“Ples i hot.” Bislama for “it's hot” (from the English “place is hot”), but it passes for “hello” or “goodbye” or “hey, how's it going?” And it's a great way to meet new people. Just sit down on a bench next to a bunch of guys you don't know, make a show of settling in a taking a load off and let out a “ples i hot” in a lazy voice that's half sigh and half groan. It's a start to many a fast friendship on the islands. When I was back in the States for Christmas, I invested in a $10 combination yard thermometer and hygrometer, thus allowing me to keep track of exactly how amazingly hot the place at any given moment. A hygrometer, by the way, measures humidity and is not to be confused with a hydrometer which, for some reason, is a tool that's used to measure the density of beer. It seems like it would make sense that, since humidity has to do with water and all, a tool that measures it would be called a hydrometer, but I guess beer predates meteorology by a good couple millenniums (apparently millenniums is the accepted plural of millennium now. I always thought it was millenia, but the spell checker doesn't lie), so they got to take all the good names. Anyway, every afternoon as I'm sweating and cooking lunch, I get to glance over at my thermo/hygrometer and see those large, cheerful digital numerals spell out 91.5 F and 68% (I'm all for the metric system, I really am. It makes more sense, it's easier to work with, and everyone else uses it. Thing is, at the end of the day, I still have absolutely no idea how hot 20 degrees Celsius is). Except the .5 on the 91.5 is only half the size over the other numbers (because it's a decimal, and decimals are only half as important) and is sort of tucked away under the F like an afterthought. It's a bonus, the plus tacked onto the A, that says that not only is it really hot, but it's really hot and then a bit extra.
I've always been an ice over fire kind of person. I've always felt it's easier to warm up on a cold day than cool off on a warm day. It's the second law of thermodynamics: it sucks to be hot. Unfortunately, that wonderful food that we eat to stay alive also produces waste heat when it's burned, which has to be dumped somewhere. It doesn't really seem like it should be a problem. Our bodies are running at 98.6, give or take, so that gross sticky air permeating my household around lunchtime is a whopping seven degrees cooler than me. It should be cooling me off, it really should. And I guess it does, it's just that the heat never really gets far enough away. You can feel it when you stand still, the stale air around you slowly getting hotter and hotter until it can't anymore and then it's on your skin, that horrible warm throb as your blood pumps in more and more heat that just goes nowhere, and then it starts oozing inwards, first through your arms and legs and then your chest and head as the whole system just backs up and you want to scream in frustration. Ples i hot. When I first got to Vanuatu I was obsessed with trying to prove myself to the locals who, I feared, would see me a as weak, pampered northerner with no stomach for the island heat. “Ples i hot,” people would call out to me as they passed me on the road. “No,” I'd say, feeling obligated to appear strong “no, it's not that bad. It gets hotter back in the US, actually.” And the Ni-Vans would nod and smile politely and wonder why in the hell I was trying to argue that it wasn't hot. I later realized that the ples i hot greeting was not meant to be patronizing, but was rather an invitation to mutual surrender and acceptance of forces outside of our control. More of a “hey, it's really hot out, why don't we both pass out under a tree for several hours and do absolutely nothing.”
I think the heat is responsible for the lack of success most international development projects experience in Vanuatu. You come up with a development idea, you talk it over with other development workers, you submit your idea to some development agency, get some funding, come up with a good acronym and maybe a catchy slogan, run some workshops and trainings, hand out materials, and pass the whole thing off to someone in-country, who gets sweat stains all over everything and shelves most of the work until the weather cools down a bit, which is never. We're kind of like Superman, the heat is like our kryptonite. When we can get away from it we're unstoppable. We invent things, build cities and civilizations, cross oceans, go to the moon. But when we're confronted with a hot, muggy day we become lazy, lethargic and useless. I think one of my favorite images of Vanuatu are those Sunday afternoons where I eat way too much lap-lap at Duncan's and pass out on his cement floor along with the rest of the family; looking out the door I can see all of the numerous household dogs arrayed similarly on the lawn, man and beast made alike by the afternoon sun.
I think my schoolyard is one of the hottest places on the face of the planet. The yard is open and shadeless, the perfect venue for the sun to do its relentless work, and there are stands of banana trees on all sides that choke out pretty much every breeze that even considers passing through. I can't blame the students at all for not wanting to come to class in the afternoon. There's really only one respectable thing to be doing when face with such oppressive heat, and that's absolutely anything that might help you cool off, even a little bit. Combating the heat is a subtle game and it requires creativity and cunning. Unfortunately, heat is fantastic at dulling both one's creativity and cunning, so the best ideas for combating the heat are often formed whilst away from it (I'll bet you that air conditioning was invented during the winter). Staying cool in Vanuatu is an art. In my opinion, the best option is to get yourself a job somewhere that has air conditioning. On Malekula, this leaves two options, the Air Vanuatu Office and the LTC Office (not the main store, mind you, just the office in the back). But, since the owner of the LTC is kind of a jerk, I think the most set up person on the entire island is the lady who works at the Air Vanuatu ticket counter. She gets to hang around for eight hours a day in the air conditioning, and gets paid. Oh, and occasionally she has to help a customer, but that's a small price to pay. For those of us less fortunate however, the thatch and bamboo houses are a good second choice. Despite their humble appearance and the fact that they often leak when it rains, the bamboo huts actually boast much better thermal properties than the fancier cement block and metal roof homes. Natural materials, you see, provide much better insulation than sheets of metal, which helps keep the heat of the day out. Thus, it's often a good five to ten degrees cooler inside of a bamboo house during the day than inside of my much fancier house. Location can also play an important role. Oceanfront properties are desirable not only for nice views, but also for those delightful ocean breezes which can make the difference between comfort and misery come 1pm. Although not always reliable, there's often a fairly strong wind coming off of the ocean that provides those whose houses are on the beach with a nice, natural, cross breeze. Once again, however, this is of little help to me, whose house is in a stagnant schoolyard, although many of my hours are spent down by the ocean to take advantage of the breezes anyway. Swimming and showering are also tempting possibilities, but they must be employed with care. While that water may feel good against you skin while you're in it, it can sometimes leave you with a vague, humid, sticky feeling that never quite goes away no matter how many times you dry off. The key is to only venture into the water (or the shower) in the later afternoon, as the heat is breaking, so that that last little bit of moisture can be absorbed by the cooler night air as opposed to combining with the sweat of the day.
