Each year Peace Corps Vanuatu receives a new group of volunteers. I had the privilege of hosting two of the new volunteers, Monica and Joel, in my village for a week to show them the ropes in an important part of training called the "host volunteer visit". It was a pleasure to show them around Ambae and I think they gleaned a fair amount of bush survival skills from their stay, including but not limited to- what to do when you find mosquito larva hanging out in your water bottle, how to get a bunch of pre teens to pay attention in class, how to make 'pad thai' out of ramen noodles, peanut butter and hot sauce, how to "wash" clothes in a bucket, how to procure more fresh fruit from your village than you could ever hope to eat in this lifetime, and so on.

Congratulations to Joel and Monica for making it through pre service training, I'm sure they're both going to rock their new sites- Joel on North Ambae and Monica on her very own island, Buniga, in the Shepard Islands.

Photos from "site announcements" (the very important last leg of the pre service training journey where everyone learns where they're going for the next two years), the swearing in ceremony, and other such shenanigans...

On our way to site announcements. Obviously a little excited.

aaaaanddd Ambae gets 3! Melissa and I sat by our little paper map with pride. Welcome to the (best?) island, boys

The ambassador for Papau New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu

The oath of service. Which we all just found out is the same one the president takes. Oh, the responsibility.

Special shout out to my new friend, Carlie. We talked briefly on the interweb before her touchdown in Vanuatu because she stumbled upon this very same blog. We have a lot of common goals regarding work, plus a lot in common, period, and it was great to finally meet her. The island of Epi is not going to know what hit it. Follow her here --->

http://congdoncarlie.blogspot.com

Parrot on the bar? Only in Vanuatu.

The Obama nakamal... can't think of many places for fit for celebrating.

Welcome to the family, yufala evri wan. It's gonna be a good year.

This is my good friend Katie --->

I've known her for some time now (Stahl Junior HS! what up!), and for the entire duration she's been one of the kindest, most hard working, open-hearted individuals I have ever met. Not to mention she's cute as a button and one of my very favorite shopping buddies.

She wrote something really sweet about me some time ago, which I didn't see until just the other day because of obvious technological difficulties the jungle produces...

katie maria v: woman ambae

This is her boyfriend James --->

I can only describe them as one of the most darling couples I've ever had the pleasure of knowing...

Two very large events have happened in Ms. Viola's life since my departure. Being away for these things has been indescribably hard for me, but I am also so happy for and proud of Katie and can't wait to see her and properly congratulate her upon my eventual return to the US. Until then, this blog entry will have to do.

1. She recently graduated from my alma mater, Western Washington University, with a Master's degree in Student Affairs Administration and is now serving as an Americorps volunteer (we're both repin' the 'corps).

2. She recently got in engaged to the aforementioned gentleman. I've been anticipating and discussing this with my village for some time now, and we've got a small surprise in the works that will be arriving by post for the happy couple sometime in the next 6 months.

This is their story:

katie marie v: it happened.

Gud wan i ko long yutufala, bae yu no save maret bifo mi kasem yufala long ples blong yumi bakegan.

(Congratulations you guys. No getting hitched before I'm there to toast in your honor.)

My first school year has come to a close, and while I'm really looking forward to a break from work during the holiday season, I'm a little sad to see things end because I'm going to miss my students a lot. I've learned as much from them this year, if not more, than I feel they've learned from me. Additionally, due to budget cuts, the Vanuatu government is canceling center schools and instead turning them into primary schools. This means that instead of my school teaching years 1-8 it will not only teach years 1-6, which in turn means that I will have to discontinue my adolescent reproductive health classes because year 7 and 8 are just about the youngest you can start kids with those kind of lessons (especially here). I'm trying not to feel discouraged about this; I know that when one door closes another one opens. I suppose I'll have to find another way to spread the "no glove no love" mentality, and until then I've still got that water project and Green Club on my to-do list.

I've really enjoyed getting to know each and every one of my students. And as I mentioned before, youth empowerment has become a major concentration of mine. I know what it's like to feel like you're falling between the cracks, and I hope more than anything my students gained confidence in themselves as well as some savvy about the environment and their health in the process. Youth too often goes unnoticed, in any country, but they are, without a doubt, our future.

Photos from an after school swim...

Academic and leadership awards for students years 5-8

The graduating class, year 8

My little brother. he's embarrassed of me and won't smile for the camera. Just like a 'real' little brother, I think.

A 'thanks for the hard work' gift from the school committee- a brick of laplap (ground root crop with coconut milk on top) and a mat weaved out of trees.

Delicious.

Eatin' with the fam. My host papa is the chairman of both the dispensary and the school, so we partake in a lot of honorary laplap.

This is Megan Burrows. She's the closest volunteer to me on the island, based out of the provincial hospital down the road in Lolowai.

She started the first ever girl's soccer league on Ambae, and is currently working on getting a permanent, renewable energy source for the provincial hospital as well as working on improving the managerial capacity of health dispensaries and aid posts in Penama province (Pentecost, Ambae, Maewo).

The closest volunteer to you on the island becomes something of a lifeline, is not a close friend and confidant for life. I'm incredibly lucky to have someone like Megan close by proximity (relatively speaking, about 2+ hours) and mentality. By luck we have a lot in common (love for Disney, awkward mannerisms, similar taste in reading material) and most importantly both have an unquantifiable passion for music. One of my very favorite activities on the island is to chill out with her on her front porch with some local beer, kava, the tropical sunset and our iPods.

Other reasons why Megan is cool (er than me):

1. She's from Iowa; and therefore slaps down my WA state elitism on the regular (we're pretty pretentious about our music, art, coffee, culture, scenery... as it turns out). She has a map of the US on the door of her office with Iowa circled and the following "Hem ia Iowa. Ples blong mi." (I am from Iowa. This is my place). Iowa might be cooler than WA even. I'm not sure anymore.

2. She's a nurse. So not only is she an incredible resource of knowledge for the provincial hospital, she's one of the best listeners I've ever met. Going nuts up in your village? No worries, grab a shell of kava with Nurse Megan and spill your guts.

3. Please see photos below...

There were a lot of things going on in the background when these photos were taken. The new volunteers were on the island and purchasing beer at our fun little provincial center corner store right next to me, the truck that has just driven us down the volcano from my village was parked directly in front of the nakamal (place where you drink kava, kind of like an island bar) and I was trying in a distracted fashion to remind him that drinking (even kava) and driving (because he's going to have to drive back up the volcano... eventually) is bad, but I still laughed my toosh off when I turned my head to the right (the approximate middle of newbs + beer / driver + nakamal situations) and saw her cruising on some small child's bike- for reasons I'm still not really sure of, but probably just to please herself and maybe a few pikinini.

There's an ongoing joke with all of us on the island that Megan is cooler than me. I suppose not even just on the island. She recently purchased a t-shirt offline reading "I wish I was as cool as Megan Burrows" with a picture of a dancing cactus and had it sent to her friend in the states, which I hear was worn to the point of holes. She updated my Facebook status when I wasn't looking some time ago with the same mantra and the four other volunteers on the island clicked "like" rapid fire, preceding discussion of how in fact, Megan Burrows, is cooler than me. And well, I'm done arguing. She really is.

Lately I've been doing a lot more environmental work than anything else; which seems to come about naturally, and which I couldn't be more excited about. Vanuatu is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen and I'm happy as a clam to participate in preserving it.

I'd like to thank Seattle, WA; the Pacific Northwest; and Western Washington University for influencing me in the way of all things sustainable and plant/animal/world friend; my dad likes to refer to people involved in such things as "granolas" (particularly in Bellingham, WA... home of the Vikings, home of the Birkenstocks) but whatever, granola tastes good.

I'd also like to thank BBC for producing the Human Planet and Planet Earth video series', of which have been both extremely entertaining and educational for me, my students, and all of us out here on Ambae. World view= increased. Feeling of personal responsibility in environmental preservation= existent.

FMI --->

Human Planet

Planet Earth

See for yourself... some photos from Green Club and a pollution survey at a nearby creek with year 7 & 8.

Today was one of those days that made me incredibly happy to live in Vanuatu.

Did a double dive this morning, snacked on fresh tropical fruit while sunbathing on the boat in between dives, chatted with the local dive instructors about world travel, spotted a small shark and did the underwater shark signal which made me feel like a baller, hung out with an octopus, grabbed some locally brewed beer with friends while basking in the beauty of the tropics...

If there was an R.E.I. anywhere within a few thousand miles of these islands, I would buy myself a "life is good" shirt and wear the shit out of it. Cause it's true.

1. Futbol transcends culture, language, location.

2. The same is true for music.

3. Kava... the "dirty water".

4. Mitz is famous.

5. Bananas are delicious, nutritious, and overall, probably, one of the very best foods.

6. We have so many more similarities than differences.

7. Wanderlust.

8. "Working shit out".

One of the major perks of coming into the city is having the opportunity to catch up with the other volunteers. Here is one such volunteer, who I don't have the opportunity of seeing very often because he's in a different sector (education) and on a different island (Pentecost) but was fortunate to find myself in the good company of this very morning...

Meet Eric Lee Wong- here he is rocking a pirate 'do and a box of recently purchased snacks (prob from his store, read on) in the volunteer resource room.

He once lived in Seattle (something to do with huskies) and his parents own a house in the same 'burb as mine, although he's really from China. He's a funny chap, this Eric LW. First off, he has a namesake store in Port Vila just by happenstance and heavy Chinese influence on marketable goods out here (I have discussed this material monopoly before), which I think is pretty cool for him. He doesn't get a discount or anything (which I think is a bunch of bologna), but it still ups his celebrity status. Secondly, his Facebook profile picture is a red panda, which is cool without need for explanation. I could make a longer and much more detailed list about why Eric LW is cool, but I'm just going to cut to the chase here.

Here's how you can be hella (/heli) cool like this guy-

Travel to SE Asia during rainy season, visit Siem Reap (please see Angkor Wat temple(s), Cambodia, largest religious structure in the world, et. all.) during a flood and dub it a "cool sinking temple" rather than consider or much less curse an extreme excess of water covering up the very site you traveled so far to see as spoiling your plans, have yourself evacuated for aforementioned adverse weather conditions via military helicopter and shrug your shoulders like NBD.

If you've not heard much about the flooding situation in SE Asia, look into it. Word on the ground in Bangkok from my dear friend S. Pounds (http://sarahlbs.blogspot.com) is that it's been a little sticky. and slithery. or quite wet, in any case...

"Thousands of crocs roam Bangkok floodwaters"

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-24/crocs-loose-in-bangkok-floodwaters

Anyway, just picked up this little gem of a story in passing conversation with Mr. LW; I can only hope my travels to Asia this spring, as I will definitely be heading to this mecca of wonder and apparently water, will be as exciting as his. I want to be heli cool too.

I stole these pictures from the memory card of his camera, he's not managed to upload them to the interweb and share their hilarity (awesome-ity?) with the world yet, so I'm doing it for him. The other cool cat in these pics (shown from the 'copter in question) is Mr. Michael Wilson, a teacher on the great island oasis of Espiritu Santo.

Just rolled into the big city after about 36 hours of transit time via ship, truck and my own two feet. It's been an interesting few days and I've probably never needed a shower and a nap more in my life. But nonetheless here I am bringing this update to you in an incredibly timely manner, because in the big city, these things are possible... communication with the outside world (well, sometimes. our communications infrastructure is still in the process of proving its legitimacy), consumption of dairy products (since this morning alone I've tackled a breakfast sandwich, milkshake, and ice cream cone. am I feeling sick? yes. was it worth it? yes.), other Westerners to share your impatience with and anxiety over the many frustrations this country produces (and any other developing country, really.... but especially an archipelago) and the list goes on. What's up Port Vila? Long time no smell.

(seriously, this place reeks...)

I've got a pretty ambitious agenda this week, including but not limited to: attending the new volunteer groups' "swearing in" ceremony, where they swear to defend the constitution, defend or maybe promote the 'good name' of the American people, do good work, blah blah, and transition to official volunteer status, purchasing tickets and finalize my travel plans for Southeast Asia in March, buying and shipping a few hundred new books to my school's library (right now we're rocking about 30 books, we can do better than that), getting an update on the funding status of our water project (my fingers have been crossed for about 3 months now and they're getting sore)and receiving my P.A.D.I certification so I can finally start diving this tropical paradise(?) I happen to live in.

Some photos from the journey...

This ipod is hands down the best investment I made in coming to Vanuatu. Tired of speaking three languages other than your own? Island fever getting you down? Stuck on a ship for 24+ hours? Led Zeppelin will cure what ails you; jamming to "Houses of the Holy" while cruising along the cost of Pentecost when this photo was taken (got some funny looks from the locals in doing so but NBD).

This is a "down with drug smuggling" notice I entertained myself with for several hours. I'm not sure which version of Bislama they're going for here (since it's an unstandardized langauge and tends to vary slightly from island to island, province to province, etc.) or if this thing is just full of typos, er... "paint-os" since this is hand painted. But first off, skull and needle-bones? classic. Secondly, I think the last sentence, should say something like "yu kasem toksave finis", essentially meaning "you have been warned", (drug smuggling is bad! don't do it on our ship!). But with an "i" instead of an "a" in kasem and a "p" instead of an "f" in finis, it reads something like "you kiss my understanding penis".

