The Stick-Flick Approach

And so the final term of the school year has arrived. Last year, at our annual end of the year meeting in Vila, at the time when Silas died and came back to life, the government offered its first allocation of money towards kindergarten education. This money, we were told, was to up grade 35 kindies in each province. I didn’t mention this before, because, to cut a long long story short the money was never actually given to us. Well this term, the money finally came through, and we have been told we have to spend it before the kindies close for the year in 7 weeks time. We have 7 weeks to upgrade 35 kindies. Silas is talking to some rural  teachers about some, so I decided to take charge of upgrading three in the town, one out in Tutuba on a small island near by, and two kindergartens that are attached to primary schools. Joan and I will do the workshops, and help the teachers of the kindies make toys, paint them, build outdoor equipment and plan their programmes. Tomorrow Joan and I will board the little boat sent for us from Tutuba Island, and stay a week in a grass hut. Tutuba has no electricity, but it does have an old well built in the Second World War by soldiers which is still used, making water access easier than on some islands.

 

Before we go tomorrow, we decided to go out to Mango Station kindy to talk to the teacher. A political party closed the kindy, because they paid the school fees for the children before elections and one of the teachers ran away with all the money. I woke up early and strolled along the dusty back streets of the town. It was a public holiday today, and at 6am everybody and there uncle’s brother were out on the lawn, sitting under trees, chatting and gossiping. Mothers sit above the children, making partings in the children’s hair, peering into them, picking out the lice. They crunch them in their teeth then flick them off into the trees. Everybody waves at me as I wonder past, children from every house shout out… Miss Bridget, Miss Bridget… Where are you going? I can safely say I know every small child in the town. I picked up Joan on the way and we got a bus up to Mango kindy. The teacher said she had three children who were still coming to the new makeshift kindy she was having on her porch. We praised her and praised her and told her to keep going until the last child stopped coming. Mango station has a large poor illiterate population. Most of the people who live there come from ‘The Banks’ islands, far to the north, and very isolated. They have settled here on the edge of Luganville, and generally live of the land and do not go to school. School is one of only ways to really rise out of such poverty, to give you the ability to find out things for your self, to work out how to build a business, to think critically enough to change your own circumstances. If your mum and dad are illiterate, and unable to problem solve, the school is your only chance of learning these skills. Because of this we are desperate to get the kindy open again. With out kindy, these children will have little chance of getting accepted into school. We told her we will be back later in the year, we will gatecrash church, to talk to the parents and try to get some support.

 

We always seem to leave on these trips so early. All the woman in Vanuatu get up at about 4.30am and do the washing. I have never seen this happen at home. Anyway, I was up at 5am and down loading the toolbox on the truck ready for our trip. The truck was covered completely in rust, and rust holes, and I wasn’t one hundred percent sure it wasn’t just about to disintegrate into the road. Joan and I jumped up and sat on the toolbox, piled our bags around us and bumped along out to million dollar point. When we got there we sat around and waited for the boat, which I predicted to be at least a couple of hours late. Much to our surprise it arrived right on time, and when they saw we were also on time, we all laughed and laughed at such an occurrence.

 

When you arrive on the island, you feel you have encountered a little version of paradise. There is a little village of grass huts, circling a clearing which faces out to a white sandy beach. The water is a crystal clear and shimmers blue. Coconut, papaya, mango and banana trees grow all around; the island is a lush brilliant green. I have visited this island before, to talk to the community about the prospects of setting up a kindy. Last time, when I arrived the whole community had gathered to greet me and I was expected to give a speech, which I did, impromptu. I was planning the speech in my head for this arrival, but when I arrived at the huts there was nobody there. I am never sure what is going to happen. I sat on the soft grass listening to the birds, wondering why everything seems so vibrant in that place. The leaves quiver, and seemed to have a fine layer of shimmering air lining them, giving the feeling on an emanating energy. I was listening to the silence, when I heard a squealing in the distance. What are they doing to that pig? I thought. It was high pitched, ear piercing, the type of noise that reaches into your insides and makes them curdle. The type of noise that makes the tiny strands of hair on the back of your neck stand on end, and tingle. I looked over at the little huts down the path and a man was standing, holding a small boy by one foot, whipping him with a broom make from fine sticks. He was lifting his muscular arm high into the air, and with the full force of his body pelting the broom against the boys ribs. With every slashing noise, the scream rose in pitch and intensity.

