A Windy Welcome (2/6/12)

My time in the States was great and if anything it has made me look forward more to when I finally get to come home to all my friends and family, but now I was back to my island life again. And what a welcome the islands have given me. Within a day of my arrival on Maewo the rain started. It kept raining for the first four days straight, which was something i'd come to expect by now, but then the wind began picking up too on the 5^th day. By the night of the 5^th day my dad and I were taking down all of the iron roofing in the area so the wind didnt start throwing it around the village. “What's the peace corps office say? This is a hurricane right?” He kept asking me. I told him i'd ask but I hadn't heard anything. Sure enough they said just some tropical lows and depressions but no hurricanes. This weather continued on for another week. Rain being blown into my house through my walls, everything slowly becoming wet and moldy. I was really hoping to wash my clothes before I had to go back to training but it was looking like the chances of them being washed and dry before training were going away. And then on Thursday only 4 days before I was supposed to go to training the sun broke through and smiled on us. I was thinking to myself that the weather was done, i'd get some days of sun and then get in to my training just fine. Vanuatu had other plans unfortunately. Friday night it started raining again and becoming windy. This time the peace corps office did report a hurricane south of the Solomon islands heading towards Vanuatu. So resigned to likely missing my monday flight I hung out and waited through the weekend.

Sunday came and Nik showed up as we were both supposed to travel in to Vila the next day. We called the peace corps office and they said that the hurricane from the solomon islands missed vanuatu but the water was still too rough and we were all on standfast. So now Nik and I both began hanging out waiting and hoping the weather got better by wednesday so we could travel in to Vila. Monday we called the office and asked for an update. They said that there was now a new hurricane called jasmine that was currently a category 3 and headed straight for Vila out of the west so there wouldnt be any flights on wednesday. Nik and I knew now that friday was the earliest and best we could hope for to get in to Vila. Thursday came and the storms had passed and flights were resuming so when we call the office to ask about us getting in to vila they let us know that the friday flights were full but they were going to do an extra one on saturday that we were both scheduled to come in on. By this point I had entirely missed the training that they were bringing me in for anyways. Worried that maybe i'd be expected to pick up my own room at a hotel when I came in since my training was done, I talked with Sara. Luckily during this training a small part of it was about us closing our services in October which they had to talk to me about so I was guaranteed to come in either way to make sure they could talk to me. Having not even been back on Maewo for a month the weather had already worked to trap me for an extra week. Now the hope is that I will be able to get in to Vila and out again before the next set of hurricanes comes through and makes everyone stuck again. I certainly have become complacent about the weather. Last year I remember being worried every time the iron roofing in the village started rattling from wind, this year two coconut trees were knocked over by the wind before I decided that there had to be a hurricane in the area haha. On the bright side it had made what is usually the hottest time of the year a bit cooler, not to mention during the really big winds its like my house has a mister system installed.

Bearded Women (12/07/11)

The past week has been exceedingly slow as everyone is starting to take breaks from their busy work schedules (not busy at all, even the busiest people probably only put in about 15 legitimate hours of work a week on Maewo) and begun "spelling" since its almost christmas time. Going from only working on a house or something about one or two days a week to not working at all cause its christmas time, kava drinking and card playing has taken over for everyone. While i have no objections to drinking kava most nights with other people in my village, i tend to get bored of playing cards for days upon end. The only card game anyone ever plays is a game they call 7-lock which is played with a regular 52 card deck and is a bit like uno but there is minor betting involved. The game can be really fun for the first hour or two you learn it and start playing it, but here it is taken to excess, they play from the time they wake up until 1 or 2 o clock in the morning and then get up to do it again the next day at 6am.
Now you may be wondering what all of this has to do with the title of the post? I was bored as hell so i decided to make a bunch of kava drinking shells to pass my time, which led me to a trip up to one of the coconut plantations. I went with my mom and we collected 25 coconuts that are longer than normal coconuts that we would be cut and cleaning into nice drinking shells. After collecting them we passed through a lone housing area that i'd only been to a few times and for the first time since coming to vanuatu i met on of my bubus (grandmas). She is not the bearded lady of the story, but the reason i'd yet to meet her despite living about a 10 minute walk from her house for a whole year was that she rarely left her house because she can't walk due to the number of boils on her legs. So i shake hands with her and then she turns to my mom and asks in local language, "ian na fafnai?" in local language ian is he/she its not gender specific so roughly translate: he/she a woman? After hearing my bubu ask my mom this i was slightly confused because i thought she was talking about me but i was positive that i had to have misunderstood and that my bubu was just talking about someone else or something else that i was following. Finally the two of them stop talking and my mom and i are walking back down to my house so i ask my mom to confirm what i thought i'd heard. My mom starts laughing immediately and says that i had heard right my bubu was asking if i was a woman. This had to be the most surprised i've been in a long, long time. Here i am with a huge rice bag filled with 25 coconuts, my shorts are covered in mud, and i have a beard that hasnt seen a razor or scissors in 6 months. Still convinced that i couldnt possibly have been mistaken for a woman i asked my mom if her eyesight was poor. My mom said no her eyesight was fine the reason she thought i was a woman was because i had my hair in a pony tail. I asked my mom how she could see that i had a pony tail and not notice the fact that my beard is like 4 inches long and my mom shrugged and said, "sam woman penecost igat mustash olsem yu." Never in my life did i think that i would be mistaken for being a woman, much less while sporting a beard longer than the average man's head hair, but apparently on pentecost island there are woman that justify this gender confusion. Glad i live on Maewo!

