Yu No Kick Part 9: Critters

I remember a time, not too long ago, when finding ants in a house was cause for great consternation. Little white ant gazebos housing ant poison were purchased from the super market and laid around the house in heavily ant-trafficked areas in an attempt at enticing ants to carry toxic substances back to their nest and do themselves in. When this failed, we had to take all the food out of our pantry and cupboards, stack it on the kitchen table, cover everything with a sheet and asked a man in a haz-mat suit and breathing apparatus to come spray chemicals all over our house and make it uninhabitable for the better part of a day. Flies inside the household were stalked and hunted with green plastic fly swatters and killed. Cockroaches, spiders, and other larger critters were trapped under and glass or tupperware and re-released into the wilds of the back yard on the grounds that nobody wanted to clean up the cockroach guts that would result were they to be squished. I remember days when cakes, cookies, and even defrosting meat was left unattended on kitchen counters over night, a daring and brazen taunt to insects everywhere to just try and come inside the house.

Truth is, these days I have no idea how we manage to keep our homes so immaculately free of insects and other critters. Even houses in the suburbs and in more rural areas, whose surrounding greenery no doubt abounds with such beasts, they manage to keep nature strictly outside the home. In Vanuatu, we open our houses to any creature tenacious enough to make it inside. Rather than being a mono culture consisting solely of homo sapiens, and perhaps a dog, a Vanuatu household is teeming with biodiversity. Arthropods (arthropods are a class of animals that includes insects, spiders, centipedes, millipedes, scorpions and some others. Although we commonly group all of these animals together, this is not technically accurate. However, often I find it convenient to refer to all arthropods together as opposed to just insects and, so as not to sully an otherwise light-hearted and sophomoric blog with fancy science words, I shall use the term “bug” as a replacement for arthropod) are by far the most common type of animal on the land, and they are well represented inside of my house. I've heard it said that bugs will take over the world once humans are dead and gone, a saying that is wrong only in that it implies that bugs do not already own the world. I think everyone instinctually feels the truth of this, which accounts for most people's fear of bugs. Just as we become anxious and uneasy in the presence of our bosses or other authority figures, we are made uncomfortable when we must share a room with bugs, who we know to be the true masters of the earth. Sometimes our fear causes us to lash out as we try to assert our dominance and, while we may be able to easily destroy a single bug, or even a hundred bugs, our feeble attempts at violence are generally ignored by the larger body of the bug population who knows that we are completely incapable of inflicting any sort of real or lasting harm on it. Although people tend to fear large and exotic bugs such as cockroaches, tarantulas, or centipedes, in my opinion the real danger comes not from the big and unusual (the fact that they're big makes them easy to see and avoid and the fact that they're exotic means that they're unlikely to be encountered on a daily basis), but from the small and commonplace, the mosquito. We're all familiar with these little flying vampires, they're something that brings us together as a species. No matter what continent you live on, what culture you belong to, or whether you're rich or poor, everyone can get behind hating mosquitoes. In Vanuatu, and in other tropical areas, mosquitoes are hated not only for being annoying but also for their ability to transmit malaria and dengue fever. To be honest, however, it's difficult to say which is worse: malaria, that obnoxious buzzing noise mosquitoes make when they're flying around your ears while you're trying to sleep, or those persistently itchy little bites. Fortunately, you don't have to worry about choosing, because you can get all three at once. My experience with American mosquitoes than that with Vanuatu mosquitoes. In the States, the mosquitoes were relatively large and somewhat dumb, slow moving, and easier to swat. Their bites left large, red welts that itched for days. In Vanuatu the mosquitoes are smaller and more wily, killing a mosquito is decidedly harder. However, their bites are smaller, less itchy, and fade faster. In the beginning of my service, the large water tank that collects rainwater from my roof was uncovered, providing a perfect breeding ground of mosquitoes. Consequently, there would always be a cloud of them hovering around my door waiting for a chance at entrance to my house so that they could annoy me. I finally got around to cleaning out the water tank, killing all the mosquito larvae inside of it, and putting a cover on it, which has done a good job of thinning out the mosquito crop in the vicinity of my house. Nowadays, the mosquitoes show up only two or three at a time, making them easier to hunt down and kill.