 

Joan and I settled our things into our little hut. It was made with flattened bamboo for the walls, and thick layers of long flax leaves for the roof. Joan takes the bed on the left, and I am instructed to take the bed on the right. I first notice that I must share my bed with several very large, hairy black spiders; I brush them off onto the floor. I then notice someone has cut out a picture of a white woman from an 80’s magazine (a blond middle aged women), modelling as a mother. It has been glued onto the bamboo above my bed, probably put there specially to make me feel at home.

 I sat on my bed and pondered about what ‘the natural environment’ actually includes. When I see these little villages, made from the forest, from the land on which they stand, where the people survive from nature, I have began to feel differently about what I think ‘the environment’ is. In New Zealand the environment is something separate from people, trees and stuff, something which we must protect, from ourselves, we try to leave it alone, as though we are not part of it. We fence it off and conserve it, put signs up telling people not to use it. Bees and their hives, they are part of the environment, but people and there homes, us… no we are not nature. We are something else. We are men, we are technology, not nature. In these villages, people and their homes are part of nature in the same way that bees and beehives, and birds and nests are. I remembered that we in the west  are also not separate from nature, we also are nature ourselves. We are all entwined into nature’s vast interwoven network of intelligent design.

 

 

The first day of the workshop goes well. We are starting from scratch, so we move through all the different areas of a child’s development and talk about what teachers can do to help the child with each one. Four teachers come, the two from the kindy we are setting up, one from an island over, and another mama, thinking of starting a kindy of her own next year.

 

After the workshop everybody thought it a good idea to go for a walk. We walked together following the tiny muddy path through the jungle. The bunch of large, round, chocolate skinned women wore bright frilly dresses, covered in flowers. Crisp lipstick red, canary yellow, lively blues and pinks. I walked in amongst them, small and white, trying to fit in but sticking out like a white chocolate chip on a dark chocolate muffin. I’m not sure if the speed could have been called walking, it was more accurately to be called a steady group sway. The bunch swayed to the left and the right, gossiping about each group of huts as we ever so slowly came upon them and moved on down the path.  Five extended families live on Tutuba, all in their own group of huts along the road. The men in all five families are actually related, the women taken as wives from other islands. Men play volley ball, or sit about in groups to the sides of the path. We sway past them, with out acknowledging them, like oil might drift past water, feeling the others presence, but made from different matter and so quite unable to integrate.

 

The kitchen is in a little grass hut with a mud floor. It has a circle of stones in one corner, where the fire is lit to cook the food. We eat large amounts of freshly caught fish, lap lap and rice. Selina, one of the teachers, told us that her family, was buying a wife for one of her husbands brothers. She explained that on Tutuba, when one family wants to buy a wife, they must pay not only for her, but must also buy her accessories. One price for the woman, another for her box of belongings. Selina then explained that this meant that she never would have any reason to return home for any reason. I asked if she could go back to say hello, have a small chat and a coffee, and Selina said that she would belong to the husband so it would be up to him. Plenty of good husbands do give permission, she added.

 

On the first night finding the toilet was quite difficult. I had found it alright in the day, but in the pitch dark, the path through the jungle wasn’t clear and I ended up standing lost in the overgrowth, shining my torch in all directions. All the vines looked like snakes. The toilet was a wooden box with a hole in it, in a hut in the bush. When I finally stumbled across it, and went inside the little hut,  I had to go out again to find a stick that would be suitable to flick all the cockroaches off the seat. I tried to count them, but there were too many. The covered the whole box, in a thick layer, all crawling on top of each other, large and black with hairy legs. I wondered what they liked about that particular spot, and made a mental note to ask other volunteers if they had had this problem. As I poked them, one ran up my leg and I jumped about and flicked it off, busting to go by this point. After ten minutes I had flicked them all off, I then tried to squat over the toilet, with out actually touching it, while shining the torch on the seat to see if any had come back, so I could jump away before they crawled on my bottom. I decided it was my least fun toilet experience so far.