Back in Cyclone Season (11/8/11)

 So cyclones are better known to most of the world as hurricanes and in Vanuatu they're not a bad weather system, they're a part of life. November being officially the start of hurricane season in this area of the pacific it becomes a regular occurrence that low pressure systems start building up and floating around bringing ridiculous amounts of rain as well as quite a bit of wind. The majority of these low pressure systems never develop into full hurricanes but the change in the weather is unmistakable. The few days before hand everything becomes still, hot, humid, and quiet as if in anticipation of what is to come. Then at some point the wind starts again and within hours it becomes a strong gusty wind and rain starts coming down in a constant drizzle. This continues to strengthen and within an hour or two the wind is blowing the rain horizontally through windows and the rain itself is starting to come down as if someone was dumping buckets of water on a movie set. It keeps up this angry weather until its spent all of its rain like a child throwing a temper tantrum. This is just a low pressure system. Welcome to Vanuatu! Just yesterday the first low pressure system of our 2011-12 cyclone season came. As the wind began to pick up I asked our safety and security officer what the weather report was. Small low pressure system south of Vanuatu, expect wind and rain for the next few days. I told her I hoped it settled down in time for the two current Peace Corps trainees to get a chance to come visit my site. Her reply was a text message that read: Vanuatu has been ranked first as most hazardous country in the world risk report of 2011 done by the U.N.. Having been here for a year now and experienced a decent share of Vanuatu's temperament, I found that hard to believe. After considering it for a while though it started to make more sense to me. If another country were regularly hit with the types of natural disasters that Vanuatu gets it would seem apocalyptic. The US is a fantastic example of this. The east coast received an earthquake that cause major power outages and millions of dollars worth of damage. The power of that earthquake is what Vanuatu gets on a monthly basis. The hurricane that flooded and ruined Queensland, Australia, payed its dues to Vanuatu before proceeding. It is a country that has developed a lifestyle aimed at existing in just the right manner to deal with all of these disasters. As it becomes more developed these rules are slowly changing and it might not be long before Vanuatu starts having larger problems with its natural disasters, but for the time being on islands such as Maewo, many people live in this way. Most people build their houses up in the jungle to avoid tsunami's, they build in areas that are concave to reduce the amount of wind that hits them during a hurricane, they build away from flood zones that the constant rains and hurricanes can cause, the build houses out of bamboo lashed together with vines that aren't the least bit bothered by an earthquake. They exist in large communities with strong ties to each other. They laugh often and live in the moment. Planning for the future is an almost alien concept with the weather unpredictable and even the islands themselves molded by storms. The weather can be hard when you have a schedule so better to just live by the weather rather than a piece of paper. It has certainly been a novel experience for me after living in Tucson, never having felt an earthquake, run from a tsunami, or hid in a house during a hurricane. One thing that all of this has taught me is to appreciate the sunny days, because you just never know when your roof might fly away!

