Some photos of Maewo!

Facebook photo album of Vanuatu Photos

~Nic

Its not all bad!

I just read through all of my previous posts and I feel that i’m making maewo out to be a terrible place to live. It definitely is not the easiest of islands in Vanuatu, but it is better than most. At my place I never have to worry about tsunami’s, I’m in an area that is safe from landslides and flooding, also, there are no volcanoes on Maewo, and there is never an issue of water shortages on Maewo. All of the rivers on Maewo are fed by freshwater springs that well up out of the rock, so if you know you’re near the source all the rivers are good to drink from on Maewo. Also, I’ve been loving my time here so far. My family is a very funny and nice group of Ni-Vans, unlike most people here they rarely go to church which suits me fine as services in this country can take upwards of 4 hours. I’ve been building a multitude of things with my host dad since coming and he and I still have a large number of projects lined up to do in the coming months. So far we’ve fitted my front room with a desk and a number of shelves, we constructed a back over hang area so I have a place to hang clothes that wont get rained on, we made a shelf with no nails, its wood and bamboo, lashed together with vines! We’ve built a bunch of chairs and 2 tables, as well as a shelter for all of them outside the kitchen. We made a little cement oven and a sink with running water outside the kitchen. Our next project is to get a bunch of cement and make a new bathroom that should have a shower and a flush toilet. The school has been out of session since I showed up pretty much, and most people are just hanging out relaxing as december tends to be a month of very low activity. So far though I’ve been really happy with my site, and I think it is a great fit for me, it has really begun to feel like home for me. Also, i think that if i just wrote a blog of my everyday life post after post you'd probably stop reading by the second post because the thrills come and go and i figure its best to fill my blog up with exciting stories about the rigors of living in a 3rd world country rather than tell you all about the cookies i baked last night... haha, More stories to come in the next few months!

Holiday Adventures

On december 22^nd Jenni Warren came flying in to Ambae from Vila and Lindsay and I went to meet her at the airport. This was a bit of a fiasco as some people wanted to walk, others wanted to pay for a truck, and some people want to take a truck, but not pay for one, so what finally ended up happening was that it was too late to walk by the truck road that follows the coast of Ambae so I had to recruit a couple kids from the village to show us the bush road that went over the top of one of the small hills to get to the airport. Because we walk a lot slower than the little kids ran, it took us about twice as long as the kids told us it would take to get there, so when we showed up, Jenni had already found a truck and was on her way to Lolowai, the place where we all wait for boats to go to Maewo. Jenni called us up on the phone though and asked the driver to wait, so we caught up to Jenni and ended up being picked up by her rather than us picking her up from the airport. Definitely set the tone for the rest of the adventure. That afternoon two more volunteers from Ambae, Kara and Megan, joined us, and we took the boat back to lindsays village in south Maewo, called  Baitora. Down there they made a little kastom food for us. The minute I showed up, being the only male volunteer, I was taken away from all the women to go make Kava with the men. After all the kava was done and ready I got to go back and join the girls and drink kava and eat dinner with them. Lindsays house in Baitora is tiny, so I was given a mat to sleep on in the house with some of the young men in the village. The next morning we got up early, ate a hearty breakfast of crackers and peanut butter and then went down to the beach where we got into the biggest outrigger canoe on Maewo and proceeded to paddle our way down towards where the truck road starts in central Maewo. The canoe was huge, holding all 5 of us along with 5 of lindsays family who would take the canoe back. We got to my house and were greeted with a dinner of bread and peanut butter because my dad wanted to show off our oven to all the other volunteers. Nik hiked over and met us that night at my house, and again, we all ground shells of kava and drank. The next day we got up and debated what road to take to get to Naviso, the truck road is longer but easier supposedly so that is what we decided on. The hike there consisted of 3 hours north to Beterrara, afterwards 2 hours to reach the summit of Maewo, and then another 2 hours to hike down the otherside and get into Naviso. That night when we arrived in Naviso, we were all exhuasted but told that they had prepared a little ceremony for us. So they sat us down in front of the entire village, hung flowers from out neck and watched us eat pineapple while they sang to us in the local language. Following this they were very insistant on us all going and bathing before dinner, but we declined being too tired and said we’d bathe the next day. So we managed to pass up bathing, but Kava we werent allowed to say no to. So we ground and drank our shells of kava and then went to bed, worn out. The next day we just lounged around the village dispensary until lunch time where we were given a feast of local food, and then after lunch we went down to the bathing areas. Against custom, but to show respect to us, they allowed the female volunteers to swim with Nik and I in the men’s area. So we all went down to the river and swam. It was beautiful swimming in a river that empties straight out into the ocean. That evening we drank Kava again and it was pretty potent. None of us could walk well and two of the girls had to be carried back to the house we were sleeping at. The next morning feeling very lazy from all the kava drinking we strapped our backpacks on and started the hike back to my place. The hike took us 3 hours to get down to the point of crossing, after an hour to hike to the top, then two hours to hike down to Narovorovo, and then an hour to hike back to my village once we made it to the west side. The next morning we’d planned to hike to Big Wota, a huge set of waterfalls, but everyone was too tired so we just took a boat instead, which turned out to be a good choice as approaching the falls from a boat, was breath taking. The water falls were incredible, even though there had been a big rain that washed a lot of mud into them making the water dirty so you couldn’t see the bottom. None of us cliff jumped because of the mud, but all of the Maewo volunteers swore we’d jump when we came back sometime. The next day saw us on our way to Ambae in a boat again and we all went to St. Patricks College, where a volunteer was posted and slept there. While new years was uneventful, it was pleasant, having 3 hours of electricity a day when the generator came on, and running water with indoor plumbing. There ended up being 12 volunteers all at the school so needless to say, anytime we caught a truck anywhere or walked around we were quite the spectacle, probably being the largest group of white men most people on ambae had ever seen haha. After new years we all headed back to our sites, sick from all the candy and alcohol, but happy to have enjoyed a “whiteman” style new years.