 

The second night, I was just lying there, talking to the spider on the wall, when I felt a sharp stomach pain, followed by the burning feeing my bowel was going to explode. Oh no, I thought, food poisoning. I jumped up, fumbled around for my torch and headed glumly back through the jungle, looking for the toilet. I didn’t want to use the toilet ever again, and it occurred to me to go in the jungle, but I wasn’t exactly sure where people’s huts and gardens were, and I didn’t want them to wake up and wonder why I had pooed on their lawn. When I found the toilet, I didn’t have time for the ‘stick-flick’ approach I had taken the night before, so I kicked the seat as hard as I thought was possible with out knocking the whole box away from the hole in the ground. About half of the cockroaches ran onto the ground, leaving their fun toilet seat party, some decided to explore my leg. I jumped around… then decided there was no time left, I would have to share the seat with the remaining cockroaches and sat down on top of them, just in time. I then decided that the night before had been a relatively good toilet experience after all.

 

On the third day of the workshop we talked about custom, culture, tradition and native language on Tutuba. Tutuba has just 200 people, Only 200 hundred people who speak the local Tutuban language, and share traditions and customs unique to only them. The children have not been told any of their custom stories and songs, and even the teachers couldn’t remember any. The first thing we did was talk about ways to preserve custom stories and language. We translated some songs into the Tutuban language, and just made some up as well. The teachers then decided to go and ask the elders to tell all the custom stories they know, and they would write them down and make big books for the children. We talked about the importance of talking to children in Tutuban language as well as Bislama. We talked about how custom, tradition and culture provides the child with a sense of identity and self esteem. Losing these things, the death of your culture and language can cause a child to grow into an adult with out roots, an adult who lives with an indescribable sense of being lost.

 

Living with the Selina and her family was a little girl called Wildy. Wildy sat quietly on the edge of every meeting, every meal, meekly in the corner, behind turned backs, unnoticed and rarely spoken too. She looked around eight or so, and when I inquired how old she was, Selina said she didn’t know. I asked Wildy herself, but she didn’t know either. Wildy’s mother died three years ago, and as only men were left in the family, she was sort of edged out and forgotten about. Selina had agreed to take her in, but not completely. Wildy had to run all the errands, help out, and keep out of trouble. I asked Selina if she was sending her to school, but Selina said they had already paid her school fees last year, and bought her a school shirt. This year only Selina’s own children were going to school. I liked Wildy a lot, and found myself wishing I could rescue her and take her home with me. During one of the workshops I made her a puzzle, a little harder than I thought the kindergarten children could do, but she didn’t have a clue what to do with it. I guess she had never been given a puzzle before. It baffled her completely for a while before she hid it behind a table when she thought I wasn’t looking.  

Mango Kindy

And so the final term of the school year has arrived. Last year, at our annual end of the year meeting in Vila, at the time when Silas died and came back to life, the government offered its first allocation of money towards kindergarten education. This money, we were told, was to up grade 35 kindies in each province. I didn’t mention this before, because, to cut a long long story short the money was never actually given to us. Well this term, the money finally came through, and we have been told we have to spend it before the kindies close for the year in 7 weeks time. We have 7 weeks to upgrade 35 kindies. Silas is talking to some rural key teachers about some, so I decided to take charge of upgrading three in the town, one out in Tutuba on a small island near by, and two kindergartens that are attached to primary schools. Joan and I will do the workshops, and help the teachers of the kindies make toys, paint them, build outdoor equipment and plan their programmes. Tomorrow Joan and I will board the little boat sent for us from Tutuba Island, and stay a week in a grass hut. Tutuba has no electricity, but it does have an old well built in the Second World War by soldiers which is still used, making water access easier than on some islands.

 

Before we go tomorrow, we decided to go out to Mango Station kindy to talk to the teacher. A political party closed the kindy, because they paid the school fees for the children before elections and one of the teachers ran away with all the money. I woke up early and strolled along the dusty back streets of the town. It was a public holiday today, and at 6am everybody and there uncle’s brother were out on the lawn, sitting under trees, chatting and gossiping. Mothers sit above the children, making partings in the children’s hair, peering into them, them picking out the lice. They crunch them in their teeth then flick them off into the trees. Everybody waves at me as I wonder past, children from every house shout out… Miss Bridget, Miss Bridget… Where are you going? I can safely say I know every small child in the town. I picked up Joan on the way and we got a bus up to Mango kindy. The teacher said she had three children who were still coming to the new makeshift kindy she was having on her porch. We praised her and praised her and told her to keep going until the last child stopped coming. Mango station has a large poor illiterate population. Most of the people who live there come from ‘The Banks’ islands, far to the north, and very isolated. The have settled here on the edge of Luganville, and generally live of the land and do not go to school. School is one of only ways to really rise out of such poverty, to give you the ability to find out things for your self, to work out how to build a business, to think critically enough to change your own circumstances. If your mum and dad are illiterate, and unable to problem solve, the school is your only chance of learning these skills. Because of this we are desperate to get the kindy open again. With out kindy, these children will have no chance of getting accepted into school. We told her we will be back later in the year, we will gate crash church, to talk to the parents and try to get some support.