Slightly less annoying than the mosquito is the ant. For my entire tenure in Vanuatu, my house has been infested with doggedly determined little brown ants. These wily little scavengers are almost inspiring to watch. Able to reach almost anywhere in the house and defeat even the most clever ant-prevention technologies to find food, it's easy to see why these little guys are thriving whereas lazy, slow, picky animals, like the panda, are not. For some reason, the one place where these ants won't venture is on top of my stove, which means that my stove is often home to large, precarious stacks of tupperware containers and plates of food which I want to be spared from the wrath of the ants. Leave something on the floor or on the table, however, and it will be covered in teeming brown bodies in a matter of minutes. Often I just have to resign myself to the fact that I'm going to be eating food covered in ants, especially if they manage to worm their way into, say, my stash of Snickers bars. More annoying than the fact that they get into my food, is their occasional tendency to crawl over me while I'm sleeping. It's not unusual to wake up to an odd, tickling feeling that slowly creeps along my body. They're small enough that you can *almost* ignore them, but the sensation of them walking over you is just a little too strange to be ignore an they can make falling asleep difficult. Recently, a new variety of ant has been trying to muscle it's way into my house. These large, black ants may not be as numerous as the brown ones (their ant trails tend to look more like small city roads, with only one ant passing by every few seconds, as opposed to the bulging ant superhighways which the brown ants tend to form), but they must be packing some serious heat as they seem to have forced the brown ants out of my common room completely. Although the brown ant hold on my kitchen is still very strong, the black ant territory seems to be slowly expanding and they look like something of a force to be reckoned with. We'll have to see how the turf wars play out in the months to come, but it may be that the days of the brown ant are numbered.

Somewhat more pleasant to host than bugs are the numerous geckos that inhabit my house. There are two kinds. Small black geckos with bright, blue stripes like to hide in my curtains when I roll them up at night. When I left them down during the day, the geckos come tumbling out and thunk unto the floor, where the stand, dazed and confused for several seconds before quickly scurrying off to wherever geckos scurry to. More interesting are the ghostly-white geckos that dot my walls at night. These geckos are larger, chubbier, and more active than the black and blue geckos and they like to come out at night to catch insects. The sticky pads on their feet allow them to climb walls and stick to the ceiling and they make a light drumming sound as they scamper across my ceiling in search of food. Some geckos will park themselves next to a swarm on gnats and you'll see their little heads dart to and fro quickly as they gobble them up. Others go in search of larger prey. After it gets dark, the electric lights in my house attract a large number of moths. My bulbs are bare (ie not part of light fixtures), which allows the moths to get nice and close into them. A swarm of moths will be constantly orbiting my light bulb whenever it's on at night. Every few seconds, a moth will decide to try and go in and will make a quick and determined swoop into the light until it comes up hard and fast against the glass of the bulb with a satisfying dinging sound. They never really seem to learn, however, and after letting a few of their friends make a try for it and end with similar fates, they give it another go. Taking advantage of this confusion, the geckos will creep across the ceiling until they near the swarm of moths around the light bulb. As they approach the moths, their motions become slower and more deliberate so as not to startle their prey. Then, when the time is right, they'll seize upon a moth's momentary confusion after running headlong into a piece of glass and strike, grabbing a startled moth in their mouths. The work's not done yet, however, as often the moth is a half or three quarters the size of the gecko, so subduing it is no easy feat. What ensues is like a miniature Godzilla versus Mothra as moth and gecko duke it out. Sometimes the battle becomes so fierce that the gecko looses its grip on the ceiling and splats on the floor, where the fighting continues unabated. Finally, either a successful gecko will forcefully stuff the moth entirely in it's mouth and begin munching contentedly, or a successful moth will battle its way to freedom and fly off, leaving the gecko to start the whole process over again. With a few shells of kava in me, I've spent many an hour watching the geckos war with the moths.

The largest inhabitants of my house, aside from myself, are the mice and rats. The rats live in my attic and, at night, you can hear the sounds of them running around echoing through my ceiling. I'm not sure what they do up there at night, but they certainly can make quite the ruckus. Sometimes you'll hear them pounding across the attic at full speed, followed by loud crashes that seem to indicate some sort of tussle and then silence. Moments later they're booking it across the attic again and another tussle ensues. It's almost like they're playing tackle football or something. Sometimes these games can go on for upwards of an hour and I fall asleep to the soothing clatter of rats doing whatever rats do. I bought a box of ramen noodles when I first came to Vanuatu that I haven't been using nearly as much as I thought I would, and these packages of dry noodles have become a favorite of the rodents. The box which contains them has several holes gnawed into the side and by now most of the noodle packets are chewed through and a portion of the noodles missing. I don't really mind this all that much, actually, as it seems to distract them from the rest of the food in my house, some of which I'm much more attached to than ramen.