So anyway, off to consume some more dairy and probably bathe. Lots more pictures and updates coming soon.

Youth empowerment has become both a formal (in the classroom) and informal (bush walking and singing at the top of your/our/everybody's lungs, discovering how hot sauce is trans-culture, etc.) pastime and passion of mine. The kids here are just about the cutest thing I've ever seen, if you're reading this you've probably seen the pictures and you probably know what I mean. But they're shy. Much like everyone, everywhere else in the world, but perhaps more so, which is why I have a job right now.

I love taking pictures of the kids here, and I love it most when they smile for me. Unfortunately, many of them are too ashamed to smile, or sometimes even look at me. My solution: I dance. So far it's a pretty successful strategy. I don't find many kids here that won't smile, or laugh, or generally feel really good and convey that to the camera when they've got a dancing white lady in front of them.

See for yourself...

Recommended viewing:

in sequence with "Look Who's Dancing" (live version) by Ziggy Marley and "Beautiful People" by SuperHeavy.

Have I mentioned I've read 68 books since departure? And the list is growing.

Currently reading:Crime and Punishment- DostoyevskyThe Death of American Virtue (Clinton vs. Starr)- GromleyBelow is a particularly fitting excerpt from one of my very favorite books that I just finished re-reading, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. If you've not yet read this, do so.

10th anniversary addition prologue by the author: "Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don’t all have the courage to confront our own dream… There are four obstacles. First: we are told from childhood onward that everything we want to do is impossible. We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the layers of prejudice, fear and guilt. There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our soul as to be invisible. But it’s still there. If we have the courage to disinter dream, we are then faced by the second obstacle: love. We know what we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream. We do not realize that love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us from going forward. We do not realize that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey. Once we have accepted that love is a stimulus, we come up against the third obstacle: fear of the defeats we will meet on the path. We who fight for our dream, suffer far more when it doesn’t work out, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse, ‘oh well, I didn’t really want it anyway.” We do want it and know that we have staked everything on it and that the path of the personal calling is no easier than any other path, except that our whole heart is in this journey. Then, we warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know that the universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we may not understand how. I ask myself: are defeats necessary? Well, necessary or not, they happen. When we first begin fight for our dream, we have no experience and make many mistakes. The secret of life though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times. So, why is it so important to live our personal calling if we are only going to suffer more than other people? Because once we have overcome the defeats, and we always do, we are filled by a greater sense of euphoria and confidence. In the silence of our hearts, we know that we are proving ourselves worthy of the miracle of life. Each day, each our, is part of the good fight. We start to life with enthusiasm and pleasure. Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently bearable; the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing, eats away at our soul, until, one day, we are no longer able to free ourselves from that bitterness and it stays with us for the rest of our lives. Having disinterred our dream, having used the power of love to nurture it and spent many years living with scars, we suddenly notice that what we always wanted is there, waiting for us, perhaps the very next day. Then comes the fourth obstacle: the fear of realizing the dream for which we fought all our lives. Oscar Wilde said, ‘each man kills the thing he loves.’ And it’s true. The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt. We look around at all those who have failed to get what they want and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want either. We forget about all the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, all the things we had to give up in order to get this far. I have known a lot of people who, when their personal calling was within their grasp, went on to commit a series of stupid mistakes and never reached their goal- when it was only a step away. This is the most dangerous of obstacles because it has a kind of saintly aura about it, renouncing joy and conquest. But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get… then you help the soul of the world, and you understand why you are here.” Paulo Coelho Rio de Janeiro November 2002 The Alchemist, pg. 134-137 “‘My heart is a traitor,’ the boy said to the alchemist, when they had paused to rest the horses. ‘It does not want me to go on.’ ‘That makes sense,’ the alchemist answered. ‘Naturally, it is afraid that, in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you’ve won.’ ‘Well, then, why should I listen to my heart?’ ‘Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend not to have heart what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you’re thinking about life and about the world.’ ‘You mean I should listen, even if it’s treasonous?’ ‘Treason is a blow that comes unexpectedly. If you know you’re heart well, it will never be able to do that to you. Because you’ll know its dreams and wishes, and you’ll know how to deal with them. You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it’s better to listen to what it has to say. That way, you’ll never have to fear an unanticipated blow.’ The boy continued to listen to his heart as they crossed the desert. He came to understand its dodges and tricks, and to accept it as it was. He lost his fear, and forgot about his need to go back to the oasis, because one afternoon, his heart told him that it was happy. ‘Even though I complain sometimes,’ it said, ‘it’s because I’m the heart of a person and people’s hearts are that way. People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren’t, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because when these things happen, we suffer terribly.’ ‘My heart is afraid it will have to suffer,’ the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky. ‘Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse that the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams.’ So his heart was quiet for an entire afternoon. That night, the boy slept deeply, and when he awoke, his heart began to tell him things that came from the soul of the world. ‘Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him,’ his heart said, ‘we, peoples’ hearts, seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed in its own direction, toward its own fate. But unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them- to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.’ ‘So we, their hearts, speak more and more softly. We never stop speaking out, but we begin to hope that our words won’t be heard: we don’t want people to suffer because they don’t follow their hearts.’ ‘Why don’t peoples’ hearts tell them to continue to follow their dreams?’ the boy asked the alchemist. ‘Because that makes a heart suffer most, and hearts don’t like to suffer.’ From then on, the boy understood his heart. He asked it, please, never to stop speaking to him. He asked that, when he wandered far from his dreams, his heart press him and sound the alarm. The boy swore that every time he heart the alarm, he would heed its message.”

And lastly, photos from a weekend stroll on the beach...

This week has been particularly busy; I've been bouncing back and forth between the school and clinic trying to balance multiple projects between the two, which is a bit like being pulled by the arms in two different directions- eventually the sockets are gonna give. I was feeling tremendously overwhelmed and losing steam fast, forgetting the purpose of my ventures to begin with and focusing on the ever increasing length of my to-do list instead. We're used to working ourselves into the ground, but how often do we stop to consider what we're working so hard for? Guilty as charged.

I recently opened my environmental "green club" at the school, and it's quickly becoming the highlight of my week. As one of the activities we've been working on the students are drawing their favorite animals and their environments. With my mind in a million other places I hardly noticed the artwork piling up on my desk until one particular student stood smiling at me, waiting for me to look up from what I was working on and notice her before she placed her piece on the top and scampered back to her friends. Rather than the suggested "my favorite animal is ______" she simply scrawled "love you all!!" dead center, and she wanted to be sure I made note of this. Were it not for her patient smile, I would not have noticed her. I would have continued focusing on whatever other unrelated thing was occupying my mind and lost the magic of that moment. Whatever tension I was feeling up to that point evaporated right then and there. I put my work away, went and sat with the students for the remainder of the afternoon, and walked home with an extra skip in my step. And I can't help but wonder, what else am I, what are we all, missing in the same fashion? What are we letting simply slip by us in our constant inattention?

There's a great big world out there and so many more smiles to be noticed, extraordinary moments to be had, if we'd only open our eyes wide enough, and long enough to see and be part of them.

I'm a firm believer in the little things in life; that any one thing is no greater than the sum of its parts. With that in mind, I give you an ode to the idiosyncrasies of the island life: the small things that become the great things, that leave a lasting impression in your mind and a smile on your face.

Free snacks.

You might have to scale a tree or try your luck with the bamboo "jab and duck" method, but it doesn't get fresher (or cheaper) than this. Grapefruit pictured courtesy of the tree in front of the clinic, a really long piece of bamboo and sheer perseverance.

The Fauna.

I've introduced you to Mitz (pronounced "meets") before, but she deserves another shout out. Originally re-appropriated from a coconut plantation for the explicit purpose of pest control, she's become something of a village legend, the most reliable of alarm clocks (5:30 AM on the dot, every day) and a priceless confidant out here in the bush. While many of the kids out here roast cats inside bamboo as an after school snack, Mitz, in all of her well-nourished, vermin-free glory, represents the under explored potential for symbiosis of man and animal in the wilds of the village and fascinates young and old alike.

Nearly every man, woman and child in Lovunivili and its surrounding villages: "She is fat. Why is this?"

K: "I feed her."

"She is clean. Why is this?"

K: "She has time to clean herself because she's not running for her life through the bush from school children."

"She is not afraid of man. Why is this?"

K: "She knows she's not going to end up on someone's dinner plate because she's protected by the white man. Also, I don't beat her with a stick like most other people do to their "pets" pre boiling pot."

"Can we eat her?"

K: No.

And lets face it, she's just cute. Suffering from recurrent giardia? At least you've got a kitten to keep you company while you rock back in forth in the fetal position, contemplating the difference between protozoan parasites and digesting glass. I may have lost contact with one too many a friend stateside, but I'd be hard pressed to find a better companion out here.

And this little guy. Our jungles may not boast monkeys or elephants, but not every one can say "a pig followed me home from work today." Add Mitz to the equation (she follows me around the village with unwavering tenacity) and I've got my very own island entourage.

The view.

There's something about waking up every morning to the sun rising, in flaming orange and pink, over a tropical island in the distance, flanked by the vast Pacific and silhoutted by palm and banana trees, that makes even the worst weeks seem bearable. That reminds you no matter how rough the going can get (and that can be pretty rough out here), that life is beautiful, and that everything is going to be just fine.

This is a view I've come to know all to well- the road from my village in the mountains to the commercial/provincial center, aka access to refrigeration and communication with the outside world. Roughly a 3 hour walk at several times per month, I've come to know this road quite intimately. How to avoid a serious dusting from passing vehicles, the proper zig-zag formation for optimum shade, which trees to avoid lest a decapitation by loose coconut, how to hold a pair of cheap flip flops together with nothing more than ingenuity and some pandanus fronds and other such bushwhacking survival skills. I can't say I'm always charmed by this walk, particularly so when caught in an unexpected and instantaneous tropical monsoon or hauling supplies and mail back up to the village and feeling very much like a mule, but nontheless I've adopted a "these boots are made for walkin" philosophy and at times it's quite empowering to get by with nothing more than your own two feet. Plus, my calf muscles would put yours to shame. Above is my favorite part of the walk, an hour and a half down the road when the bush gives way to the ocean. Not pictured: the phenomenal breeze this spot boasts at any given time. Island AC, affectionately.

New friends.

This is Jenny. On an average week I find her scaling the guava tree outside my house and peeking in my windows asking if she can sweep my house. She's also a total nail polish connoisseur and the absolute best at procuring any/all fruit to be had on the island, at any given time. Need an avocado? A lemon? A breadfruit? A smile to melt your soul? She's your girl.

Sometimes she comes complete with sidekick, too.

Tryna give me a thumbs up. If this photo doesn't arrest you with fuzzy feelings, I'd be inclined to say you had no heart.

The adventure of each day, and the comedy of it all.

Every day here is different, and holds innumerable new surprises and lessons. I wish I had cameras in my eyeballs so I could photograph all of the strange, hilarious or otherwise moving things I witness on a daily basis. Above is one such instance I happened to be camera ready. I happened upon this scene at my neighbors house, not 30 meters from my front door. In preparation for a marriage ceremony, the village women butchered the carcasses of several pigs, excavated the organ and entrails and held them all above their heads, as if offering thanks to the island gods, while dancing around the fire chanting. After which, their bounty was stuck on sticks, as shown, roasted over the fire, and shared among them. I was privy to part of the liver (at least, I think that's what it was). I have a video of this whole ordeal, but as the internet connection is nothing short of prehistoric out here, I'm unable to upload it. Ask me for it in about a years time if you're still interested.

Each day is an adventure. Each day I learn something new, about myself, humanity, or the world at large. Whether it be a good day, a bad day, or a day in which I can't even pinpoint the outcome as the whole roller coaster of the experience leaves me flustered and verbally inept, I'm glad to be out here. I'm happy to be doing something for the world. Outside of a cubicle. Outside of the shackles of my once incredibly narrow comfort zone and the maddeningly self-centered culture that bred it. So here I am, world. Whether you're my biggest fan or my most accomplished foe, you can't say I'm not grabbing life by the horns. Or the pig by the liver, in any case.