Education

Since the UNICEF workshop, many of the teachers having been talking about the concept of children’s rights, and in particular the children’s right to education. This is the idea that children should be allowed to attend school, whether or not the parents can pay the school fee. We are thinking of holding a meeting or two and introducing the idea to the community, teachers are really getting on side with the concept of it, but whether people agree with it or not, the problem still stands that the town’s schools do not have space for all of the town’s children. We did have two ‘Head teachers’ of primary schools agree to stop expelling children for this reason, once they are in, whether or not fees are paid, they should be let through school, as long as they pass. Getting people onside is still important though, it might eventually contribute to public pressure on the government to get more schools built, and eventually, free education for children.

Chief Jack

Today I spent the whole day in a UNICEF workshop about child protection. Its terribly draining to sit and listen to people talk about sexual abuse towards young children. It did strike me as odd, that in Vanuatu the traditional punishment for a first time offender is ‘to say sorry’. After this, the second time, you must give a mat.. which your wife would most likely have to make, or even a pig. Failing this the child would be sent away to live with someone else. In one activity in the workshop, every group was given a case of abuse and asked to role-play how they would solve it in their community. I found the role-plays quite fascinating, partly because of the vast cultural gap. The teacher who broke a child’s nose and left a gash on their face was given a warning, but not fired. The father sexually abusing his daughter was given three months to stop the behaviour. The 40 year old chief was not allowed to marry the 13 year old girl, not because she didn’t agree, but because she was too young. He could marry her if he still wanted her in a few years. I felt like putting my hand up and reminding everyone that the girl didn’t want to marry the chief at all, but knew it wasn’t really relevant.

 

Oh, but did I mention that in Vanuatu, there is a tribe that thinks Prince Philip is god? Well, there is. Do you remember, ages ago, when I first arrived I told you about John Frum? He came to Vanuatu at the same time as the missionaries, in the body of a white man and told them to keep to the traditions, and if they did he would bring them lots of western goods from heaven. Well, Prince Philip, is believed to be John Frum’s brother. He once lived in the volcano on Tanna island but escaped over to England and married Queen Elisabeth. Chief Jack immediately recognized him as their God, when he was sailing past Vanuatu one day, many many years ago. Chief Jack was in a canoe welcoming the royal ship. Thirty years has passed, and the tribe still awaits his return, to his rightful place in a grass hut, where he will be waited on hand and foot. Prince Philip, aware of his status as God, has sent two signed photographs to Chief Jack, for the tribe to worship. They are crumbling, apparently due to humidity, so hopefully Prince Philip will be returning to his rightful home quite soon.

Triplets

At study group for the certificate of early childhood, I read over an interview with a parent of seven month old triplets. I love reading these interviews, because they are questions from local teachers asking parents about how they are raising their children. This interview, said that the mother was expecting two children, and when the third was born she screamed loudly and demanded the doctor take the third away. After a while, Dad convinced her to keep the third one too. The interview asked ‘what do you feed your newborn triplets?’ I always hope to hear ‘breast milk,’ but never seem to get that answer. Dad answered that when his babies were born they were fed extra special food, from most newborns, with more nutrients. He said he mixed all three different brands of formula milk available in Vanuatu into one tin, then made it up ‘extra strength.’ The mother also topped the diet up with a little breast milk as well. The interview then asked ‘what stimulation does your child receive now?’ Dad answered that they put a DVD on for two hours a day, and the babies stare at it for that long, but they have recently found that if they change the DVD they can get another two hours. It sounds quite stimulating if you ask me.

