Life in the Ring of Fire Part 64: Back in the US of A!

*Note: The title of this blog entry should be sung to the tune of “Back in the USSR” by the Beatles

Well, my flights actually did go pretty smoothly. True, I got a little hung up in Australian customs and had to surrender some of my Vanuatu wood carvings and ended up only just making my connection. And sure, one of my bags got lost on the way to LA and had to be delivered to me several days later, but I just kept thinking about how much more pleasant the whole experience was than the 48 hour hell ride on the Dante's Inferno, shivering and wet on an overcrowded refugee boat to Vila, huddling under a barely waterproof tarp in the rain. I mean, my flight to LA was air conditioned and had little TVs set into the back of every seat for Christ's sake. And the alcohol was free. Air conditioning, television, and free alcohol; that's kind of what I imagine heaven being like when I'm sitting in my shack on Malekula. I'll admit, however, that I was a little annoyed with Australian customs. I'd taken the time to get all of my wooden items chemically treated so that they could clear customs, and I'd already been allowed into New Zealand without question for my two-night layover. I'd flown from New Zealand to Sydney and was trying to catch a flight to Melbourne and then another onto LA, for a total amount of time spent in Australia probably under four hours. However, since I was making a domestic connection, I had to clear customs and thus was my first re-encounter with what western cultures like to call “laws,” and Ni-Vans like to think of as “people being jerks.” While most of my collection of Vanuatu trinkets were deemed worthy of spending four hours in Australia, they took issue with two circumcision rods. These are long sticks decorated with faces formed with tree sap and painted with colored soils. They're used when a boy undergoes a circumcision and are placed around the family's compound to denote the fact that the ceremony is going on. One of the rods was made for an average-Joe circumcision, but the other was for the son of a chief and thus was set with feathers and a pig's tusk. Although I'd picked up both for a total of about $40 from a guy on my island and could probably get an arbitrarily large number of them made for me upon request, I decided to really ham it up and make the customs officials feel really bad about confiscating them.
“These are interesting cultural artifacts,” I explained “you can only get them when there's a circumcision ceremony is going on (not true. I just have to ask my uncle), which happens, I don't know, maybe once every couple years (untrue, do you have any idea how many kids get born in my village? Lots).”
“This one here,” I continued, pointing to the simpler rod “can be used by any family, so I might be able to get another one of them, if I'm lucky. This other one, however, can only be used for the son of a chief. I was quite fortunate to be able to get it. There are very few people left from the chief family lines these days (also not true, basically everyone and their mother can claim to be a chief of something).”
My items were still confiscated, of course, but the customs staff seemed suitably guilty, distraught, and apologetic, so I considered it a moral victory.

I was in Auckland, New Zealand waiting for my flight out to the US for a couple days before my run-in with the Australian customs officials. Although it was supposed to be summer in New Zealand, the country's excessively southern location ensured that it was still somewhat chilly. This was my first experience with cool weather in a while, as November had been an exceptionally oppressive month in Vanuatu as far as heat and humidity were concerned. I hadn't packed any kind of warm clothing for my trip, as I really don't own any in Vanuatu, but I enjoyed walking around the city in the chill autumn-esque air with my shorts and t-shirt drawing inquisitive looks from other passersby. I also discovered this remarkable little device in my hotel room where you punch in the temperature you want it to be in the room and somehow it just magically becomes that temperature. I was so pleased with this device, in fact, that I changed my room from frigid ice box to sweltering sauna and back a couple of times just to prove that I could.

I set foot on US soil for the first time in over a year in LAX, where I was warmly welcomed home by a friendly US customs official. I also got paged for the first time in an airport (“Quantas airlines is paging passenger Daniel Moser. Daniel Moser, please see a Quantas airlines representative immediately”), which I was really excited about, but it turned out they just want to tell me that they'd lost my luggage. They seemed to think that this would be a huge inconvenience to me and apologized profusely and promised that it would be delivered to my house in Austin as soon as possible. I thought that this was way better than the standard method of hauling my bags through the various customs and security checkpoints myself and I wondered if I could have saved myself a lot of trouble by just requesting that they lose my bags immediately and just delivered to my house a few days after my arrival.

