Vanuatu is an archipelago of 83 small islands in the South pacific with a population of 250,000 people. Due to this isolating environment of lots of little islands with rough terrain in a big pacific ocean, it is ridiculously cultural and linguistically diverse; over one hundred completely distinct languages for only 250,000 people. The people and islands of Vanuatu were not unified as a country until both the French and the English simultaneously colonized them at the turn of the 19th century. As a result they speak a creole of native languages, French, English all mixed together which is called bislama.
In my area at least, the people were not poor because they have a strong family support system, a diversified portfolio of income generating options, they own the land they live on and they grow all the food they need. They earn around $3000 per year and are pretty self sufficient. The main areas where they fall behind are in education, health care, and infrastructure. On average people have a 6th grade education and it can take between a few hours to a few days to get to the nearest hospital, always over rough terrain and with very unreliable and expensive transportation. The country became independent in 1980 and has been slowly but surely climbing out of the status of least developing countries and is now on the border to joining the ranks of developing countries. To catch a glimpse of the whirl wind pace of change, just think that every Vanuatu airplane pilot or computer systems manager is the grandson/daughter of someone who lived in the stone ages.
After two months of training near the capital in September and October of 09 I moved to the second biggest island, Malekula in the village of Lamap. Lamap was the former capital of the French colony and has many vestiges of this including French language, French schools, French Catholic Church, and some tasty French cuisine. Of course they also left rotting old cement structures like old government buildings without rooves, power lines even though there has been no electricity in Lamap since independence, land disputes and even an old tennis court with night lighting that doesn’t work.
The Lamap Ecotourism project
For the two years I lived in Lamap I worked as a business advisor to a grassroots ecotourism project as well as to a new community-run vocational school. The ecotourism project balanced community environmental needs with the income generating power of the growing tourism industry. Through ecotourism products such as hiking tours, snorkeling, cultural festivals and island entertainment, the community was able to afford environmental project such as waste management, coral reef monitoring and clean up, marine protected areas, environmental education campaigns, and the promotion and introduction of solar power lighting.
The vocational school was only three years old when I arrived and had never finished a full year of school. The manager, managing committee, and I faced many challenges as we couldn’t find qualified teachers that would take the salary we could afford to pay. After just settling in to site our head teacher stopped coming to school and so did most of the students. We changed the salary system to allow for more incentives and bonuses without over straining the budget and managed to attract two new teachers who finished out a full year in 2011. We lowered the reliance on school fees with secondary income generation projects integrated into the students’ studies. We also got the school recognized as an education institution, got it to fall into the guidelines required by the government in order to allow us to give out certified diplomas so our students could graduate and go on to higher level technical schools.
This was my host mama for 2 years. Miss her!
As secondary projects I assisted the local women’s association in getting up and running again and did some hygiene and sanitation projects trying to move away from open sewage toilets to water seal toilets built from cement. I also learned some of the local native language, lots of local stories, learned to weave mats and baskets and drink lots of kava, made lots of friends, chilled out and read a lot of books while hanging in my hammock in my bamboo hut.
My Favorite Grandma/kava drinking buddy and our favorite nakamal owner (the taller one)
Vanuatu is a beautiful place with such friendly people who accepted me as family immediately. I learned a lot of lessons from them. Like to complain is to ask for help. So don’t say you’re cold unless you want the shirt off the back of the guy sitting next to you. Also share everything with everyone, even if it’s your last one. So what? They’re just material things. The joy of giving is worth more than any one thing. My time in the Peace Corps was such a great experience; I would readily do it over again.
