Instalment 21; No room for Dinosaurs:

 

If Santo was famous, it would be famous for its sunsets. I often hear people say; “Santo is famous for its sunsets” to which I reply “is Santo famous? Oh, I didn’t know- it feels rather neglected and undiscovered”. Santo also has the largest ‘divable’ sunken ship in the world (which is actually more likely to one day make Santo famous) but putting that aside we can safely say the sunsets here are so glorious that you will be unlikely to find their equal in any other location in the world. Although each individual sunset is magnificent; it isn’t the magnificence of any particular sunset on which the residents of Santo lay claims of fame. It is the individuality of each sunset, night after night, that causes one to look up in surprise and get caught in awe just for a moment at the particular unusual mix of bright splendid colours which are swirling through the sky. It can be said that every night, even after very many nights have past, one will never become indifferent to them, one will never forget to stop what they are doing, turn around, look up at the sky and marvel at the intense and unique firmament.  For a small moment it becomes effortless to imagine the heavens above. Each night the colours change dramatically from deep violets to mauves to rich crimsons to shimmering silver and scarlet, each shade so vivid and dazzling that all other colours seem like fakes, mere copies of the true intense colours of the Santo sky.

 

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Nothing works very well in Vanuatu. The main reason for this is that most people don’t turn up at work, especially government officials. Silas (who had the appendicitis) has recovered but now must take his three month holiday back to back with his sick leave so will be away until May. I turned up at the ministry of education with an armful of work for us to do, and plans for our year.. to find this out. I am suspicious that I will be expected to do his job until he gets back. A big crime ring was broken, and one of Luganville’s most notorious thieves was caught. He turned out to be the president of the football association. Did he lose his job and go to jail? No.. nothing happened to him at all. Just about all the stolen goods in Luganville were found in his home but the evidence was ‘inadmissible in court’. It does mean that Sarah is now working for a man that has been caught for three ‘break ins’ to her own apartment. Her laptop and camera were recovered in his house. Frustrating. There is one jail in Luganville and one in Vila. The prisoners are let out some weekends and over Christmas. Crime goes up during this time, and the prisoners just return after Christmas when they are ready. There was once a ‘mass walk out’ from the Luganville jail last year because the warden forgot to lock the gate. The prisoners walked out, got some food and returned right after dinner of their own accord. 80 percent of the people in prison are in for rape, half of them child rape.

 

The cell phone coverage on Santo has been down for two months. We are not quite sure what the problem is, but rumor on the street says a tower is down and we must wait for someone to come from Vila to fix it. We have waited and waited and after sometime made a unanimous decision not to hold our breaths. The coverage isn’t completely down however, and there does seem to be random spots (if one is lucky enough to find one), where the phones will work. Since discovering this, there has been a search on for ‘cell-phone spots’. I found one on my balcony. To access the spot one must stand right in the corner and lean ever so slightly over the edge. One tiny spot, that if I stand directly on it, without swaying left or right I can make a call. It is important not to get to excited during the call and take a step away from the spot, in which case you will be cut off immediately. Sarah also uses my cell-phone spot as she doesn’t seem to have one, but I’m not convinced she spent as much time as I did searching. To search for a cell-phone spot one must attempt to make a call from every part of the house. This takes quite a while and mainly involves a ‘step, call, step, call’ type motion. Who said anyone needed TV to fill your time anyway? We are not able to use the coverage bars on the phone as an indication of the location of a spot, as they seems to always be full. Before finding my own spot, I used to walk outside and halfway down the hill. I think the telephone company may have decided not enough people have phones on Santo to bother fixing the problem but only time will tell. Last year I went into a kindergarten and the three teachers who have phones had them hung from pieces of string from the ceiling, all three in the same place. I looked at them, felt slightly confused and decided not to ask (I am becoming immune to strange events). After a bit one teacher became concerned that my phone wasn’t hanging there and I gave it over, to be strung up with the others. It is only lately that I remembered the event, and in a moment of clarity (perhaps my first since arriving here), I said out loud ‘oh- that must have been their spot’.