The sad truth, however, is that on the worst days there's not a lot you can do. When the wind over the ocean cuts out and the sea is glassy calm and the sun's heat manages to work its way through even the thickest of thatch roofs, often the only thing that can give you the smallest hint of respite is the fan. A small piece of something held in the hand and slowly waved back and forth to produce the smallest of breezes across the body. Choosing a good object for fanning is key. You want something stiff enough to move air effectively (sheet of paper, for example, is far to floppy), yet light and easy to move so that you're not expending undo energy. Cardboard boxes in my house are quickly cut up and employed as fans that serve fairly well until the sweat from the hand holding them permeates the cardboard and they become too limp and must be discarded. The Ni-Vanuatu favor fans fashioned from pandanus (similar to their mats), which last long, but are just a little bit too difficult to move for my tastes. Getting the proper fanning speed is also important. If you fan too slowly, you won't feel adequately cooled, but if you fan too quickly the extra heat produced from the exertion will counter whatever cooling effect the breeze you're producing has. Fanning is best employed when the rest of the body is totally immobile, and in slow, steady strokes that can be continued for hours without tiring you out.
Getting through the days are one thing, but by far the worst is when the heat persists into the night. A hot night can make sleeping almost totally impossible, and there's little to be done about it. If you have a cement floor, you can abandon your bed in favor of the slightly cooler cement, although you're sacrificing physical comfort for thermal comfort, so it's only a matter of time before you become too sore and have to return to the bed. It's also possible to fan yourself to sleep, although this is a tricky business. You have to make your fanning motions as mechanical and monotonous as possible in order to become drowsy enough to fall asleep. Close your eyes and relax while fanning yourself slowly and allow yourself to drift off. Now, you're eventually going to have to stop fanning in order to allow sleep to fully take hold, so the key is timing, you've got quit fanning right as you feel yourself on the verge of sleep. Once the fanning stops, you've got only a minute or two to seal the deal before you start becoming too hot again and have to start over. But don't worry, it's OK if you don't nail it on the first go, practice makes perfect. Of course, sometimes the best option is just to have a few shells of kava, which will put you straight to sleep, heat or no.
Although manual fanning is about the limit of what we're able to achieve with local materials, modern technology has opened up some more possibilities for me. The electric fan, under appreciated in our over-air conditioned society, has found a new place in my heart out here on the islands. Unfortunately, technological difficulties have been something of a hindrance, so I'm now actually on my third fan. My first was a cheap, Chinese-made piece that did well for the first couple of months but began to slow down to the point where I had to push-start the blades with a pencil just to get it to move at all. When I was back in the States, I decided to upgrade and invested in an “industrial air circulator,” which worked wonderfully for about 30 minutes before the motor got fried by the electricity here (and yes, I was using a transformer to step down the voltage, but I guess 60Hz motors don't like 50Hz power). This led to a very depressing month or so where I had two fans in my house, neither of which were working. I recently went to Vila, however, and went looking for the most durable-looking, fanciest fan I could find. I finally settled on an 18 inch, 180 watt floor fan imported from England that I got for about $90. So far it's been serving me faithfully, but I'm still only cautiously optimistic that it will last me until December, when I leave, given my history with fans.
Along with the dud of a fan I also, when I was in the States, purchased a vinyl water bed mattress, which is a fancy word for a giant, watertight bag. This was at the suggestion of my engineer-filled family and the idea behind it was twofold. First, since water takes a long time to heat up (has a large heat capacity, in science-speak), a fully filled water bed would always be a few degrees cooler than whatever the temperature happened to be in the house around it. Second, since water is better at absorbing heat than air, even if the bed were to get up to 91.5 F along with the house, it would still feel cooler (sort of like how water at 70 F feels a lot colder than air at 70 F). And so, when I got back to Vanuatu, I set my vinyl bag on the floor up against my wall and set to filling it up. This was actually a lot harder than it sounds. You see, the manufacturers of the water bed were obviously expecting the person filling it up to have running water, which I don't. There was a nice little fill valve on the bed and it came with a nice little adapter to hook up to a hose and then a faucet, none of which would work with my water tank. I ended up placing the end of the hose inside of a bucket instead of attaching it to a faucet and placing the bucket on my kitchen table. I then filled the bucket with water, and used the hose as a siphon to draw water out of the bucket and into the bed. Every thirty seconds or so I ran outside with a second bucket, filled it up with water from my tank, and refilled the first bucket. The whole process ended up taking about an hour and a half, I probably made a least a hundred trips to my water tank, and used up about 2/3 of my drinking water in the process. But it was definitely worth it. Predictions were correct, and the water bed was pleasantly cool to lie on, even in the middle of the afternoon. Plus, I now have the only water bed in the country, which is kind of cool. Really, the main downside is that, given how comfortably cool it is and how difficult it can be to get out to water beds anyway, it's pretty tempting for me to spend entire weeks lying on it.
