Parents Visit (7/11/11)

 This is a kind of long story, but I guess that is to be expected from me as most of my stories are long ones. So at the start of June I got headed to Ambae to start my trip back into town to see my parents. The trip was off to a brilliant start with me getting drenched in salt water on the crossing as is usual. Once I got to Ambae because all of the volunteers on east Ambae were out for various reasons it meant that I was going to stay with one of my dad's who works for the provincial government. I show up and as luck would have it he was gone aswell. So still unphased by all of this news I sat down with a couple of the people I knew in the village and hung out talking for a while, fully expecting that I would be offered a bed once they found that I was without a place to sleep. Sure enough about twenty minutes into the conversation I got my offer of a place to sleep but not what I was expecting at all. They talked with one of the owners of a guest house and told him that I needed a place to sleep so I had to spend 1500 vatu for a night. Not expensive really, just funny because i've become so used to always just being offered a place to sleep on Maewo. The provincial center of ambae really is a totally different place. So that adventure done and out of the way I got up the next morning and headed down to the airport and climbed on the plane. While in flight to Vila, my phone started ringing (with the small planes you don't have to turn off your cell phone while flying here) and guess who was calling my parents! I was expected it to be my mom's last minute worried to make sure everything was going to be going according to plan and was quite shocked to find out that they had missed their flight. Upon landing in Vila I wasn't sure what to do, they had told me that they would be able to come in 2 weeks, but I had only had plans to be in Vila for one day before my parents came and now it was going to be 2 weeks. So I headed into the Peace Corps office and started discussing what to do with Sara, and thank god we have her working for us in the office. She helped me plan out work related stuff I could do for the next two weeks and even invited me to a workshop about phonemic awareness that a woman from DC was putting on for some other teacher trainers.

My next problem now was finding places to sleep for 2 weeks because I certainly don't have the money to put myself up at even a cheap hotel in vila for 2 weeks. As luck would have it the other volunteer who's place I was staying at, Alexia, was totally unphased by my request to stay for an extra week after the only night I had planned to stay at her house. At the end of that week I was looking for some other volunteers to stay with but everyone was pretty full due to the health volunteers all being in town for an aids workshop. So I had plans to stay with an Aus-aid volunteer I had met in Vila before. At about 5pm in the afternoon I was unable to get ahold of her about it and unsure where I might stay I decided to call Gene. Gene is the ex-peace corps volunteer who just started a kayaking business in port vila. I'd talked with him a couple times and he Volunteered in the village just south of me on Maewo so I figured that pretty much made us family. Luckily for me Gene felt the same way and with only about an hours warning I had a spot to sleep on his couch. I told him it'd just be for a single night and he said that I was welcome to stay as long as I needed. The next day I stayed with another volunteer and was there through to my parents coming. All things considered it wasn't as hectic of a time finding places to sleep as I had expected and all of the people I stayed with were super accommodating.