Upon exiting from the international terminal, I was approached by a man who gave a short spiel about some children-at-risk aid organization and requested a donation, claiming to accept any currency. Since it was all I had, I handed him a 500 vatu note, which he took and stared at blankly for a little while.
“What's this?” He finally asked.
“It's vatu,” I explained, “it's from Vanuatu.”
“Huh.” He said. I nodded in agreement.
“I don't know if our bank will accept this,” he continued.
“Probably not,” I said.
He handed the note back to me.
“Thanks,” I said, “have a Merry Christmas.”
I wondered if he would consider rewording his “accepting any currency” claim for the next person he approached.

Having made my way to the domestic side of the airport and ascertained that my flight to Austin would not be leaving for another couple hours, I settled into an airport Chili's to have a burger and a few margaritas and muse about how far I'd come in the past few days. I'd flown halfway around the world, that much was clear, but there was more than mere distance at play here. I tried to picture Duncan's nakamal: the woven bamboo sides, the flimsy-looking thatch, the uneven beams that make up the support structure– complete with twists, knots and protrusions as only fresh-cut wood can be, the giant mango tree that somehow managed to grow in an “L” shape, thus forming a nice little bench for those wanting to sit down outside. I thought about husking coconut and peeling kumala for dinner and tried to make those memories mesh with the scene in front of me: a building larger than my village whose concrete, steel, and right-angle construction doesn't even hint at the existence of nature, the steady flow of people darting in front of my table, toting all variety of wheeled clothing-containing contraptions, and the cheerful Mexican waiter who somehow managed to produce all manner of food and beverage upon request. I felt like I was in a Star Trek episode and had just stepped off the holo-deck and was now wandering the Starship Enterprise LAX, ordering food from the food synthesizer. It was like my whole life for the past few months had just been one of those annoying “Gotcha! None of that was actually real!” gimmicks that the writers like to pull every once and a while.

Further cementing the contrast between the cultures in my mind, a television in the waiting area in front of me began looping a commercial for the Radisson, highlighting the hotel's use of sleep number beds which, if my understanding is correct, is a sort of robot that allows you to adjust your bed's puffiness via remote control, just in case your mattress is too soft for comfort.

It was snowing in Austin when I landed. This is pretty unusual. I can only remember it snowing in Texas once before, one Christmas when I was staying at my cousin's house in Houston and we got a light dusting of snow covering his palm trees. It was very picturesque. I don't think I was adequately able to appreciate the strangeness this time around, however, as everything I'd seen for the past 24 hours had seemed kind of strange and I'd sort of lapsed into a just-roll-with-whatever-happens-without-asking-any-questions mode.

My Mom and brother were waiting for me at the airport. My brother was wearing a red Santa Claus hat and ran up and jumped on me as soon as I passed through the security checkpoint, just like when I used to come home for Christmas during college, except this time he was a lot bigger and almost knocked me over. My Mom had gotten some kind of contraption in her car that allows it to hook up to cellphones, thus saving everyone in the car the trouble of having to guess what someone on the phone is talking about, as the whole conversation comes booming through the car stereo. We used said device to contact my Dad to let him know I'd arrived, and for some reason this freaked me out more than the snow had. As we promised me, our first stop on the way home was at a Mexican restaurant. The same Mexican restaurant, in fact, where I'd had my going away party a couple of Septembers ago. As I ordered a plate of nachos (which had somehow assumed the status of the holy grail of food items for those of us in Vanuatu. I'm not entirely sure why, but nachos are admittedly awesome) and my brother and I jostled for room on the restaurant booth, I could feel myself beginning to slip back into my life from over a year ago. It felt right. I almost felt like I'd never left. Almost.

