Instalment 18; Emotional Survival

My workshops this week are out on the edge of Luganville; I stand on the side of the road and wait for a minibus going that way. The bus usually has at least one lose screw, right underneath me that jingles all the way along the bumpy road. The driver will blast loud reggae music with the occasional love song thrown in. We go past many little villages with whole families standing in the garden and the jungle gets quite dense by the time we are there. The Kindergarten is close to the beach out near million dollar point, which is famous for divers. It is the spot where the American army dumped all their equipment, vehicles and machinery after the war, because the government in Vanuatu wouldn’t buy it all off them for the price they wanted. Instead of donating it they dumped it in the ocean to prevent the locals from using it. The water is aqua blue, not one colour, but streaks of different blues which merge and swirl and create a marble effect. It is a truly nice spot. The kindergarten is a wooden building with a grass thatch roof, it is raised of the ground and has slats in the wooden walls so that the breeze can pass through. It has a smooth clean wooden floor which we sit or lye on while making our literacy games. There has been one main similarity with all my workshops, one thing that every host teacher will do, with out fail. On the last day of the workshop, just as someone is about to plunge into the long closing prayer, the teacher will disappear for a few minutes and return with a surprise bottle of thick, syrupy, warm raspberry cordial. Every body else claps and cheers and looks delighted. Raspberry cordial. It is, I’m afraid to say, a treat. Actually anything which must be bought in a shop is a treat. I hate raspberry cordial, it is my least favourite, of all the chemical laden products, which I try not to poison my body with. I usually get forced to drink at least four cups, which I pretend to enjoy because I know it was bought especially for me.

 

At this workshop is Kathleen. Kathleen is a large round lady with a grey afro. She usually wears a brown or green missionary style island dress with many bows, tassels and huge puffy sleeves. She is bursting with emotion at all times and sweats profusely. When I arrive she hugs me tightly and kisses my cheeks over and over, and after my face is wet from the sweat on hers. If Kathleen is to say the opening or closing prayer, she will start wailing loudly, crying out the words, with tears of emotion running down her cheeks, she thanks god for everything in her wonderful life and the joy she feels overpowers her whole being. Kathleen also bursts with emotion when someone else is saying a prayer, but usually mutters the ‘thankyous’ under her breath, almost as if she can not help it. Yesterday she cried out; ‘thank you lord for sending us Bridget’, over and over, right through out the other teacher’s prayer making it quite hard for the other teacher to concentrate. I sat there with my eyes closed tightly and my hands clasped, feeling a little embarrassed and glad none of my friends or family were there to see.

 

Actually usually about three quarters of the prayer is about me. They thank god that I’ve been sent, they ask him to protect me on my way home from the workshop, and while living in Luganville, they pray they will understand how to use my games, and so on, and so on, for quite a long time. Many of the teachers have babies and there are two newborns at the moment. ‘Babies’ is one of the most popular conversation topics, and I always chip in with ‘My brother and sister in law had a baby last week’. This news is always greeted with much enthusiasm, and everyone wants to know all about it, over and over again. My new niece is called Ella. Ella got an infection after a few days and had to go back to hospital. On being questioned about her I told this news to the teachers at the workshop. The teachers replied “oh she will die then, if they get sick in the first month they will die, after that they get a bit stronger”.  I felt quite sad at that news. Not because I thought Ella would die, but because these women lose babies unnecessarily, and I didn’t feel like explaining that in our culture we don’t. I suddenly had the thought that if Ella was born in Vanuatu she may well not have survived, it is these moments that the inequality in the world seems very real, and grinds down inside of me to touch a nerve which (for the sake of my own emotional survival) I usually mask over, and pretend to myself isn’t there.