Being a desert person, moving to the pacific islands has been quite
the experience. Obviously even without constant rain the humidity
here is stifling. The minute you step out of the plane into Vanuatu
you feel like you're breathing over a pot of boiling water. I was
never too bothered by hot days in Tucson as long as it wasn't monsoon
season. 100 degree dry heat really is nothing compared to 85 with
humidity. This is something that after almost 2 years of living in
Vanuatu still catches me by surprise at times. The first and best
example being when I had first arrived on maewo I would notice that
if my house had been cool through the day my bed sheets were often
wet with condensation as I would climb into them at night. This
happens sometimes when you're out camping and its becoming cold at
night. In vanuatu this happens all well above 75 degrees farenheit.
The next shocking difference was when I was away from site for a week
during new years during my very first year. I came home to find all
the clothes that i'd hung up in my house covered in mold. One of my
tshirts was molded so badly that it became my snot rag due to how
badly it had rotted in the week that it was hung up in my house.
After that I realized that my clothes needed to be thrown outside in
the hot sun at least once every couple weeks or so, otherwise the
cotton shirts might not make it through two years.
It was a source of constant annoyance for me as a desert dweller and
it wasnt until roughly the start of my second year of service that I
came to an acceptance of the issue. We were having a particularly
long rainy period (about 3 weeks where I didnt see the sun once) and
I was running out of clean clothes so I finally did my was in the
rain and hung them up under my roof to dry. The next day passed and
all of the clothes were still wet enough that if I tried really hard
I could still wring a bit of water out of them. The second day passed
and I was re-wearing my last piece of non-washed clothes and the
clothes still felt wet to the touch. The third day came and after
three days straight of wearing the same clothes I finally came to
accept the fact that clothes that you couldnt actually wring any
water out of were going to have to be considered dry enough and worn.
Acceptance is definitely the correct word choice in this circumstance
because I will never acclimate to wearing damp clothing as being
normal.
My most recent realization and what prompted me to post this blog
was a science experiment I attempted with the year 7 students at the
school. Everyone knows the classic saturate a solution with salt or
sugar, hang a rope in it and leave it in the sun for the water to
evaporate and crystals form on the rope experiment right? Well guess
what on Maewo, it doesnt work. One gloriously sunny day, I had the
students pair up and saturate a 250ml beaker half filled with water
using either salt or sugar. Afterwards they wrote their names on them
and sat them outside under the sun. It was a nice and toasty day so I
assumed that if we left them there through the day that afternoon
we'd be able to start seeing some crystals forming. The students came
back after lunch and we went to check. If any evaporation had
occurred it was imperceptible. Not to be let down I told the students
to leave them and we'd check them each day so we could record the
progress of the crystals growing. After the second day, there were
still no crystals at all. The third day only of the beakers had any
crystal growth evident. By the fourth day two of the beakers now had
some crystal growth and since it was the end of the week, I called
the experiment. In 4 days of constant sun the most water that had
evaporated out of any of the beakers was 90ml. It was quite shocking
to me as a single hot day of tucson you'd likely to be able to get a
few liters of water evaporated, on Maewo you'd be lucky to get
100ml's evaporated.
