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).

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.