 

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I mentioned dinosaurs. The president of the pre-school association quickly told me “not to mention dinosaurs in the kindergartens because they never existed”. I wasn’t quite sure to what to say, so I just stared blankly in her direction. “Have you ever seen one?” she asked. Um… “no” I said. “But, they have found bones”. “Animal bones” she said. “they stick all the animal bones together in any shape they like”. “But they are big big bones” I said. “Elephants and all sorts” she said. I decided I should be a little careful with how I continued the conversation. “Why don’t you believe in dinosaurs” I asked. “Well, When the big boat was here, Noah put all the animals in it, but he didn’t make enough room for the dinosaurs.. did he?”. Hmmmmm. She had me there. My mind raced, so much I wanted to say, so many levels to approach my answer. If I had told her I didn’t think the boat was real, I might have lost my job. I stared for a minute longer, then said… “ but, at the time Noah made the big boat, that was a time when people were on the earth already. So, that was much much later than the time when dinosaurs were on the earth. So Noah didn’t need to make room for them did he?” She stared at me blankly for what felt like quite a long time. I knew that in the SDA church, they are told, and told and told.. but not required, able or allowed to think critically about the information. “Just wan tingting blong yu”. She replied (That’s just  something that you think). “Yes” I replied. “Blong me, nomo” (Only my idea).

Intstalment 20; Lime green but not the green of limes…

I am in Vila. This short trip across the ocean was the first I have taken in the four months I have lived on Santo. I realized while waiting for the small plane at Luganville’s hot moist airport that the tiny island had, in just a short time become my home. I arrived at that airport, confused and frightened in July. It was the start of a rough week of escape plans, I formulated many excuses that week that might allow me immediate passage back off the island. This initial week of shock, which is experienced by all who come here has been fondly labeled the ‘oh shit experience’. I looked around today and realized that I knew every face, and that I had become an intricate part of the web of human interaction in Luganville. Everybody knew my name. I belonged. I have learnt to speak Bislama, mainly through forced immersion and impromptu speeches to people who don’t understand a word of English. In Vila everyone is very impressed, there are so many white people here many don’t bother to learn. Hot showers. Yes, it’s true, in Vila the showers are hot and I’m planning on having one soon. Shops… real supermarkets with actual food. You can buy everything you need in one stop. It can take hours to buy food for a week on Santo. Food all year round, people buying cheese when ever they feel like, on the whim of a thought. Movies on the water front, people who don’t stop and talk for hours in the street, they just say hello and walk right past. I am excited. I am going to town.

As I walked along the road I felt a little dizzy. First off, it was cruise ship day. Not a regular cruise ship; but an extra giant cruise ship, carrying two thousand passengers had pulled into Vila’s port. Secondly everything seemed very loud, the sound of traffic was up on full volume, and I couldn’t turn it down. I went to supermarket and the sheer amount of available produce was overwhelming, I stood in each isle looking at it feeling unsure what to buy, unable to make any decisions. I went into a real clothes shop, with new clothes in it, and people kept bumping in to me. I couldn’t remember what style clothes I liked. In Luganville there is no style, and you look best when you jumble things together that definitely don’t go. I have a volunteer staying at my house while I am here in Vila. She lives on a remote island near Santo called Malo. Famous for its high rate of deadly malaria cases; Malo is electricity-less and without running water. We talked a little of Isolation, she told me how hard it was when she went to Vila. Isolation is a strange thing. At first it is terrifying; it seeps into every part of your being. After a while something raw inside of you hardens, and although you still experience overwhelming penetrating loneliness, you feel you can cope with it. You feel you are coping. It is after this stage, it is after coping for an extended period of time, at some indescribable point, the isolation becomes a part of you, it grows and changes inside of you and you befriend it. It is the only friend you have. When you get back to the real world everything seems different. People seem different. You can hear endless conversation which appears to have no meaning what so ever. The noises are louder, the world is faster. People are all rushing about with important things to do, but you can’t for the life of you think what those things could be.