Some volunteers are more opposed to critters sharing their house than other. I get people giving me advice on how to get rid of my rats or my geckos or my ants, and I thank them politely and proceed to do nothing. Truth is, I've grown somewhat attached to my house guests. Fighting the ants for control of my food keeps me on my toes and watching an ant trail form can provide a solid half hour of entertainment. The geckos and moths provide my evening cinema and the scampering of the rats serves as a soothing cacophony to accompany me to sleep. Oddly, while I'm not the biggest fan of pets, I have absolutely no problem with pests. They don't need to be fed or walked or taken care of in any way. They're easy to ignore when I want to and they go about their business without any need for interference from me. In many ways, I admire their tenacity and self-reliance. While pets often die despite our best efforts to save them, these pests live on despite our best efforts to exterminate them.

Quick Note

So, I was looking over my blog while I'm in Luganville and have access to faster internet and noticed that there seems to have been an issue of Life in the Ring of Fire that I wrote but never posted. For posterity, I've uploaded it and changed the post date of it to make it look like it was uploaded back on December 13 of 2008. If you're interested in reading it, it's Life in the Ring of Fire Part 62: Thanksgiving

Yu No Kick Part 8: Be... Yu Save Chuck Norris?

I think people in the US tend to associate being a Peace Corps volunteer with going to Africa and building bridges and schools and whatnot for starving children. Truth be told, however, most of the Peace Corps volunteers I've met aren't people that I'd trust to build a picnic table, much less a bridge (no offense guys). The current fad in international development is something called sustainable development, which means we shy away from projects that require us to actually DO anything (like build things) and focus more on “building capacity,” which usually means trying to teach people how to do things. The idea is that while one-time development projects like a bridge will eventually fall apart, a successful sustainable project will live on forever. It's a nice idea and, of course, it often doesn't pan out in practice as frequently the lasting lessons a volunteer leaves with his village aren't exactly the ones he was trying to teach. In Tautu, for example, a major lesson that my villagers took away from previous volunteers is how to make bootleg liquor with sugar water and bread yeast, which is an accomplishment I don't think makes it onto the Powerpoint slides at the Peace Corps congressional budgetary hearings. Still, most people tend to think of Peace Corps as being all about the do-gooding. However, saving the world by teaching math to underprivileged kids (actually, if I'm really going to come clean on this one, I think most of the major contributions I've made as a volunteer involve unjamming the photocopier at the school), which is the part of the job one usually talks up at the bar, is only a component of what Peace Corps is about. Being a US government funded institution, part of what Peace Corps tries to do is build understanding and goodwill towards Americans and the US in obscure and sometimes pissed-off corners of the world (Latin America, for example). So, part of what the government is paying me to do is to buy people drinks and talk about how awesome America is. This is a part of my job that I take very seriously. Especially the drinks part.

In Vanuatu we catch a pretty huge break on this one, as pretty much everyone here already thinks the US is the really damn cool. Unlike, say, people in Chile, who seem to like nothing better than to remind us of how the CIA totally screwed up their country, most Ni-Vans have only ever had positive dealings with Americans. Older Ni-Vans remember American soldiers defending the country from Japanese occupation (of course, no one has the heart to break it to them that, really, no one was all that keen on occupying Vanuatu in the first place) and a majority of Ni-Vans can remember at least one occasion where a Peace Corps volunteer bought them a shell of kava. To top it all off, most of the obnoxious tourists come from Australia or New Zealand, so they draw most of the heat on that front. So really, all us Peace Corps Vanuatu volunteers need to do in order to build goodwill towards the US is not be total assholes. Actually, I often find myself having to downplay the awesomeness of America to keep stories from spiraling out of control. I've had the following conversation a number of times.

Ni-Van: So... America is really awesome, huh?
Me: Umm, yeah, I mean, we try.
Ni-Van: Best country in the world.
Me: Well, I guess, well, actually, it depends on how you...
Ni-Van: There isn't another country that's better than you guys at anything.
Me: Umm... I don't know about that, for example, I think the Germans have better beer and...
Ni-Van: Man! The US!
Me: ....yeah, we are pretty sweet.

