Life in the Ring of Fire Part 46: Full House

This week's Tautu language word is “rolbong.” It means “morning.” Like with natanbong, you can combine it with ares to say “ares rolbong,” which means “good morning.”

Monday started my last week of teaching, which I was indescribably happy about. I was going to be in Australia for the next two weeks, which were the last two weeks of the term, and so I'd gotten my headmaster to cover my class for me. Seeing how much things tend to peter out by the end of the term anyway, I doubted I would be missing much. In addition, my parents and little brother were to be spending the week with me in Tautu, which was pretty cool. Their first order of business was to declare the water in the water tank outside my house, in other words, my drinking water, unsuitable for all purposes except flushing the toilet, which made me feel really good about my sanitary habits. In their defense (or perhaps in mine), the water quality in my tank had degraded significantly since I'd left for Vila almost two weeks before, I think because there'd been a heavy rain that had washed a lot of dead leaves and rotting lemons into it. I promised to clean out my tank as soon as I returned from Australia and, in the interim, we all used the water from the school's tank. Also, a cool thing about having visitors from the States is that they're really impressed at how much work I go through to accomplish everyday tasks, even though it's really just part of the routine. For example:

“OK, well, I'm just gonna whip up some bread dough, knead it and let it rise, then chop some firewood and get a fire going so we can have fresh bread for breakfast.”
“No, Daniel, it's fine, you don't need to go through all that trouble.”
“Umm, it's not really any trouble. I mean, the alternative is sitting around for an hour.”

The funny thing is that it really isn't any trouble. It's like having guests that are really impressed at how much work you put into microwaving soup for them. Another cool thing was that my parents aren't volunteers and have actual jobs, and thus actual paychecks, so costs that'd I'd come to think of as being preposterously expensive were shrugged off by them (“Two dollars to go snorkeling here! It's not like I'm buying a freaking car!” “Uhh, Daniel, that's just fine, actually”). And, of course, I finally had people to take pictures of me. You see, since I actually live in Tautu, if I were to walk around with a camera all the time taking pictures of things, people would think it was a little weird, but visitors are expected to do such things. Thus, I was at last able to get photos of me doing things like walking around with a machete. Also, my brother was tasked with filming a documentary about Vanuatu since he was missing a few days of school to come visit, so he was carrying around a camcorder the whole time, which caused a lot of excitement in the village.

At any rate, on Monday I showed them around the Greater Lakatoro Area (GLA), being Norsup, Tautu, Lakatoro, and Litz-Litz. During the process I stopped in at the post office to pick up all the mail that had been piling up in my box since I'd left for Vila, and received a package from a couple friends from college loaded with a variety of snacks which, combined with all the stuff my family had brought for me, skyrocketed the amount of American stuff in my house to record levels. On Tuesday we chartered a motor boat to go out to Urpiv, a small island off the coast of Malekula. I'd heard about Urpiv from a couple of the older volunteers who'd told me that there was supposed to be some good snorkeling there. My mom had also read in a tour book (yeah, Malekula does show up in the Lonely Planet guide to Vanuatu. Of course, about half of the information it gives is inaccurate) about a supposed marine sanctuary, which I suspected was the same place, although I was guessing it wasn't so much a “sanctuary” as a “place that the chief tries to keep people from fishing in.” We made it over to the island without a problem (I was shocked). I asked some of the villagers where we should snorkel to see some good coral and fish, and they pointed us up the island, saying that diving was not allowed in the other direction. I thought that probably meant that that was where the protected area was, which was where we wanted to go, but everyone was fairly adamant that we head off in the opposite direction. We worked our way up along the coast; it was OK, but fairly mediocre by Vanuatu standards. Eventually, we crossed over to the windward side of the island and lost it's protection from the wind and where forced out of the water by rough seas. We walked back to where we started and started asking around again. Finally it came out that we could snorkel in the protected area, but we would have to pay a fee. This we did and set out again. The second time was much nicer, with a lot more coral and fish and a lot fewer waves, more what I'd come to expect from Vanuatu. After snorkeling, Duncan and Linda gave my family lap-lap making lessons, so that they could enjoy the delicacy when they got back to the US, provided that they were willing to dig a big pit in their back yard and build a giant fire in it. I had a feeling it might be a little difficult to get the home owner's association's approval for that.