The conference in Vila was full on. One government preschool coordinator from each province in Vanuatu attended, the president of VEJA (Vanuatu Early Childhood Association) and me. There were about 8 of us all together. I was woken at 4.45am every morning and worked through to 7pm. I gave my presentations on how to assess the quality of a kindy, how teachers should observe children and how to incorporate more literacy into the programs. I gave copies of the workshops so that each provincial coordinator can do them with the 8 or so key teachers in each province who will then train the teachers under their jurisdiction. My workshops were incorporated into the teacher training program, and so I felt I had made my mark. Silas (my counterpart on Santo) got sharp appendix pains about fours hours into the first day and had to be rushed to the hospital to get it removed. Monday night therefore, I got my first real experience waiting inside a local hospital; I came out feeling very ill. While I was sitting there I was unsure if I had words to describe it, to really explain the condensed bodies, the smell and heat. I will say that if we didn’t have this conference this week Silas would be dead now. Santo has nobody to operate, due to a doctor shortage. The first words that come to mind are lime green. Concrete walls painted in lime green. The paint is worn away, more so at the floor than at the ceiling, leaving streaks of brown to show through. Lime green but not the green of limes. Bangladeshi transit prison green. That light Bangkok train station green that accompanies rusty metal ceiling fans, clusters of flies, mosquitoes and hot stagnant humid air. The green of poverty, the green that you can’t leave, you must wait in it; you know there are other people all over the world waiting in it too. People are trapped inside it for years, for their whole lives. While I sat there I thought to myself that this green is a colour that only those people in the world who suffer get a chance to know.

I sat and waited. The mosquito bites on my legs started to swell. I started wondering who the person was that was bitten right before me, what blood diseases they might have. A woman went past with the back of her head gashed open from the top of the head down to the top of her neck. A coordinator, who was storianing with a doctor, later told me that she had picked up a pawpaw which had been half eaten by a bird. She ate the other half. The owner of the tree came along and thought it fit to chop her in the head with a machete. You don’t want just anybody eating your pawpaws.

Two little children went past burnt from head to toe. They were both dead. The mother wandered along dazed behind them. The mother that had just lost both her children. I wished I hadn’t been there to see her face. This ‘house burning’ is happening because of disputes between the islands. Local men living in Vila but originally from two specific islands are at war. They are fighting their war by setting each others houses alight. It started because apparently a man on one island killed an old lady from another island using black magic. Now men, women and children are being burnt alive. The worst thing about it is that she probably just choked on a chicken bone. When someone just dies, everyone assumes it must be black magic.

When the doctor came out all the patients jumped up and ran towards him holding their tickets out, trying to be in first. He picked one at random and disappeared back into the little office. A particularly large cockroach scurried across the floor behind them all. There was a man sitting in the room that had had a heart attack and was frothing at the mouth. The smell. Hot burnt skin and sweat, bleach, vomit, the air was wet. I can’t really put the smell into words. It was asphyxiating, choking; one must breathe such air slowly to give the body time to digest the particles in it. Silas was in a room lined in beds, pushed up against each other like you might see in war a movie, the surgical ward was over crowded. He was too sick to know I was there so I decided to leave.

After packing myself a box of goodies in Vila and posting it to my own address I have returned to Santo. I prefer it here. I have begun to realize all the things I miss out on here are not really necessary anyway. I filled out two project proposals for money from aid agencies and got them both. This means I have 72,000 vatu towards teachers fees and 260,000 vatu to upgrade one kindy in Luganville to a good standard. This is a start, it is good news, very good news indeed. It is December, and although the people here are Christian and celebrate Christmas there are no signs or songs of Christmas here at all. No tinsel, no men in red suits with white fluff, no sales in the Chinese shops. Christmas here will mean a big island dinner, which is wrapped in leaves and rocks and cooked on the open fire. It will be eaten with the fingers off a large plate sized leaf. Those who have jobs here either have little radios or walkmans. Not a diskman that can play CDs (as this would be a bit useless) but a walkman that plays cassette tapes which can be purchased at several stores in town. I have noticed the walkmans available look like a CD player from the outside. They are round CD sized and grey. When you open them up there is a space for a tape. This is an ingenious invention so people in the street who see you with your tape player will think you actually have a CD player, this will make you look very flash. The tapes available have a selection of local string band songs. A ‘string band’ is a group of men. One man sits in the middle on a box, the others gather around him facing in. The box has a string which rises up and is tied to a stick; it can be played by strumming it with your fingers, while moving the stick around to tighten or losing the string. The men all sing and chant. To the untrained ear; string band songs all sound exactly the same. I have a string band living next door which plays night and day from 5am in the morning and I am still yet to notice the difference between songs. After hearing no other music for an extended period of time the string band songs do eventually grow on you.