Instalment 29; Mustard Shorts Man and some rather gigantic rats

My yoga teacher, and his yoga class have moved out by the airport. When walking to yoga now, it is obligatory to walk through the area known for its gigantic rodents. Imagine the biggest rat you thought possible to be in existence, fatten it up a little, until it is almost the size of a small dog, with a snake sized tail, and you will have rat from this part of town. I didn’t really believe in them, until one frightful day, when I was walking home from the kindy in this area, and one walked out across the road in front of me. I was walking down a steep hill, along a tiny one-lane dirt road; the grass on each side of the road had grown up over my head. When I saw the gigantic rodent I turned around and ran back up the hill, then stopped and panicked a little, feeling trapped in the grass. I decided it was probably home to a whole pack of gigantic rodents and their rodent uncles. I then turned around again, paused, and ran full speed ahead down the hill with my eyes closed, and half way along the main road back into town. When I go to yoga, I only have to walk along the main road, not up the hill, but I can often hear much rustling in the grass and trees beside me. Yesterday, when I was quite along way from anywhere, walking to yoga, I heard quite a bit of rustling in the grass. I froze still, trying to figure out whether to run forward or back, when out of the overgrowth popped ‘Mustard Shorts Man.’ Mustard Shorts Man often pops up when you least expect him, in all different parts of town, I’m never really sure where he’s going, or where he’s been. Mustard Shorts Man is balding on the top of his shiny head, but has a puffy white afro ring, which grows out and the sides and back. His mustard shorts, which he never takes off, may have started their life as suit pants in the 1970’s. I’m not sure if they were once full length suit pants, that have been cut and sewed into tiny shorts, or if they belong to a summer fashion era, long ago, where suit pants were worn as very short shorts. They are made of that old professor-tweed woolen sort of fabric, and lately I have been noticing that they have an ever-increasing size hole, right in the middle of the bottom. Every day Mustard Shorts Man visits the USP office. This is the office for students studying by distance learning at the University of the South Pacific. I also visit this office frequently, because I am holding study groups there, and posting assignments for teachers. Mustard Shorts Man is not enrolled in any papers, nor has he ever been, but he spends hours there with his old dog-eared notepad, scrawling plans and writing vast quantities of notes. When asked what he is doing, he will reply that he is a professor, and has much important research to do, and requests politely that he is not disturbed again. I do not disturb him, but I smile nicely and sometimes give a little wave.

Instalment 28; Shiny new plastic bags

Like ice melts in hot fat, Santo too is changing rapidly. For a start a new phone company has moved in, the newest and biggest thing that has happened to the island in a long time. This phone company, not only works within a two-minute radius of the town centre, but reaches every corner, of every island in Vanuatu. The days of waiting three weeks for someone to pass a paper message to a remote village, will soon be over. Every chief, every tribe, everybody’s teenage daughter will be able to have a cell phone. Wives will be able to ring their husbands, who are fishing in their coconut tree canoes out on the reef, from the privacy of their own grass huts in the jungle. Each phone comes with a free solar powered charger. On the morning of the first day of coverage, ten billboards, giant enormous billboards, were erected around the town. Santos’ first advertising, Santos’ only advertising, intrudes upon the undisturbed jungle and muddy roads like cancerous tumors appearing on the liver of a non-smoking vegan.

 

Advertising is different, when it stands alone. In the west, we get so much of it thrust upon us, that we become desensitized to it; we screen it out with our super-dooper anti-advertising brain shields. But when you see it for the first time, glossy full colour pictures, of beautiful thin local girls on beaches, with cool topless Ni-Vanuatu boys, you stand and marvel, and think ‘I too could be that cool, if only I had one of those phones he’s talking on’. Oh, all right, perhaps we do that in the west too. The point is, now the people here have somebody to try to look like. The new phone company has a new shop. On the main road, in amongst the crumbled dusty shops, which are dark inside and piled full of random assorted junk, standing amongst them, is a brand new, glossy phone shop. It has Santos’ only flat screen television in the background, and glistening pictures of happy people, as big as the wall, talking on cell phones. One of the girls on the wall is Lynn (remember her?), who moved to Vila for a job in a beauty shop, and next thing we knew she reappeared in Santo as a giant billboard girl. The shop has glossy plastic shelves and gives out shiny new plastic bags. It has a similar effect on the local people as an alien spaceship would have on us if it planted itself down in the middle of a busy western city. Crowds of people stand outside, gazing in night and day, transfixed by the magical thinness of the screen and mysterious dustlessness of the windows. The people peer in the windows and line up along the street, until at last it is their turn to go in and have a look. There is a looming feeling in the air, for most volunteers, that this is the beginning of the end. The world…it seems… is creeping in.

