Tautu is sandwiched between two commercial centers, Lakatoro and Norsup. They're not really towns so much and not many people live in either of them, they're mainly just locations where various stores and offices happen to be. Back when Vanuatu used to be jointly ruled by the French and British, Lakatoro was home to the British provincial offices and Norsup was home to the French ones. Today, Lakatoro has a little bit more going on in terms of commerce, but Norsup definitely has its upsides as well. There's a roundabout where the road out of Tautu joins up with the main road along the coast of the island. One turn takes you to airport and then to Lakatoro while the other takes you to Norsup. Ironically the airport is called Norsup airport even though it's not really anywhere near Norsup, which I suppose is in keeping with the time-honored tradition of airports never actually being in the cities (or villages) they're named for. The airport is probably about the midpoint between Norsup and Lakatoro, which makes Tautu a bit closer to Norsup than to Lakatoro. I'm actually not sure exactly where Tautu ends and Norsup begins (and I don't really think anyone is sure) but I usually take it to be around a house on the side of the road that would be quite a home in rural Georgia or something. Broken down cars and car parts absolutely litter the lawn. There are rusted out hulks of every kind of vehicle imaginable, buses, trucks, cars, and unidentifiable wheel beds. There's about as many broken cars on this lawn then there are functioning cars on the island, and I have absolutely no idea where all these wrecks came from, but they probably date back to British and French rule.
After passing Georgia, you round a bend to the left and the ocean, which is hidden from view for the majority of the walk from Tautu, emerges. Personally, I think Norsup has some of the best views in the area. Norsup Island, a small island just off the coast, is plainly visible and there's usually at least some canoe traffic going back and forth from the mainland. My favorite nakamals are here too, situated between the road and the ocean, providing and excellent view of the moon and stars over the water at night during kava time. There used to be only two nakamals along this stretch, but in recent months they've been springing up like Starbucks, one right next to the other. Considering that they all sell exactly the same (disgusting) thing for exactly the same price, I'm not really sure what's fueling this boom, but I suspect it has something to do with the Presbyterian Church in Tautu banning kava there on the weekends, thus forcing Tautu residents to search elsewhere. Just past nakamal row on the left is the Provincial Education Office, whose shabby-looking, dull yellow exterior masks a shabby-looking, dull yellow interior. Behind the education office is the Co-op, a large-ish store with the reasonable selection, but no refrigeration (hence no cold drinks or meat or cheese and, really, why else would I be going to the store?), and thus really only visited as a last resort. Behind the Co-op is another bank of nakamals providing emergency backup kava in case the oceanfront nakamals run low. Across from the education office is what is probably the nicest looking and newest building in the area. It was actually built by the French army when I first got to site, and thus it's larger and looks more structurally sound than most buildings on the island. It was also a source of amusement when it was being built as the construction crew was big into really short shorts and cowboy hats and thus tended to look more like an escort service. Originally the building was supposed to house a branch of the University of the South Pacific, but that didn't pan out for some reason and so this year it was re purposed as an office for the TVET program, a nebulous, Australian funded aid organization whose purpose still remains unclear to me. After the TVET office come another cement court that looks like it might once have been intended as a basketball or netball court but is currently being used as a nakamal.
The Norsup French school takes up a considerable amount of space along the road and is actually pretty impressive-looking. Unlike the British, the French have continued to fund their schools in Vanuatu even after independence as part of their (seemingly failing) mission to maintain French as an important language in the world. To their credit, however, the French schools do somehow manage to teach all of their students excellent French, a feat the English schools have yet to duplicate with English. Because of their funding, the Norsup school is able to build and maintain its facilities and has an excellent campus. Despite me having been here for almost two years, the students still seem to not have caught on to the fact that I don't speak French and so always call out to me in French as I walk or ride by on my bike.
Following the school is the hospital which, like the school, seems to be in impressively good condition. The buildings are relatively new and modern and the hospital is quite large. It's also probably the last place I'd want to be if I were sick. Norsup hospital lacks a regular doctor and the Ni-Vanuatu nursing staff are woefully under-trained. Malaria is given out as a default diagnosis for most ailments, including cuts. After McKenzie's and Elin's experiences with the hospital, I've avoided it for purposes of health care. The real reason for going to Norsup is the plantation. The PRV Plantation is (I think) the largest coconut plantation on the island and focuses on producing copra, although they also grow cocoa. The plantation worker housing is located right down the road from the hospital and is a collection of about ten to fifteen duplexes that look strangely reminiscent of cooker-cutter housing developments in the US. The walls and roof of each duplex are constructed entirely from corrugated iron, which undoubtedly makes them preposterously hot during the summer. Although I initially thought such houses to be totally unlivable, they're actually some of the fancier homes on the island. They even have legit power lines running between them. At the end of the housing comes the plantation store, a large, white, wooden building elevated off the ground a good six to eight feet for no reason that's apparent to me.
