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.

Instalment 24; The Alfie Executive and Associates

A week in Magerette’s kindy, out by the beach. First up on Monday morning was ‘morning story’. It was the same storian I heard on the other side of town last week; the one about the man that smoked marijuana and slit the various throats. As it had traveled mouth to mouth across town, it had changed slightly but not much. There were now two birds, and the blood collected in a dish. It ended differently also, Magerette announced to the four year olds that the man had escaped and was still looking for a child to drink his or her blood, so they should watch out. The children were suitably terrified. Not quite the same themes for morning story we have in New Zealand. At snack time, the children with scabies sit away from the children with out, in their own circle. I choose to sit with the scabieless group, but didn’t feel too bad because Magerette has scabies so she sat with the other group anyway. Scabies is an infestation of mites, which live and lay eggs under the skin. It’s very infectious, and the excruciating itch causes pussy welts, bleeding and scaring, which cover the children’s legs and hands. I did try to explain that the children should be taken into town to see if there is any cream for them at the hospital. I tried to explain that it is not just the eating together, but also the touching and skin contact that is causing it to spread. Magerette said the families of the children have had scabies for three years, so they didn’t really mind too much. Luckily, on the brighter side of things, every child on the island has head lice already, so we don’t need to worry about that spreading. Magerette told me a white man had moved into her village, but she was very concerned he was into black magic. I asked her why she thought that. She said one reason was that he built his house right on the beach and not in the village with everyone else. Secondly, he ate a suspicious amount of green vegetables, which he grew in his garden. Hmmm…. Sure signs if you ask me.

 

To escape having to get a permit to sell cakes in the park, we have decided to sell them at the stadium on Saturday instead (Well, not all of us). Ninety percent of the teachers are SDA and so can’t leave the house on Saturday, nor can they bake on a different day if the produce will be sold on a Saturday. These are only two of the many annoying rules of the SDA, and I’m usually very respectful of other peoples beliefs and don’t make comments like that. Anyway, the four of us that are not SDA baked cakes and sold them at the football, along with glasses of cordial and lap lap. Lucy is the president of the Luganville association.  Lucy’s husband left her for another woman seven years ago. Although she had never seen him since this time she still lives in her house with her children, waiting for him. He is still her husband, and him running away for seven years hasn’t been a good enough reason for her to move onto someone else. “ I am a married woman” she often exclaims. When I first heard that she hadn’t seen him in seven years, I wanted to suggest he wasn’t coming back, but didn’t. This afternoon at football, the husband turned up in his truck. He had been on a different island and he was back. Back to stay. “Thank goodness!” “It must have been all those prayers!” “Sometimes God is slow isn’t he, must be really busy”. Everybody sighed happily, at the wonderful ending to the story. “What a good man he is!” Everybody exclaimed. “It must have been black magic that has finally worn off!” They chattered. I told her she should tell him to go back to where he came from; it was a very ‘whitegirl’ thing to say, and nobody had a clue why I would say it, so they all just waved their hand at me as if I was a little silly.

 

When we were alone after the football, Margerette told me a great secret, that under no circumstances am I allowed to tell anyone. I promised I wouldn’t, but telling you lot doesn’t count because you won’t tell. Apparently, the ‘Alfie executive and associates’, a very important sounding lot, came to their village one day, and told them that if they pay a small fee, well, actually quite a large fee, they can “speedum up power blong god’ (speed up the response time of God after they have made a prayer). Every one was delighted at such a useful thing, and joined up immediately. It is top secret though. All she can tell me is that it works, because right after that the new phone tower started going up. Also old aunt Magey’s son came back, and everyone had been praying for that for a long time. I had a feeling Margerette was suspecting them to be involved in the sudden and surprising return of Lucy’s husband that afternoon. That was several prayers made a decade ago, suddenly processed. God must be going through old files, The Alfie executive and his associates are surely involved.  I asked if the ‘Alfie executive and associates’ were white men or not. They are from Santo, apparently. One was very short and one was very tall. She told me I was especially not to tell the Santo police, because the police will be jealous of the ‘Alfie executive and associates’ power. I promised I wouldn’t.

Instalment 23; Ludicrous Things…

It’s Jans job to develop women’s businesses in the villages. Jan is with ‘Australian Volunteers International’ (AVI). Women often must pay the school fees if they want their children to go to school, and so try to sell baskets, vegetables, woven flax bags, mats and cooked local food. Jan tried to get them a permit to sell their food and baskets in Unity Park, the main park in the middle of town, but the permits are extremely expensive. Even after paying the permit, you must also pay 100 vatu per tray of food you sell, meaning that you cannot get ahead even with good sales. If you have a government job, you not only do not have to turn up at work, but give no money in tax (not even one percent of your income). There is a 25 percent tax on anything imported, making absolutely all products here very expensive. You pay more for a meal or a box of laundry power than you do in central London. The very poor people pay high taxes in the form of permits to sell their produce. It maddens her.. it is injustice that she lives in amongst but can not do anything about. It is one of those tiny flies; buzzing a centimeter from her eyeball (no amount of swatting makes any difference). Jan said that most women actually lose money when they try to sell things because they don’t have the mathematics skills to work out that their expenditure is higher than their income.  Anyway, if you see her I would advise not bringing up the topic,  it would be a similar mistake to opening a can of worms (best to not have a can opener).