Lost in Translation (10/8/11)

 This story starts with my return to playing soccer. I'd been wanting to join the younger men in my community playing soccer for a while now but I didn’t have my shoes until Stephanie brought them for me, and I’m too much of a wimp to play barefoot when half the men have soccer cleats on, even though lots of the teenage boys run around barefoot. After Stephanie brought my shoes, the boys stopped playing for a couple months because there were no tournaments for them to train for, so apparently that means full stop on playing soccer. Playing because its fun apparently seems like too much work here, I could be wrong though. Anyways, the boys all started playing again finally in September but due to a nice large infection I had on my ankle the doctor told me I wasn't allowed to play until it started closing up. So two antibiotic cycles later and as much babying as I could possibly do, my sore was on the mend, the boys were still playing soccer and it was time to join them. I tied up my hair into a semblance of the samurai style, grabbed my ball, and shoes an walked down to the field. It being 3 in the afternoon I was ready to start playing, but of course it being Vanuatu soccer wouldn’t start until about 4pm even though they told me they started at around 3. That was fine by me because not having looked at a soccer ball in almost a year and it having been about 3 since I played, I figured it was a good chance to try running around and kicking the ball a little bit to make sure I wouldn't horribly embarrass myself when everyone else showed up. Sure enough, I was horribly out of shape not having done anything athletic in a year and my soccer skills were just short of making me worthy to be on the St Michael's A team. As the guys started showing up and kicking the ball around with me though I relaxed because most of them were not much better than me. So the day progressed and we played 6 a side for about an hour before they started calling out last goal wins, by which point I couldn’t have sprinted if you put me in front of a lion and tied a steak to my shorts. The next morning I woke up as sore as I was after the first day I ever lifted weights in high school, and felt like I might not be able to walk down the hill to my school. After hobbling around my family's compound for about an half hour and eating breakfast I decided the best remedy to being so stiff and sore was to just ignore it. So that afternoon I donned my cleats again and stiff and sore played another couple hours of soccer on our stone and dirt soccer field. This happened again on Thursday and again on Friday. Friday is when it got interesting. As I was on my way down to the field, my legs cramping as I walked down the hill to the field my brother in law saw me and asked if I was going to play in the big soccer tournament with the boys and I laughed and said if they wanted me to I would, assuming he was just joking around with me because of how poorly I played. We played for about an hour before my brother in law came through again and stopped us playing so he could make an announcement. This was of course all in local language, so all I got out of it was, bring an 18 kilo rice bag full of kava to play in the tournament, there was a lot of money to win, and the boys had to train hard if they wanted to win. After this he turned to me and in Bislama told me. Bae I mus gat physical blo winim tournament ia, yu save helpem ol boy mo mekem training lo olgeta? Translated as literally as I took it, The team has to have physicalS to win this tournament, can you help all the boys by training them? I told him that of course I’d be happy to help train all the boys for the tournament but that if they wanted me to play with them I’d have to see if the medical office had an up to date physical on form before I could tell them if I could play or not. This got a very confused look, which I didn't understand at the time. So excited about being asked to play in the tournament with the guys I immediately sent messages to the peace corps staff asking if it was ok if I played and if they had a current physical on file they could mail me. It being the weekend they said they would check next week. On Saturday as we were sitting down talking before getting ready to play one of my dads asked me if I knew what kind of work outs and training to teach the boys to help make them more physical in the tournament. I told him I knew a bunch of them and said we could start them up on Monday, at which point he asked me, so why are you waiting on the physical papers to come from your boss? Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. They didn’t need me to get a proof of a physical to play in this tiny soccer tournament in Vanuatu... they thought that I had to ask someone at the office to mail me a bunch of work out plans or something. Here I was after over a year of being in Vanuatu and speaking Bislama almost exclusively and I had completely misunderstood what was said. In Bislama they never use plurals, so while they said it fairly straight forward that the boys would have to be physical to win the tournament I just assumed that physical was supposed to be plural hence the way I interpreted it as, we all needed physicalS to play in the tournament. Now the funny look about me saying I needed to make sure I had the right papers to play made sense! Quite embarrassed I let the office know the next day that I actually wouldn't be needing a physical. Needless to say I didn't explain to them why I had changed my request. =)

Earthquake, Earthquakes

I regularly get concerned messages from friends and family back home whenever Vanuatu gets another earthquake. I find it a little humurous that vanuatu so regularly experiences such strong earth quakes and i never feel any of them on my island, but in the span of the week i have been in Vila i have felt 4 earth quakes and not received a single worried message haha. I have no idea of how strong the earth quakes are though, but its always kind fun feeling everything shake!