I seem to be at a loss for words lately, or at best lacking ones sufficient to explain my life to date with any justice. I returned from my first trip outside of country nearly a month ago, the year mark has gone and passed and the next group of volunteers arrives in a few weeks. Experiencing life outside of Vanuatu, the developed world at large, for the first time in 11 months and for a semi extended period of time, and then being thrust back into the ebb and flow of the village is a dichotomy I can’t begin to explain and perhaps the reason for my apparent inability to formulate my thoughts in any substantive manner. I’m still at a loss to even process the events of the last year, to wrap my mind around all that’s already happened and all that lies ahead. What can I say? There’s no sequence of words that will do, no photo that can show, how a place changes you. How a new culture, a different language checks your own identity. How an ideal guides you by day and seeps into your dreams at night. Have you ever seen an animal react to a new environment? Slinking around the edge of things, eyes wide, giving a sniff here and there to test the waters, unsure what to think about much of anything but weary of the unfamiliarity nonetheless. This is much how I felt the first week in New Zealand. The bright lights of a city, the wide variety of just about anything you could ever possibly want available at your very fingertips, self check-out, traffic lights, clubs, heels, breakfast buffets, consistent electricity, consistently clean feet, lattes, conveyor belts, crosswalks, blow dryers, gas stations… so many things I had forgotten about, so many things to readjust to. Reverse culture shock- check. By the second week I had pretty much gotten into the swing of things, speaking English and wearing close toed shoes, but by that time I was departing for Vanuatu again. It’s truly fascinating the different versions of ourselves we create to cope with our surroundings. Whether it be a bamboo shack on a remote island or a chic café in a bustling city, we adapt. So, if you’ve never been to New Zealand and you dig beautiful scenery, friendly people and doing cool shit I would recommend a visit. I wish I would have had several months to experience all that the land of the kiwi has to offer, but with only two weeks I think I did a fairly good job- flew into Auckland (North Island), acclimated, ate things, drank things… flew into Christchurch (South Island), rented a camper van, drove north to Blenheim, toured the Marlborough wine district by bike, drove farther north, sky dived over Abel Tasman, drove straight south to Wanaka, snowboarded Treble Cone, drove west through the mountains to Queenstown (adrenaline capital of the world), got snowed in, rocked my island apparel in a blizzard, feasted on the Christmas cookies my mom sent from the states in said blizzard and tried to remind myself it was August and therefore to refrain from singing “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas”, remembered how much I love the nightlife and how very talented I am in partaking in it, flew back to Auckland, ate more things, drank more things, cried a little, threw a small-ish tantrum about how unfair being an idealist and a diva at the same time is, returned to Port Vila, tried to motivate myself to do some work, drank kava instead, flew back to Ambae, tried to motivate myself to do some work, did some… then drank more kava, remembered how much I love kava, blogged about it.

Because of the unexpected and rather adverse weather conditions I wasn’t able to see Milford Sound or do the AJ Hackett bungee (first commercial jump, original jump originated in Vanuatu- what up) but with a little luck and perhaps some help from Visa victory will be mine… eventually.But up next: Australia and SE Asia.

(for the full set of photos from the trip: NZ- a set on Flickr)

AucklandChristchurchMarlborough Wine DistrictAbel Tasman

(dunno what face I'm makin there, but I guess a surprise backflip out of a plane at 16,500 ft will do that to you)WanakaQueenstown

The open road...

In a year's time it seems I've lost contact, for one reason or another, with many back home, but in the same capacity have developed a number of friendships with those that have chosen to remain an integral part of my life that much more and gained what has become my Peace Corps family on top of that; this family of sorts has also grown and evolved with time, with the ordinary ebb and flow of every day life and an extraordinarily unique experience that has forged many bonds in the same regard. We've lost many along the way for nearly every reason imaginable, one more of which will be departing from us this day. A toast was made in this respect last night, orginally from A. E. Housman's Shropshire Lad and more recently from the film "Out of Africa" that strikes me as particularly fitting for this occasion, as well as for the sentiments stirring around my brain as of late regarding the mark of year's absence from family and friends back home-

With rue my heart is laden

For golden friends I had,

For many a rose-lipped maiden

And many a lightfoot lad. By brooks too broad for leaping

The lightfoot boys are laid;

The rose-lipped girls are sleeping

In fields where roses fade

To those that come into our lives for any amount of time, from the briefest encounter to the oldest of friends, to those that come into our lives and change it for the better; To those that shake us awake and leave us in awe of the complexities of life, the ever-changing nature of the human spirit and the way in which our friendships shape who we become.

On July 30th, 1980 Vanuatu gained independence from colonial rule of both England and France. Being such a new country, independence day traditions are still in the making, and I figured I'd show them how it's done in the states with the help of the postal service and my mom's knack at sending exceptional care packages.

Below are a few photos of the first ever Lovunivili s'more experience, and a few rounds of complimentary Uno. Children and elders alike couldn't get enough of them! Unfortunately graham crackers and marshmallows aren't available in country and definitely so not on Ambae. Nevertheless, hopefully we'll be able to partake in a repeat celebration as this was a big hit.

The PHAST workshop came to a successful end last week, which is a big victory and an even bigger relief after four days of waking up before the sun rose in preparation and falling asleep long after the sun set in the same manner. This is a unique workshop in its participatory nature, which I’ll touch more on in a minute, and I’m happy I gave it everything I got (or, had? My grammar is going out the window I fear…)because it proved to be a classic “you get out of it what you put into it” type situation. I believe this is largely true for a volunteer’s experience as a whole as well. I’ve explained the PHAST workshop in previous entries but I suppose I’ll summarize again. PHAST stands for: Participatory Hygiene and Sanitation Transformation. It’s a seven step workshop, with each step building on the previous. The activities are participant led and allow for individualized learning for many community members that would otherwise not have a voice in community proceedings and community leaders alike. It’s based on a series of drawings depicting different behaviors and facilities related to hygiene and sanitation, everything from photos of a contaminated water source, someone washing their hands to an ill constructed and mismanaged pit latrine. The workshop runs as follows: 1. Problem identification- community led discussions of existing health problems 2. Problem analysis- community mapping of water and sanitation facilities, good and bad hygiene behaviors and disease transmission routes 3. Planning for solutions- selecting potential barriers and discussing gender roles in sanitary practices 4. Selecting options- choosing sanitary improvements and improved hygiene behaviors 5. Planning for new facilities and behavior change- who does what, budgeting, etc. 6. Preparing for monitoring and evaluation- implementation of various committees to oversee project success 7. Evaluation- this last step takes place after the workshop is finished and the subsequent project is complete The objective of the workshop is to improve hygiene and sanitation behaviors for the prevention of diarrheal diseases and encourage community management of water and sanitation facilities. The participatory method, in theory, “leads to increased knowledge, empowerment and responsibility on part of the community” (verbatim from the guidebook). This workshop was originally developed by the World Health Organization and a similar version called WASH is sometimes used with other organizations. I believe it was developed in Latin America but am not entirely positive. I do know that Peace Corps volunteers from several different host countries around our respective regions have tried it, although I’m not sure at what level of success. Because the workshop was designed to be universally applicable for most rural communities, the aforementioned photos are not included with the workshop, but rather just the guidebook and recommendations. Two volunteers from group 22 (the group from the year before me, I’m part of group 23) on Pentecost got their hands on a copy of the guidebook and worked together with another volunteer from Epi that happens to be particularly gifted at the arts to develop the first set of PHAST drawings for Peace Corps Vanuatu. After many long hours of coding and copying and a number of paper cuts we duplicated the sets and the rest is history. We’re still working on improving the sets and streamlining the process more so that volunteers from incoming groups can run the workshop as well but I think this progress is pretty exciting, albeit I jumped on it halfway through. It’s a testament to the hard work and dedication of so many volunteers- this was not originally a Peace Corps provided workshop but came to be through the hands of some extremely motivated individuals with a passion for grassroots development. This is also a great example of the manner in which Peace Corps operates, in my opinion. Peace Corps is a support organization, development comes at the hands of the volunteers working with their communities and the ideas sparked from that. Mind you, Peace Corps offers many resources to support almost any kind of development project, but the idea, the motivation for it and the follow through to make it happens lays with the volunteer. As I’ve mentioned before water security and sanitation was the most frequently identified need I discovered in my village after surveying the area. It’s also blatantly obvious after spending any amount of time in the village. It’s an interesting issue because it’s also one that affects me on a daily basis in collecting water, falling prey to my own ailments from contaminated water and witnessing a heartbreaking amount of traffic at the clinic for entirely preventable illness related to water contamination. Although water related issues definitely make my life in the bush that much more difficult (you can’t imagine the comfort a legitimate shower offers after a hard day’s work until you’ve lived in the bush, in the dirt, and gone without said shower for nearly a year) it’s an important aspect of my service in the intimate understanding it provides of the daily life of the people I hope to help. There’s no better way to experience a community’s, or any body of people’s struggle until you’ve lived it yourself. Since virtually my first day I’ve heard murmurs amongst the village about a water project and since have received many formal and informal requests from the women, the teachers, the elders and every other character imaginable. That being said water and sanitation rapidly become my priority since my arrival at site and naturally has drive most of my work to date. As I also mentioned I recently conducted a sanitary inspection of the area’s primary drinking sources using H2s tests provided by Rural Water Supply and discovered seven of eight are highly contaminated and unsafe for consumption. Using the results of this announced the PHAST workshop, which is a great way to launch any kind of community led environmental health project as that’s what it is designed to do. Using this workshop as figurative building blocks, my community planned an impressively ambitious water project. It was incredibly rewarding to watch this unfold the last day of the workshop and proved that this method is indeed very effective in achieving what it aims to accomplish- community empowerment and a shared responsibility of sanitation facilities and practices. The workshop had about 25 participants representing 15 households and five different villages throughout the week. The plan they developed to improve the area’s sanitation is as follows: Provide one 1,100 liter rain water catchment for each respective household in attendance, as well as one for the clinic and one 1,600 liter catchment for the school. Each small tank is $52,000 vatu (about $500 USD) and with ship frieght, transport to the village and building materials for the catchment housing comes to about $109,410 per household (about $1,100 USD). By a stroke of luck one of the village elders got called to Port Vila for a church meeting and was able to negotiate with the company that makes the catchments for a 10% discount and discovered that in buying in bulk it’s possible to fit up to four tanks together, dividing the cost of freight per household by four. Originally freight was $19,000 vatu per tank, which is just under half the price of the tank itself and gives you an idea how difficult it is to get things out here. This knocked about $350,000 vatu off of the overall price, making the total $1,388,160 (about $10,400 USD) including all 15 households, the dispensary and a large tank for the school. As I said, it’s an ambitious plan. The community, the school and the dispensary have all pledged to raise half of the funds, setting a monthly goal of $7,000 per household per month for five months and having the project end in December. This is a major contribution on their part and speaks volumes about their motivation, and also means that I need to find donor funding to match their contribution at about $700,000 vatu. I’m not sure if this is possible, I might have to find several donors over a longer period of time, but I’m going to try my best. Getting 17 rainwater catchments, which are by no means small, to the outer islands and then getting them up the mountains to my community would seem to me a modern day miracle. Here’s to making a believer of me, and improving the daily lives of a community I’ve come to call home while I’m at it. In other work related news, I’m wrapping up term 2 at the school as I’m heading to Port Vila next week for our mid service conference and afterwards taking two weeks of annual leave in New Zealand to celebrate. It’s hard to fathom that my service is halfway over, it seems like my work is finally getting started. I suppose that’s why it’s a two year contract rather than one. Anyway, with the beginning of term 3 I’m launching an environmental “green” club at the school. I’ve been mulling over starting some kind of after school program with the students but wasn’t sure what sort of angle I was going to take until just recently, and this seems to fit perfectly with my pre existing curriculum, the community’s needs and my personal interests. My official proposal is as follows: Quatui Centre School Environmental “Green Club” Objective: Foster environmental education for sustainability with global and local significance and encourage increased personal environmental responsibility leading to activism. Additionally, seek to improve students’ overall knowledge of the English language through discussion, easy access to a wide variety of print resources and video documentaries of the aforementioned topic. The club will accomplish this with weekly meetings in which the natural world and its modern issues will be explored through: -An environmental “library” or resources with information ranging from plants and animals to biology to climate change and beyond -Videos to increase topic retention and illustrate global significance and connectivity -Activities that encourage environmental responsibility for activism and civic engagement including trips to observe local habitats and ecosystems, letters to government officials and other organizations to raise awareness, debate on current issues and more. I’ve secured a small space at the school I’m going to turn into a club house and I’m really excited to see where this goes, particularly the library. If anyone reading this has any old National Geographics or anything of that nature laying around taking up space, donations would be much appreciated! Anything helps as it’s more than what the kids have now. Please see left side bar for shipping details. The fact that I’m a health volunteer serving as a teacher and working with the kids about the environment testifies how flexible our job descriptions are. Initially the vagueness of this frustrated me to no end, but since I’ve come to embrace it as it allows me so many different opportunities. A volunteer’s vocation seems to be limited only by one’s imagination. In other, non work related news, living on an active volcano just produced its first scare since I’ve come to call Ambae home. What seemed to be a little thunder and/or small earthquake last week was actually Manaro shaking a tail feather or two, which produced a large, quite ominous looking cloud over the island and dusted the villages of West Ambae with ash. Other than humbly reminding all of us out here of the power of Mother Nature, life has proceeded as normal with no evacuation or real chaos and a level one warning. Nonetheless, I am, at all times, Red Cross ready… not to worry, mom. Photos from the workshop:Presenting small stories reflecting current health problems in the community

community mappingchoosing good and bad hygiene behaviorsidentifying disease transmission routeschoosing improved sanitation facilitiesranking improved sanitary facilities and behaviors between easy, difficult or very difficult to do and effective, moderately effective and very effective.the community with their finalized plan. please note a small addition to group on the right hand side...

Just for kicks:The results of newly introduced catnip- Mitz kickin it with the produceSunrise the morning of my birthdayA birthday party I hosted for twins in my village, Sandra and Sandrine, complete with pink cupcakes, nail polish and people magazine- style watch. What else could a girl want on her special day?