 

Yesterday we had a meeting with all the rural teachers on the island. Usually to organize this is quite complex. We must decide to have the meeting three weeks before we have it, and then write hand-written notes to each of the ten remote areas on the island. We give the note, with the name and village on the outside, to anyone we can find going in that direction. It is then a matter of waiting and hoping that the note will eventually be handed to the person. That person then must pass the message to all the remote preschools in the area, often it will be a two day walk through the jungle in one direction, then another. When the meeting comes, about a third usually turn up, another third come at the wrong time on the wrong day. You will understand, that we don’t try to hold such meetings very often, but some contact and support for these remote teachers is deemed important. Anyway. This last meeting, everyone was there, all ten areas were represented. When I was chatting with a teacher from the south of the island, she got out her new mobile phone to show me. She said that usually it’s a long walk for her to contact the teachers in her area, but this time she just rang them all. She said at first she couldn’t believe it was really their voice, so far away, but sounding so clear. On the back of the phone was all her phone numbers, taped on with clear tape. I showed her how to put them in the phone, and everybody crowded around, amazed the phone had such a function. But how does the phone remember all those numbers? We then tried to ring my phone. We found my name, and pressed call. When my phone rang, shrieks of laughter came from all around us. Everybody was delighted that the phone knew how to ring me, with out being told the number again. If the rural teachers don’t have a new phone, then you can be sure that they are saving up for one.

Instalment 27; Fatfat Tumas

At Thursday study group we learnt about obesity. Obesity in Bislama is ‘fatfat tumas’ (fat fat too much). Most people in Vanuatu are obese, most women anyway. Obesity is becoming one of the biggest health risks, next to malaria. This is mainly because the consistently available food here is taro, sweet potato and island yam. I would estimate 80 percent of the diet is made up of these stodgy carbs. Meat is much rarer, quite expensive and usually kept for special occasions. There are scrawny chickens and valuable plump pigs, but you don’t want to go eating your own wealth away do you? There are loads of fruits and vegetables, but the availability of these things largely depend on good weather. Different vegetables come and go in the markets, and there are times when little is available, especially if there has been cyclones and storms destroying trees. So people eat stodge, and a lot of stodge at that. Children get very unbalanced diets, as they eat the stodge combined with imported cheap junk food (chemical snacks) and raspberry cordial. It was quite difficult explaining what obesity was. This was because everybody is obese, so Agnus and Alice thought that size of people was quite normal, rather than a heath risk. What would be the point of everyone being scrawny and thin? It would be terribly unattractive for a start. No, it is much better for women to be very large and fat and beautiful. For the first time in my life I suddenly wished I was a bit plumper. Much to the teachers dismay I have actually lost 6kg since arriving. To much walking, not enough delishous fried and fatty western food.

Installment 26; Locking them away

Another Thursday study group has passed. This time the lesson was on ‘disability’. The question for the student’s essay was ‘do you think people with disabilities should be locked away where other people can’t see them?’, ‘Why or Why not?’. Agnus and Alice were not sure. Alice said that her sister has a boy with a disability, but that she had never met him. “Why not?” I asked, “Oh, she keeps him in a room; he doesn’t come out” Alice replied”, “Does he go to church?” I asked, (quite sure that there wasn’t a living soul on the island who would be able to dodge church), “”No”, Alice replied a little louder, “He is locked in the room all the time, otherwise people would see him” “How old is the boy?” I asked. “16”. We read the article. It said that people with disabilities had rights. ‘The right to freedom’ I translated the best I could into Bislama. There is no word for ‘rights’ in Bislama, and so the English word is used. There is no concept for it either, as far as I could tell. I gave an example of a pilot having the right to go in the cockpit because he was a pilot. No one else has the right. Then I said people have rights, things we should get, just because we are human. God gave to them to us. The penny dropped. We read on.  ‘The right to mainstream education’, this five words took twenty five minutes to translate. After I finished Agnus jumped up and said “my brain has opened up” “It has changed, the people with disabilities should be let out, let out at once”, “and into the schools” she added. “We must let them in to our classes”. Agnus was standing up by now and leaping about my balcony (arms up and down, bursting with joy). When we had our closing prayer, Alice said, “thank you god, that Bridget is the same as Jesus, god she lives in the image of you” Agnus wailed her agreement. I felt a little guilty, almost as I knew God might beg to differ, (knowing all and everything). Right as they were both wailing this, I opened my eyes a little and saw my new Australian landlord standing on the bank watching us. I closed my eyes and took the opportunity to thank god that my landlord couldn’t understand their Bislama.