Of course, much of what Ni-Vans know about the US comes either from movies or what Peace Corps volunteers have told them. The problem with this is that both movies and volunteers are prone to making things up for the sake of entertainment. Thus, a lot of Ni-Vans tend to picture the US as a sort of mystic wonderland full of all sorts of fantastical people and creatures. A place where cowboys battle dinosaur-riding Indians and Rambo is always close at hand in case something needs to be blown up. Basically, anything cool that Vanuatu doesn't have is pictured as existing in the States. As a volunteer, I must choose between trying to dispel misconceptions (ie. Explaining that Rambo isn't a real person) and compounding misconceptions for my own amusement (ie. Explaining that Rambo is my next door neighbor). Of course, it's usually far easier to just roll with whatever ridiculous fact some person in your village believes about the US than to try and set things straight. Like, I'm not sure who came to Malekula before me to spread this rumor, but people are dead set on the fact that we still have dinosaurs in the US, to the point where they will argue very forcefully with me about it, as if I'm lying to cover something up and at some point I'll break down and be like “OK, you got me. I was trying to keep this on the DL but, yeah, we've got dinosaurs. Actually, I used to fly a pterodactyl to school every day before it ran away and got sucked into the intake of a 747.” McKenzie actually once had a really heated argument with someone in her village about the existence of dinosaurs who at one point noticed a map she had hanging on her house of the US with stylized cartoons of each state's major attractions and, wouldn't you know, Dinosaur State Park was marked with a few cartoon dinosaurs. This led to an attempted explanation of the fact that there actually are dinosaur FOSSILS, just not any living dinosaurs, which I'm sure the villager just took as further evidence that something fishy is afoot. One of my favorites was a day when I was waiting at the airport and a guy walked up to me and told me that he'd just heard that Harry Potter had died and asked whether or not it was true. My first reaction was to chastise him for giving away the ending of the last book, which I hadn't read yet, but then I realized that the chances of him having read it were unbelievably slim. My next reaction was a decent into confusion and an eventual explanation that, seeing as Harry Potter isn't really real, he can't really die, which was probably taken to mean that not only is there a teenage boy able to fly around on broomsticks in the US, but he's also immortal.

Early on I make the mistake/brilliant move of explaining to everyone that, seeing as I live in Texas, I'm from the same State in the US as Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris is idolized in Vanuatu almost as much as Rambo is, which is impressive considering that Chuck Norris is actually a real person. Thus, Duncan likes to introduce me to people as his son from the US who comes from the “same place straight” as Chuck Norris. At first I tried to explain to everyone that, seeing as Texas is a really big place, just because the two of us were from there didn't mean that I'd ever been in the same room as him, or even the same city. Now, however, I've grown tired of wasting my breath trying to explain that I'm not nearly as awesome as they think I am and instead just try my best to look quietly imposing as if at any moment I might break into some spontaneous ass-kicking taught to me by my good buddy Chuck Norris. And there are always those moments of temptation. Those nights when someone settles into a seat next to me and the nakamal and, without even so much as a “hello” breaks out and says “Dan, yu save.... Chuck Norris?” (Dan, do you know Chuck Norris?), when I know that I should be a good volunteer and patiently explain the fact that the US is not like Vanuatu and that not everyone knows each other and that actually the only times I've ever seen Chuck Norris were on TV, just like them, but there they are, the words forming in my head, just waiting for the green light from my conscience to be vocalized: “Yeah! Chuck Norris! Of course! He's actually my cousin. We used to go dinosaur hunting together all the time when we were little.”