As the months roll by, quickly approaching one year in country, America seems almost a distant dream. Time apart from the many distractions of the modern world has afforded me a unique kind of clarity and opportunity for reflection on my life to date, particularly of recent years. It seems prior to departure my life was largely a series of inconsequential tasks to accomplish, people to impress and places to fly to in a hurry. Indeed, any personal misgivings this might imply also suggests a larger cultural fault. It seems to me we’re all rushing around with a carrot in front our noses; I wonder if we even remember what we’re chasing after anymore and what we would think if we stopped long enough to let our thoughts catch up to us. Does the quest for greatness, the pursuit of the "American dream", inherently hinder our ability to stop and smell the roses? Or have our values become so skewed in the chase we’ve simply forgotten the importance of the journey in favor of the destination? I find it hard to recall why it was so pressing to keep pace for want of a mcmansion and a platinum card in the first place. Never the less, the longer I’m away from America the more find myself forgetting her bad parts altogether, what drove me from her in the first place. But isn’t this true with most extended separations? Time softens the edges, whittles away at any ill giving or once perceived deficiencies until you’re left with but the simple charm of the whole, a pleasant pallor of detail, the very skeleton of the thing: the corner grocery, a Sunday morning brunch, the steady hum of a city side street- a world in itself. Is it true what they say, distance makes the great grow fonder? Or does it but make us an opportunist of memory, tricking the psyche’s sentiment in all discretion with what seemed to have been, might have been, rather than what was? Time makes believers of us all.

Photos from last Saturday, a typical day in the village.

Photos from last week's unexpected trip to South Ambae to assist in some research/clinics with a group of professors, doctors and students visiting from the motherland, Japan and Sweden. It seems no two days are the same in the Peace Corps, I began my week teaching at the school as usual, journeyed to the deep south for some excellent quality kava and malaria/chronic disease work with some unexpected visitors and new found friends, and ended the week with a three hour boat ride in a tropical storm back to Lolowai in which I tossed my cookies more times than I can count and envisioned many a headline along the lines of, "Peace Corps volunteer lost at sea in the Pacific", only to find myself on another boat that very same night, dining on the yacht of a lovely couple from Colorado but recently based out of New Zealand, enjoying lamb, chocolate cake and fine wine... not too shabby for a week's adventure, if I do say so myself.

(more of the photos from this trip later, slow internet permits me only a few before I have to hike back to my village for the night...)

I'd like to start this off with a little shout out to some of my amazing friends from the states that I've received a lot of support and encouragement from as of late, especially in the form of letters and care packages (you know who you are). I just recently received a fabulous care package, packed full of all kinds of goodies including Taco Bell hot sauce and Cap 'n' Crunch cereal, from one friend in particular, my old friend Melani from community college (PCC! what up). I was surprised to find yet another treat from her waiting for me at the post today, and wanted to share a part of her letter that especially hit home (wherever that may be, these days). Regarding her ability to find time to send me such thoughtful things while balancing a marriage, a toddler, work and school:

"I may be busy, but so are you and every other person in this world. Whether it be facebooking, blogging, shopping, exercising, serving in Vanuatu or picking your nose... people will always make time for the things they want to make time for. And I want to write to you, not only because I miss and love your guts, but also because I support you 100% for serving in the Peace Corps!"Our ability as a species to entirely transform another person's day with the smallest of gestures, whether it be a heartfelt letter or a smile across the way, will never cease to amaze me. Anyway, with the end of the school term and the first batch of classes under my belt, I suppose you might refer to me as an “experienced” health and environment teacher now. Although even that might be a generous proclamation of skills to which I’m still in the process of developing. Development work is funny like that; the giver and receiver become blurred in a series of cooperative exchanges that more or less resemble one great melting pot of knowledge and experience, to which both parties benefit equally, or so it seems in this case, anyway. I continue to forge ahead with my projects, which as time progresses become characterized by a more trial and error based approach than any other remarkable methodology of development I might dazzle you with. By and by truly the most remarkable instrument of behavior change (as is where most development work herein lies apart from policy and infrastructure) appears to be no more than one’s aptitude for flexibility and procurement of limitless patience. I say, throw caution to the wind and hold impromptu workshops in your skivvies if you must; and I can speak on this from personal experience as on more than one occasion I have found myself in this situation, with all the patience and humility I can muster, encouraging aspirin seekers of all ages that beating on my windows in the wee hours of the morning will not get you medical treatment, aspirin is not actually a treat-all, cure-all miracle drug and the consistent misuse of medicine results in one’s eventual immunity to the aforementioned drug and therefore really causes more harm than good ( hasn’t anyone around here read the story about the boy who cried wolf?), also that most human beings have basic privacy needs… I suspect this one was over their heads but isn’t the real crux of the matter, anyhow. Nonetheless, a rose is a rose by any other name, or I suppose a hibiscus in this case. And so I continue to toil away; and by toil I mean bounce back and forth between wanting to rip all of my hair out from frustration and call it quits for want of a latte, shopping mall and interstate to drive on, to wanting to jump for joy for every student or community member I’ve noticed the slightest bit of marked difference in and hide out in bush forever playing futbol with the kids, making laplap with the mamas and debating island hearsay (topics ranging from best ways to roast a pig’s entrails over fire to the extinction of dinosaurs) with the elders. Not to worry though mom, Starbucks and a pedicure will beckon me home sooner or later. Term 2 just started back up again at the school, and I’ve managed to hammer out my curriculum for year 7 and 8 for the rest of the year. I’m still working on year five and six… right now I’m kind of just winging it as I go but they don’t seem to notice. Next week’s lesson: the respiratory system, i.e. balloon and straw induced mayhem. Stay tuned. Environment curriculum for year 7 and 8 is as follows: -Habitat loss and degradation: destructive logging and land use -Human population growth: family planning and the “population explosion” -Endangered species: over-fishing and the wildlife trade -Waste and pollution: the trouble with rubbish and urban sprawl -Climate change: global warming and sea-level rise -Resource management: tools for the future -Sustainable practices: planning for the future -Taking action: current environmental issues in the Pacific and personal sustainability pledge -Culminating project: this will be up to the class; I’m thinking something along the lines of a re-planting project, compost project, community clean-up, or a combination. I’m excited to see what they come up with! I’ve taken more of an issue-based approach with the older years rather than a more scientific based approach as I have with the younger years. The goal is to encourage the older years to think sustainably and recognize the effects of human behavior on the environment, whereas with the younger years I’m focusing on how our environment works as a whole, particularly the connections between living things. Interestingly enough, the government just released an article in the paper regarding the implementation of global warming and climate change in schools’ curriculums. Sea-level rise is hairy business if you live on a small island, and I’m pleased to see the government taking initiate and even more pleased that my students are now ahead of the game. Health curriculum for year 7 and 8 is as follows: -Sexual changes and reproductive health: the male and female reproductive organs and menstruation -Sexuality and decision-making: influences on values and responsible decision-making -Sex and gender: traditional gender roles and gender discrimination -Becoming sexually active: risks and consequences, pregnancy and contraception -Sexually transmitted infections: understanding, transmission and prevention -HIV/AIDS: myths and facts, transmission, treatment, global and local significance -Safe relationships: assertive communication, talking with parents, talking about condoms and protection from sexual abuse -Substance use: alcohol, kava, tobacco and drugs- health risks, social effects and how to say “no” -Your health and your future: setting goals for a healthy future Are you sensing a theme here? This is essentially a youth empowerment and adolescent reproductive health project that I’m carrying out using the guise of a class. Clever, I know. Also a very delicate matter given the culture and I’m interested to see the results. While I hope for a more affluent, if not inspired generation, I realize that, even if I were that good of a teacher, I will probably never see the bulk of this project’s results while in service. Nonetheless, as with the environment classes, I’m taking an issue-based approach with the older years with issues specific to their age group, and focusing more on general health with the younger years, body systems, hygiene, disease prevention and oodles of other fun things. I’ve discontinued cumulative weekly lessons with the younger years (1-4) as retention was blatantly low. Instead I’ve planned a series of small lessons to be carried out with them at various times for the remainder of the school year: -Germs: how they make us sick and how to stop those little devils -Hand washing tutorial: everything your mother told you and you promptly ignored -Basic nutrition: tri kaen kakae (their food groups here: meat (mostly tin), veggies/fruits (mostly bananas), root crop. Oh, the variety) -Tooth brushing tutorial: how to prevent your teeth from rotting out of your head -Basic first aid: what to do when a bush knife goes astray -Disaster preparedness: because we live on a volcano, after all. So there you have it, a tried and true “teacher” among you. I’m also still working away at my water project, this is turning out to be a monster of a project, which is all as well I suppose because it seems to be a monster of a problem in this area. I’m in the process of training a co-facilitator from the village to run the PHAST (participatory hygiene and sanitation transformation) workshop with me, which examines the relationship between poor hygiene, poor sanitation, water and disease transmission and will hopefully elicit behavior change to alleviate the aforementioned because the water here is very, very unclean, as I just found out after a recent water audit and sanitary inspection of the area. Using H2s tests from rural water supply in Port Vila, which identity if a water sample is contaminated with bacteria, I discovered that 7 of 8 primary drinking sources in the community are highly contaminated and unsafe for drinking. Naturally, I followed this news with an urgent community meeting, urging for chlorine treatments using household bleach and boiling water before drinking (which is my method of defense). Initially the black samples (the samples should remain clear if uncontaminated, light gray is slightly contaminated) seemed to frighten the community into action by way of boiling, but things seem to have returned to life as usual and day by day different community members fall prey to severe stomach cramping and diarrhea. Here’s to hoping the PHAST workshop helps tackle this problem, it’s scheduled for the end of this month and will run the course of a week. Afterwards I’m hoping to submit several grants for additional water sources (especially for the dispensary and school, which at present are without any form of water source… not even a contaminated one) and run a follow-up workshop on rainwater harvesting maintenance and management (since rainwater is the only potable water source in the area). Volunteers on different islands have reported an array of frustrations (noted, dually anticipated) and a myriad of encouraging successes with the PHAST workshop and I’m looking forward to trying my hand at it. In other news, I seem to be making waves in the Peace Corps world. Or I suppose ripples, waves just has a nicer ring to it and boosts my ego a little more. I recently had the opportunity of hosting the Asia-Pacific regional manager in my village for the day, a first time Vanuatu visitor. I’m proud to report I filled her full of laplap, gave her what I’d like to consider an expert village tour and sent her away with a hand-painted mat weaved from palm leave by my very own host mama. If you see me popping up on Peace Corps propaganda in the near future, don’t say you weren’t warned. Monica, if you’re reading this, I hope you enjoyed your trip to Ambae and that the mat helped fung shui your new pad. Additionally, I just returned from the big city where we held a week long HIV/AIDS training with village health workers throughout the islands. Traditionally, village health workers are unpaid community members with little experience, so training in HIV/AIDS is an imperative step towards prevention for the country as a whole. During the closing ceremony the director of public health was asked to give the closing speech. With the event set on a white sand beach just outside of Port Vila, fittingly enough, he thanked the participants for all of their hard work, emphasized the need for HIV/AIDS education for prevention and tugging on heart strings high and low, attested to the top notch development work of the Peace Corps, after which he began to speak of a blog he had recently read of one volunteer in particular, working in Lovunivili, East Ambae… your shock is as great , if not greater, than mine. Believe you me, between this incident, reviewing my monthly blog stats and hearing from my mother that I have quite the following from the hospital I worked at prior to service (and by this I mean a constant, “Kara, update your blog… so and so on 3 North wants to know what happened after the glitter) I am quite frankly dumb-founded at my apparent publicity. Nevertheless, I promptly introduced myself after the closing speech, found that we are of the same island (which tends to instill a certain kinship among us islanders) and drank a shell of kava with my new found fan, white sand underfoot, palm trees a swaying. As far as less moving matters go, at ten months into service I find myself in due time for the medical staff’s highly recommended bi-annual de-worming; only a little more than a quarter overdue, anyway. Working out several digestive issues as we speak, which might otherwise render most in the Northern Hemisphere unfit for duty, I blog on, with unwavering diligence, because if I have learned anything in the Peace Corps it’s that some small child in Africa is inevitably suffering more than me and that whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, or a more "seasoned" volunteer at very least. "Seasoned" referring to those whose medical kits have been sacrificed to the island gods by way of mold. When a Peace Corps volunteer is faced with the dilemma of ailment by intestinal worms or questionably safe means of eradicating said ailment, does one balk in the face of a little unsightly green fuzz, a little malodorous eminence? Not in Peace Corps Vanuatu anyway. I did what any soldiering volunteer on a distant island would do… I called the medical staff and asked for replacement medication to be put on the next available flight. Here’s to hoping Air Vanuatu comes through in a timely manner, because if de-worming isn’t a romantic way to spend ones weekend, then I just don’t know what is; to think, I once marked my weeks end with a pair of stilettos and a of couple cocktails… Speaking of romantic, the cockroach problem persists. Although happily so less in quantity and frequency. My catchment system (coconut shell + large rock) appears to be fairly effective at keeping the beasts at bay, although upon removal and thus exposure of my shower drain, which I learned the hard way during a minor flooding incident of my casa proper is pretty necessary while heaving buckets of cold water over yourself (I don’t have it in me to refer to this as “showering”), all hell breaks loose yet again. However, I have learned in my grisly trials of woman versus wild that when one is expecting a terrible thing, one is benefited by an adequacy of preparation in meeting said terrible thing. It is frankly almost disturbing the amount of pure satisfaction, often mounting on joy, I take from the demise of these lowly beings. It has become a thing of sport, and one that I find myself rather gifted at; on more than one occasion my service has been requested by a fellow volunteer in pest induced distress. My method is as follows: paralyze with multipurpose insect killer, smash with nearest blunt object. I just so happen to have a collection of many such things in my bathroom, namely empty shampoo bottles, for this explicit purpose; to think, I once required a battalion of every masculine force my given quarters had to offer at the mere sight of a pin-sized spider… And speaking of spiders, I might as well end with some heartwarming photos of year 5 and 6’s end of term field trip to the bush for their much anticipated ecosystem scavenger hunt. I have never been so charmed to hear, “Miss Kara! Miss Kara! Come look at my spider!”, “Miss Kara! Miss Kara! Look at this huge worm I found!” and countless other creepy ,crawly things you could only expect a bunch of 12-year-olds to dig up in the jungle.