Tropical Climates and Insects

So Maewo is a fantastic island, there are rivers coursing down almost the entire island, there are spectacular waterfalls everywhere, and the ocean is usually within about 2-15 minutes of walking from almost anywhere on the island. This is all incredible and being that I like swimming and jumping in water and all that, I couldn’t be happier. Of course all this water comes with its drawbacks. The humidity on Maewo is pretty unreal. The only way to ever make sure anything dries out is to put it in the sun for about 4 hours, which can be hard to do as Maewo frequently has rain. I hang all my clothes up on clothes hangers and then string them from a clothes line in my house and they still get damp and the cottons mold. I have to carry my mattress outside and toss it in the sun every time there is good sun, because if not, mold will grown on it. The other day I baked a loaf of bread until it was rock hard on accident and by the next morning it was soft. Haha, I think you get the idea, you redefine what dry is on this island. I’ve decided if I cant wring water out of a shirt, its dry enough to wear. I’m sure 2 years here is going to make me appreciate the dryness of tucson. Another great thing that comes with all the water is the insects. If you leave a jar of peanut butter open for about an hour, you wont be able to see the peanut butter inside anymore from the number of ants that will miraculously show up out of no where. They will get to candy that is in “air tight” ziplock bags. They even managed to get into a sealed tin of Cookies, how I have no idea?

If you don’t mind eating ants, which most people don’t at all because they’re in almost anythign that is edible here, then they’re a great source of extra protein I’m sure Bear Grylls would tell you. Flies are the next insect that bother me. While most of the time they’re just annoying because you know they hang out in feces all day and then come try to fly into your nose, whenever you have a cut, or scrape, or open sore of any type, they seem to come out of the wood work. My younger brother got a pretty bad cut climbing a tree the otherday and I am pretty sure there was about 40 flies inside of a 2 inch cut when he sat down at the kitchen table for lunch. I have to cover every cut I get because it grosses me out too much to see flies landing on them. Finally, the worst thing about the insects here are the mosquitoes. While, my family keeps telling me that it is just the season for mosquitoes and they’ll start going away as the island gets “colder” right now there are days when I don’t know if the whine of mosquitoes is imagined or really there because I feel like it doesn’t ever stop sometimes. There are one or two breeds of mosquitoes here that will still bite me even while im wearing mosquito repellent and am sitting in my house burning a mosquito coil. Luckily, after drinking a shell of kava at night, you don’t even notice the bites anymore.