So the two weeks I spent in Vila were nice, filled with regular french fries, and trips to the store for candy, while I soaked up as much internet access as I could in my free time. I was able to skype pretty much every other night with Stephanie which made me not worry about my parents coming two weeks late! One night while Steph and I were talking she said that it was a very telling thing of our relationship that we are so long distance we look forward to skype opportunities just to be able to see each other's face haha. Finally on the 21^st of June my parents showed up from their flight. We went and stayed at the little place they had found online called Vila Chaumieres and while the rooms were nice they weren't anything too exciting. We all had dinner at the restaurant, it was a tad expensive but definitely the best steak dinner I have had since coming to Vanuatu! The next morning we got up and headed to the airport. Due to my parents coming two weeks late the only days we could get flights up to Ambae to get to Maewo were the day after they landed and the day before they flew back to the states. This had me nervous because it meant that originally they were only planning to come for 4 days to Maewo and now they would be coming up for almost the whole 2 weeks of their visit. We flew up and then crossed over and got drenched by both the ocean and the rain that was coming down in Maewo. The weather persisted in being cloudy and rainy and wouldn't let up to give them any sun, but we decided that we'd try heading down to Asanvari anyways. My grandpa Basil picked us up in the boat and we headed down to Asanvari with the day still chilly and overcast. Once down there we walked around a little as it started to rain and found out about a couple places they call the “eyes of the salt water.” These are two places where standing well up in the jungle you can see the ocean through small holes in the ground. I was excited to try and see this but a little worried about hiking up to them with the weather. As we waited for my host dad to talk to his brother about showing us the place the weather got even better. The rain started coming down as a torrent and the wind started picking up. After about half an hour it felt like the start of a hurricane. About 5 minutes later my grandpa comes running into the house we had all taken refuge in and tells us we needed to hop in the boat and head back because if this weather kept up we'd be stuck in Asanvari with a hurricane. So we all hopped back in the boat and began heading back up to my village in the coldest weather I have ever experienced in Vanuatu. The rain was pouring down and the wind was howling. My grandpa had on two sweatshirts and a beanie and in order to keep his beanie as dry as possible he stuck the gasoline funnel on his head to block the rain. I wish I had the picture to show but my parents have it, so if you see them, you should ask them about it. As we were heading up the coast all of the rivers that empty into the ocean were swelling like crazy and the ocean was slowly going from crystal blue and clear to brown and murky and muddy from all the dirt and mud that was being washed down from the rains. It was quite a site to behold as the entire ocean changed colors in the middle of pre-hurricane weather. Upon arriving home we all drank some hot water and no one wanted to bathe because of how cold it was. That night when I crawled into bed I check my watch's temperature gage, 70 degrees, definitely the coldest it's been in vanuatu yet. I woke up at about 3 in the morning and had to get my sheet out because I was cold and I checked my watch again, 66 degrees, I felt like that had to be some kind of record in this country haha. Needless to say when I come back to the states i'm probably going to struggle with how cold it will be in the winter.

The next morning I got up and called the peace corps safety and security officer to ask about the weather and she told me that sure enough there was a tropical low east of northern vanuatu, but it likely wouldnt turn into a hurricane. So for the next few days we stayed around the house a lot while the sky emptied itself on us and the wind blew all of the rain through the front of my kitchen. I felt bad because of how bad the weather was but I didnt know what else to tell my parents but, “hey atleasts its not hot right?” They didnt seem to agree quite as much. I can't blame them as i'm sure cold hurricane weather was hardly what they were expecting when they planned a trip to the south pacific! Haha. Anyways wednesday came around and we got a truck ride up to Big Water. I was really excited as it would be the first time I had ever rode a truck from my place all the way north. For the longest time the trucks couldn't pass because the roads were destroyed but luckily people had just recently fixed them. So it took us about 2 hours in the truck bouncing around in the back and ducking tree branches as we made our way up to big water. Once we got to Naone, the village right next to the water falls they were having a celebration for one of the church days so we stayed and watched for about a half an hour while some of the villages dressed up ridiculously and put on some funny skits. I don't think I quite got the point of the skits they were making, but they definitely were funny. After that we hiked up to the waterfall and my mom was brave enough to jump off from one of the lower areas. We hiked up, looked around then jumped in and swam out. I have to say I wish it was closer to me because I love jumping off the waterfalls there. We spent the next few days doing small things as the weather started to die down. We walked to the villages around mine and on saturday the weather had calmed enough that we jumped into the ocean and did a little snorkeling. The water was still a bit murky from all the rains but they day was warm enough that i'm pretty sure my mom was just happy to be outside and swimming around even if we weren't able to see a lot of fish.

Finally sunday rolled around and we headed to Ambae so that my parents could stay the night before catching their flight the next day to head to Vila. Of course, we got up in the morning and the clouds were just starting to clear and by the time we got to Ambae it was a nice sunny day. My parents managed to spend 12 days on Maewo with nothing but rain and not a single day of good sun. Oh well, I guess that is just how Maewo is.