Note to reader: I've switched to Flickr for uploading/hosting my photos as Blogger has proved unfit to handle the amount of megapixels my Nikon is packing. For your viewing pleasure, of course: please note exceptional photo clarity.

These are a few photos from Megan's birthday (the volunteer closest to me, posted at the provincial hospital in Lolowai, where I coincidentally steal wifi from in order to bring you this very blog). What better way to celebrate than with a couple of Tuskar (Vanuatu's national beer, or 'bia' in Bislama) on the beach with a killer view of Maewo across the way and one of the neighborhood boys as a sidekick (nobody panic, no Tuskar for him). This was of course followed by a night of kava bar hopping throughout Saratamata (the provincial center) with a few other volunteers, although no photographs of that as I was too busy enjoying my muddy root water. But take it on good authority, a good time was had by all.

They got hops

I nearly shot Tuskar out of my nose when I looked over and saw this, totally unsolicited. Quite the charming sidekick

Hanging out with my host mama, Mommy Oli, one of my favorite village pikinini, Shania (isn't she a doll?) and Mommy Adline- the French teacher at the school who tutors me. Which reminds me that I've neglected to mention, je parle Francais :)

And lastly, banana pancakes I whipped up for the women in the village on Mother's day, topped with fresh papaya and a hibiscus, naturally. It's mind blowing to me how hard these women work to support the community and how little they're thanked for it.

These past few weeks 9 out of 10 of my conversations have been regarding the following: 1. The death of Osama Bin Laden. I mentioned in my last entry the role volunteers here play as a part-time diplomat, this couldn’t be more true as of late and I can’t help but laugh at the ironic timing of this given my last bit of rambling. Being an American, it is widely assumed that I’m a walking one stop source for any and all information regarding the United States Government. And upon the death of Bin Laden I could not step outside of my house without a “Bin Laden?” followed by an inquisitive tilt of the head. Much to everyone’s disappointment I’m as ill informed at the next bush dweller. Yes, he is dead, fill you in on the rest just as soon as I’m telepathically sent a government issued press release and/or I finally get that high speed internet connection up and running in my bush kitchen. 2. The arrival of the U.S. navy in Santo (a neighboring and fairly urbanized island). Again, being an American it is assumed that, naturally, I would know the whereabouts of my government’s navy at any given moment. Alas, upon repeatedly failing to deliver any useful knowledge regarding the massive influx of uniformed white men in Luganville I’ve been given many a detailed rendition of their faculty. I may be mistaken but I don’t think the Northern islands have seen this much American military presence since WWII. And it seems that not much has changed out here in the Pacific, banana trees are still used as hiding spots from overhead jets, and submarines are still likened to very big fish. I’ve kept myself occupied recently with various odd projects as well as the larger ones I detailed earlier. Rural development is a tricky and multifaceted business, and effectiveness requires a unique combination of flexibility and creativity. While formal workshops and trainings are certainly important, and I’m definitely not one to knock a decent flow chart or well itemized work agenda, I can say without a doubt the greatest strides and most noticeable impact I’ve made so far has been solely in informal interactions with individuals. Whether I’m discussing the HIV/AIDS epidemic while cooking over an open bush fire, encouraging increased waste and water management while collecting coconuts in the bush, advising a village elder on the value of a nutritionally balanced diet and exercise in preventing diabetes or teaching the dispensary staff how to monitor patient vitals during our afternoon down time, these spontaneous instances, prompted by my community by the interest of my presence among them, will be my legacy here, and will never be something I can put on a resume as professional development work or claim on my quarterly reports to the State Department.Events as of late:

I'm asked constantly about American food, so I decided to put on a nutrition workshop based on the premise of sharing some with the village. I purchased noodles and pre-made spaghetti sauce in Vila and had them shipped to my island, and received the necessary spices and parmesan cheese from the motherland itself. I also brought back a smokeless cooking stove from Vila, a healthier alternative to cooking over a smokey fire and just as easy. I was able to gather all the village women in my mama's kitchen and cook spaghetti with them over said stove in a sort of sneaky demonstration, after which the whole community came together to eat. I went around to individual families beforehand and asked them to talk with the rest of the village about what they were going to bring to the meal, in attempt to have them work together to plan a balanced meal. We ended up with a delicious spread of spaghetti, yams, taro, bananas, grapefruit, island cabbage and more. The spaghetti was met with some initial skepticism, but after the village elders dug in and confirmed it's tastiness, the pots were soon empty and requests for future spaghetti feeds made.

Some of the mamas cooking with me over the stove, and some of the village girls snacking on dry noodles

Cooking the meat for the sauce with May (purchased this meat at the provincial center and hiked back up the the village with it... no sauce would have been complete without it!)

Some of the elders and the original taste testers, on their second plate and too busy to be bothered with photos (seriously, they were in deep concentration). Affirmation of their enjoyment I think.

I've also taken to baking with my neighbors, and although scraping together all of the necessary supplies is a challenge the spoils are worth it. This was my first endeavor- chocolate, heart-shaped cupcakes with rainbow sprinkles.

The official baking party... I swear they were as excited about it as I was...

In an effort to teach some of my younger students about germs and disease transmission, I created the Quatui Centre School glitter challenge. I sprinkled glitter all over the classroom to represent germs, which inevitably found its way to all of the students' hands. I followed this with a hand washing demonstration and relay race. This was a big hit, every student here has been told to wash their hands because of germs before, but my guess is very few have actually ever been shown how it works.

Years 4, 5 and 6 showing off their glittery hands, I don't think the school will ever be able to get all of the glitter out of that room.

Lastly, I also gave a lesson on the skeletal and muscular systems and had been asking around the village for some animal bones to use as visual aids. Not long after the leg of a freshly slaughtered cow, or buluk in the language here, was brought to my house, still dripping with blood. I ate well that night and the next morning set to work trying to clean the thing. It took me about four hours to strip and burn all of the meat and flesh off of these enormous things and made a complete mess of myself and my kitchen in the process. I've never felt like more of a dedicated teacher, and only wished some of you would have been there to witness this as testimony to my full scale acclimation to the bush. A little dirt, er... bone marrow, never hurt anyone, anyway.

Upon initial arrival I considered Vanuatu to be a country uniquely void of American influence. With no American embassy (the closest is Papua New Guinea), no history of significant interaction aside from a short lived relationship based on geography and the Japanese during WWII and no real assets for exploitation aside from copra (which is a market primarily dominated by the Philippines already), America has by in large left Vanuatu to its own devices. Moreover, with a hearty influx of tourists and foreign aid from Australia and New Zealand, a goods market monopolized by the Chinese and other forms of Asia-Pacific relations spanning from Fiji to Japan filling in every other niche imaginable, Americans and all things North American represent a cultural and geographical rarity here. I like to consider myself a pretty globally conscience individual but to be perfectly honest, before being offered an assignment here from the Peace Corps, I’d never heard of Vanuatu and my guess is the same holds true for most of you reading this. Without a shadow of a doubt most Ni Vans are pretty familiar with America, but for the most unlikely of reasons. For example, the average Ni Van is largely unaware of the events of 9/11 and the current conflict in the Middle East, has never heard of McDonalds, Microsoft, Budweiser, Boeing or any other major American corporations or dietary staples, couldn’t name a single American city outside of New York (if that) and is utterly perplexed that a seemingly predominately Caucasian country is run by a black man. And I refer to it this way because the hands down top question I have been asked while in service goes something like, “hu ia blak man blong bigfala kavman blong America?” (Who is the black man in the big American government?), which usually prompts the classic inquiry, “America i gat bak man tu?” (America has black people too?). Occasionally I’m treated to the ever so vague indirect inquiry, “mi bin luk long blak man blong America” (I have seen the black man of America). Any lack of savvy in terms of American political events, cultural diversity and consumer goods in the collective Ni Van consciousness is, in my humble opinion, completely compensated by their impressive and expansive knowledge regarding all things entertainment. Perhaps my favorite conversation I’ve had with a Ni Van thus far went something as follows: “America i gat blak majik olsem long ples ia?” (Does America have black magic like Vanuatu does?) “No, mifala no gat blak majik long America.” (No, we do not have black magic in America.) “Yu kiaman! Mi bin luk long Harry Potter finis!” (You’re lying! I have seen Harry Potter!) *insert several lines of conversation where I attempt, with no success, to explain the subtle differences in reality on and off screen* “From wanem yu wantem kiaman long mi? Mi bin luk long fulap blak majik long ples blong yu wetem ae blong mi finis!” (Why do you want to lie to me? I have seen lots of black magic happening where you come from with my own eyes!) *tension escalating* “Mi harem save be, Harry Potter hemi stap long England. Hemi no blong ples blong mi.” (I understand, but Harry Potter lives in England. He is not from America.) “O, ale.” (Yes, okay.) Quick save, I think. Considering the relative shortcomings in terms of transportation and communications infrastructure an archipelago breeds and the fact my village has no electricity or running water yet many have a more impressive movie collection than I can claim to have owned in the states is entirely mind blowing. Mind you, nearly every one of these is some form of illegal Chinese import, but I say still impressive nonetheless. It’s not just movies either. As I mentioned my little brother, Brannon, is quite musical; serenading the village from the tops of whatever fruit trees he finds himself in on a delightfully consistent basis. I eat dinner with him and my host family a few times a week, and I usually bring my iPod for him to listen to. On one such night the first week after I returned from Vila, he found his way to the Lady Gaga section of my artist directory and asked me in all seriousness, in Bislama, if I had her new song. Much to his delight I did, as I had just gotten it while I was in the city. But the point of this is that my 12-year-old Ni Van brother is as much, if not more in sync with Lady Gaga’s newest hits as I am. We then proceeded to listen to and afterwards discuss “Born This Way” over plates of taro and cabbage in a dirt-floored bush kitchen made of bamboo and lit by nothing more than a small cooking fire and the stars. Shortly thereafter my iPod ran out of battery, but lucky for us our neighbor turned on his gas powered generator and treated us to some Radio Vanuatu. And of all things, what should pass through those speakers? The Backstreet Boys. Thrilled at this, my little brother started singing along, which in turn prompted my mama to sing along, while I sat there dumbfounded and speechless, mouth full of taro. After the shock of this wore off and our sing along was finished, I asked Brannon who his favorite artist was. His immediate response, “Chris!” (They refer to artists here by first name, as in Chris for Chris Brown, Jason for Jason Derulo, Will for Will Smith etc.). He then proceeded to ask me if I like Chris, which I responded, “Mi likem singsing blong hem be…” (I like his music but…) and before I could even complete my thought he interjected, “be hemi kilim woman blong hem, Rihanna!” (but he beats his woman, Rihanna). And so, while some may not know much about the “war on terror”, disease transmission or the joy of a happy meal, they do know that Chris Brown got into a scrap with Rihanna and every word to “Everybody” by the one and only Backstreet Boys.Sandrine, Mitz, Jenny and Brannon snacking on guava and rocking out to my iPod

Serving in Vanuatu is unique in countless ways, but perhaps one of the most interesting for me is that Peace Corps serves as the one and only American entity in country. That being said, Peace Corps serves as the face of America in Vanuatu and the only real form of American-Ni Van relations. And that being said, renders us as part-time volunteers and part-time diplomats. I’ve found myself in a precarious balancing act regarding the latter. How do I represent my country to a small, rural village on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific? And how do I do this in a way that is both culturally sensitive, and cognoscente of the fact that I will probably never be as influential here as Rambo, Tupac or Britney Spears have been pre-dating my arrival? In other news, I found an impressively large spider living in my hair the other day (really) and work is going well. I’ve been teaching in the school four hours a week on Tuesday and Wednesdays, which is exhausting but very rewarding. I have my first water committee meeting tomorrow morning and a nutrition workshop the following day. I also have a maternal child health clinic set up for the end of this month, as well as workshops on diabetes and hypertension/heart disease in May which will lead into a community wide NCD screening. Here’s a peak at the last few weeks:My view the other morning, sometimes I have to remind myself this is real (click to enlarge this, the small version doesn't do it justice)

My new neighbor...

