Big Thanks All To Those Who Donated!

I can't believe, in less than three weeks my amazing friends and family have helped me to collect over $1,600 to buy computers and sewing machines for the vocational school I work at. Perfect timing too because here I am in the capital, Port Vila, ready to purchase the supplies in time for the start of the school year. My local conterparts, the manager and teachers, are so surprised and excited. They didn't think it would be possible to collect such a sum in such a short time. They will surely be glowing when I hop off the boat next week with 2 computes and 3 sewing machines so we can start the two new courses, home economics and computer science this february.

Thanks once again from the Lamap Rural Training Center.

Warm wishes,
Stephanie

All I want for Christmas is computers and sewing machines for my school!

As you know I'm serving in the Peace Corps down in Vanuatu in the South Pacific. One of the projects I'm working on is helping a local grassroots vocational school grow and better serve its small community. The school is hoping to add two new courses in 2011, Home Economics and Computer Science. But they can't get enough funds from the local community to buy the supplies they need to expand.

The community has invested a lot in creating this school over the last three years because they see that the many area youth that only go to middle school don't have the skills to succeed. The community has raised funds to create the school, build a two classrooms, buy a computer, and run the school for 3 years but now we need your help. We're trying to raise $1,600 over the Christmas holiday to buy two more computers and three sewing machines so that the students will have what they need to succeed this year.

Christmas is the time to give and think of others. I know a lot of you like to donate to charities in others' names as Christmas presents. So now you can give a donation gift through this secure online donation website run by Peace Corps, plus you have the added benefit of helping out little old me and the assurance that it really will be going directly to a community in need (50% of it won't get lost in logistics of running a big non-profit). So this Christmas show your love to friends, fam, coworkers, strangers, etc. by donating to the Lamap Rural Training Center.

More info on the project

Donate Here!

Meet the students and teachers at the school in this youtube video.



Please try to forward this info to some friends and co-workers. Trust me they won't be annoyed, I know them. They love this sort of thing. Don't make me use scare tactics (If you don't send it to five people right now you will get a paper cut this afternoon, guaranteed;). No but really I need your help to get all these supplies in time fore school next year, so try and pull me some strings gang.

I love you all lots and lots! Have a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Love,
Stephanie

Ambrym Volcano hike

Ok I promise I'll write a proper blog post describing every detail but right now I just arrived in Brisbane and I'm beat so I thought I'd put these videos up. If a picture shows a thousand words then a video must be exponentially better.

Here's the gist: Virginia and I hiked up the volcanic island of Ambrym to visit the twin volcanoes, Benbow and Marum, an 8 hour hike, then we were attacked by tornadoes of poison gas flinging ash around. The guide was walking around with a small child on his shoulders right on the edge of the volcano despite strong winds. We saw lava. It is infinitely more amazing in person than in video I assure you. We camped outside the crater of the volcano. In the morning we walked back to shore and soaked our blistered feet in the hot springs on the beach.

Everybody Run! The French Are Invading!...again

This huge French ship came with a hundred soldiers and apparently they are coming back next year for a whole month next march to do some service projects. Cool.




My little recycling poster boys. We did some fun workshops with these kids on recycling and disposing of rubbish.




Throw your rubbish away in the 'ol' but batteries must be thrown away in a 'cemen ol'

One Year Has Passed Already?!

Well actually a year and a month. Which means around this time next year I’ll be getting on a plane back to the states. I can leave as early as October 5th but I think I’ll stay as long as I can without missing Halloween. That is a long ways away still and I need to enjoy the present instead of dwelling on the future (which is surprisingly hard ‘cause, well, if you know me you know how obsessed I am with planning the future).



Speaking of the present, today happened. I was supposed give a talk to a bunch of elementary school kids about the environment but then when I woke up I found out that it’s a public holiday and school was canceled. Constitution Day, like Vanuatu needs another excuse not to go to work. Nobody’s been getting much done here recently because of a couple deaths. When someone in the family dies the entire extended family has to take 10 days off work and stay together with the body (don’t worry they bury the body the first day (It’s hot here, ew)). So there was one death and then when those ten days finally passed and everyone was allowed to go home there were two more. And everyone is extended family so basically the whole town’s been shut down for three weeks. But hey gotta respect the dead.