Together, the water bed and my new Gazz brand 180 watt fan make up my personal cooling solution. Lying on the bed with the fan whirring just inches away from my head goes a long way towards taking the edge off the heat. But, and this is the sad part, it's still just not *quite* enough. There are still those times when the air moving through the fan is still just a little too uncomfortably warm and the water from the water bed isn't quite sucking enough heat out of my back when I still feel the oppressiveness around me and I know that I can never really win, that my victories are small and my fight is in vain. There's just no way around it. Ples i hot.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Yu No Kick Part 5: Digicel
Cell phones, those in international development like to say, are a leapfrog technology. That is, it's a technology that can be implemented more easily than earlier forms of itself and it doesn't require older forms of itself to be in place in order to function. So, cell towers are easier to build than a network of landlines and they don't require a network of landlines to be in place in order to function, thus the land line phase of telecommunications development can be totally skipped. When I first arrived in Vanuatu, communicating with anyone not within shouting distance was something of a challenge. A French company called TVL had set up a very precarious phone network. Phones connected to large radio transmitters that passed their signals over the ocean between the islands and finally fed into a large satellite dish in Port Vila which allowed a slow trickle of communication with the outside world for those few of us desiring it. Often, the transmitters were located in remote areas without access to electricity and thus relied on solar power to function, an energy source that can become decidedly scarce should it be raining a lot. Phone cord also tends not to last long in the bush, where it is baked by the sun, corroded by the rain, and chewed on by rats, and thus phone cables were often held together via arrangements that made duct-taping seem like a shockingly sturdy and long-term solution. Technicians were also usually less than thrilled to travel to areas reachable only by machete-wielding adventurers to make repairs. But there they'd be, incongruous as palm trees in Alaska, these off-white desk phones, looking like they'd come straight from Office Depot (they even had speed dial), nailed to the side of community centers or housed in little bamboo and thatch huts which you could, if you really squinted, call phone booths. Those phones were a promise, a tenuous glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, you might be able to talk to someone outside of your village. That, if it hadn't been raining too much and if the piece of cloth holding the phone wire together continued to function properly, you might just be able to talk to your parents in the US or, if you were really lucky and happened to own a laptop, log on to Facebook and update your status.
TVL made money by charging for plastic, pre-paid phone cards with long numerical codes on the back covered by lottery-ticket style scratch off goop that you removed when you purchased them to reveal your number, which you could then punch into a phone to access airtime. It cost about $5 for the cheapest card, which earned you about ten minutes of talk time. After being prompted for the number you wished to call, a friendly voice would come on and inform of how much time you would be able to connect to said number on your current phone card. The thing was, TVL employed a complicated billing system where the phone charges were based on the time of day, the day of the week, the island that you're calling from, the island that you're calling to, and whether or not it's a good day for yams at the market; the bottom line being that sometimes you'd connect to a number and be granted fifteen minutes to talk and sometimes you'd connect to the same number and have four. You just never knew. Sometimes calling cards were used as a substitute for currency. For example, I once heard a story of a woman buying a baby using phone cards, which I thought was strange because not only did it imply that someone had negotiated the purchase of a child, but that they didn't have the common decency to at least use an actual currency when doing so.
TVL eventually branched out into cell phones as well, but there coverage was rather spotting as you could only use your cell phone in about 10% of the country. You couldn't really blame them for this though, given what a pain it is to build and maintain cell towers. The tower on Malekula, for example, required a forty-five minute hike through the bush, up a rather steep hill to reach, which really isn't that bad if you're just carry a bottle of water and maybe a few snacks, but if you're carrying, say, the cement to build a cell tower with, it starts to look like a real pain in the ass.
When I first got to Malekula, a new phone company, Digicel, was in the process of building a network of cell towers across Vanuatu with the ambitious goal of providing coverage to over 70% of the country. Unlike TVL's towers, however, which were small, simple affairs which relied on terrain (ie. hills) to provide the height needed to broadcast their signal, Digicel's structures were huge, towering monstrosities (at least for Vanuatu), and they were going up all over the country. It was an uphill battle and one that I, when I saw it began, thought was doomed to failure. For one thing, building a large tower that will remain standing for a long period of time, even in the presence of natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes, requires a quality of workmanship that is mostly absent from Vanuatu. For example, the concrete cinder blocks made on my island are so incredibly shoddy and low-quailty that it's entirely possible to break one by stepping on it (which, as you can image, makes me feel really good, given that I live in a cinder block house). To get around this problem, Digicel not only imported the cement (the chemical ingredients used in making concrete) for their towers, but also the sand and water that went into the making of their concrete blocks.
The launching of the Digicel phone network was the biggest thing to hit Vanuatu since independence. Actually, no, the Digicel launching was the biggest thing to hit Vanuatu, period. And it was accompanied by an ad campaign that would have been right at home advertising the release of a new kind of Doritos chip back in the States. They imported who knows how many gallons of red and white (Digicel's logo's colors) paint and sent people up and down all the islands painting everything that they possibly could red and white. People's huts out in the middle of nowhere became Digicel advertisements. So you'll be traipsing through the bush and all of the sudden come upon a little thatch roofed store with DIGICEL written in large, white letters on the side. They wrote theme music, got celebrity endorsements (no mean feat considering that there aren't any celebrities here). The national newspaper sold them their front page for several weeks running. As in, the front page of the newspaper contained not a single bit of news but was one, giant, Digicel ad. They even put a highway-style billboard up in Lakatoro, conveniently large enough to read while you're speeding by in your car. Now all we need are some cars to speed by in. On launching day in Malekula, they rented a truck and decked it out with speakers and banners and drove up and down the island blasting Digicel music and giving out hats. I wondered if someone should try and explain to them that, in order to sell phones in Vanuatu, all they really had to do was, you know, have some phones to sell.
Needless to say, cell phones were an overnight success in Vanuatu. Even the crazy guy who sings outside of our general store got one (although his is a broken one that someone else threw away). The basic Digicel phone model is a black-and-white screen job, which I like because it's simple, functional, and easy to use, but especially because it has a little flashlight on the end of it. In my mind, this is really the only cell phone extra that's actually useful in Vanuatu (or anywhere, really. I actually saw the flashlight phone on sale in the US when I was home for Christmas. I was trying to sell my brother on it when he was shopping for his first cell phone, but with little luck. “Hey Nick, check this one out, it has a flashlight on it!” “But it doesn't even have a color screen or an enhanced keypad and it doesn't flip open or slide or do anything.” “Yeah, but check it out, it has a flashlight!”), although it can lead to complications when you're using it to walk around at night and someone calls and you have to choose between walking and talking on the phone. Of course, people in my village quickly discovered the many and varied features of the fancier phones, including the MP3 player, the camera, and the video recorder, all of which are pretty much totally useless without a computer, but no one seems to mind. I soon became pitied in Tautu as the one, poor guy still using the cheap-o, uncool phone. Even the crazy dude's broken phone is a fancier model than mine. I usually end up getting the last laugh, however, seeing people walking along at night, hunched over low so as to allow the light from the large color screens of their internet-capable camera phones to illuminate the many potholes in the road.