Planning for a lesson on anatomy with year 7 and 8... I have to draw my own diagrams and the only curriculum I have is terribly dated, moldy and in French, which I then have to translate into English and then teach in Bislama and intermittent Haven. Teaching so far has been the ultimate test in resourcefulness. I had to call my dad in America to ask him what the function of a spleen was right before this lesson because none of my materials said anything about it and for the life of me I could not remember what a spleen does. I have never missed the power of Google so much.

Mitz pretending she's the village lookout

On a clear day in Lovunivili, I wake to a spectacular view of Maewo across the way. Such a spectacular view that one can make out ships, roads and most notably, waterfalls. I’ve made good use of these waterfalls as my Christmas adventures will attest, and therefore have always been in good standing with them, admiring them for their majesty and ignoring the unfathomable amounts of mud they create for the poor souls of Maewo. I was admiring this view and said waterfalls my first morning back as I went about my morning routine of filling my kettle for the urgent consumption of coffee waking up at five AM in the bush usually requires; admiring it a little more so than usual as absence makes the heart grow fonder. I was admiring it so much in fact, that I failed to realize my kettle remained painfully dry, shining like a warning beacon in the early light of the unforgiving tropical sun. Not so much as a single drip of water made it into my anxiously awaiting kettle. My brow furrowed, a layer of sweat crept over my body, dread filled my heart- I feared this day would come. The waterfalls mocked me. Ambae is a beautiful island, a wonderful island, a fantastic island I would say; but it is also a very, very dry one. This isn’t to say that it doesn’t rain here, because it does. A lot. And as previously mentioned under my talk of the major water security dilemma us Lovunivilians are facing, we don’t have a lot of water source options. We pretty much have the one, actually- rain tanks. Never mind that the few currently standing tanks, including mine, are dilapidated and crumbling to the ground, infested with parasites (did I mention I’ve been riddled with dysentery for the past few months?)and certainly not enough to support the population- if, more like when, we run out- just climb a coconut tree and drink some coconuts. What’s that, you don’t want to bathe in coconuts too? No problem, swim in the saltwater, it’s only a two hour walk to the beach. I don’t have any scientific proof to support this, but I get the feeling that the closer to the volcano you get, the less water you have available to you. I base this on the fact that both Megan and Melissa have a running tap in their house, not three hours down the road from me. What’s more, Melissa has a running shower. I kid you not. Manaro: 1; Kara: 0. I am not bitter. No, do not discern this from the telling of my water woes, I am not simply stewing in self pity but rather reflecting on how this will undoubtedly make me a more well-rounded and better acclimated individual upon my return to the states. I may even go so far as to ascertain that perhaps the tackling of such hardships will in turn allow me to develop such resourcefulness and doggedness that the American government could only hope would emerge in the civility of a returned Peace Corps volunteer. That, or the ache in my girl-ish biceps from hauling one too many buckets of water uphill will be the fire under mine and my villages (respective) asses to get going on a water committee and get a project proposal for a additional water sources in the works. Only time and/or dehydration will tell.

Some snapshots of the people in my village...

One of my little brothers scratching coconuts to make coconut milk

Some of my most frequent visitors, playing with Mitz on the bench outside my house

Some of the men hanging out outside the store, the one standing is chief Marcel, founder of the school and dispensary

The pikini raiding the guava tree outside my house

My papa, little brother and some of the other boys from the village

The women of Lovunivili, plus a few pinkini. I swear they're were really excited about this picture, a little hard to tell from their expressions though...

Some of the older girls that also come to visit me often, although have recently left for school on Pentecost. Hopefully they'll be back soon, we've had some pretty good dance parties thus far

One of my little sisters and my mama roasting breadfruit- tasty!

Lovunivili is a fairly small village of about 19 households (comprising around 80 people) in a much larger area referred to as Longana. Longana is essentially every village "antap" (on top of the mountain/really big hill) past the airport, which is also called Longana and which was very confusing for me at first. I'm not sure exactly how many villages there are antap, they all seem to blend into one another and it took me a very long time to distinguish between them. The total population for the area is about 1,000 and the dispensary I work at provides medical services to this entire area.

It's also a pretty new settlement and the dispensary and school were both founded by my "booboo" or one of my grandfathers, Marcel Tari, who looks like he's pushing his 90's but still lives in the village. After receiving his formal education in Nduin Ndui on west Ambae, he carried medicine and teaching materials back to Lovunvili and ran an informal clinic out of his house while recruiting teachers for the village school. He's nearly lost his hearing and doesn't speak a lot of Bislama, but I've got a lot of respect for him.

Our welcome sign and the first thing I saw upon reaching Lovunivili

Quatui Centre School, home to about 150 students years 1-8 in the area

The dispensary and my house behind it

Inside my super cute house

My bedroom and walk-in closet (I've always wanted one) that doubles as a guest room from time to time

My bathroom, where I dump buckets of cold water on myself until I'm clean. Toilet is on the other side of that wall. It doesn't have a toilet seat and doesn't flush so I have to pour buckets of water down to flush but it's not a drop toilet, or "bush toilet" so that's exciting. My mom has no good excuses not to visit now.

Some of the village kids playing in the church extension after the most recent cyclone. The village tried to extend the pre-existing church but ran out of funding

Some of my neighbors' houses, made out of local materials

One of the village woman cooking by wrapping food in banana leaves and placing it over hot stones (this is the finished product)

The view from the dispensary, I don't have sunsets because I'm on the wrong side of the island but I've got sunrises. This is the sun rising over Maewo

The view from my bedroom window, sometimes I lay in bed and just stare at this upside down trying to let it sink in that I'm actually here, doing this

More of the village kids playing with marbles on the road, this is our "nice stretch" of road... the whole thing definitely doesn't look like this

The Mitz! She's a doll, no?

My booboo woman making laplap in her kitchen

The work of Hurricane Vania, RIP banana tree. Also a good shot of my bush kitchen when I can cook over open fire if I'm feeling really ambitious

Tiny leetle pig. Most of the livestock runs around untamed like this, which gets pretty annoying (especially with the roosters that like to hang out by my bedroom window in the wee hours of the morning), but when they're this cute I don't mind

The soccer field for the school, this game was one of the first things I experienced in my village and left me a pretty big fan of futbol (only Americans call it soccer) as it's a compellingly universal sport

Our fancy community hall where I'll be holding a lot of workshops in the near future. Rumor is that dish used to pick up Australian TV but broke during the "excitement" of the most recent world cup

November was an interesting time to leave for site, I was definitely a little nervous to spend the holidays away from home for the first time and completely out of my element on top of that. But I'm happy to report I had a fantastic Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years; I think would even go as far to say they were some of the best I've ever had and completely unforgettable as well.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving isn't a practiced holiday in Vanuatu so all of us ladies on Ambae migrated to Nancy's village, Vandue, on North Ambae for some American kicks. I took a truck down the mountain (about a 45 minute ride) and met Megan and Melissa in Lolowai; from there we chartered a boat North as the roads from East to North are pretty impassable via truck. The boat ride there was only about an hour because there were only four of us including the 'captain' and the seas were pretty calm. Docking in Vandue turned out to be pretty tricky since there is no actual 'dock', the driver has to wait for just the right moment and follow a wave in to dock on the beach. However, if the driver misjudges the wave the boat can easily capsize. So we had to circle around the shore for about 20 minutes until we found a suitable wave. This was especially funny because Nancy and a pretty good portion of her village were all waiting on the beach to help us pull in the boat, laughing at us.

Upon finally beaching ourselves in Vandue and all giddy from being reunited for the first time since leaving for site, we promptly began a two hour hike up another mountain to Mac's village, Quatemele. We were received with much excitement as the village had never hosted that many white people before. A welcome ceremony and small meal was had, introductions and smol storian were made. I have to admit, I was a little nervous heading up there with my blatantly white skin. The first thing my host mama said to me when she heard of my Thanksgiving plans is as follows, "oh, bae yu ko long Not? oli bin kakae fulap waet man long ples!" (you're going North? They used to eat a lot of white people there). And while this turned out to be true, this story has a happy ending yet. The chief of Quatemele greeted us with his official custom killing stick (a spear carved out of wood) and proudly told us that while they used to use said stick to kill and eat white men that ventured to the area, he would now use it to protect us in the event that a neighboring area tried to kill and eat us. I was comforted.

Shortly thereafter we headed back down to Vandue with Mac in tow to get a good night's sleep in preparation for a busy day of cooking. I have to say I was pretty wiped by the time I got back to Nancy's house; down one mountain, across the water, up another mountain and back down again in 24 hours... I slept pretty well.

In true Thanksgiving fashion, we spent all day slaving away; in nontraditional Thanksgiving fashion we slaved away over an open fire rather than a stove. We only had a few pots and pans available to us so we had to be really resourceful and cook things in segments.

Peeling a kumala the size of my head turned out to be a pretty difficult feat. As you can see from my face here, it took some deep concentration. I had throw this photo in to brag about my accomplishment a little bit, plus I'm reppin' WWU.

Our Thanksgiving spread ended up being pretty impressive given our means and resources. We roasted a couple of chickens and made mashed kumala, pumpkin soup, bread and banana cake via dutch oven, fried kumala, beans with curry, and last but not least... Kraft macaroni and cheese. The mac & cheese was the biggest hit of the night, I couldn't imagine this being true of an tride and true American thanksgiving, but obviously our taste buds aren't that picky anymore.

Christmas (or as my dad would say- baby jesus day)

Christmas was spent adventuring across my neighboring island, Maewo. To begin, Lindsay and Nic (two volunteers based on Maewo) came across by boat and met myself, Megan and Jenni (a volunteer based in Port Vila who had just flown in). We set out for Linday's village Baitora, and as luck would have it got caught in a pretty wicked rain storm.

Jenni, Lindsay and I in front of Lindsay's comically small house. I should have taken solid shot of the door, because it's basically a hobbit house. I don't know how she does it, I hit my head on the frame every time I tried to come in or out and before I could even recover slipped on all the mud and cow droppings just outside her doorstep. The cows like to eat her house, you see. To bath you have to kneel on coral in a small, not entirely enclosed structure wrapped in tarps because the "roof" is too low. I'm convinced they were under the impression they were getting an eight-year-old rather than a full grown American. Kudos to you for handling this like a champ, Lindsay. For more information on tiny houses and outrageous mud please see:

After some mandatory kava and laplap we began our journey North toward's Nic's village, Talise. Transportation in and out of Baitora is completely reliant on water travel so we decided to go by way of canoe, in true Ni Van fashion.

We canoed into "hole blong moon"along the way, I wish I had some pictures of some of the stone carvings in here but if you watch the Penama video in my last entry it shows them briefly.

After staying in Nic's village for a few days we strapped on our hiking packs and ventured by foot to Nik and Jennifer's village, Naviso on East Maewo. Reaching Naviso was a trial in brute human strength and will power. It took us about six hours scrambling up and down mountains, wading through knee deep mud and creeping along tiny footpaths where one wrong step could end in a fall to your death. Alright, maybe not a fall to your death but you'd break a few bones for sure.

This is about halfway across the island on the top of Maewo, looking East towards Fiji.

We received a huge welcome in Naviso, which was pretty overwhelming immediately after hiking across the island. Most people in Naviso had never seen that many white people before, and similarly to Mac's village on North Ambae, that many white people had certainly never ventured there before. Needless to say, we got a lot of looks.

Christmas Eve and Christmas were spent recovering, drinking kava and swimming in the river. Jennifer (a teacher trainer in Naviso) made us all hand fans so we got to open presents on Christmas morning, in true American fashion.

All of us at the nakamal, I'm four shells of kava deep. Maewo's kava is really strong and hand ground with coral. We all had an interesting time walking back to Nik's house for the night, to say the least. But when in Rome...

Hanging out in the river, a pretty aesthetically pleasing place to hang out with the ocean and all, I'd say.

After Christmas celebrations commenced and we gathered our bearings once more, we hiked out of Naviso back to Talise, where we proceeded to take a boat farther North to Big Wota- the biggest waterfall in Vanuatu.

Entertaining ourselves along the way. Pretty normal for us.

Some friends we met along the way...

Of course we had to climb it. Pretty slippery work.

At the top finally, amazing view and totally worth the treacherous climb up.

New Years

After our Christmas adventures on Maewo we took a boat back to East Ambae a New Year's Eve party at Melissa's school, Vureas. We made American food, drank cheap wine, listened to bad 90's music and had a pretty fantastic time being silly Westerners.

Here we all are on Melissa's porch representing five different islands, a pretty impressive migration for an outer island gathering. I think this may hold the record for most white people on Ambae at one consecutive time, we broke all sorts of "most white man" records it seems like. From left to right: Lindsay- West Maewo, Jenni- Vila, Nik- East Maewo, Me, Nancy- North Ambae, Mac- North Ambae, Melissa- East Ambae, Jennifer- East Maewo, Nic- West Maewo, Gene- Santo, Jeff- Malakula.

We rolled through Lolowai in this truck blasting such fine tunes as "OMG" by Usher and "Dynamite" by Taio Cruz on an iHome. I don't think the villagers knew what hit them.