I have no interest in selling either copra or cocoa, but I frequent the plantation store probably more than any other on the island because they have by far the best butchery. As I explained in a previous entry, coconut fields are very large and relatively empty on the ground, leaving lots and lots of space for things like grass and shrubs to grow. Now, in order to make coconut harvesting easy and effective, its important to keep the grasses cut low so that workers don't have to be tramping through knee-high grass looking for fallen coconuts. Of course, there aren't very many lawn tractors on Malekula (and, even if there were, maneuvering them through the coconut trees would difficult), cutting grass with a machete is a gigantic pain, and even push mowers would take forever to cover that much ground, but there's actually a simple, 100% natural solution: cows. You see, cows eat grass, lots of grass, and they're totally automated, and never have to be paid or re-fueled. They even reproduce. The only thing is that, if you have a lot of coconut plantation to cover, you end up with a lot of cows and you've got to have something to do with the excess ones that are bound to spring up every now and again. Thus, most coconut plantation also wind up selling beef. Now, Vanuatu doesn't have a lot going for it in the food domain. Most of the local dishes are bland and boring and exist simply to sustain life. Plus, the hands-off approach to agriculture generally means that the quality of produce and livestock is inconsistent at best. But I tell you, Vanuatu has the best beef I've ever tasted. I was actually never that into beef in the US. True, I am totally obsessed with meat, but I tended to prefer pork, lamb, fish, and poultry to beef. Now I am a convert. The thing is, beef in the US is a little on the tasteless side. Our modern agricultural practices have indeed succeeded in producing cows that are more muscular and meat that is more tender, but we seem to have lost some flavor along the way. But Vanuatu beef is amazing, it's juicy and flavorful and you can eat it with absolutely no seasoning and it's delicious. And it's not just me. Every visitor we've had from the US and every volunteer that we've eaten with has mentioned that the beef here is some of the best they've ever had. The problem is that Ni-Vanuatu don't know how to respect a good cut of meat. To them, meat is meat. When Ni-Vans slaughter a cow, they chop it up with a machete into a bunch of one or two kilo chunks and sell all the meat for the same price, no matter where it came from on the cow. Thus, most of the beef Ni-Vans eat is tough and inedible unless it's stewed for many hours or cooked in a lap-lap. You never really appreciate the services a good butcher provides until you don't have one. The PRV, however, is French run and the French will be damned if they're going to see a good piece of meat go to waste. Unlike most stores on the island, the PRV store butchers their cows properly and sells their meat by the cut, from filet all the way down to stew meat. Fortunately, their prices are still all incredibly reasonable (filet for example, the most expensive cut, sells for about $4 a pound). Unfortunately, the names of all the cuts are in French, and it's taken me a while to sort out what's what, but I think I've got a pretty good handle on it now.
Upon entering the store, you're usually greeted by a plump, French-speaking, Ni-Van lady passed out behind the store's counter, her head pillowed by her arms against the wood of the counter top. Her eyes are the only thing that move as you approach. A dusty blackboard on the left lists the various cuts of beef available and their respective prices. It's up to you to initiate the transaction, as the lady behind the counter could comfortably let you stand in the store for many hours on end without speaking to you, so once you're sure of your order, you tell her, politely “half a kilo entrecote, please” And, seeming to marshal great amounts of energy in order to accomplish this, she'll lift her head off of her arms, shout your order to the wall behind her, apparently to no one, and begin rummaging around for a pen. A few moments later, strange noises will begin in the back of the store, clanging of metal, stomping of feet, occasional cursing and, sometimes, what I swear sounds like an electric saw. Once the lady finds her pen, she calculates your total on a large calculator sitting next to her on the counter, all the while muttering to herself in French, takes your money, and begins recording your purchase in a beat-up school notebook. A while later, an old, skinny, wily-looking Ni-Van man comes shuffling out of a door on the left side of the store wearing a white apron in various stages of being totally covered in blood and asks something like “two kilo faux filet, yes?” After you correct him, he shuffles back through the door and the strange noises resume. A little while longer and the man re-emerges clutching a plastic bag filled with red meat. If you're really lucky, the meat will still be warm from the slaughter, although this has only happened to me a few times over the couple of years I've been here. The total round trip from Tautu on foot is generally around an hour, but the results are so, so worth it.
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