So when I heard that I had my morning free I decided to go visit my favorite cafe, probably the only café on the island of Malekula. It’s only reliably open like that because it is the front porch of a handicapped man and not quite obese woman. They never leave the house so they are always open. They’re great fun and they have good food and they are also the only place that sells fresh vegetables. Anyway stocked up on the fresh veges, then made some pumpkin bread and some fake Tabasco sauce.

Then my tech savvy friend, who always has technology problems for me to fix and I never know how to fix them but he keeps coming back for more, showed up. Today he brought me a fake iPhone he’d just bought. It’s called ‘Phone’ and on the back it says, “Designed in America by Phone a Assembled in China”. It looked so cool but was totally worthless. He’d never heard of an iPhone before but then I showed him online what a real iPhone is. He got so excited and now he has to have one. I know that is not surprising to most people reading this but I think anyone who’s lived in Vanuatu would be surprised because most Ni-Vans either don’t give a crap about technology or are afraid to try it. I’m always telling people how much easier computers will make their lives but it’s actually a surprisingly hard sell sometimes. They’re like ‘OK so it can type letters? Why would I want to type letters and pay 40 cents to print them when I could just put my pen to the paper here?’ So when this guy is getting really excited about an iPhone I’m like I know I totally want one too! iPhones, building bridges across cultural cleavages. Maybe instead of getting Palestinian kids and Israeli kids to play soccer together they should just get them talking about how badly they want the new iPhone. Tell them if they come up with a way to stop the fighting they’ll all get iPhones. Problem solved (Go American Capitalism!).

Then my friend, feeling grateful to me for enlightening him about iPhones, says he wants to do something for me.
“Stephanie, you used to fight will you fight again when you go back to the US?”
“Yeah I’ve taken like 6 years off from karate but I really do want to get back into it when I go back to the states”
“Yeah when I used to live in the Capital I used to always fight. I used to always drink vodka and fight. One day 28 men chased me down and they kicked my ass from here over to that house over there. Then I got kastom medicine [black magic] put on my bones so that they’re stronger. After that if I punched a man one time he would go down. I got them in my feet too and my elbows. You look at these cuts too. I think only my family knows the secret. It’s the bones of my grandfather [and/or ancestor]. I put his bones in my bones so I have double bones now. They can’t break and they’re really heavy to throw a punch. You could get it done too so when you go back to fight in the US you’ll have double bones too. If you hit someone they’ll go down in one punch”

So now I’m seriously contemplating getting double bones, I mean yeah I want double bones that would be awesome. I just have to find out more about the procedure, like how deep are the cuts and where do the grandfather/ancestor bones come from? I asked him, “well if he’s not my ancestor why is he going to want to help me out? I mean if I’m not from here would it work on me too?” He assures me that it doesn’t matter, that it works the same on everybody. There never seems to be any logic with magic. I guess it doesn’t really matter anyway because I don’t really believe in black magic but man I’d love to try it. And if nothing else it’ll be a story, so I’ll keep y’all updated.

A message from the future to Man Vanuatu

I come from the future. Did you know that? I come from a world of microwave ovens, internet, computers, heart surgery, video games, gang violence, crack hoes, obesity, etc. I know you guys are psyched to have all these new stores with all this imported candy and chips but your children are going to have diabetes and plenty of cavities as a result, and possibly obesity. I know this because I come from the future and these things have already happened in our society. Like they say in that movie ‘The God’s Must Be Crazy’, every time man has come up with ways to make his life easier he has in fact made it more complicated. I look at the lives of man Vanuatu and I think wow you are chilling all the time that must be great. Because if you can, why not? But for us in the future if you led a life like that with papa working part time in the garden, a stay at home mom, and five kids you’d have to be on welfare. But if you own all your own land and grow all your own food then why should you have to work for the anything else? It’s really a Utopian system. If the rest of the world didn’t exist to make you want to buy all it’s cellphones and satellite dishes, you could live like this forever but alas that ship has sail… literally a boat sailed up to your little island 230 years ago and there is nothing you can do about it but prepare for the inevitable. All I’m saying is appreciate what you’ve got, don’t sell your land, get your kids to the highest possible level of education, and enjoy the lack of social pressure to wear clothes without holes in them. Ta! -pis cop blong yu.