The highlight of NYE was without a doubt the coconut drop. This was my brilliant scheme- we tied a coconut to the ceiling and dropped it like it was hot after the countdown, while strobing our headlamps. I think we might have outdone Time's Square. I have a video but unfortunately the internet connection is too slow to upload it.

The end! Happy Holidays everyone, I've got a good feeling about 2011.

I figured I'd start with a little more information about my island, Ambae (pronounced am-by, as in ambiance and goodbye).

As you can see from the map below and as I previously mentioned, Ambae is fairly far north in Penama province (shared by Pentecost and Maewo) and not very close to the capitol. Direct flights from Port Vila to Ambae do exist, but are few and far in between. The easiest way to reach Ambae is via a connecting flight in Santo, which is just west of Ambae. Port Vila to Santo is about an hour flight, Santo to Ambae is about 40 minutes... not including layover time (which in my experience is usually around three hours, even if the flight is "running on time"). A few cargo ships dock in Lolowai (the port on Ambae) which also serve as means of transportation on and off the island and is how I got all of my things out there. Up until recently Vanuatu had one passenger ship, Big Sista, traveling between Efate, Epi, Malakula and Santo. I've heard a rumor of a new passenger ship called the Efate Queen traveling between Efate, Santo, Ambae and Pentecost and I really hope it's true. The captain is supposedly from Ambae so hopefully this will mean frequent trips to the area. Because of it's geography, Vanuatu is one of the most logistically difficult countries in the Peace Corps. This also means that the volunteer living allowance here is the highest in the agency since it can be quite pricey to get around and everyday essentials cost so much to ship out here. This can also cause a lot of difficulty for communities in terms of basic resources, i.e. the outer islands, such as Ambae, are completely reliant on on shipments of goods that sometimes simply don't show up.

This is our fabulous group on Ambae right after site announcements. PC staff made a walkable map of the islands so we could see where we were in relation to one another, this is us standing by our paper replica of Ambae. From left to right: Megan- a nurse and fellow health volunteer working with the nursing staff at Lolowai Hospital on East Ambae, Me, Mac- a business volunteer working with a women's group on North Ambae (http://marycatherinebradley.blogspot.com), Nancy- another fellow health volunteer working at a dispensary on North Ambae (http://nancymiyake.wordpress.com), Melissa- an IT teacher working at a secondary school on East Ambae (http://pelirroja79.blogspot.com), Don-a former business volunteer posted at the national bank in Saratamata on East Ambae; he returned to the US shortly after arriving on Ambae so us ladies have taken over. I'm incredibly lucky to be surrounded by such fine individuals and don't know what I would do without their frequent support and company. We try to have slumber parties every few weeks and gab about celebrity gossip. Seriously. Send us some magazines, please.

Here's a map of Ambae I stole from a tourism site and edited my village into. As you can see it's the end of the road on East Ambae and therefore has a lot of connection with South Ambae as it's the closest access point for them. It takes me about an hour to walk to the airport, shown on here, and about two and a half hours to reach Lolowai.

This is the main store on Ambae, located in Lolowai. We refer to this as "Wal-Mart" because you can pretty much get everything you need here, although you wouldn't know it upon first glance as most things are strewn about in rotting boxes on the ground. Once you've mastered the art of the search, you can get your hands on some real gems. My favorite find was a bottle of cold chardonnay thrown in with the catch of the day- a little fishy on the outside, a lot delicious on the inside.

This is our joint bank and post office, also in Lolowai. I spend a lot of time in here pestering the one and only postal worker about the whereabouts of my mail. I'm fairly certain Peace Corps packages take up most of the space under his counter.

The current system for cash withdrawals at the bank is based solely on mobile communication between the bankers here and main branch in Port Vila. However, the most recent cyclone knocked out the tower in the area and now in order to check account balances the bankers have to take your account number down and walk up a nearby hill until they find reception. Next time you're irritated about the line at the bank, think about that one.

Here's a shot I took from the plane of the bay in Lolowai. The cluster of buildings to the very left is the hospital, where I recently discovered I can steal wifi. Ambae is one of the only outer islands fortunate enough to have any kind of internet connection so I totally lucked out on this one. You can see Maewo in the background here, which is about an hour boat ride away depending on how rough the waters are.

This is the plane that frequents Ambae most often and carries all of my mail out here. As you can see it's not very big so it usually takes a long time for me to receive anything since mail is the last thing put on board and is only put on board on a space available basis. This plane was broken for a few weeks preceding a cyclone that shut down all transportation to the outer islands so I haven't received mail in sometime. I'm still receiving things from December. Patience is a virtue.

Lindsay- a health volunteer at an aid post on West Maewo (most people on Maewo fly through Ambae and take a boat across) and Megan fresh out of the airport, in a truck headed to our sites for the first time. Can you feel the excitement?

Call me bias, but I'm pretty sure Ambae is the best island, and I've got at least four other volunteers that'll agree with me.

I just got back to the big city after four months on the outer islands, and I've got a lot to say, but I'm trying to get into my blogging groove again and I think I'll start with some long over due photos from training.

Our first training site, a training center called IDS located just outside Pango village and 20 minutes outside of Port Vila on the main island, Efate. This was my first taste of the island life.

My backyard during training- clothes lines, nakamals (the hang out spots for most of the villagers) and the beach

The road running through the center of my training village, Takara on North Efate

Making some local food with a fellow volunteer- peeling manioc is hard work, but we're not worried about it!

My host mama's favorite thinking spot: the propeller of an American plane from WWII that washed up on shore.

Playing a little futbol on the way to see a nearby hot spring

My host grandfather or "pua" and the Chief of Takara with one of my little brothers

One of my grandmothers or my "smol tia" making some local food, milking a coconut over grated banana to be baked over a fire in banana leaves (aka laplap banana)

Preparing the banana leaves for laplap with one of my little sisters

The verdict is in and I’ll be heading off to Louvinvilli, Ambae to work at a health dispensary. I’m really happy about my placement and I can’t wait to get started. I’m very excited about going to Ambae for several reasons. First and foremost, Ambae is a volcano. I’m not exactly sure how safe it is to live on the side of a volcano, but it’s definitely something I’m looking forward to putting on my resume.

Ambae is also where the provincial offices for Penama province are located so I’ll be close to the provincial hospital which will make for some interesting work experience. I’m told Louvinvilli is about a 45 minute truck ride up the volcano from the hospital and airport in Lolowae and Longona. I’m not sure how treacherous the terrain is but I’m told it takes about three hours to walk, which might just be worth it for a cold beer at one of the few stores that has a refrigerator and the prospect of internet at the hospital.

The short job description I was given highlights that the community requested a woman to come and work with the other women in the village on maternal and child health and work with the children in the school on health education specific to reproductive health. It also touched on strengthening the delivery of primary healthcare and developing the preventative capacity of the clinic through working with the village’s health committee. I’m ecstatic that this community requested a female as this is rare for Vanuatu (most sites request males) and was bracing myself to potentially be undermined in my work based on my gender.

I’ve heard great things about my community in that it’s very open and welcoming and collaborates together, which should make the facilitation of health projects go a little more smoothly (some communities are not very cooperative). I’ve also that my work counterpart at the dispensary is very nice and has a lot of ideas about where to start, so I’m excited to meet her and get to work.

My house is also very nice, Peace Corps provided us with a few small photos. I’ll be living in the nurse’s quarters right next to the dispensary, it’s a cement house with a tin roof and legitimate windows and doors. It has an indoor bathroom, although no running water or electricity. I will still need to bucket shower but I have water seal toilet instead of a hole in the ground like many locations. I’ll still need to dump water down the toilet to flush and from what I can see there’s no toilet seat, but I’m still unbelievably excited about this. I can’t wait to get settled in.

Ambae is pretty far away from Efate/Port Vila so I most likely will not be coming into town much. It is however very close to Santo/Luganville, which is Vanuatu’s other urban center and I’m told beats Vila any day. Santo is also the diving mecca of Vanuatu and I’m excited to get certified and go find Nemo. I’m not sure how this will affect my access to internet though. It’s rumored that all of the provincial hospitals have internet and if this is true, I may be able to access it there every so often. It’s sort of a wait and see type situation, but I was anticipating absolutely no internet access while at site so the prospect seems almost too good to be true. I will also have cell reception at my site, which I’m incredibly thankful for and still a little shocked about.

All the trainees are headed to Vila for the week for a bit more training and some time to purchase all of the necessary goods for site. After the weeks up we’re all headed in different directions and I’m not sure when I’ll see everybody again. Peace Corps is flying all of the health volunteers in again in February for phase two of technical health training. My address will be changing and once I know what it is I’ll post it on here. Although anything sent to the Peace Corps office in Vila that hasn’t reached me before I’ve left will still reach me eventually as the PC will forward it, it will just take longer.

So this will most likely be my last update for the next three months. That being said… happy Thanksgiving, merry Christmas and a very happy New Year!

It seems like just yesterday I arrived in Vanuatu and could barely speak a word of Bislama, but alas Pre Service training is coming to an end. Time here on the islands, and especially while spent in the Peace Corps, is a very funny thing. Sometimes it’s hard to believe things are moving as quickly as they are and that I’m now speaking semi fluent Bislama and leaving for another island soon, but at the same rate it seems as though the past few months have absolutely dragged by because of the drastically slower pace of life here. Nonetheless, a whole hoard of funny and interesting things have happened over the past month.

I experienced my very first Vanuatu earthquake. Luckily I was sitting down at the time. I was sitting outside a school talking with another volunteer when a roaring sound came out of the hills and suddenly the ground was shaking. Earthquakes are a lot different here, they’re nothing to make much of a fuss over. We sat and there and turned to each other to ask, “Is this an earthquake? Once we had established a definitive yes and the ground finally stopped shaking we went about our day and no one really said anything about it. I could be wrong on this one, but I remember reading somewhere that Vanuatu is the most disaster prone country in the Pacific. Which makes a lot of sense, its specific position on the earth makes it extremely prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, and on top of that it’s host to several active volcanoes.

Speaking strictly another language for the past few months has been tricky. I can’t help but feel like my English is slipping away from lack of use and I keep finding myself wanting to interject Bislama words when I do speak/write English. I’ll most likely come back to the states interjecting words like this without realizing, which should be pretty entertaining. Here are some of my favorites:

-Singaot: to say/shout.

-Klosup: physically close, almost, or near.

-Flas: cool, fancy, or very nice; most used in conjunction with tumas, meaning very. “Flas tumas” is one of my favorite things to say in Bislama. If someone is wearing a really extravagant island dress, you might singaot, “flas tumas!” Said with lots of sass, naturally.

-Stret: fine or it’s fine. Ni Vans use this one all the time, if someone says thank you it’s appropriate to respond with “stret”, if someone asks you how you are it’s appropriate to respond with “stret nomo”, meaning just fine. It’s used similarly to “chill” or “cool” in English as well.

-Storian: to chat or talk with. A favorite pastime around here.

I’ve noticed recently that I keep saying things in Bislama that I have no English translation for and can’t pinpoint where I learned. Meaning I learned these phrases strictly in Bislama with no prior English translation. Apparently this is how babies learn to speak, by hearing things said in a certain context and simply repeat them. So I suppose I’m on the right track. I’m able to storian with people in the village with ease now and it’s really nice to be able to talk and laugh with people without feeling like an outsider or being confused as to what’s happening. Learning another language is a lot easier once you stop trying to translate things directly and realize that a lot of the time there simply isn’t a direct translation. This is particularly true with Bislama, which has very few adjectives, much unlike English. There are no words for beautiful, frustrating, nervous, excited, and so on. Instead you have to describe things in as much detail as you can and hope you’re understood. Much of Bislama is also contextual so a lot of what you’re saying is conveyed in your tone, expression, and body language. That being said, speaking Bislama on the phone is difficult.

We had our final Bislama exam this week and we had to create a presentation on some part of Vanuatu’s history to present to the community. My topic was the eruption of a volcano called Kuwea that created several small islands (the Shepard Islands if you look on a map). I told a “kastom story” or legend of the people of Kuwea as to why the volcano erupted, and the crowd went wild, if you will. The audience was roaring with laughter and applauding throughout, although personally, I don’t think it was that funny of a story. This is the first time this village has hosted volunteers for training so I think they were just really entertaining by my ability to stand in front of them and deliver a presentation in Bislama. The story is basically that a village tricked a boy into sleeping with his mother and he got really angry with them, so he spent six years collecting pig bladders and then climbed a tree, threw all the bladders down which broke on impact, and the volcano erupted. Going into the capitol and ordering food at a restaurant or talking with a store clerk in Bislama is also quite fun. Vanuatu has very few American tourists (most are from Australia or New Zealand) and so Americans period is something, and Americans speaking Bislama? Well, that’s just crazy!

And speaking of crazy, black magic is an extremely prevalent part of culture here and quite frankly blows my mind. Many deaths in Vanuatu are said to be the result of black magic and likewise if someone dies mysteriously (most likely due to something that’s not easily identifiable like cancer) often someone in the village is blamed for that death, accused of practicing black magic, and tried accordingly in a fashion I can only liken to a witch trial. There was an incident like this recently where two men where accused, and instead of facing trial they fled to another island. Apparently the villagers followed them to this other island and hacked them dead with their bush knifes (machetes) on the beach while another village, full of women and children, watched it happen unaware of the situation. Suffice to say black magic is taken very seriously here. Lucky for us Peace Corps volunteers though, white men/women are not thought to be capable of black magic. So no witch trial for me.

