May so far…

has been great. I just came back from Vila three weeks ago. We had our last two weeks of school before the term break. Well actually that part wasn’t so great. I came back to find that the other teacher has been playing hooky for the last two weeks and the whole community including me and the manager are like wtf man. But the manager doesn’t take any responsibility. He acts like there’s nothing he could have done. But he could have found a substitute teacher duh. While I was in Vila I had a substitute teacher. I told him that and he was like I couldn’t find one. And I was like well why didn’t you do it? And he goes well I didn’t want to. Oh ok great but do you want to deal with people not paying their school fees and not coming to school anymore because of what you did. Anyway we got a new school policy out of it but it’s not going to do much. Nobody pays attention to policies.

On the other hand when I asked what the other teacher was so busy doing that he couldn’t come to school. It turns out he’s doing some contract labor to fix up this house for a new doctor. Our aid post is being upgraded yay! And we’re getting a doctor. I was at a meeting the other day and my friend goes “we’re getting a doctor”
I was like “oh really that’s good”
“Yeah a white man”
“ Oh that’s good (me trying to hide excitement)”
“Yeah a young guy”
“Uh huh (me trying to not show that I’m freaking psyched)”
“Yeah an American”
“WHAT?! You’ve got to be kidding!”
“Yeah I’m kidding”
I don’t know what part he was kidding about though. Cause I asked around and we are supposed to get a doctor. But I don’t have the guts to ask if it’s going to be a young American guy or Frenchman or what? Anyway it could totally change the dynamics of my situation because I could have somebody that speaks English and reads newspapers and has been out of the country/off the island. It’s an exciting prospect but I can’t get my hopes up because it could easily be some old fart from the next island over who’s morbidly obese and doesn’t know how to smile (like our current RN).

I had a pretty good birthday. I got lots of phone credit from my parents so I could call lots of people. I got a chicken from a friend of mine. whom my mom quickly turned into a delicious soup. Yum. I also received a bucket of kava and sort of a kava party at my house. Some peace corps on my island came down to visit they made me a bench and gave me some alcohol that I’ll never get around to drinking. But yeah it was nice to have all the local guys in the neighborhood over for kava and the peace corps peeps all together chilling on our newly made “place belong sit down” behind my house. We made burritos with homemade tortillas. The norm when drinking kava is to get things to go because sometimes kava and food don’t mix. So I was wrapping up all these dudes burritos for them other side style in foil and shiat and I’m thinking man these guys have never seen a burrito in their life. How are they going to eat this? Ten bucks says they thought the tortilla was a plate and didn’t eat it. (You have to remember we don’t have lights at night too)

I can’t wait for the Naos fruit season to be over. There’s a Naos tree over my house and every time they fall out of the tree they wack my roof so hard I think they’re going to come right through. Then they roll down off the roof and land on the ground right next to my bed on the other side of the bamboo screen. Then every night just as I’m going to sleep some big huge pig comes and smack-smack-smacks his way through all the yummy fruit. Ugh chewing with your mouth open is so gross mister pig. I could literally poke my finger through the screen and touch the pig but I’m afraid of what he might do plus that would be gross cause they roll around in their own poo all day. Also baby pigs are the most obnoxious things I’ve ever heard. Imagine one baby crying times 8 or 10 babies and louder. Anyway, pigs, they taste great. Naos, I could do without.

I had an interesting conversation about black magic the other day. It was with Romeric and wan olfala man. Romeric’s like “have you ever seen black magic with your own eyes?”
I was like “no have you?”
“No” he says.
Which is funny enough in itself, because he’s always talking about how people here know how to disappear with a leaf and use it to steal cake as a joke. Anyway olfala man goes “I have. I’ve seen it and I’ve done it.”
“Really like what?”
“Like flying.”
“What! You know how to fly? How?”
(Typical non-direct answer, he starts talking about something different) “You put ashes –this is for getting a girl- ashes from a certain leaf –“
“Yeah and bones from dead bodies or something like that,” Romeric interjects “baby bones are the best. You can do anything if you have a baby bone. You can take a baby bone and go to a locked door and they’ll open it for you.”
“What? Where do you get baby bones?
No answer.
Olfala man continues with his recipe for getting a girl. “This is for a girl that is shy and doesn’t talk to you. It doesn’t work on girls that you joke around with all the time. One time I was saying I didn’t believe in black magic but an old man told me to try this. He took ashes mixed with some other things and rubbed it into my skin until all of it was in my skin and there was none left. Then he did it again and again until it all went into my skin then he wrapped up my hand in a leaf and told me to go see the girl after dark. If you sing out her name the first time her family will sleep, the second time her animals will sleep, the third time she will be thinking of you so much she won’t be able to sleep. And she’ll get up and come to you. So I went to her house that night and I did what the old man said and when I came into the yard all of the animals were asleep. Her dog was sleeping right in front of her door but it couldn’t get up. I knocked on the door once and she sung out my name. She didn’t know I was coming but she sung out my name. I came into the house and all her family was asleep but her. We talked go go and when it was time for me to leave I said goodbye and turned around to leave out the door. The door closes behind me and I hear her father say ‘what are you doing up?’ She says ‘no papa I just came back from the toilet.’ As I was leaving the yard all the dogs got up at once and started barking.
There’s black magic all around here like that mango tree over there between Merivar and Penisies with the taboo leaf on it. If you break a leaf from that tree someone from your family will die quite soon. And when you break the leaf you’ll see it’s not white like usual. The tree has blood, blood comes out if you break the tree.”
So I never found out the story about flying but now I know not to touch the blood mango tree! Good to know.

I had a great fundraiser where I played katikati, which is like a raffle, but it’s high speed and low stakes and it somehow feels more like gambling. I organised it but I didn’t really know what I was doing. The way you play is you’ve got something like a t-shirt and ten people buy tickets and then pick a winner and then you get another prize like a bag of sugar and ten people buy tickets and then you pull the winner. It goes really fast. People get so excited. You should have seen some of the women who were betting on sugar they were so nervous it was making me uncomfortable. But we did get a lot of money. Between selling food, kava, katikati and a DVD show we made $300 which when you think about that relative to people’s salaries/cost of living here it’s more like $3000. That was for the vocational school. Then this Friday we’re having a fundraiser for the environment committee; kava and some new string band video everyone’s freaking out about.

I’m probably going to Vila this weekend. I shouldn’t go back so soon. But I promoted this festival on the wrong date. I asked them a million times if there was anything going on that date that might mess up the festival. I asked them again and again. I asked al different people and they all failed to mention that there is going to be a football tournament that week and that all the young men that should do the custom dance in the festival won’t be able to make it because they’ll be playing football. I was like AHHHG. Then I just found a blurb in the Newspaper about it. It was totally out of my control. But I still feel like and it’s going to look like I messed it up. Anyway I’m going to have to go correct it. So I’ll hop on a ship with either half of my village that is going to a wedding or an AOG youth group this weekend. I wanted to go with the wedding group but they are freaking out because they chartered a boat for the family to get to the wedding and now everybody in the village wants to get on the boat. And then the boat they chartered couldn’t come so another boat is going to come but they don’t know what boat or what size boat or when. So yikes what a headache. I think I’ll just jump on the AOG boat. The boat ride is something like 20 hours. I hope it’s a “big” ship. Though last time I was on a ship it was relatively big but I still launched some projectiles into the sea. I wish I had Dramamine. In any case if this is on the Internet during the month of May, it means I survived the voyage. If not I either didn’t survive or didn’t get on the ship.