If there’s one thing I’ve learned here it’s that development as we see it in the US is not the best fit for all places. I feel bad for Americans and especially American kids that they have to grow up in suburbs with no natural swimming holes and trees full of fresh fruit to climb and pick. These kids here in Vanuatu haven’t been corrupted with high fructose corn syrup. They crave mandarins, mangoes, sweet corn, and fresh lemonade, not bubble gum, Doritos, and soda. I remember in Elementary school it was drilled into us that the US was the best country on earth and that we were so lucky to be here and not starving in Ethiopia (or my parents would have been told starving kids in China and today’s kids probably hear about starving kids in Afghanistan). But not all developing countries are starving. That is a very small percentage or the developing world. And I would argue from what I see here in Vanuatu that the developing countries that still rely on their traditional eating habits are probably eating better than Americans.

When my group of 40 Peace Corps volunteers arrived in Vanuatu last September, everyone one was freaking out because the people didn’t eat enough protein. Influenced by the Adkins craze of the last decade, we were shocked that these people were so uneducated about some crazy American food fad. Many immediately started a campaign to get people to eat more meat. But now looking back I see that the people here actually know more about eating healthy than we Americans do. And it was wrong of us to jump in and expect we know best because we’re more educated. When they eat the island food it’s based on root crops then lot’s of fruits, then vegetables followed by meat. Pretty much fits into the food pyramid. Plus it’s all 100% organic and locally grown. They don’t eat a lot of meat, true but they eat it nearly everyday, and they also eat nuts. Anyhow when I think about the mainstays of my university diet; Chinese takeaway, ramen noodles with frozen veggies, hot dogs, beer, and splenda products, I’m shocked by how bad it was. All of it processed, rarely fresh, organic, or local. The reason I was eating that way was because I had no money and I think that kind of diet is reflective of a lot of lower income Americans. You always think that no matter how bad we are eating in the states, all those millions of people in developing countries are eating much worse. Well think again. As a rule people that are eating as they’ve been eating for thousands of years have a more healthy diet than those that change their eating habits every 10 years due to a new scientific discovery. We haven’t figured it all out yet. When we do maybe we’ll know better than they do but in the mean time maybe we should try to eat more like our ancestors, or more like people in developing countries.

I should note that it’s not all good here. In the last 20 years people have started eating more rice, tinned meat, and over processed Asian imports. Hence the warning in the first paragraph. Island food is pretty healthy but people are moving to a more unhealthy diet because they see store bought food as more prestigious. My neighbor just lost his leg to Diabetes.

Highs and Lows

Yesterday I had a horrible day everything went wrong and I was so ready to write a big angry long blog rant (know as a grant in internet slang ;)) but I’m glad I didn’t because today I had a good day. Although all the problems from the previous day are still floating there waiting to be confronted again on Monday, at least you don’t have to read my rant. Basically I have two main jobs and one I just added on there cause it’s fun. Of the two main jobs, one is adviser and teacher at a vocational school and the other is adviser for the environment and tourism committee. And then I also do some work with the women’s committee cause I feel like it even though it’s not my job (call it volunteer work). The Environment and tourism committee is doing good work. We’re getting ready for a big art and culture festival in about a month and a half. But on the other hand, ugh headache of the century, the vocational school is in shambles and the whole thing has fallen on my shoulders. As in I’m the only one keeping it afloat. So yesterday was horrible due to various factors surrounding the circumstances of said vocational school disaster. and I nearly cried actually because so many people kept on letting me down over and over again. But then I ran into some friendly faces that cheered me up. Anyway the point of the story is even though yesterday was such a let down, today made up for it cause I had my workshop with the women’s group and they are just really awesome and a good time. We talked about nutrition and food safety and I showed them how to make some English food and some American food and we exchanged recipes. It was really fun and I felt like we accomplished something. I think the nutrition and food safety stuff went over well. We made plans to build some more energy efficient and health friendly stoves and to make hand washing stations outside everyone’s toilets (I showed them how this time and next time we’ll each make one). I think they really like it too. Plus I think our meetings have improved the cohesiveness and morale of the group. I just wonder how I could make that continue after I leave.

The women’s group also helped me build this wood fire stove out of cement. I got the instructions and then we all made it together. It was the first time any of us had worked with cement and it was empowering, surprisingly easy and fun. And now I have a stove which only cost me 13 dollars (had to buy the cement). We mixed the cement in an old canoe and used banana leaves and scrap wood to make the frames for the cement.



and here it is when it's finished. That blue can is where I'm going to put a pipe for the smoke. It's been surprisingly hard to find one though.