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.