I think leapfrogging is an appropriate image for the arrival of Digicel to Vanuatu because, while Digicel may cover over 70% of the country, things like electricity certainly do not. Originally, Digicel sold their phones with little, red solar chargers which, as anyone who's ever used any kind of solar charger knows, are totally useless. Eventually this plan was abandoned and thriving cell phone charging businesses have sprung up all over the place. People with it enough to own generators or to have large solar setups charge $1 per charge to charge a cell phone. The stores in Lakatoro, who all run on the power grid, charge similar rates to those who want to use their outlets to charge their phones while they're in from the out villages. Given that charing a cell phone uses probably a maximum of ten joules of energy, I think this is a pretty brilliant businesses model.
Along with the lack of electricity, many Ni-Vanuatu also suffer from a lack of anyone to call. Not to be deterred, however, some adventurous Ni-Vans have taken to simply dialing random combinations of numbers and trying to strike up a conversation with however answers. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone gets married to a person they met while randomly punching in numbers on their phone one afternoon. For all I know this has already happened. This practice got even worse when Digicel started offering this service where you can send a free text to a friend requesting that they call you back. Whereas before randomly calling people cost money, now you can randomly text people for free and see who calls back. I get at least four such texts per day. Adding to my daily influx of phone spam are special offers that Digicel texts out to all their customers, things like “Make a 20 minute phone call today and make calls for the rest of the day for free.” Helpfully, they will sometimes send out three versions of each message, one in English, one in Bislama, and one in French. For a while, the whole concept of a special offer was a little shaky in the village and so I was having to do a lot of explaining.
Ni-Van: “What does this Digicel text mean?”
Me: “Well, if you make a phone call that lasts longer than 20 minutes, all your calls for the rest of the day are free.”
Ni-Van: “So if I talk for twenty minutes today, I don't have to buy phone cards anymore?”
Me: “No, only calls you make today will be free. Tomorrow you have to start paying again.”
Ni-Van: “So I talk for twenty minutes and then it's free until tomorrow?”
Me: “Yes.”
Ni-Van: “What if I use my brother's phone?”
Me: “No, just the calls you make on your phone.”
Ni-Van: “But what if mine runs out of battery?”
Me: “You know what, just forget about it.”
Ni-Vans are also absurdly bad at accepting the fact that they've dialed a wrong number, or maybe it's just that they don't really care if they actually end up talking to the person they're trying to call, I don't know, but the bottom line is that I get a lot of conversations like this:
Me: Hello
Caller: George?
Me: No, sorry, I'm not George.
Caller: But I'm trying to call George.
Me: Well, I'm not George, sorry.
Caller: Is George there?
Me: No, this isn't George's phone, it's my phone.
Caller: Who are you?
Me: I'm Daniel, sorry, not George.
Caller: Do you know George?
Me: No, I don't, I'm sorry, I think you have the wrong...
Caller: Where are you on?
Me: Malekula, look, I...
Caller: No, George lives on Pentecost, this should be Pentecost.
Me: Yeah, I'm not George. I”m Daniel, I'm on Malekula, look, try...
Caller: Could you get George for me?
But what's worse is when you hang up on them and they call back.
Cell phones in Vanuatu seem like some kind of alien artifact that some UFO accidentally left a bunch of behind when they were visiting earth. They're so out of sync with everything else that's going on in the country. Stores in Vila have even started selling iPhones so that you can get directions to the nearest nakamal with on your cell phone with MapQuest (Continue STRAIGHT for 200 meters on THE ONLY ROAD ON THE ISLAND, then turn LEFT). Digicel has even activated the GPRS network, allowing phones with internet capability to get online. Just last Sunday I was sitting on the beach watching Duncan and some friends grind a batch of kava. We were struggling to find a bucket in which to work the kava and a rag with which to strain out the grinds when I was asked if I knew of any good websites to check out. I turned around and was faced with a bright, color, cell phone screen displaying the Google homepage. I was flabbergasted and for a while could not think of a single web address. Finally, one popped into mind. “Try http://www.nytimes.com,” I said, and watched as the guy painstakingly typed “http://www.nytimes.com” into the Google search bar. “No,” I said “that's a URL, you don't put that in the search bar.” “What's a URL?” he asked. I sighed. Technology is a strange thing.
TVL made money by charging for plastic, pre-paid phone cards with long numerical codes on the back covered by lottery-ticket style scratch off goop that you removed when you purchased them to reveal your number, which you could then punch into a phone to access airtime. It cost about $5 for the cheapest card, which earned you about ten minutes of talk time. After being prompted for the number you wished to call, a friendly voice would come on and inform of how much time you would be able to connect to said number on your current phone card. The thing was, TVL employed a complicated billing system where the phone charges were based on the time of day, the day of the week, the island that you're calling from, the island that you're calling to, and whether or not it's a good day for yams at the market; the bottom line being that sometimes you'd connect to a number and be granted fifteen minutes to talk and sometimes you'd connect to the same number and have four. You just never knew. Sometimes calling cards were used as a substitute for currency. For example, I once heard a story of a woman buying a baby using phone cards, which I thought was strange because not only did it imply that someone had negotiated the purchase of a child, but that they didn't have the common decency to at least use an actual currency when doing so.