The model kindy has been moved. There are a lot of land issues here, and nobody has pieces of paper to say they own the land they live on. Now the government is trying to go through the process of getting land titles for everyone, and before you can build on the land you need to make sure you have one. The problem is, as soon as you apply for your land title, everyone and their big brother says that’s actually their land, and they want it back. So Susie Jane applied for her land title so we could build the model kindy, that we got funding for. But some random chief disputed it wasn’t really Susie Jane’s grandfathers land (land that the family has always lived on), he said his family lived on it before Vanuatu was independent and so it was his land. In the midst of this dispute, the deadline for completing the project loomed closer, and just eight weeks before, frightened if the kindy was not built I would have to send the money back to New Zealand, I pulled the plug on her, and decided to move it. Now the kindy will be held at Kamewa school. Kamewa school is where Fleur works, the hot leaking tin shed by the ocean. If anyone deserves a new kindy, Fleur does. We had some emergency meetings with the head of the school, and I got the cash out of my bank account and handed a whole used plastic bag of it over in crumpled brown rotting notes. We arranged a second meeting for Friday afternoon, so that I could get the receipts from everything she has purchased. When I turned up at school, school was closed, so I found a child to show me to the heads house. The head, in her pajamas, had not done anything yet, because it had been raining all week and she didn’t want to go out in it. You don’t have to go to work in Vanuatu when it rains. You don’t have to turn up at meetings, no matter how important. The first four or so meetings I attended in the rain, I attended alone. I sat their for a bit, a little confused, maybe I had got the day?. After this I learnt my lesson, until this meeting.  As I walked home on Friday, I made a decision never to leave my house, when it was raining, ever again.

Instalment 25; Did anyone see where my island went?

Today I had an epiphany. Maybe I didn’t, I’m not really sure what an epiphany is. I had a moment of pure joy and sadness, a change in perception. Agnus and Alice came to my house for study group. Agnus has never had a chance to study before, never read anything really about the world, never watched TV, or DVDS. The article they had to read was on ‘Global warming’. It was an introductory exercise, to show the student how to take notes. They were to read the article and make notes on it, then hand the notes in. Agnus couldn’t really understand the English in the article, and so I read it out to her and translated it into Bislama. Have you heard of ‘Global Warming’? I asked. No. I explained that the world was heating up, the polar caps melting and the seas rising. Agnus looked at me as if I was a mad woman. I read the article. Agnus listened to the article with such intensity. As I got through it her eyes started to glass. I watched her face and it touched my heart. It was the face of an old woman who lives in a hut with out electricity and running water, who has never driven a vehicle or flown in a plane, finding out for the first time that the earth was polluted, the fish were dying and the seas were rising. In a far away, unimaginable land, with unfathomable machines and technology, her brothers and sisters were killing our home.

 

It went on say, just to rub salt in her wound, that Vanuatu was the first place on record, where people have already had to evacuate because of an island that disappeared under the rising sea. Agnus jumped, “that wasn’t rising sea!” she exclaimed, “that island sunk”. I tried to explain that it just seemed like it sunk, but in fact the sea was rising. Agnus recalled how long ago weather used to be reliable, people used to know when to plant crops, there used to be fewer cyclones. “This is because of the global warming”, she said. I agreed. Agnus has an amazing brain, just a small amount of information, which she never before has had the opportunity to have, creates whirlwinds of connections and realizations inside her. When I got to the end I tried to explain why we cant all just use wind power, what people are trying to do, I talked about money and oil companies. Agnus sat quiet for a moment, and then tears started streaming from her eyes. It made me cry to, and I cried for the world as though I too had never known it had any problems. I could feel the magnitude of it all from a fresh perspective. As Agnus and Alice left, Agnus said:  “I am crying because I am sad for the world, and I am crying because I am happy I am learning, I am learning magnificent things, things that will change my life. It was always my dream to learn. It was always my dream to learn such things. I really am the luckiest person I know, thank you, thank you, thank you God”.

 

Agnus is 61. She is the oldest person around and I assume that the end of her life will not be too far away. The life expectancy in Vanuatu is 63, and so 61 is very old indeed. She has the body of an old woman, who has struggled through many hardships, walked many thousands of miles and slept many nights on woven mats on the floor. There are times, if you watch the way that her body moves, you can see she is slowly wearing out, you can almost feel the stiffness and pain in her muscles.  Her life has been lived without good medical care, or hot water, it has been a life lived in the blistering sun. Yet, I have never heard a single complaint leave Agnuss lips, she is the most grateful and thankful person I have ever met.