Instalment 19; More Rasperry Cordial

 

Filling in the forms for study has been quite an adventure. I trapes out to the school and lye on the floor with the forms. We look at the first question: Name? The teachers go off to ask their husband what name would be best to use, the family name, the custom name, there are many to choose from. Thirty minutes will pass by. Next question: ‘Date of Birth’; Most people don’t quite know their date of birth, but put the month and year. This takes about 20 minutes to think about. Question three: ‘Address’; Nobody has an actual address. You only have an address for mail if you pay for a P.O box number. Some settle on using the church but must go to find out what the address is. I lye down and wait patiently, it wouldn’t be done to try and rush things, and its best to forget about anything else that you might have had to go and do.  If worst comes to worst we put my address. ‘Educational background’; Most don’t have any records of an education, as they left school at the end of primary school, you must get in the top 30 percent of the class in the exams at the end of primary school to graduate to high school. Do you have a copy of your birth certificate? “I was born before we had birth certificates in Vanuatu”. You will be starting to get a picture of what fun it is to fill out these forms.  I went to three schools today, equipped with my forms, which I stuck in my island basket, it slings over my shoulder and has the Vanuatu flag weaved on it in different coloured flax (very flash). The days are getting very very hot, and in this area schools must be walked to. I would say in total I walked for about four hours. The first time I went to the Kindy in ‘Pepsi’ I went with George and he powered along, today I did the walk along the dusty track at snail speed. I walked past little grass huts and people standing outside, they look fascinated and as if they are wondering what on earth a strange white girl is doing walking along their track. I always pick a flower and put it in my hair, the flowers are huge and come in every colour, sometimes I change the flower after a bit if I find a better or brighter one, by the time I get home I usually have a pretty big magnificent flower in my hair, which probably looks a bit silly, but there are no prospective boyfriends around to see.

 

At Pepsi Kindy I was given a delicious glass of warm raspberry cordial (extra syrupy), a bowl of rice with baked beans on top, and a quarter of a giant cucumber. The children sat beside me on the muddy wooden floor and shoveled the food in their mouths from their rusty metal bowls with their fingers, I got the honorary spoon. We all randomly waved our hands in front of our faces and across our ears to ward off the cluster of flies that had gathered around us. They come so close to your face I am often worried I will accidentally eat one.  I could tell from the children’s expressions and eating styles that the baked beans were a treat. After lunch I did a walk up to Matafunga Kindy and got a half of a juicy pineapple and a big chunk of papaya, which a little boy scurried up a tree for. Everybody loves to feed me, lucky I am walking so much.

Instalment 18; Emotional Survival

Instalment 17; Invoking spirit

I went to watch some custom dancing. A tribe from south Santo had come into town and built a fire up next to the education office. They were painted head to toe in white stripes and reminded me very much of zebras. The chief wore a large head dress of orange flowers. Everybody wore only tuffs of ferns around their waist, and for the first time I saw scores of women, unclothed, bare breasted and looking extremely beautiful. The men built up the bonfire, they then danced around it stamping their feet and chanting, the women chanted a different song near by, and as the two songs meet they created an invigorating sound. The men built up speed then all at once they jumped on the fire, the flames lapping around their bodies and a thousand sparks would fly off and into the air, this (one teacher told me) was the fire talking back to the men. As the chanting went on the air got thicker with energy, I could feel that a spirit had indeed been invoked, I found the chanting and dancing became intoxicating. I felt truly moved by the ceremony, and surprised at my own feelings. I can not explain it, but there is some very powerful truth in what they believe in, in earth spirit worship, something which we like to pretend is ‘primitive’ but only because we do not understand.

