer questions and comments directed my way with anything other than a dirty look and a scowl. I began to fantasize about strangling the supercargo (the person responsible for driving the speedboat to shore to load cargo) or about beating up random passengers and throwing them overboard. In other words, I was well and truly going insane. By evening I was at the absolute end of my leash. We'd been on the ship for almost 40 hours and still hadn't left Malekula. I was a tense, nervous wreck. It was a good thing there weren't any firearms on board, because I honestly probably would have started shooting people. The only thing holding me together was the fact that we'd finally made it to Akam, which the captain still insisted was to be our last stop before Vila. The Akam villagers had a lot of cargo, and the crew was rushing to bring it all in before they lost daylight. They probably made four or five runs in the motorboat to get everything, but finally it was over. It was almost totally dark, the faint outline of the shore only dimly visible in the darkness, but it was done. The crew tied up the motorboat and we started moving in earnest. It was about half and hour later, just as I was finally starting to relax, that I heard it: the engine was slowing down. I started crying. I mean, I literally started crying. “Where the f%$@ are we?!” I demanded of the surprised passenger sitting next to me. “Southwest bay,” she replied. We were going completely the wrong direction, working our way back up north on the western coast of Malekula. I snapped. I started screaming random profanities at the coast, now invisible in the darkness. I pounded the benches and punched my fists wildly in the air. I don't really know what happened next. I think I passed out from anger and exhaustion because the next thing I knew I was lying on a mat on the deck of the ship and we were moving again. McKenzie and Laura were discussing plans for what to do once we reached Vila, and I gathered we'd been moving continuously for a couple hours. I still don't know how the captain was navigating in the dark. I was pretty sure he didn't have a GPS. It was cloudy and the stars were barely visible. The ship didn't even have bow lights to spot shallows.

So we were on our way to Vila, and that was good. The end was in sight. Still, the powers that be weren't about to let us off that easily. Midway through the second day, Laura had decided that the ship, Moaika, that we were on should be renamed Dante's Inferno. Because if you're trying to decide whether to take the Moaika or an airplane to Vila, the correct choice isn't necessarily obvious. However, if you're choosing between an airplane and DANTE'S INFERNO, well, things are a little bit more clear. Now, I don't know what cardinal sin I'd committed which doomed me to end up in whatever circle of hell is home to miserable ship rides, but there were a few more torments I had yet to undergo before my sins were atoned for. For starters, the ship had gotten a lot more crowded. We'd picked up a good number of passengers over the past many hours and now space was no longer plentiful. I was squeezed in amongst a number of mamas, screaming little kids, and various parcels and luggage. I had essentially be locked into the same position for the past few hours as movement had become impossible due to crowding. It had also turned cold and rainy. Having been in Vanuatu for too long, none of us were equipped for the cold as we all sort of assumed it would always be hot. Thus, we were reduced to rummaging through Elin's bags looking for t-shirts that we could wrap around our legs and arms for warm. The rain started just a couple hours out from Vila. The deck we were on was covered, but open, so it wasn't exactly watertight. There were a number of leaks and rain was blown in the sides by the wind. Soon we were all soaked and even more freezing. Finally, there was the bathroom. Midway through the first day, someone had had an accident or something had sloshed over the side, leaving about an inch of urine-water mixture covering the floor. The bathroom was also located right next to the kitchen, and so all the waste heat from the stove was vented into it, quickly raising the temperature to that of ground zero of an atomic blast. This caused the standing urine on the floor to evaporate, filling the tiny enclosure with ammonia vapor and creating fumes potent enough to be outlawed by the Geneva convention's ban on chemical weapons. We all stopped drinking all fluids to minimize trips to the bathroom and each time one of us got up and began to make our way below decks, those remaining gave them a mournful look.

Towards the end, I'd been on the ship so long I'd forgotten where I was going. I just assumed I'd be on the ship forever. For some reason I thought back to our friend Louis, back when we'd first gotten to site, who would always show up miraculously to bails us out of whatever ridiculous situations we'd get ourselves into such as, say, deciding to walk to the LTC from Tautu in the blazing summer sun. I started having visions of Louis motoring up behind us in a luxury yacht and inviting us aboard to enjoy steaming mugs of hot chocolate spiked with peppermint schnapps and comfortable, spacious sofas. When we finally pulled in to Vila harbor it was 9am on Saturday, almost 48 hours on the dot since we'd left Malekula. I think I can very safely say those were the worst 48 hours of my life up to that point.

Given all the trials and tribulations we'd gone through to get to Vila, we'd almost forgotten why we'd wanted to come. However, as if to add insult to injury, we were quickly informed that Elin had already left for the States on Friday morning, almost 24 hours before. I think the most distinctive thing about Elin was always her eyes. She had the most ridiculously huge doe eyes I've ever seen. And she had the sad puppy-dog look down to a science. When she first got to Malekula, she didn't have much experience cooking and so either McKenzie or I would end up cooking for her a lot. At a certain point we decided that that couldn't go on for two years and that she needed to learn how to cook and we needed to stop making stuff for her. Nevertheless, one of us would always show up at McKenzie's house to find the other presenting Elin with, say, a pumpkin pie. “What happened?!” We'd ask each other. “I don't know. It's those eyes man!” “Oh god, I know! Those eyes are killer!” During the Christmas holidays she was down in Lakatoro a lot and would always walk around with her guitar over one shoulder and a giant handbag over the other, looking for all the world like a wandering musician. Elin was perpetually out of money and, probably on a related note, could have gotten a frequent shopper's card at the Lakatoro used clothing store. She was also the only person I've ever seen actually use the Wester Union money transfer service at the post office. She had a deep and abiding hatred for the bands Guns & Roses, AC/DC, and Metallica and once swore to us that she would never date a guy who liked any of these bands, which I believe disqualifies most people on the planet. She had an iPod that actually had a pretty impressive collection of music on it, a fact that I didn't find out until about seven months into service because she would always play us the same playlist with the same twenty or so songs on it. She had this really infectious open-mouthed, full body laugh which was accompanied by a slap on the shoulder and a “you're killing me” for particularly funny jokes. Unfortunately, she kind of got tossed around a lot here in Vanuatu. Peace Corps changed her site assignment at the last minute to send her to Malekula to a village that didn't really want a volunteer. Her house was broken into a number of times, which would leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth, and thus went back and forth a lot about going back to the US. McKenzie and I both agreed that the most frustrating part of the whole situation was that Peace Corps asked her to leave just as she'd found the resolve to stick it out and make things work. At any rate, Elin, I wish you luck in all future adventures and I hope at some point you finally get a chance to watch “Arrested Development.”