Hey guys, I'm back! Sorry for the long delay. I've been enjoying life in the US too much to write anything. No worries, though, I'm back to the islands shortly and I owe you all about 6 more entries, so stay tuned.

Life in the Ring of Fire Part 63: The End of the Beginning

On Monday, McKenzie and I caught a plane for Vila. We left in the morning, which gave a pleasant finality to my first year of service: I was departing almost exactly a year after I'd arrived on Malekula. Plus, I didn't have to hang awkwardly around Tautu for most of the day after saying goodbye to everyone, waiting for the plane to arrive. In an act that would certainly have gotten me detained were I flying on any airline in the US, I'd purchased two clubs (one for killing pigs and one for killing people) as well as a couple of bow and arrows, all of which I was taking carry-on. In Vanuatu, of course, this barely raised an eyebrow. The relative of mine who'd done the woodwork for me had also carved a spear that he'd wanted me to buy. I explained to him, however, that, while the spear was nice, the difficulties involved with transporting it to the US were probably just a little too much. He countered by explaining that it could easily slid underneath the airplane seats for convenient traveling. I actually considered this for a while before realizing how totally ridiculous this proposition was. I also considered that probably the only thing one could fly do with a hijacked airplane in Vanuatu was fly it into the Pacific Ocean, which is actually surprisingly resilient to such terrorist attacks. I'd once had a Ni-Van ask me if there was ever likely to be any terrorist activity in Vanuatu. I explained to him that, since Vanuatu gets about ten times less media attention than a movie actor's latest haircut, this was unlikely to be a concern anytime soon. I did, however, assure him that, should Vanuatu work hard in its development efforts, they might one day be important enough to merit terrorist threats. Something to strive for, I suppose.

There's nothing like a plane ride to drive home just how small and insignificant my home in Vanuatu is. As the plane lifted off from the runway and began to gain altitude, I watched the terrain shrink below me. First, Tautu and the airport merge into one, then Norsup and the dusty road to Lakatoro are thrown in. Soon I can pick out the LTC and MDC, the PRV plantation, Urpiv island. A mere minute after takeoff, my entire world is compressed and is visible in its entirety through a tiny aircraft window no more than eighteen inches high and a foot wide. All my friends and family, my house, my haunts and hangouts, my trials, triumphs, and failures, my joys, worries, and complaints, my life for the past year have receded into obscurity. People, places, and events which seemed so large in my head are shown for what they really are: a small green blob in the middle of a vast, blue ocean. It's a humbling thought, and I try not to dwell on it.

We landed in Vila and headed to the Peace Corps office to drop off our stuff only to discover that this idea had occurred to many others before us. The office was festooned with stuff: half-packed suitcases, piles of recently purchased items, shopping bags full of clothes, food, and other random junk. I recognized the scene from our week in Vila before departing to our various islands and I remembered that the newest set of volunteers, a few of which we'd hosted on Malekula almost a month ago, were scheduled to head out in just a couple of days. We found a couple empty corners to ditch out bags and then set out for Jill's American Cafe, as it tradition, to have burritos. Knowing that there were likely to be at least a few volunteers from the new group that we hadn't met yet at the restaurant, we played “try and spot the Peace Corps volunteers.” McKenzie was convinced that the group of four sitting behind us were volunteers, but I remained skeptical due to the extravagance of their order, well beyond the budget of I volunteer, I reasoned, and their reluctance to speak Bislama to the wait staff. McKenzie ended up winning out, however, as we saw them again later at the office.