A day in my life

In the morning the sun is up at around 5am and with it all the roosters in the area start crowing, I usually get up and go to the bathroom and then throw a few rocks at the roosters and go back to bed until about 8ish. Afterwards I’ll go and sit down with my family in the kitchen/dining area and usually have a plateful of taro and cabbage with coconut milk. Somedays we’ll go up into the garden to work, but as it’s the month of rest, most mornings we just hang out and play cards for a while and then wander around to the neighboring communities and storian. This goes on until lunch time at which point I sit down with my family and eat another bowl of taro with cabbage and coconut milk for lunch. In the afternoons, I usually walk down to the school and charge my zune or cell phone, but most of the time I just go down to walk around a little as sitting around playing cards can start to get very boring. Afterwards, I walk back up to my house, do a small series of push ups and sit ups and then shower. Showering for the first month was a thing of entertainment for my village because in order to shower I simply stand under a shoulder height pipe and soap up then rinse off in my boxers. Now, though its become old news that the white man bathes just like all the locals do haha. After, I go hang out with my family in the family area and am usually treated to a handful of different local foods as extended family bring it to come and sit and look at me and sometimes talk with me, afterwards we play some more cards and then I brush my teeth and go to bed. I enjoy having lots of free time and being able to be lazy, but I think I’ll appreciate being able to start my projects in february and having more to do most days.

Maewo: Hiker's Dream / Casual Walker's nightmare

Maewo has a single “road” which runs from the north end of the west coast to about the center of maewo. The reason they call it a road is because a truck can, occasionally drive this road when the rivers are too big or a land slide hasn’t just ruined a section of it. This means that anytime you go anywhere on Maewo, you take a boat which is expensive, or you walk. Not having much money and in general being a cheap person, I much prefer the walking option.  Now, I’d like to believe that I am a fairly competant hiker. I was hiking very regularly in the states before I joined the peace corps. I loved all the challenging and difficult hikes I could find around Tucson as well as a few that were a little farther away. All that being said, Maewo makes me feel like I am just learning how to walk all over again. The only road that you can easily walk around on is the truck road, and that feels like an average hike in the states. All the rest of the trails on Maewo make me feel like it’d be easier to just walk a greased balance beam. I’m finally starting to get the hang of walking around after having been here almost 3 months, but Maewo is not friendly. The trail that goes from the school up to my house only takes a bout 10 minutes, but it goes up at about a 45-60 degree incline, and when there is rain, I feel like going down might be safer if you just treated it like a bobsled shoot. The road to my garden would put any seasoned hiker to the test. It takes about an hour of walking through jungle so thick a lot of the time you cant even see your own feet, on a trail that is about as wide as a two by four and is littered with sections of quicksand like soft mud, hard packed clay and moss covered stones that are more slippery than a bannana peel. All of that being said, I love hiking around on Maewo. A simple trip to the garden makes me feel like I’m exploring some untamed wilderness, and when you hike to the east side of Maewo it feels like an epic journey out of lord of the rings or something. Maewo is not a friendly island to travel at all, but I am very happy to be in a place where walking anywhere almost always is an adventure.

Kava Kastom of Maewo

Finally, I arrive at my house and am greeted by all my family in my village, which means the entire village was there to greet me. One of my dads, again not my straight father, but another uncle I’m to refer to as papa, introduces everyone rapid fire, and then tells me that he and I are going to drink a shell of kava together and then eat. The custom of drinking kava on maewo is explained briefly to me and we proceed to drink, while I hope I don’t ruin any of the custom rituals while drinking my first shell on maewo. The ritual with drinking kava on maewo is thus: A group of men sit in a circle with large pieces of coral that they use to grind the kava, these stones are called bwasis, you hold your bwasis in your right hand and then hold as much kava as you can with you left hand while grinding your bwasis into it. Below you is a large wooden plate that you grind the kava onto called a tambia. This process takes about 10-30 minutes depending on how much kava, and how practiced you are. The first time I ground kava, it took me 40 minutes, which of course was a source of great hilarity to my family. Once the roots become a large pile of pulp the next phase is milking the kava. First small water is added to the kava pulp and then using your hands you ring as much of the liquid as you can out of the pulp into a coconut shell. These shells are smoothed and used specially for drinking kava and are called min-lasah. After you milk as much as you can into the shell, the next step is called serving, which means that you strain the kava through a coconut husk into another coconut shell and repeat until you’ve done this 3 times, then you wait until everyone has ground and is ready to drink, or in my case you move on to the next step because everyone has already been waiting on me for about 20 minutes. Finally you fill a coconut shell with water and pour this water over the hands of the man that you ground kava for and tell him, Ko mak malloh. Which, roughly means your kava drink. After you serve the kava one final time into the shell you just emptied the water out of and then he can take it to drink. So I washed my grandpa’s hands and passed him his shell then turned and got my hands washed by my uncle (he was my uncle and not my dad because he is the brother of my mom). I took my shell and got ready to drink. I hate the taste of kava, but the effect of it is a very pleasant drunkenness. Before im allowed to drink im told that there is more ceremony involved with the drinking of the kava too. On maewo all the men say a kustom prayer in language and then you kneel down, face south, close your eyes and drain the shell in one go. After you finish drinking your shell you let the last of the kava drip into the pulp that was left behind from making it, and then proceed to throw the kava pulp out into the jungle. Afterwards you go eat quickly because if you wait too long the kava will start working and I’d barely be able to finish a handful of french fries after kava starts working. In my village on Maewo, that is the entirety of the kava drinking custom, but on the east coast, after you finish drinking, you’re expected to yell out Spoy! And wait for a response, if someone responds you’re expected to begin grinding a shell because it means you’ll have someone coming to drink another shell with you, but if no one responds you yell a second time and this time you yell Sve! The first yell is to let people know you’re drinking kava and to come join you and the second yell is to left people know you just finished a shell. Im glad I live on the west coast cause one shell is all I feel up to most times haha.