 

The teacher I was with, who was from this area, told me that this was a very sacred dance, and usually to watch it costs one pig. I wanted to ask her more about the purpose of the dance, what was happening, but I felt strangely frightened to find out. The men would rush at the fire chanting at it, challenging it, and all by it self the fire would flame up back at them, letting off sparks, it was communicating with them. Or perhaps the soul of the universe had found a way to express itself, using the fire as a tool.

Instalment 16; Is it me Who is Odd?:

 

I have been doing literacy workshops every afternoon. The mornings I spend walking from school to school in the sweltering heat delivering messages and convincing teachers to sign up for the certificate in early childhood through the university of the south pacific. I tell them if they enroll through the correspondence program, I will hold study groups and we will all do the work together in a class. I tell them I will help them with the assignments and translate their work from Bislama to English. So far I have four teachers. One of the 30 or so teachers has completed this certificate and so can call them selves ‘trained’. The problem is that the teachers don’t get paid, so if they train the school may fire them as they may have more ground to demand money for their work. I tell them teachers must work for their children’s future and the future of their country. Better teaching will help their children become tomorrows leaders, their country will have a brighter future. People like this sort of talk here and I’m becoming better at it. I get asked to make an impromptu speech at least once a meeting and I usually add something like that in.  Delivering messages is quite time consuming. As nobody has a phone and there are no postmen all messages must be delivered by hand or mouth. If you have a note or letter for someone you can ‘pass’ it. Passing a letter is just giving it to someone going in that direction, who will pass it to someone else until it finds the person. You must make sure the name is written clearly on. You can pass letters to remote parts of the island by standing on the road and flagging down a taxi going that way. They will pass it to the next taxi and so on until it reaches the village… at some point, usually well after it was needed. This is a reasonably good system but all the same, often people don’t get messages.

 

Anyway that’s my mornings. This week’s afternoon workshops are in Kamewa school. The school is right on the beach, the kindergarten just about in the sand. The walls and roof of the kindy are made completely with rusty corrugated iron, inside it is empty with a smooth concrete floor. I walk across the school field at lunch time through hundreds of laughing, topless, shoeless children in faded grey school shorts. They usually run after me for a bit shouting ‘hello missus’ and then return to the football. The school field is nicely mowed and lined in tall palm and pine trees. When I arrive at the kindy usually all the teachers (from five of the surrounding schools) are asleep on the concrete floor. The first day I was surprised to see the large women in flowery dresses scattered around, I lay down in the middle of them all and gazed out the window at the blue sea. I could actually see the heat like a clear mist. I woke up ten minutes later and the women were all sitting up looking at me, as though it was me who was odd. I am coming to terms with the fact that it is indeed me that is odd. I then say the welcome prayer, and somebody else says the closing prayer, I think this is because the closing prayer has to be really really long, and I can never think of enough things to thank god for, as much as I do try.

Instalment 15; An Immeasurable Speed:

Time has been passing by at an odd immeasurable speed, which travels both slower and faster than time at home and can not be understood with clocks. This is the speed of time which can only be felt from the tiny islands of the south pacific. I have started to find my routine here, although I’m still unsure of what I’m supposed to be doing most of the time, have a lot to do but no idea how to arrange it and I get stuck spending hours completing menial tasks, at least I am in a routine of doing so, I am beginning to know what I can expect. A ship came in full of delicious produce. I first noticed something unusual when I saw ‘LCM’ milling with excited looking people. I went in and couldn’t believe my eyes. I found imported fresh apples, feta cheese, tasty cheese, butter, carrots and red ripe imported tomatoes. I rushed to the ATM and got out more of my volunteer allowance than I should have, then rushed back to buy the rare, ‘unseen before’ food. Apart from this the days are beginning to run together, many of the white people here have left, and we are awaiting the day we see new people walking aimlessly about in town to befriend.

 

I read in the paper today about ‘Tusuruce village’,  a remote community on this island that had converted to Christianity, and then all at once converted back to their ancient ways. The paper reporter had interviewed the chief about this unusual occurrence. The reporter asked the chief why after accepting Christianity, had they given up their clothes for grass skirts, and exchanged prayers to Jesus for the more traditional magic and ancestor/ earth worship. The chief replied that he had made the decision on behalf of the community and that they had agreed with him. He said he found Jesus ‘unreliable’ when it came to answering prayers and based on this, he was unsure whether we could trust him to be returning from heaven at all. He also found clothes quite uncomfortable and couldn’t see their purpose; they were creating more work when it came to washing them. I think this is a fair call. It is the first recorded case in Vanuatu where a chief has made the decision to reverse the conversion, and stuck to his guns.