Thursday was my family's going away feast (their second feast in less than a week). Once again, Duncan had been busy fussing around for the previous couple days to get everything ready. I one point, I went to see him to check on things and he was very concerned about something that I just couldn't weasel out of him. It can be very difficult to get Ni-Vans to get to the point, especially when something is wrong. After about half an hour of back and forth, it came out that he'd invited too many people to the party and was concerned about having enough food. “I think we should get a second pig,” he told me. “That's awesome,” I replied. Two pigs in one feast, things were getting pretty epic. When we showed up Thursday evening, all of my US family were whisked off by by Vanuatu family and dressed up in matching island clothes: a Hawaiian print dress for my mom and matching Hawaiian print shirts for my dad and brother. My family was also presented with a gift: a carved wooden canoe to symbolize safe passage home and welcome should they ever wish to return to Vanuatu. Then my host grandpa got up and gave a speech in Bislama and asked me to translate it into English. The problem with translating Bislama into English is that an entire paragraph of Bislama can be summed up by one English word, so what would happen is that by grandpa would say a couple lines and then pause and look at me, waiting for me to translate, and I'd be like, “Uhh, you haven't, actually, said anything yet.” In the end, it all turned out nicely, and I think my two families got along pretty well, and I think my US family really liked their carving, although, as I was told later, they had a little trouble getting it through airport security in the US, as it was tagged as a “sharp object.” I thought this was a pretty perfect juxtaposition of the two cultures.
Vanuatu: “This craving represents our appreciation of your visit and is a symbol of you being welcome to return any time.”
US: “Sir, are you aware that boat could be used to stab someone?”

Friday afternoon we caught a plane back to Vila and spent another day there before Sunday, the big day, my first return to western civilization in almost a year, our flight to Sydney. I was excited. Although I do like Vanuatu quite a bit, I was ready for a vacation. I was getting a little claustrophobic. The thing about Vanuatu is that, not only is it small, but it's also disconnected. The usual web made up of phone, TV, internet, radio, newspapers, etc, that tie us to the rest of the world in the US just aren't in place to the same extent in Vanuatu, so when you look out from your beach and see nothing but the endless dull blue of the Pacific Ocean, it's easy to forgot that the rest of the world exists. Sometimes when things just aren't going my way in Vanuatu, it's good to know that there are other places on the planet.

So, for the first time ever, I went through Port Vila's international terminal on the departing end. Surprisingly, Air Vanuatu is actually a pretty nice airline to fly for international flights. You always get lots of food, and it's usually pretty good, and wine and drinks are included in your ticket and, I got to say, you can really taste the difference between really cheap cooking wine sold in two liter jugs and only pretty cheap airplane wine poured out of bottles. Sydney airport is massive. Huge. I'd sort of forgotten what it was like to be able to walk long distances inside. We walked what was probably the equivalent of my house to Duncan's house just to get from the gate to the customs counters. We got our bags, spent a little bit of time working things out at the car rental counter and then we were outside. It was pretty cold. My parents had brought me some winter clothes, so I wasn't totally unprepared, but still, I hadn't felt cold for a while. It was really nice actually. While heat makes you lethargic and lazy, cold makes you active and alert. I liked the feeling. We found our car and hit the road. We were headed for a few nights at a cottage in the Blue Mountains, about an hour's drive outside of Sydney. The rental car lady had given us easy directions and so soon, with very little trouble, we were cruising down the highway leaving town. We stopped once at a gas station convenience store to use the bathroom and I browsed the grocery section. To my surprise, western food items such as chips and crackers and the like weren't significantly cheaper than they were back in Vila. I was a little disappointed. It was almost ten at night when we reached the town we were staying in. We'd gained a lot of altitude and, I assumed, colder, because I could see snow on the ground outside the car window. Yes, snow, unbelievable. It was also almost ten at night and it was very dark. We found the street our cottage was supposed to be on, but it was too dark to see the numbers, so we couldn't locate the address. Me and my brother were sent out to investigate. It was frigid outside. Not the pleasant cold from back in Sydney, this was a painful cold. I was jumping up and down and running in place as we looked for addresses. Finally, we found it, and let ourselves inside. The house was almost as cold as the outside. There was not central heat, but the proprietor had left a fire going in the fireplace which I spent the next half hour huddled next to. The bedrooms were even more frigid, as they were far away from the fireplace, but the beds all had electric blankets, which were pretty key, just as long as you didn't need to get up to go to the bathroom. It was late and I was tired and thus wasn't in the mood to access my re-introduction to westerness and glorify in such pleasures as running water. I would have to wait until Monday for that.