The Adventures of traveling in Vanuatu

November 9th           

 The next adventure came about when we were getting to our sites. So the peace corps in all of their kindness said they would pay the excess baggage charges for up to 36 kilos (80lbs) so we could bring a lot of stuff with us when we flew to site and then just send the rest of it by ship to come in the next weeks. Unfortunately, peace corps in all of their short sitedness decided to book 8 volunteers on a 12 passenger plane. We all lined, up, checked in and paid all the charges and were all set to go, when one of the pilots comes out and tells us that everyone has to unload 15 kilos of luggage so that the plane will be light enough to make its trip. So all of us go into the back of the airport and start picking an choosing what we think might end up lost and what we cant live without. Finally we load onto the plane 15 kilos lighter per person and the pilot informs us that our stuff will show up in the airport with the next flight coming in a week. Unfortunately for me, I’m flying to Ambae and then taking a boat to maewo, so coming back to the airport to retrieve my luggage as it comes a week later isnt much of an option! So the plane takes off and lands in Ambae and then I hop on a little speed boat to make an hour long trip Maewo, while on the boat I find out that the boat driver is my Grandpa, and one of the other men who was just coming back from santo is my dad (brothers of your dad are your dad too in their culture). Feeling more comfortable that I’m now surrounded by my family and on my way home, to a place I’ve never seen, I start enjoying the boat ride. The driver of the boat is a man named Basil, and he tells me that he’s going to take me to a place that tourist pay lots of money to go see, but because I’m family he will be taking me there for free. So I got to see the cave of the moon, which is a huge cave which the ocean fills up and boats can drive inside of. The place if beautiful and Basil tells me I am lucky because even some of the locals on maewo havent seen this place. I’m pretty sure the way their culture works is that you’re as nice as you can be to everyone so that everyone always feels indebted to you. Haha

Vila:

November 1-9:

The week I spent in Vila was no good. I appreciate all the amenities Vila offers, such as running water and electricity, but after that I’m not a fan. Vila is crowded, dirty and expensive. The place we stay they put us 4 to a room that is the size of the average bathroom in the states. I’d probably be more comfortable if I just slept on the ground at some random relative of my host family’s haha. To top off the week in Vila it was really my first time of feeling sick at all since coming to Vanuatu and it was while I was in Vila. So on Nov. 4^th I finally got to swear in and officially become a volunteer and at that time a few of us almost passed out because the room was unreasonably hot. Would have made quite the swearing in if during the middle of us swearing to uphold the constitution one or two of us suddenly passed out haha. During the week they were trying to get us all through our medical check ups and ready for site and a load of stuff. I lost 27.7 lbs during our 8 weeks of training, which was the most in the training group, but I’d already expected I would lose a lot as I’d gained an unhealthy amount of weight before coming to peace corps in an attempt to sate my fast food and sweet tooth. The nurse said I was a little dehydrated, but otherwise in great health, as if I’d be surprised that losing weight would be a good thing when I was already quite over weight haha.

Notice:

Ok, I realize it has been a long time since my last post on the blog and sadly because of my lack of ability to frequently update my blog im going to be posting large amounts of stuff in the few opportunities I get to use the internet!