TVL eventually branched out into cell phones as well, but there coverage was rather spotting as you could only use your cell phone in about 10% of the country. You couldn't really blame them for this though, given what a pain it is to build and maintain cell towers. The tower on Malekula, for example, required a forty-five minute hike through the bush, up a rather steep hill to reach, which really isn't that bad if you're just carry a bottle of water and maybe a few snacks, but if you're carrying, say, the cement to build a cell tower with, it starts to look like a real pain in the ass.
When I first got to Malekula, a new phone company, Digicel, was in the process of building a network of cell towers across Vanuatu with the ambitious goal of providing coverage to over 70% of the country. Unlike TVL's towers, however, which were small, simple affairs which relied on terrain (ie. hills) to provide the height needed to broadcast their signal, Digicel's structures were huge, towering monstrosities (at least for Vanuatu), and they were going up all over the country. It was an uphill battle and one that I, when I saw it began, thought was doomed to failure. For one thing, building a large tower that will remain standing for a long period of time, even in the presence of natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes, requires a quality of workmanship that is mostly absent from Vanuatu. For example, the concrete cinder blocks made on my island are so incredibly shoddy and low-quailty that it's entirely possible to break one by stepping on it (which, as you can image, makes me feel really good, given that I live in a cinder block house). To get around this problem, Digicel not only imported the cement (the chemical ingredients used in making concrete) for their towers, but also the sand and water that went into the making of their concrete blocks.
The launching of the Digicel phone network was the biggest thing to hit Vanuatu since independence. Actually, no, the Digicel launching was the biggest thing to hit Vanuatu, period. And it was accompanied by an ad campaign that would have been right at home advertising the release of a new kind of Doritos chip back in the States. They imported who knows how many gallons of red and white (Digicel's logo's colors) paint and sent people up and down all the islands painting everything that they possibly could red and white. People's huts out in the middle of nowhere became Digicel advertisements. So you'll be traipsing through the bush and all of the sudden come upon a little thatch roofed store with DIGICEL written in large, white letters on the side. They wrote theme music, got celebrity endorsements (no mean feat considering that there aren't any celebrities here). The national newspaper sold them their front page for several weeks running. As in, the front page of the newspaper contained not a single bit of news but was one, giant, Digicel ad. They even put a highway-style billboard up in Lakatoro, conveniently large enough to read while you're speeding by in your car. Now all we need are some cars to speed by in. On launching day in Malekula, they rented a truck and decked it out with speakers and banners and drove up and down the island blasting Digicel music and giving out hats. I wondered if someone should try and explain to them that, in order to sell phones in Vanuatu, all they really had to do was, you know, have some phones to sell.
Needless to say, cell phones were an overnight success in Vanuatu. Even the crazy guy who sings outside of our general store got one (although his is a broken one that someone else threw away). The basic Digicel phone model is a black-and-white screen job, which I like because it's simple, functional, and easy to use, but especially because it has a little flashlight on the end of it. In my mind, this is really the only cell phone extra that's actually useful in Vanuatu (or anywhere, really. I actually saw the flashlight phone on sale in the US when I was home for Christmas. I was trying to sell my brother on it when he was shopping for his first cell phone, but with little luck. “Hey Nick, check this one out, it has a flashlight on it!” “But it doesn't even have a color screen or an enhanced keypad and it doesn't flip open or slide or do anything.” “Yeah, but check it out, it has a flashlight!”), although it can lead to complications when you're using it to walk around at night and someone calls and you have to choose between walking and talking on the phone. Of course, people in my village quickly discovered the many and varied features of the fancier phones, including the MP3 player, the camera, and the video recorder, all of which are pretty much totally useless without a computer, but no one seems to mind. I soon became pitied in Tautu as the one, poor guy still using the cheap-o, uncool phone. Even the crazy dude's broken phone is a fancier model than mine. I usually end up getting the last laugh, however, seeing people walking along at night, hunched over low so as to allow the light from the large color screens of their internet-capable camera phones to illuminate the many potholes in the road.
I think leapfrogging is an appropriate image for the arrival of Digicel to Vanuatu because, while Digicel may cover over 70% of the country, things like electricity certainly do not. Originally, Digicel sold their phones with little, red solar chargers which, as anyone who's ever used any kind of solar charger knows, are totally useless. Eventually this plan was abandoned and thriving cell phone charging businesses have sprung up all over the place. People with it enough to own generators or to have large solar setups charge $1 per charge to charge a cell phone. The stores in Lakatoro, who all run on the power grid, charge similar rates to those who want to use their outlets to charge their phones while they're in from the out villages. Given that charing a cell phone uses probably a maximum of ten joules of energy, I think this is a pretty brilliant businesses model.
Along with the lack of electricity, many Ni-Vanuatu also suffer from a lack of anyone to call. Not to be deterred, however, some adventurous Ni-Vans have taken to simply dialing random combinations of numbers and trying to strike up a conversation with however answers. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone gets married to a person they met while randomly punching in numbers on their phone one afternoon. For all I know this has already happened. This practice got even worse when Digicel started offering this service where you can send a free text to a friend requesting that they call you back. Whereas before randomly calling people cost money, now you can randomly text people for free and see who calls back. I get at least four such texts per day. Adding to my daily influx of phone spam are special offers that Digicel texts out to all their customers, things like “Make a 20 minute phone call today and make calls for the rest of the day for free.” Helpfully, they will sometimes send out three versions of each message, one in English, one in Bislama, and one in French. For a while, the whole concept of a special offer was a little shaky in the village and so I was having to do a lot of explaining.
Ni-Van: “What does this Digicel text mean?”
Me: “Well, if you make a phone call that lasts longer than 20 minutes, all your calls for the rest of the day are free.”
Ni-Van: “So if I talk for twenty minutes today, I don't have to buy phone cards anymore?”
Me: “No, only calls you make today will be free. Tomorrow you have to start paying again.”
Ni-Van: “So I talk for twenty minutes and then it's free until tomorrow?”
Me: “Yes.”