Yu No Kick Part 7: Samting Ia

Vanuatu is a country with far too many languages than is good for it. There are three national languages: English, French, and Bislama, which means that whenever someone posts a public notice, they usually end up posting three copies of it, one in each language. For a lot of Ni-Vans, their command of English and French is a little shaky, so it's not uncommon for a notice to end up saying completely different things in each language. As if this weren't confusing enough, each island is also home to several indigenous languages that predate the arrival of Europeans to the country. There are over two hundred of these local languages and many of them are drastically different from each other. In some places the local language is still used as a main form of communication. It's retrofitted with western vocabulary and concepts and made to function in the modern world like a tired old suitcase held together with crude stitches and duct tape that's still being forced into service. In practice, the borrowed English words will often far outnumber the traditional vocabulary in a given sentence: “blah blah Peace Corps blah Nokia phone charger blah blah Toyota Landcruiser blah blah Rambo.” More often, however, these custom languages are shelved in favor of the more modern European ones and soon begin to yellow and rot until only a few stray words remain, relics from a not-so-distant past. Some see this as sad, and perhaps it is, but the fact is that these traditional languages are often only valuable in the same way that antique cars are valuable, they're cool to show off to your friends and remember times gone by, but if you're actually trying to get somewhere you need something newer. These are languages that developed in small island villages and are well suited to village life, but they're not particularly useful for conducting international business, for example. It's not just that almost no one outside of Vanuatu knows these tribal languages, which is a pretty big problem in and of itself, but rather that they lack the ability to express concepts and ideas important in the modern world (Tautu's local language, for example, lacks the ability to talk about time). Linguists and Bible translators love Vanuatu. They like to move into a village for five or ten years, learn the local language, and then spend many hours painstakingly writing out a local language-English dictionary or wondering how to translate the book of Psalms into a language that has no word for God. The problem that they face, of course, is that they're Bible translators and linguists. They can learn all the vocabulary they want, but they will never really understand a Vanuatu language because Ni-Vanuatu do not translate bibles or write dictionaries, their languages are not outfitted for such tasks.

Bislama is Vanuatu's black sheep of a language that tries to bridge the gap between the village and the wider world. Bislama is named after a sort of sea slug that the French were apparently really into back in the 1700's and 1800's. The fact that Bislama is named after a sea slug makes about as much sense as anything else in Bislama. Bislama originated in the plantations of Australia and PNG which used to kidnap Ni-Vanuatu and force them to work. The people doing the kidnapping, of course, were rarely considerate enough to take all of their stolen workers from the same village, or even the same island, so the chances were that, if you were a plantation worker, you had no language in common with the other workers. In order to communicate, they cobbled together words and phrases from the languages of their overseers, French and English. Of course, these humble, exploited originators of Bislama had no idea that their tentative pidgin would one day have the distinction of being one of the most ridiculous languages on the planet. While the vast majority of Bislama's vocabulary originates in English, English speakers tend to find it totally incomprehensible when they first hear it. I remember my first experience with the language, at LAX when we were checking in for our flight to Vanuatu. We had all been given the address of the Peace Corps office in Port Vila to be written on our luggage tags. The address included the phrase “Nambatu District.” Nambatu sounded like a pretty exciting and exotic island word to me. Of course, I soon learned nambatu is actually pronounced numba-too, as in “number two.” Number Two District, not nearly as original.

Nowadays I find it hard to believe that an English speaker can't understand Bislama, it just seems like it's staring them right in the face. I mean, hemi klosap tumas lo English, mi tingse ol man bae i kasem olsem nomo, right? Peace Corps volunteers, being native English speakers, tend to catch onto Bislama pretty quickly (like, in a matter of weeks), but I can't help feeling sorry for the Japanese volunteers who, since they usually don't already know English, spend their two years in Vanuatu struggling with Bislama only to be rewarded with moderate fluency in a language that's more to less completely useless anywhere else. We, on the other hand, get to brag about being completely fluent in a new foreign language on our resumes, safe in the knowledge that no potential employer could possibly know that Bislama really doesn't count as a foreign language.

Learning Bislama is about learning how to let go. In fact, that's a good first Bislama word, “lego” (as in “lego my eggo”). Just let go, don't worry about it. Grammar, pronunciation, spelling, structure, just let it all go. We speakers of Romance and Germanic languages love our rules and so we look for them in Bislama, write them down and memorize them, and end up with convoluted and confusing lists of linguistic ordinances. Far easier is to start with the realization that there are no rules, just the occasional guideline. Bislama is all about being good enough. If you can cobble together some words and maybe a few wild gesticulations and get someone to understand that you want a shell of kava, then you're already fluent. None of the spellings are standardized either, and it not uncommon to see a piece of written Bislama where the same word is spelled three different ways in the same sentence (Bislama Scrabble is absurdly easy). Just as important as learning all the rules not to follow is learning all the things you can't say. Question: how would you translate the following sentence into Bislama? “With the money I earned from my job I could have bought a new stereo, but instead I deposited it in my bank account.” Answer : You would never, ever, say this in Vanuatu. In our language classes during training we'd constantly bombard our language instructors with such questions, determined to master the ins and outs of Bislama's present conditional, and we'd receive vague confused answers, which we tried to make sense of. It took a while for us to put together the fact that there often just isn't an answer. Mastering Bislama is more about learning a culture than learning a new vocabulary. Although we don't often think about it, English is much more to us than just a method of communicating with each other. Our language guides the way we look at the world and governs the things we choose to talk about and think about. So, to speak Bislama well you have to stop thinking like an educated American and start thinking like an island villager. Thoughts about truth, meaning, and Halo 3 need to be replaced with thoughts about where various other people in the village are walking to and what kind of yams are in season.