 

Emma just came in, dripping head to toe in sweat, with five island woven bags hooked over her shoulders. She dumped the Daily post on the coffee table and said, “That is officially the worst daily post ever”. “Can’t be the worst ever” I said, (typing my instalment into the laptop). “It is! It’s worse than all the others,” she said. Apparently, in the world today there was no news what so ever. There was one story about some high school students getting a detention for not going back to their dorms. In the paper it said that the students watched the football, then the game finished late so they rushed back to their dorm, only to get a detention. The paper interviewed the students only. Emma said she was at the football and the students left at 2.30pm but did not get back to their dorm until 7pm.  This left them plenty of time to wander the streets at dusk and give each other specific eyebrow raises. The news was incorrect, but then again, the news is often incorrect. There must be a guy in most newspaper offices, whose job it is to decide if news is important enough to print or not. I don’t think the daily post office here has that guy.

 

Twenty teachers are about to start study at the University of the South Pacific, although I won’t be surprised if there is a high drop out rate in March when the fees are due. It is not a regular program, but a program designed for teachers in the South Pacific who have not completed secondary school themselves. It is called ‘the certificate in early childhood’ and is made up of three courses. Each course is six months part time. Filling in the forms, gathering the applications, receiving the acceptance letters, enrolling and collecting the books has been a frightening and complicated process for most teachers. Being a kindergarten teacher is one of the least respected and lowest paid jobs in Vanuatu, and as a result, most of the women don’t have the confidence to talk to ‘big men’ (respected people) in society. Even the enrollment officer at the ‘correspondence office’ is too important to approach.  They know me now, they know I am their advocate; they wait outside for me and follow me in. I spend lots of time in the meetings trying to explain that they have a right to ask for things, they have a right to make rules for the children, to tell parents things about the development of their child. I tell them they must be confident, approach people, for they have as much right as any ‘big man’ to be alive. A lot of my job is just standing up for them. It does not take much, the enrolment officer told one teacher she had to repeat course one even though she sat it two years ago and passed. “No”, I said. “She passed, “she can move on to course two”. He was not going to argue with a white ‘missus’, that is all it took to convince him. Everybody likes to hold each other back. I heard today that another teacher has sat ‘course one’ three times and passed each time, she has been too shy to demand to move to course two. She has enrolled in course one again, so I’m glad I found out in time. If she had moved on, she would have finished by now. It would be funny if you didn’t know how painstaking it is for her to save up for the fee each time. I am trying to help them get a permit to sell cakes in Unity Park, so they can get money for their course fees (I know Jan says it’s not really worth it, but we may as well give it a go). I could have asked the council my self, but I will not be here forever, and they must build the confidence to do it themselves. I gave the president lots of advice on what to say, and went in with her, I literally held onto the edge of her shirtsleeve, and she seemed confident enough. A funny little man waddled out of the office and said ‘can I help you’, she cowered, and couldn’t find the voice to ask.

 

Between Jan, Emma and I, the word ‘ludicrous’ is spoken at least 30 times a day. I have decided I quite like the word ‘ludicrous’, just saying it loudly makes you feel immediately better about the situation.

 

“LUD- I-CROUS!!!”

 

See?

 

I heard another good storian from a teacher in the street today. A 14-year-old smoked marijuana (just the one time). He then went to slit the throat of a chicken and drank the blood. After this, he slit the throat of a dog and drank the blood. He then caught a small child, and just as he was about to slit the child’s throat, a group of men caught him and saved the child’s life (her eyes lit up at the last words). She then told me she would be telling the kindergarten children this storian first thing in the morning! I find it quite funny, because nobody has ever thought of not believing what they hear in a storian. It is as good as true if it’s told in the street. I nod and say ‘terrible’, then dutifully pass the story on the next friend I pass. There was an article in the paper a while ago about a man that smoked marijuana and then stripped naked and climbed a tree, it suggested the marijuana had turned him into a monkey.

Installment 22: Baskets that belong to the what?

 

The local language, Bislama, is a form of Pidgin English, which has changed enough over the years that English speakers will not understand it when it is spoken. Many words in Bislama seem to be missing, and so to explain anything there is a lot of describing that must be done, which takes a suitably long time. It can take twenty minutes to have a conversation that would take five minutes in English. Just about everything you learn is quite funny at first, before it becomes normal. Diarrhea (for example) is ‘shitwota’. The med students when doing a checkup for a sick patient must ask ‘yu shit water?’ (as the official question, not a form of slang). ‘Prince Charles’ in Bislama is; ‘Numbawan pikinini wite quen’ (Number one child of the white queen), I love it because it is always so true and takes such a long time to say. ‘Broken’ is ‘buggerup’in Bislama, and ‘heart’ is ‘pump’. Me got wan buggerup pump…. I have a broken heart. I don’t actually have a broken heart.  (Incase you were felling sorry for me). Me no got wan buggerup pump. Don’t you love it? It’s so fun, it makes you want to stand in the street and chatter with people which is lucky because that is the most appropriate thing to be doing anyway. The signs around the place are really cool too, outside the operation room in the hospital there is a sign ‘room blong cuttem man’ (the room for cutting people). Nice, it makes me want to go get an operation right away.  The language has developed slightly over time, the names for things used to be even more descriptive than they are now (according to earlier records). ‘Piano’ in Bislama was ‘bigfela boxis blong witman witem tut, som i wit, som i blak, yu kilim emi singoat’ (big fellow box that belongs to the whiteman, with teeth, some are white, some are black, you hit it and it sings out). It’s an ingenious name for a piano if you ask me, I don’t know why we don’t all call it that. A violin was ‘smal sistor blong bigfella boxis i cry’ (small sister of the big box, it cries). It is funny because you can imagine from the way the things have been named (or described), exactly how odd they must have seemed at the time they were introduced. Lastly, the word in Bislama for ‘bra’ is ‘Basket blong titi’ (baskets that belong to the tits).