Ni-Van: “What if I use my brother's phone?”
Me: “No, just the calls you make on your phone.”
Ni-Van: “But what if mine runs out of battery?”
Me: “You know what, just forget about it.”
Ni-Vans are also absurdly bad at accepting the fact that they've dialed a wrong number, or maybe it's just that they don't really care if they actually end up talking to the person they're trying to call, I don't know, but the bottom line is that I get a lot of conversations like this:
Me: Hello
Caller: George?
Me: No, sorry, I'm not George.
Caller: But I'm trying to call George.
Me: Well, I'm not George, sorry.
Caller: Is George there?
Me: No, this isn't George's phone, it's my phone.
Caller: Who are you?
Me: I'm Daniel, sorry, not George.
Caller: Do you know George?
Me: No, I don't, I'm sorry, I think you have the wrong...
Caller: Where are you on?
Me: Malekula, look, I...
Caller: No, George lives on Pentecost, this should be Pentecost.
Me: Yeah, I'm not George. I”m Daniel, I'm on Malekula, look, try...
Caller: Could you get George for me?
But what's worse is when you hang up on them and they call back.
Cell phones in Vanuatu seem like some kind of alien artifact that some UFO accidentally left a bunch of behind when they were visiting earth. They're so out of sync with everything else that's going on in the country. Stores in Vila have even started selling iPhones so that you can get directions to the nearest nakamal with on your cell phone with MapQuest (Continue STRAIGHT for 200 meters on THE ONLY ROAD ON THE ISLAND, then turn LEFT). Digicel has even activated the GPRS network, allowing phones with internet capability to get online. Just last Sunday I was sitting on the beach watching Duncan and some friends grind a batch of kava. We were struggling to find a bucket in which to work the kava and a rag with which to strain out the grinds when I was asked if I knew of any good websites to check out. I turned around and was faced with a bright, color, cell phone screen displaying the Google homepage. I was flabbergasted and for a while could not think of a single web address. Finally, one popped into mind. “Try http://www.nytimes.com,” I said, and watched as the guy painstakingly typed “http://www.nytimes.com” into the Google search bar. “No,” I said “that's a URL, you don't put that in the search bar.” “What's a URL?” he asked. I sighed. Technology is a strange thing.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Yu No Kick Part 4: Centipedes
Vanuatu is pretty lucky when it comes to its fauna, as most of it is friendly, or at least harmless. No large, threatening mammals. No lions, tigers or bears. The closest we've got are wild pigs and cows which, while they're nothing to be trifled with, just aren't really what one pictures when asked to think of a fearsome predator. There are no poisonous snakes (actually we do have white and black striped sea snakes whose venom is lethal, except their jaws are so small that the only place where they can bite you is on the ear lobe) and the spiders, while gigantic, are also harmless. There are no black widows or brown recluses or even wolf spiders. Basically, any animal you might even consider being afraid of doesn't live in Vanuatu. Except for the centipedes. These impossible creatures abound in the country particularly, it seems, in my house. They aren't unique to Vanuatu, really, you can find them in the desert southwest of the US, hanging out with the scorpions and other creepy-looking insectioids. In fact when I was in Big Bend National Park in west Texas over Christmas I noticed them selling centipedes encased in glass as paperweights. They were labeled as “giant centipedes” despite the fact that they were barely four inches long. Any self-respecting centipede enthusiast would scoff at such measly specimens. The centipedes in Vanuatu grow to mutant proportions far exceeding what would conveniently fit inside your average paperweight. Around these parts, centipedes upwards of eight inches aren't an unusual sight to see clambering across my walls. These are centipedes that you wouldn't be particularly surprised to see carrying off small kittens or one of those obnoxious football-sized yappy dogs.
My training group's fear of centipedes was cultivated early on in our Peace Corps experience. A few of us had read accounts of such creatures in various books about Vanuatu and the stories quickly spread. During our first week in Vila we were constantly on the lookout, expecting giant centipedes to be lurking behind every corner, ready to inflict all kinds of unimaginable horrors upon us. I didn't end up seeing my first centipede until we'd moved to our training village, in the bush a little north of Port Vila. Like any self-respecting monster, centipedes eschew the light and prefer dark, damp haunts. However, come nightfall they emerge in search of food and sometimes would venture into my family's dining area. Your average adult centipede is six to eight inches long, reddish brown, and has far more legs than is really necessary. They're about the thickness of your little finger and are made up of countless little segments, each segment sprouting a spindly pair of legs. A menacing set of what are undoubtedly pincers adorn the head and you can tell, without any questions asked, that they just HAVE to be poisonous. It takes about a second to put together the fact that these things are up to no good. Ni-Vans go after centipedes with a overly religious zeal usually reserved for witch-hunters and exorcists. Whoever spots one sounds the alarm and everyone within a fifty foot radius instantly springs into action. Even nakamals, where peace and quiet held sacrosanct, dissolve into frantic mayhem if a centipede is sighted. Flip-flops are quickly removed and converted into clubs with which to bludgeon the beasts. Dirt and gravel fly everywhere as dozens of men ruthlessly pound the ground with their shoes. And then, just as suddenly, when the foe is vanquished, the all-clear is sounded. Everyone replaces their shoes, returns to their seats, and continues their conversations as if nothing had happened.
Although physics would seem to dictate that, as the number of legs attached to a creature increases, eventually it would have far too many than is useful and any further increase in leg number would simply lead to increased clumsiness, this does not really seem to play out in the case of centipedes. They move with an impossible grace that has to be seen to be believed. They don't so much walk as they flow. None of their myriad of appendages ever really seem to move, and yet somehow they are propelled forward with terrifying speed. They ooze through the smallest nooks and crannies like syrup, making them all but impossible to keep out of your house. Of course, anything able to move with such horrible fluidity is certain to be predatory. Centipedes are the lions of the insect world. They descend upon unsuspecting cockroaches and toiling ants and slaughter them like lambs. Frightening enough as they are for us, veritable behemoths hundreds of times their size, one shudders to think how a centipede must appear to its prey: the sudden flurry of legs, the quiet whoosh of impending doom, and those giant pincers closing you.