 

Instalment 14; The Coconut Rebellion:

 

I was picked up at 6am. I had dinner with the New Zealand high commissioner, who was visiting Santo, the night before and felt particularly tired. On the way to Fanafo we had to stop and pick up the literacy trainers from their various villages. You can always tell a lot from the reaction of children. Children are honest with their emotions. I became aware that I was a rare species when the babies screamed at my passing and the children cried and stared. We were moving very slowly in an old green truck with ‘World Vision’ painted on the side. The road had been cut into the mountain, it was similar looking to an old river bed,  the trees had grown together and entwined their branches above us. On the way we past a very black skinned lady with out clothes on. Around her waist was a skirt made from fresh bright green leaves. Not the long flax sort, but a shorter round leaf. Her breasts drooped to her stomach. I wondered if they make new skirts daily, and what they wore while making the skirt for the day. She was with a boy of about 12. He wore nothing at all but had a long stick over his shoulder and on each end hung a big bunch of bright yellow bananas. At the time it was teeming heavily with thick tropical rain. It occurred to me that if I saw the two in movie; I would complain that it was unrealistic and clichéd. When we arrived in Fanafo it first appeared everyone had clothes on, at this I couldn’t help feeling slightly disappointed. Fanafo was like a small paradise in the forest. Each small community lives in circles of about fifteen huts.  The community I was staying in had converted to Christianity, and so wore muddy shorts and floral dresses. We walked down a little path through the jungle. The children couldn’t take their eyes off me. One little girl walked along beside, continually tripping over, gazing at me with such intensity that even as she fell she would still be looking until the moment she hit the ground. She too looked fascinating to me, she was about eight, and she wore only a pair of white muddy shorts, lined with holes around the rims. She had a wild long blond afro which grew up and out and pointed at the ends. She had that exotic child beauty, as you might see on the cover of an arty magazine, her magnificent look would probably bring her fame and fortune if born into a different part of our inequitable world.

 

Two minutes through the jungle we came across another community dressed completely in traditional custom attire. I first noticed an old blind man sitting alone on a log nearby, he spoke to us but I couldn’t understand him. I said hello back. He had a small frame, with little fat on it, his dark skin wrinkled over it in folds. He had a long white beard which had grown down to his stomach and pointed at the end. He seemed happy enough just sitting there on his log and I wondered how long he had been sitting there, and how many hours he would stay. Groups of boys played volleyball with a coconut over a vine net. Each boy was wearing a long thin rectangle of fabric at the front attached to a vine around his waist. There were no women there. Where do all the woman go? I never see them. Probably looking after the pigs. I could hear a noise that sounded like music coming from one of the grass huts. Do they have a radio I asked? “A generator, a dvd and a tv” The world vision lady replied, “these people are nomads, they wear custom dress still but make money from kava plantations, they have nothing to spend it on, so they bought a generator and a dvd player.” The mind boggles. Tribes people in a remote place, grass huts, no electricity, no transport, no clothes and a working dvd player.  We then went past a green concrete building. “This is the health centre. Built by world vision, we also put a water tap into this village,” the lady said. In the health centre was the village phone and the chief. “The chief is the nurse”, the lady added. On hearing this I opened my mouth to ask why the chief was the nurse and whether he knew much about medicine, then decided just to accept it… as the way things were. I poked my head in the room and made a mental note not to get sick and need medical attention while in Fanafo.

 

When I stand up in front of people to start the training, I can never shake the feeling that I’m a fraud. I always feel like I’m pretending to know about something that I do actually know a lot about.  I have a secret fear that if they ask too many questions they will find out that I am really still just the little girl that was never really very good at anything, trying to be seen in the shadow caused from the considerably brighter light of her older brother. It doesn’t occur to the village people that you might be nervous, I get the feeling white people are considered to be free from human weakness and I sometimes get an overwhelming urge to explain that this is very far from being true.

