These are just some of my many new skills that will be rendered absolutely useless and soon forgotten upon returning to the good old comfortable usa.
1 Killing and dressing a pig, chicken or fish
2 Doing anything and everything with a machete
3 Gardening in the tropics. It’s easy as long as you don’t bury it upside down it will grow. I’ve had particular success with peanuts, pumpkin, cucumber and onion
4 Reading the secret meaning behind what ni-vans are saying, i.e. reading ni-vans minds. It takes a lot of cultivation of relationships, observation of behavior, and analysis of motives to understand even a basic conversation. Essentially people lie expecting that you know their lying. So then it’s not really lying, if you have an understanding that one person is lying. At least that’s the local theory.
5 Staying clean without running water
6 Cooking like a ni-van: Cutting food without a cutting board, using my hands as a cutting board while sitting on a stool 5 inches off the ground.
7 Using coconut milk in every meal
8 Catching crabs with my bare hands and bare feet and tying them to a stick with a vine.
9 Baking delicious cakes, bread, and quiches in a pot over a wood fire
10 Speaking Bislama sign language, (also speaking Bislama (Pidgen English) for that matter)
11 Hiking barefoot all day long
12 Sleeping without a mattress
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Breaking News: Community organizing can be a pain in the arse in Vanuatu!
My apologies in advance for another work rant about the difficulties of getting things done in Vanuatu.
The ecotourism project’s busiest month should have been June however many of the committee members were busy in the capital. So I was stuck being the only one freaking out about all the work that needed to be done. I could have just let it go and said hey this is their project and if they are in Vila well then it’s their fault if the work doesn’t get done. Anyway I didn’t do that. The biggest work was preparing the venue for the big tourism events coming up over the yacht season. The first event was going to take place on Thursday the 16thonly ten days away. However our venue had no roof, or chairs or table and there were only 10 days till the event. I get the tour guides together to try to make a plan to work on the house. They say ok let’s do it this Friday. I go talk to the chief to arrange his support to get more community members there. I then make an announcement at the two community churches to let the community know that they are expected to come give a hand.
On Friday, I go to the prospective venue and there is no one there. Nobody, not one person, showed up to work. I just stayed at the house all day waiting. Honestly it wasn’t so bad waiting. I visited a good friend who lives across the street and met a tourist that was passing through. I still felt pretty disrespected. Plus I was freaking out because of the approaching deadline. But I also knew that the fact that they disrespected me could be my best bet to get the job done.
That night, I go to my host family and tell them the story over kava. They were appalled. “They made you wait all day and nobody showed up!” (by the way the people saying that should have been there too.) The mamas in my host family then go walk with me to the various workers houses and shame them with the story of how they made me wait all day for them. The word gets spread all over about the horrible offense I suffered (though it really wasn’t as bad they make it out to be). All this sympathy drummed up a lot more support and awareness than my announcements and meetings. It just goes to show that people pay more attention to gossip than what’s said in church. Next thing I know the chief is coming to me saying he’ll have the whole community down there Wednesday. “You no worry You no kick.” I tell him that’s cutting it a bit close but he says well that’s our way of doing things here, wait till the last minute.
The American in me couldn’t deal with leaving it to the last minute so I managed to recruit some boys to get building supplies for the house on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday when I go to the venue low and behold 30 people are working away on the house. It was a miracle. For the first time in my Peace Corps experience everyone who said they’d show up, actually did show up. As I walked up to the group and grabbed a knife to help descale the fish for lunch, I couldn’t help but smile and laugh. You have to go about things in the most roundabout way to get results in this country. But I guess I’ve kinda got the hang of it. Look at me, I used my cultural knowledge for community organizing.
Thanks for the attentive ear. I feel a lot better now.XOXO
The ecotourism project’s busiest month should have been June however many of the committee members were busy in the capital. So I was stuck being the only one freaking out about all the work that needed to be done. I could have just let it go and said hey this is their project and if they are in Vila well then it’s their fault if the work doesn’t get done. Anyway I didn’t do that. The biggest work was preparing the venue for the big tourism events coming up over the yacht season. The first event was going to take place on Thursday the 16thonly ten days away. However our venue had no roof, or chairs or table and there were only 10 days till the event. I get the tour guides together to try to make a plan to work on the house. They say ok let’s do it this Friday. I go talk to the chief to arrange his support to get more community members there. I then make an announcement at the two community churches to let the community know that they are expected to come give a hand.
On Friday, I go to the prospective venue and there is no one there. Nobody, not one person, showed up to work. I just stayed at the house all day waiting. Honestly it wasn’t so bad waiting. I visited a good friend who lives across the street and met a tourist that was passing through. I still felt pretty disrespected. Plus I was freaking out because of the approaching deadline. But I also knew that the fact that they disrespected me could be my best bet to get the job done.
That night, I go to my host family and tell them the story over kava. They were appalled. “They made you wait all day and nobody showed up!” (by the way the people saying that should have been there too.) The mamas in my host family then go walk with me to the various workers houses and shame them with the story of how they made me wait all day for them. The word gets spread all over about the horrible offense I suffered (though it really wasn’t as bad they make it out to be). All this sympathy drummed up a lot more support and awareness than my announcements and meetings. It just goes to show that people pay more attention to gossip than what’s said in church. Next thing I know the chief is coming to me saying he’ll have the whole community down there Wednesday. “You no worry You no kick.” I tell him that’s cutting it a bit close but he says well that’s our way of doing things here, wait till the last minute.