On dry days, the centipedes stick to the outdoors, preferring the warm and moist hideouts offered by the soil. When it rains, however, they are driven from their holes and begin to creep inside. With the lights out, they claim full reign of the house, rushing across the floors and oozing up the walls to prey on the roaches, beetles, moths, and others who make up my usual collection of house guests. Once sated, they seek out warm nooks to roost: underneath pillows, in the folds of bedsheets and clothing, snuggled up against a sleeping human. I had my first close encounter during my first few weeks on Malekula. I awoke in the middle of the night with the odd sensation of something crawling on me. Still groggy, I glanced down to investigate and froze. Nestled on my sternum was a massive and distinctly alien creature. I'd seen a number of centipedes before, but never one this big. Its fangs glistened in the moonlight. My adrenaline was flowing freely, I was ready for action, but, if it came to a showdown, I was uncertain which one of us would emerge the victor. The thing was HIUGE. I mustered every ounce of strength I had and swatted the beast to the side. It went flying, hitting the wall and falling to the floor. I bolted upright, waiting for it to retaliate, but it was already in full retreat. My mind, in its panic, had vastly overestimated the size of my foe. It was tiny. Even by American standards. Little more than a baby. I smiled and relaxed and settled back into bed. But when you've shared your bed with a centipede, it puts your senses on edge. Suddenly, everything feels like a many-legged creature crawling across your body. The brush of your sheet, the night's breeze against your skin, the tickle of your mosquito net, has you bolt upright in moments, searching for your assailant. It was a long time before I was able to fall back asleep.
Over the months, I've become a seasoned veteran of centipede attacks. At a glance I can distinguish a baby centipede from its somewhat dopey and entirely harmless cousin, the millipede (millipedes rarely get to be more than an inch long and, rather than being fearsome predators, they instantly curl up into little balls whenever they're startled. Their sole purpose in life seems to be to crawl into my house and die. I have to sweep millipede corpses off my floor on a daily basis). I straighten the folds of my bed sheet and shake out my pillow before heading to sleep. And I'm a survivor of many a centipede bite. After spending almost a year in fear of being bitten, my first bite was a surprisingly painless experience: a sharp sting lasting a minute or so subsiding to a dull throb and then an itchy lump by morning. Many a centipede has regretted its decision to sink its fangs into my skin. Usually, I get stung at night when I accidentally roll on top of or brush an appendage against a centipede that's decided to share my bed with me. The sting brings me awake and is followed by a glance at the affected area of confirm the cause. Centipedes leave two little puncture holes right next to each other that make it look like I've been bitten by a midget vampire. The larger centipedes can even draw blood with their bite. With the sight of those two little welts, the hunt begins.
Centipede hunting can be a tricky business. First, you have to choose a weapon. Centipedes are well armored, so going after them empty handed is generally ineffective and will often earn you a second bits. However, they're also fast, so if you delay too long whilst arming yourself your prey will have escaped. The edge of a shoe is generally the choice I prefer (stepping on centipedes is also usually ineffective, they're too fast and slippery and, more often then not, they'll just crawl on top of your foot and deliver another bite). Next, I turn the lights on. When the room floods with light, the centipede will bolt for the nearest cover it can find. If you catch it out in the middle of the floor with no cover in sight, it can become disoriented and start running around in circles, making it an easy target. The key is to drive it out of any cover its able to find. Lift up clothes and pillows and sheets, pick up books or any other objects and force it out into the open. Then, you strike. You need to deliver a sharp blow to effectively damage a centipede. You need a hard edge. Rolled up newspapers aren't going to do you any good, neither will the flat of a book or a shoe. You need something to focus the force of your blow and crush through the centipede's armor, hence the edge of the shoe or the book will work much better than the flat. Once you've delivered one or two good blows, you're on the home stretch. Centipedes are pretty hardy, so it will probably still be alive, but you'll have effectively immobilized it by crushing some of its segments, now you just have to finish the job. Chickens are fond of eating centipedes, so you can carry it outside and feed it to one. You can also burn them. Or you can keep on hammering. Once you're sure that the centipede is damaged enough that it's not going anywhere anytime soon, you leave it and wait. The ants will finish the job for you. Once prey for these mighty beasts, the ants hover on the outskirts of the conflict waiting for you to turn the tables in their favor, then they descend upon the wounded predator. Before long, the centipede is covered in a swarm of these relentless creatures who tear it apart and carry it back to their nest for food. Of the large variety of insects and other small animals that inhabit my house, centipedes may be the most frightening, but the ants are definitely the most insidious. They may be small and weak, and one swipe of my hand my obliterate hundreds of them but, in the end, they always get the last laugh.
My training group's fear of centipedes was cultivated early on in our Peace Corps experience. A few of us had read accounts of such creatures in various books about Vanuatu and the stories quickly spread. During our first week in Vila we were constantly on the lookout, expecting giant centipedes to be lurking behind every corner, ready to inflict all kinds of unimaginable horrors upon us. I didn't end up seeing my first centipede until we'd moved to our training village, in the bush a little north of Port Vila. Like any self-respecting monster, centipedes eschew the light and prefer dark, damp haunts. However, come nightfall they emerge in search of food and sometimes would venture into my family's dining area. Your average adult centipede is six to eight inches long, reddish brown, and has far more legs than is really necessary. They're about the thickness of your little finger and are made up of countless little segments, each segment sprouting a spindly pair of legs. A menacing set of what are undoubtedly pincers adorn the head and you can tell, without any questions asked, that they just HAVE to be poisonous. It takes about a second to put together the fact that these things are up to no good. Ni-Vans go after centipedes with a overly religious zeal usually reserved for witch-hunters and exorcists. Whoever spots one sounds the alarm and everyone within a fifty foot radius instantly springs into action. Even nakamals, where peace and quiet held sacrosanct, dissolve into frantic mayhem if a centipede is sighted. Flip-flops are quickly removed and converted into clubs with which to bludgeon the beasts. Dirt and gravel fly everywhere as dozens of men ruthlessly pound the ground with their shoes. And then, just as suddenly, when the foe is vanquished, the all-clear is sounded. Everyone replaces their shoes, returns to their seats, and continues their conversations as if nothing had happened.