We gave everybody a pair of scissors, and a piece of cardboard box to make some letter cards and there was much excitement when the news came out that the trainers could keep the scissors, for some, they were probably the only pairs of scissors they would ever own. Everybody asked me if I could send them some more cardboard boxes. The workshop actually went quite well, and I was yet again impressed by the pious sacrifice these people made to share their limited literacy skills with their communities, for no salary or reward.

 

Fanafo holds the body of Jimmy Stevens, not buried but his skeleton partly covered in tin so that his soul may easily escape. Jimmy Stevens is very famous in Vanuatu. He started the ‘coconut rebellion’ a movement which contributed greatly to Vanuatu eventually winning its freedom from the colonial powers which controlled it. Born from royalty in Tonga, he was raised in Vanuatu. In 1980 he moved to Fanafo and bought with him men from fifteen islands in Vanuatu, he started his own world there, with structure, guards and order, the new Vanuatu. He proclaimed the island of Santo as independent, and called it ‘Vermarana’. With bows and arrows they occupied Luganville town, and took complete control of the island. He even printed his own currency, with the help of French settlers. As Jimmy’s men stormed the municipal building, young British authorities tried to defend them selves with tear gas, the strong sea breeze blew the tear gas immediately back into their offices. The young guards ran coughing right into the hands of Jimmy’s men. The basis of Steven’s movement was that white people were buying too much land and clearing it for coconut plantations, the local people were losing their rights to live there and use the land for their traditional life styles. Stevens petitioned the UN for early independence and although a date was arranged he continued to rule his ‘independent republic of Vermarana’. When Vanuatu became independent in 1980 the new government, wanting Santo back as part of the new Vanuatu, arrested Stevens and Vermarana was no more. While living in Fanafo he had fifteen wives who all lived in the same hut with him. They did tell me it was an especially big hut. On my first night I talked to one of his wives over the welcome ceremony kava, she was on my training course. She was his traveling wife.

 

In Vanuatu each of the man’s wives would have a different purpose. There was usually one for looking after the pigs, one for the children, one for gardening etc. I quickly decided that if I had been married to Jimmy Stevens I would also have chosen to be his traveling wife, rather than the one for looking after the pigs. I asked his traveling wife how she met him. She is very old now and spoke very slowly. Her eyes glassed over and she spent long moments staring into the distance, as though she was getting lost in the memories of her life as a young woman in love with a powerful man. She was 14 when her father came to work for Jimmy Stevens and bought her to live in Fanafo. As his traveling wife Jimmy bought her with him to Africa, Europe, Australia, and England. She stopped talking and I got the feeling that the memories were almost too much for her to bear. We were sitting outside under a sky brightly alight with a thousand stars. It went quiet and I sat there in silence for a while, listening to the sound of insects in the distance. It was very peaceful in that place, and people seemed content and happy, like perhaps they knew a secret that we don’t know in the west. I wondered if it was us that needed help and not them. Sitting there pondering my thoughts, I had another one of those moments that I used to search for and not find. A feeling of utter contentment, combined with the feeling that I was experiencing something very unique. I sat on my sleeping mat alone and awake for many hours that night. It was another time when I had so much to talk about and nobody to tell. When I finally lay down I noticed many cockroaches on the ground. I was exhausted, too exhausted to sleep or even move my body. The first few that crawled on me I tried to flick off, but there were so many and I knew I couldn’t win. There was one nestling against the skin on my stomach as I drifted off to sleep.