That evening our medical officer was hosting an early Christmas party for volunteers at her house in Vila. Our medical officer, Jane, has a palatial estate looking over Port Vila harbor complete with pool, guest house, and an enormous patio for hosting parties. We'd first been brought to Jane's way back in training, where we'd been given a crash course in opening coconuts by her gardener and had one last chance to see the type of deluxe accommodations that we'd be missing out on for the next two years. Jane's is also home to a number of dogs, including a great dane which is larger than your average horse. Ni-Vans are kind of funny about dogs. Most villages are literally crawling with dogs. They're like pests, locusts that attach themselves to people's houses and feed off of scraps. Since they are regularly beaten and abused by the villagers, they grow to be utterly terrified of humans, and will quickly clear out of the way if they see some approaching. Because all their dogs are so cowardly, however, the Ni-Vans are totally afraid of any dog that doesn't instantly flee in terror at the site of them. McKenzie's dog, for example, which hasn't quite made it to my knees in hight yet, regularly strikes fear into the hearts of Tautu residents whenever he comes to visit as, instead of fleeing at the approach of a human, he usually goes up and tried to sniff them. This leads to some interesting scenes as, for example, villagers jump off the road into the bushes whenever he walks by. Thus, I can't imagine what the Ni-Vans' reactions are to Jane's horse-hound. If he were living in Tautu I'm sure that most Ni-Vans there would instantly consign themselves to their houses, leaving to find food and use the facilities only after a careful inspection of the nearby area to ensure that the devil dog was nowhere in sight. Aside from the dog, however, Jane's party was enjoyable and a good opportunity to get to meet some of the new volunteers, although I ended up put my foot in my mouth several times as I discovered that assuming everyone I didn't know was a new volunteer was not really a viable strategy as I didn't really know many people from the group that had arrived six months earlier or, indeed, any group that isn't my own.

Wednesday was the last kava for our outgoing Peace Corps country director, Kevin George. Kevin had actually ceased being the country director for Peace Corps Vanuatu back in June, but he'd been hanging around Vila for a while to finish tying off all loose ends before departing. Thus, as we gathered, the past five months or so had been more or less an endless slew of farewell dinners and farewell kavas and some speculation as to when, exactly, this guy would actually be leaving. Apparently, however, things were finally winding down and Kevin actually had departure tickets for sometime in the following week, which gave this farewell kava at least some degree of finality. Plus, drinking kava with Kevin George is always a good time. We met at a nakamal a little bit outside of Vila, which had been Kevin's favorite haunt for as long as anyone could remember. In an unheard of move, Kevin had not only arrange for a bucket of kava to be set aside for us, free of charge, but was also subsidizing our beer purchases. Tusker, which usually sells for something like 300 vatu ($3) at a nakamal, was going for 100 vatu ($1) for volunteers, thus making that evening the first, and probably last, dollar beer night that I'd ever experienced in the country. At any rate, if Kevin's goal was to leave us with a glowing impression of him and make his shoes more or less impossible to fill for his replacement, he did an admirable job.

As the week drew to a close, I grew more and more anxious for my flight to New Zealand and the US on Sunday. Being in Vila makes me anxious anyway (as my Dad so eloquently put it in a recent conversation: “Yeah, Vila is really depressing”), but I'd mentally checked out of Vanuatu several weeks ago and I was now impatiently waiting for my corporeal form to follow. My parents had provided me with a long list of Vanuatu merchandise that they wanted me to bring them to be given as Christmas presents, so most of my days were spent browsing the various craft markets and stores in search of said items. Once I'd secured everything on the list, I was presented with a new difficulty: packing everything up in a manner suitable for trans-pacific travel. Towards the end of the week, I solved this problem by purchasing a cheap, large, Chinese-made suitcase, which I knew was ridiculously overpriced and probably would fall apart before my journey was over, but which I hoped would hold together long enough to at least get me to LA. I also located a long cardboard tube in which to transport my bow and arrows to make them more amenable to being checked. By Friday afternoon I was fully packed and had reached a new peak of antsy-ness. I could almost taste the enchiladas. Austin was so close I felt like I could touch it. Of course, I still had an incredibly complicated trans-oceanic flight ahead of me, requiring two nights stay in New Zealand and stops at two major cities in Australia, but things like that usually go pretty smoothly, right? I wasn't particularly concerned.