Although physics would seem to dictate that, as the number of legs attached to a creature increases, eventually it would have far too many than is useful and any further increase in leg number would simply lead to increased clumsiness, this does not really seem to play out in the case of centipedes. They move with an impossible grace that has to be seen to be believed. They don't so much walk as they flow. None of their myriad of appendages ever really seem to move, and yet somehow they are propelled forward with terrifying speed. They ooze through the smallest nooks and crannies like syrup, making them all but impossible to keep out of your house. Of course, anything able to move with such horrible fluidity is certain to be predatory. Centipedes are the lions of the insect world. They descend upon unsuspecting cockroaches and toiling ants and slaughter them like lambs. Frightening enough as they are for us, veritable behemoths hundreds of times their size, one shudders to think how a centipede must appear to its prey: the sudden flurry of legs, the quiet whoosh of impending doom, and those giant pincers closing you.
On dry days, the centipedes stick to the outdoors, preferring the warm and moist hideouts offered by the soil. When it rains, however, they are driven from their holes and begin to creep inside. With the lights out, they claim full reign of the house, rushing across the floors and oozing up the walls to prey on the roaches, beetles, moths, and others who make up my usual collection of house guests. Once sated, they seek out warm nooks to roost: underneath pillows, in the folds of bedsheets and clothing, snuggled up against a sleeping human. I had my first close encounter during my first few weeks on Malekula. I awoke in the middle of the night with the odd sensation of something crawling on me. Still groggy, I glanced down to investigate and froze. Nestled on my sternum was a massive and distinctly alien creature. I'd seen a number of centipedes before, but never one this big. Its fangs glistened in the moonlight. My adrenaline was flowing freely, I was ready for action, but, if it came to a showdown, I was uncertain which one of us would emerge the victor. The thing was HIUGE. I mustered every ounce of strength I had and swatted the beast to the side. It went flying, hitting the wall and falling to the floor. I bolted upright, waiting for it to retaliate, but it was already in full retreat. My mind, in its panic, had vastly overestimated the size of my foe. It was tiny. Even by American standards. Little more than a baby. I smiled and relaxed and settled back into bed. But when you've shared your bed with a centipede, it puts your senses on edge. Suddenly, everything feels like a many-legged creature crawling across your body. The brush of your sheet, the night's breeze against your skin, the tickle of your mosquito net, has you bolt upright in moments, searching for your assailant. It was a long time before I was able to fall back asleep.
Over the months, I've become a seasoned veteran of centipede attacks. At a glance I can distinguish a baby centipede from its somewhat dopey and entirely harmless cousin, the millipede (millipedes rarely get to be more than an inch long and, rather than being fearsome predators, they instantly curl up into little balls whenever they're startled. Their sole purpose in life seems to be to crawl into my house and die. I have to sweep millipede corpses off my floor on a daily basis). I straighten the folds of my bed sheet and shake out my pillow before heading to sleep. And I'm a survivor of many a centipede bite. After spending almost a year in fear of being bitten, my first bite was a surprisingly painless experience: a sharp sting lasting a minute or so subsiding to a dull throb and then an itchy lump by morning. Many a centipede has regretted its decision to sink its fangs into my skin. Usually, I get stung at night when I accidentally roll on top of or brush an appendage against a centipede that's decided to share my bed with me. The sting brings me awake and is followed by a glance at the affected area of confirm the cause. Centipedes leave two little puncture holes right next to each other that make it look like I've been bitten by a midget vampire. The larger centipedes can even draw blood with their bite. With the sight of those two little welts, the hunt begins.
Centipede hunting can be a tricky business. First, you have to choose a weapon. Centipedes are well armored, so going after them empty handed is generally ineffective and will often earn you a second bits. However, they're also fast, so if you delay too long whilst arming yourself your prey will have escaped. The edge of a shoe is generally the choice I prefer (stepping on centipedes is also usually ineffective, they're too fast and slippery and, more often then not, they'll just crawl on top of your foot and deliver another bite). Next, I turn the lights on. When the room floods with light, the centipede will bolt for the nearest cover it can find. If you catch it out in the middle of the floor with no cover in sight, it can become disoriented and start running around in circles, making it an easy target. The key is to drive it out of any cover its able to find. Lift up clothes and pillows and sheets, pick up books or any other objects and force it out into the open. Then, you strike. You need to deliver a sharp blow to effectively damage a centipede. You need a hard edge. Rolled up newspapers aren't going to do you any good, neither will the flat of a book or a shoe. You need something to focus the force of your blow and crush through the centipede's armor, hence the edge of the shoe or the book will work much better than the flat. Once you've delivered one or two good blows, you're on the home stretch. Centipedes are pretty hardy, so it will probably still be alive, but you'll have effectively immobilized it by crushing some of its segments, now you just have to finish the job. Chickens are fond of eating centipedes, so you can carry it outside and feed it to one. You can also burn them. Or you can keep on hammering. Once you're sure that the centipede is damaged enough that it's not going anywhere anytime soon, you leave it and wait. The ants will finish the job for you. Once prey for these mighty beasts, the ants hover on the outskirts of the conflict waiting for you to turn the tables in their favor, then they descend upon the wounded predator. Before long, the centipede is covered in a swarm of these relentless creatures who tear it apart and carry it back to their nest for food. Of the large variety of insects and other small animals that inhabit my house, centipedes may be the most frightening, but the ants are definitely the most insidious. They may be small and weak, and one swipe of my hand my obliterate hundreds of them but, in the end, they always get the last laugh.
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