Installment 13; Spiders and coconut shells

I am suddenly becoming quite busy.  Partly because I have started working for World Vision. I didn’t mean to, I am supposed to be working with a different NGO. A lady from World Vision rang me up and told me that if I didn’t help her the literacy drive in the remote parts of the island would fall apart (people are very direct and emotional here). I paused, unsure how to form my ‘no’, and then I told her that I would meet with her and look at the program, but that I couldn’t be doing any training for her. If I had the spare time I should be helping more of the rural preschools. I met with her and looked at the program they are using.  It was a mess. They have two old workbooks, each only ten pages long. Neither the lady running the program, nor any of the World Vision ‘trainers’, have a background in education or literacy. I wasn’t surprised that people were not learning to read and write from the workbooks. World Vision works with the poorest people in the remotest areas. Those who pray to god for rain so that their family may have drinking water, who have never been to school, whose whole community are unable to read or write. People who are unable to make notes or record ideas and family stories, places where every family will be expected to lose at least one child. They do three year projects that teach adults, especially mothers how to read and write.  Reinstalling traditional writing and reading systems wiped out in colonisation is also encouraged.  World Vision uses local people to teach in local languages. Apparently these projects are not working. To cut a long story short I’m going to Fanafo next week. Into ‘middle Santo’. In Fanafo woman wear grass skirts and men wear vines around their wastes, with those small pieces of fabric that dangle down at the front (this doesn’t cover much when it’s windy). As I mentioned, the men from this tribe come into town every now and then, and so I have seen them before, I will be interested to see the women.  

 

My job will be to train 16 world vision trainers from the surrounding area, how to help their adult students develop literacy skills without resources, to teach them how to extend the workbooks and repeat activities in different ways. I am going into the jungle. I asked what I should take and the lady said ‘mosquito repellent’. Great.  I have been wondering whether mosquito repellant comes in more than 80 percent deet. It is funny how much people trust you to do these jobs here. Suddenly I am an expert, on everything. This is partly because only thirty percent of the country has finished secondary school. I have found even small ideas, games that everyone at home knows, like memory, become a goldmine for the locals. I think people think I just make it all up off the top of my head. The way teachers do things is very different at home, for a start we have paper and pencils. I don’t actually have a clue how to teach reading and writing with out paper and pencils, I am finding I have to be extremely resourceful. They do have some great stuff in nature here though that can be adapted and used to learn. Kids can draw pictures or write things down by dipping a stick into half a coconut shell full of mud paste, and then use a large dry leaf instead of paper. Leaves come in all sizes here, there are ones big enough to use as picnic blankets for the whole fam, loads of people also use them as umbrellas. Alternatively they can get half a coconut shell and walk around finding things that start with a particular letter, the ‘s’ one could have seashells, sticks, spiders etc (but in their own tribal language). I am finding many early literacy games and activities from home can be adapted. Anyway, I will tell you how Fanafo went when I return.

Installment 12; The phone man

Suddenly the markets are full. Many types of vegetable are available. Yesterday I bought tomatoes, beans, capsicum, and spring onions. It must be the season. Vanuatu is full of food, fruit trees and vegetables, but it is small and vulnerable, if crops are wiped out, if the weather isn’t good, if there are too many natural disasters, then there is no backup. Everybody eats what is available, and in season. I have also found wholemeal flour, chickpeas and a lighter. With these ingredients I could make falafel, hummus and wholemeal pita bread. Making this meal from scratch I found an immensely enjoyable experience. I can also light the stove anytime I please.

 

The phone man came to my house with the apprentice phone man. He put a machine on my floor that made a loud high pitched noise, then walked out the door and off into the distance. I sat wondering where he was, listening to the high pitched noise for an hour before he returned, with a spanking new telephone. I was pleased to see he had a student to teach all these phone man habits too. When he got home that day he rang me to ask me how my new telephone was. The following day he returned to connect a second line. I told him I didn’t need a second line and that one would be fine. He was determined I needed another telephone and line, and pointed to a suitable place for it on the other side of my living room. I insisted that one line and phone would do. He showed me the piece of paper he had in his hand. It was a line order for Jack (who lived in my apartment a year before me). He had apparently ordered a phone line, but unlike me had not visited the phone man (shocking I know).

 

He never got his line, and only now, a year later had the phone man decided to connect it. The fact that Jack had moved out, I had moved in, and that he had connected my line in the same apartment the day before didn’t seem to be relevant to the situation.  There was two orders for this apartment, and both would be put in… next to each other. Part of the problem might be that there are no street addresses; you just have to say “I live in that white place, down the road no good”. There are quite a few ‘road no goods’, any road that can no longer be driven on is one. I’m sure the phone man isn’t exactly sure of where all the places are that have made requests. Anyway, I do hope that the phone man stresses to his apprentice, the importance of the customers making regular and lengthy phone man visits.