Bislama is a language that values talking over communicating. In English, it is considered proper to speak precisely and concisely until you reach your point, and then stop talking. In Bislama it is custom to speak vaguely and verbosely about something unrelated to your point until it gets to be around kava time and you and whoever you're talking to have a few shells. Thus, while English sports a myriad of vocabulary words that allow one to make nice, succinct arguments, Bislama boasts a tiny vocabulary of words with uncertain meanings to ensure vagueness and overly long conversations. One of the few nouns, for example, is “samting,” from the English word “something,” meaning thing. A variation is “samting ia” from the English “something here,” this thing, or thing-y, if you will. As in “yu bin karem samting ia?”, did you bring that thing-y? Or “yu save samting ia we yumi bin tokabaot?”, you know that thing that you and I were talking before? It's entirely possible to have a long conversation with someone in Bislama and come out of it having absolutely no idea what the other person was talking about. You see, in the village, it just doesn't matter if you get a point across. It's not like there's any sort of vital information that needs to be passed along, people are just trying to pass the time by talking at each other about nothing. Also, when vagueness and misunderstanding fail to generate enough conversation, exaggeration and outright lying are also acceptable. And don't worry about contradicting yourself, that's all part of the fun.

The problem, of course, comes on the other end of the bridge, when people attempt to use Bislama to actually communicate with each other and get things done. Businessmen and government officials in Vila often try to expand the usefulness of Bislama by creating more Bislama words by sticking an “em” onto the end of English words. When used properly, this technique produces a sort of strangely accented English that's slightly more understandable than straight-up Bislama. Often, however, it falls into the wrong hands and English office jargon is mixed with Bislama's incomprehensibility to produce nonsense the likes to which the world has never seen (ie: bae yumi amalgamate-em ol processes blong yumi blong facilitate-em ol business mo utilize-em ol niufala synergy). In the end, however, there's a reason why all Ni-Vanuatu students are required to learn either English or French (strangely, the French schools are far better at teaching French to the Ni-Vans than the English schools are at teaching English, despite the fact that Bislama so closely mirrors English). English and French offer more than just a means of communicating on the international level, they provide a framework for understanding and explaining all sorts of concepts and ideas that are impossible to convey in Bislama or any of the traditional languages for that matter. Unfortunately, many students don't become sufficiently fluent in English to benefit from this. Often, they only learn the English equivalents of the concepts and vocabulary they already know from Bislama, and never use the other 98% of the language, which is kind of like purchasing a supercomputer and using it to surf the web; you're missing out on a whole lot of potential. And so I find myself explaining optical refraction and sound propagation in Bislama in my science class, which is quite simply absurd; when it's put into Bislama, I barely understand it myself. Without a some level of English proficiency, there are some topics that will always remain beyond my student's grasp, Bislama simply does not provide the tools needed to convey them. While it works fine for chatting with people around the village, it is not a language powerful enough for more advanced learning. It's like trying to build a skyscraper with a hammer, while the hammer may have worked well for putting a chair together, in order to tackle a skyscraper you're going to need something a little more high-tech.

And so slowly you resign yourself to the fact that there are certain things that you'll never be able to explain to the people in your village, certain things that they lack the language to understand. Slowly you grow comfortable chatting for hours about someone's new truck or who drank kava where the previous night. But every now and then that sense of stubbornness seizes you and you grow determined that, just this once, you're going to really just take the time to really explain the difference between 50 hertz and 60 hertz current, and everyone's just going to GET IT this time. And you find yourself crouched over on the ground drawing sine curves in the dirt with a stick and saying “you see this thing-y, it goes up on top and then comes back down fifty times in one second and this other thing-y, it's kind of like the first thing-y but different, and it goes...”

Yu No Kick Part 6: Ples I Hot

“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.

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.

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.