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.

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.

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).

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 2; Naked People:

It takes some getting used to not having technology. The hours in the day last infinitely longer, as each moment passes there is a readjustment that must be done in the mind and soul, many hours can be spent thinking about, planning, taking steps toward completing a small and simple task, simply because there is time and nothing else to do. This process then consumes one in the moment of what they are doing and forces them to contemplate each and every part of life, to make connections between the way small things work and life itself. I have become aware that much of my day is filled up with hand-washing my clothes, heating water on the gas stove to wash my hair and cracking open peanut shells, each food type must be bought separately from different people, and to get to each place one must walk. For some strange reason all of this is making me feel extremely happy. Luganville is one of the rare places where the occasional naked man can be seen wandering down the main street wearing nothing but a thin strip of dangly fabric. This is called a ‘mal mal’. I’ve never been quite sure what do when walking past a naked man and cant help feeling a slight flush of embarrassment.  I do tell myself ‘it is their ‘culture’ to be naked and wearing only a strip of fabric’, I sometimes tell myself several times in a row. For those who are not naked it seems appropriate to mix every type of clothing possible to create your own unique style. A bright green wooly hat, dress shirt, dreadlocks, board shorts, and doc martins, each their own bright colour, it gives me the strange feeling that I am living at the end of the earth…. Isolated…. But it is the place I have been secretly wanting to escape to all my life.

 

This is a world where nothing gets done, and nobody tries to complete a task. If one wants to complete something they make a decision to begin the process of completing it, and the process at some point will begin. An example of this is getting the phone line on in my house. I have waited a month for a good time for an appointment. Only in the afternoon on a Tuesday are there appointments for such a matter. After the appointment the process of getting the phone on has began. It will take several more months of steps and stages, nobody really knows if they can or will connect a phone, the actual line is already there but it’s a matter of waiting, checking, taking time, and regularly visiting the phone man to encourage him. If I forget to visit him the phone line order will be cancelled immediately. This was made clear.

 The Ministry of Education in Santo is a small green concrete shed not dissimilar to the size and shape of the public toilets in my hometown. It has no computers from preschool all the way up to high school. The ministers do know how to use computers and the internet as they studied in New Zealand, but the extreme poverty and lack of funding means their offices are empty… literally empty. Something to do with the government of Vanuatu being in Debt. Anyway must be off, I have found out Matavulu has no kindergarten, a town of 600 up the coast. I will go organize a community meeting and find out how keen they are (keenness being the main criteria, as well as people willing to act as teachers for nothing but free training). Amazingly the local people here teach for no salary, they do it purely out of dedication to make their country a better place, and provide the children with increased opportunities.