The American in me couldn’t deal with leaving it to the last minute so I managed to recruit some boys to get building supplies for the house on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday when I go to the venue low and behold 30 people are working away on the house. It was a miracle. For the first time in my Peace Corps experience everyone who said they’d show up, actually did show up. As I walked up to the group and grabbed a knife to help descale the fish for lunch, I couldn’t help but smile and laugh. You have to go about things in the most roundabout way to get results in this country. But I guess I’ve kinda got the hang of it. Look at me, I used my cultural knowledge for community organizing.
Thanks for the attentive ear. I feel a lot better now.XOXO
Highest Highs
and some lows
I’ve had some low points in the past 20 months; all of them in the first 9 months of service. It has been pretty much all uphill from there. They would include:
1. Feeling out of place in the training village,
2. Getting stared at and pitied in my first 3 months in my community,
3. The time the teachers stopped showing up and the school closed for a term,
4. Getting bed bugs,
5. Being medically evacuated for diphtheria in May 2010.
But let’s not focus on the negative. I think the highs make up for it:
1. Moving to my very own cute as a button little thatch house after living with a host family for 5 months.
2. Getting little baby Marie Antoinette during my first week in my comunity. She was so tiny and fluffy and full of fleas!
3. Organizing 30 self important busy community leaders to build a venue for the tourism events.
4. Organizing 50 self important yachties to attend our tourism events in one of the most remote places on earth.
5. Finally being able to tell a good joke in Bislama and making my friends laugh.
6. Peering over the edge of Marum Volcano with Virginia in Dec 2010. Plus the trip to Australia over Xmas/New Years. All 3 weeks were a high.
7. Nina’s Visit! Land diving wooo!
8. Visiting other volunteers in Vanuatu; Justine on Maewo, Amy on Lamen, Robert, Gaia, and Jason on Pentecost, Hali, Zoe, Laura, and Jake on Tanna, Zoe and Whitney on Santo, all my peeps on Malekula, Ambae, Alisha on Ambrym, Desiree on Nguna and Alexia and Kalli in Vila.
9. Electricity and meat vacations: Meeting up with the other volunteers on my Island, organizing beer pong tournaments, snorkeling, and eating lots of meat; Karen, Sandra, Ricky, Andrew, Marie, Neill, Josh, Sara, Yegor and Jeff
10. Helping out with all the youth leadership camps (called GLOW/BILDs) in Wowo, Lakatoro, Lamap, and Blacksands. Soon to come one last camp in Emua my training village.
11. Having a kava bar named after me. And enjoying a good storian session with my oldfellas over kava.
12. Painting huge world map murals with Neil, and an environment mural with Amy. Soon to come another world map in my community.
13. Hiring Karine to teach at the vocational school. You Yes Karine! She literally saved the school from ruin and took heaviest the burden from my shoulders.
14. Realizing my students have actually mastered the material I’ve taught them.
15. Seeing my projects functioning properly on their own as I finish my time and prepare to leave.
I’ve had some low points in the past 20 months; all of them in the first 9 months of service. It has been pretty much all uphill from there. They would include:
1. Feeling out of place in the training village,
2. Getting stared at and pitied in my first 3 months in my community,
3. The time the teachers stopped showing up and the school closed for a term,
4. Getting bed bugs,
5. Being medically evacuated for diphtheria in May 2010.
But let’s not focus on the negative. I think the highs make up for it:
1. Moving to my very own cute as a button little thatch house after living with a host family for 5 months.
2. Getting little baby Marie Antoinette during my first week in my comunity. She was so tiny and fluffy and full of fleas!
3. Organizing 30 self important busy community leaders to build a venue for the tourism events.
4. Organizing 50 self important yachties to attend our tourism events in one of the most remote places on earth.
5. Finally being able to tell a good joke in Bislama and making my friends laugh.
6. Peering over the edge of Marum Volcano with Virginia in Dec 2010. Plus the trip to Australia over Xmas/New Years. All 3 weeks were a high.
7. Nina’s Visit! Land diving wooo!
8. Visiting other volunteers in Vanuatu; Justine on Maewo, Amy on Lamen, Robert, Gaia, and Jason on Pentecost, Hali, Zoe, Laura, and Jake on Tanna, Zoe and Whitney on Santo, all my peeps on Malekula, Ambae, Alisha on Ambrym, Desiree on Nguna and Alexia and Kalli in Vila.
9. Electricity and meat vacations: Meeting up with the other volunteers on my Island, organizing beer pong tournaments, snorkeling, and eating lots of meat; Karen, Sandra, Ricky, Andrew, Marie, Neill, Josh, Sara, Yegor and Jeff
10. Helping out with all the youth leadership camps (called GLOW/BILDs) in Wowo, Lakatoro, Lamap, and Blacksands. Soon to come one last camp in Emua my training village.
11. Having a kava bar named after me. And enjoying a good storian session with my oldfellas over kava.
12. Painting huge world map murals with Neil, and an environment mural with Amy. Soon to come another world map in my community.
13. Hiring Karine to teach at the vocational school. You Yes Karine! She literally saved the school from ruin and took heaviest the burden from my shoulders.
14. Realizing my students have actually mastered the material I’ve taught them.
15. Seeing my projects functioning properly on their own as I finish my time and prepare to leave.
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