Cannibalism is also an interesting part of culture here, although thankfully, an outdated one. I believe the last incident occurred in the sixties. Still a little too klosup for comfort though, if you ask me. According to the history books the first wave of missionaries that came here from Europe were quite simply, eaten. After that missionaries from other Pacific nations were sent with the rationale that perhaps since they weren’t white they would be able to do some work. But alas, they were eaten as well. I’m not sure at what point missionaries came again, but they did and did so congruently with a famine that in conjunction with the missionaries’ vivid depictions of hell scared the would-be cannibals into a more… civilized way of living. So no ending up on the menu for me either.

Yet another interesting part of Ni Van culture is “creeping”. Dating is kept very secretive here since there is so much pressure to get married quickly so creeping was developed as a way to court someone in some semblance of secrecy. Creeping is essentially a man showing up at a woman’s house late at night and either whispering her name, scratching at her window/door, or simply watching her hoping to be invited in. Can you see where it gets its name from? I suppose creeping would be all good and well if both parties involved were interested, but often times the woman is not which I’m under the impression creates a semi stalker type situation. Usually you can ward off a creeper by telling that you’re no interested and so forth, but if you’re not firm enough or don’t say anything the situation has the potential to escalate into something a bit more dangerous. That being said, Peace Corps has put us through quite a bit of safety training regarding this. So much training, in fact, that they sent someone to creep us late one night in order to “gauge our response” or “prepare us”. I was not amused. I woke up around midnight one night to someone pounding on the window right above my head whispering my name over and over. My relentless creeper would not leave after I shouted, “you go!” about ten times, so I finally had to scream, “yu wantem toktok wetem busnaef blong mi?” (Do you want to talk to my bush knife?) That seemed to work and I got pretty good markings saying that I sounded “quite angry”. Apparently if they don’t get the picture after that, dragging your bush knife alone the ground so they can hear it usually does the trick. I’m really hoping I don’t get creeped for real when I go to my permanent site. Although if I do, it’s comforting to know that I can still spit some pretty menacing Bislama while half awake.

My host family was very entertained by my response to this and lately I’ve received a lot of comments like “yu gel Vanuatu nao! Yu nomo gel US!” Meaning I’m a girl of Vanuatu now. I’ve got about a hundred mosquito bites and a lovely farmer’s tan to prove it.

My host family has also been using the snorkeling mask I brought since they do not own one (they are quite pricey here) to go spear fishing on the reef for our dinner. While out fishing the other day my uncle and a friend he was fishing with speared a shark that was coming at them. It wasn’t a very big shark but shook me up a bit nonetheless. I was asked about seafood in my diet and why I didn’t mention that earlier, and that was mostly because 1. I wasn’t getting very much seafood because my family doesn’t have a mask for fishing and 2. the seafood I was getting I didn’t like. The fish we eat here are usually very small and full of bones as they aren’t filleted. It took me awhile to build up to eating a fish head and I was constantly getting mouthfuls of tiny bones when I tried to eat the actual body. I was also given a giant sea snail that the Ni Vans eat by picking it up with their hands and simply gnawing on it. It’s very, very chewy and salty and trying to eat it in the same manner was not pleasant. I mean, this thing was a beast. But since I’ve gotten the strategy down for eating the little fish with bones and when they’re made with coconut milk they’re really delicious. You have to pick these up and eat them with your hands as well but it’s worth it. One of my favorite foods here is pumpkin boiled with coconut milk, it’s like island style pumpkin pie.

I recently just returned from a short trip to the island of Epi to visit another volunteer working in health as a part of training. The highlight of this trip was having a cockroach fall from the ceiling and hit me in the head. The fun part about this story is that the cockroach sat in my hair for awhile before one of the other volunteers noticed it and swatted it out. Epi is a beautiful island though, hair inhabiting cockroaches aside.

We’re leaving our training villages for our permanent sites soon and I have mixed emotions about it. I’m going to miss my family here a lot and am nervous about integrating into a new one. Takara has been a great host village and I’m going to miss having the ocean as my backyard and chatting with the women on the beach as they weave mats and grate root crops for laplap. The people of Takara also really want a health volunteer so they frequently ask me to stay. It’s been difficult to explain to them that in order to receive a health volunteer a community must have a preexisting health facility. Even though I know I explained this in perfect Bislama, I was still asked “what if” the Peace Corps came out and looked at a house the community has built that would according to them be perfect for a new volunteer. It’s really kind of heartbreaking, but I got them all of the paperwork I could about requesting a volunteer and the health program.

It’s been an interesting journey getting to know the people in Takara. The village seemed so overwhelming at first and now I can walk around and chat with people with confidence. I brought a few tourism type books full of pictures of Seattle/Washington and it’s been a blast showing people those. They especially get a kick out of Pike Place market and the Space Needle. My grandpa (the Chief) asked me in all seriousness if the Space Needle was dangerous because planes fly into it. The only thing that kept me from bursting out laughing at this question was the blatant concern written all over his face.

While I’m definitely going to miss this place and am a little nervous about getting thrust into the unknown again, I’m also more than ready to finally settle in and stop living out of a suitcase and begin my work. Site announcements are next week and I’ve spent awhile talking with the program managers about what I’m hoping for and so on, so my fingers are crossed!

Greetings from Vanuatu! I arrived in Port Vila on 9/12 with 41 other volunteers. It took quite awhile to reach Vanuatu with a three hour flight from Seattle to Los Angeles, 13 hour flight from Los Angeles to Auckland, New Zealand and 4.5 hour fight from Auckland to Port Vila (this flight was delayed a bit because of a luggage mix up). It was kind of eerie flying out of LA on the 10th and arriving on the 12th, since we crossed the International Date Line we essentially did not experience 9/11 because we lost that day in travel. All of us new volunteers (the 23rd incoming group to Vanuatu) met in LA first for a few days of what PC refers to as staging. After a slew of paperwork, introductions and activities pertaining to the PC core expectations/goals we were off. We were greeted at the airport in Port Vila by PC Vanuatu staff, volunteers of group 21 and 22 and a whole lot of other people excited to shake our hands, welcome us, place a sarong (what they call a “lava lava” here) and flower necklace (which are only referred to as leis in Hawaii) on us and offer us a coconut to drink. Immediately after we climbed onto a couple buses, jet lagged as ever, and headed off to a camp site about 20 minutes outside of town in a village called Pango.

The first week spent at Pango was an interesting experience; I think it was Peace Corps’ way of easing us into the culture. Slowly but surely island food (a LOT of root crops, cabbage, tin meats, fresh fruit and rice) became the norm, cold showers weren’t so uncomfortable, spiders the size of your hand seemed manageable and electricity until 9 PM seemed good enough. Bislama classes and safety trainings filled our days and we were able to socialize with each other at night. That first week passed achingly slowly and looking back seemed incredibly surreal. Shortly thereafter, still standing, we boarded buses yet again and were split up and sent to five different villages on North Efate (the main island where Port Vila is located) for eight weeks of community based training. Myself and three others were sent to a village right on the water called Takara.

Arriving in Takara we were greeted by the entire community and a huge island style lunch they had all prepared for us. We were then introduced to our host families and have been living the village life and speaking broken Bislama ever since. My host mama and papa’s names are Peter and May Albert. My papa works at a Presbyterian school about 20 minutes down the road called Onesua and my mama cooks, cleans and takes care of the children (amongst many other things, she’s a very talented woman). My family here is enormous! Family structure here is a lot different than in the states, all of my cousins are referred to as my brothers and sisters and my uncles are referred to as my papas too. So I have a ton of siblings and papas and several sets of grandparents, it’s difficult keeping everything straight and it seems like I’m related somehow to the entire village. Families here usually all live together, it’s customary to live with your siblings and parents long into adulthood until your parents pass away. My pua (the father of my host papa) is the chief of Takara, so I am of a chiefly family. He gave me the custom name of Leitau (pronounced Lay-tao, tao like meow) so no one here really calls me Kara anymore and if they do it’s pronounced car-uh… if you know me, you know that I’m very firm in the pronunciation of my name as care-uh, but alas they do not have the “air” sound in their language.

Language here has been a tricky thing. The national language of Vanuatu is Bislama (along with French and English) and thus is what we’re learning, but Vanuatu is one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world, so most speak Bislama on top of a distinct local dialect (there are about 200 here). Many of the children here don’t speak Bislama and only speak their local language and my family uses their local language to speak to each other and only use Bislama when speaking to me. Being that I only have about three weeks of language training on Bislama and still don’t understand it fully and definitely don’t understand anything in their local language other than how to say good night or good morning, it can be very difficult trying to figure out what’s going on. Bislama is an interesting language to learn as it is form of Pidgin English. Speaking exclusively in Bislama and then trying to quickly convert back to English can be quite challenging because the two are similar, but very different. For example, to say you do not have something in Bislama you would say, “mi no gat.” A lot of words are modified English words that don’t really sound English anymore and are spelled phonetically. To say good afternoon you would say, “gud aftanun”, government is “kavman”, news is “nius”, surprise is “sapraes” and so on. They have a lot less sounds and letters than English and have words that are very commonly used but mean a vast array of things. Like blong and long, for example, they are used for everything! Blong can be used to indicate possession, indicate a function, indicate a reason for an action or describe the identity of a person and long can be used to point to a location, to describe something, or can be used as a preposition. Getting those straight has been a challenge. To say “my name is Kara and my custom name is Leitao. I’m from Seattle and I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer in Vanuatu currently living in Takara” I would say “Nem blong mi Kara mo kastem nem blong mi Leitao. Mi kam long Seattle long Amerika blong mi wan voluntia blong Pis Kop long Vanuatu. Mi stap long Takara naoia.”

I’ve been living here for nearly a month now and have participated in many cultural activities. My mama showed me how to weave a basket out of dried palm leaves and I should be learning to weave a mat and a fan soon. I helped make laplap last weekend, which is the signature Ni Van dish. It’ s essentially grated yam, banana, or manioc mixed with coconut milk to make a sort of paste and then wrapped and cooked over an open fire in banana leaves. I like banana laplap in moderation but am not too keen on the others. My papa likes to take me to drink kava at the nakamal on Friday nights. Kava is all the rage in Vanuatu and a big part of Ni Van culture. It comes from the root of a kava plant and is ground up (usually by the younger village boys or the “yungfala”) into a liquid and served as a drink in coconut shells. It tastes absolutely awful, like grass and dirt. You’re supposed to drink your shell kind of how you take a shot, although a coconut shell is much larger than a short glass so that’s pretty difficult. I usually plug my nose. Drinking kava is kind of like the nice buzz you get from drinking alcohol, and interestingly enough the more you drink kava the more it affects you, which is the opposite with alcohol. To drink kava people gather at the nakamal, which is a usually a covering or clearing and in Takara’s case is a small covering right by the ocean. Kava is usually only consumed at night as it’s said bright lights, as well as loud sounds, disrupt the effect. So nakamals are quiet and dark and a little bit creepy in my opinion. I also went to the garden with my mama to plant manioc and cut banana leaves for laplap. Turns out the garden here is about a 30 minute hike into the bush (or gnar gnar jungle as I would call it back in the states) and after working away for a little while I got pretty dehydrated and my mama shouted “wait small!” and scaled an enormous coconut tree in a matter of seconds to get me some fresh coconuts to drink. I wear island dresses that look similar to muumuus every Sunday to church where my papa preaches and we sing hymns in Bislama about “Papa God”. This week the volunteers in Takara prepared a traditional island meal for lunch, which involved catching, strangling, de-feathering, gutting and roasting a local chicken. I’ve also done a bit snorkeling and came face to face with a moray eel the other morning. My uncle wants to teach us all how to fish using a piece of string and a bottle soon.

My living quarters here are very nice by Ni Van standards. My family lives in a sort of compound with several rooms and small houses that we sleep in surrounding a central dining area/kitchen and cook house. Bathrooms are separated into one small space for bathing and one for the toilet. Mine are both surrounded by aluminum with a thatched roof. My toilet had a rickety wooden door, dirt floor and is essentially a hole in the ground surrounded by a small mound of concrete with a plastic lining, typically referred to by expats in the developing world as a “squatty potty”. In order to flush you fill a bucket with water and dump it down the hole after your business. My toilet is usually swarming with geckos during the day and cockroaches at night. My shower is built the same way but with a piece of fabric as the door/curtain and a cement floor with a small hole in the center for draining. My fabric door blows open on occasion, which is always a humbling experience. In order to shower you fill a large bucket with water and use a smaller bucket or bowl to dump water on yourself. I’ve been heating up my water via the cooking fire to make it warm. Suffice to say cold bucket showers are not very pleasant. A lot of crabs seem to find their way into my shower, and there are ants living in the walls of both my toilet and shower. Most houses in Vanuatu are made out of local materials like bamboo and palm trees, but given Takara’s relative proximity to Port Vila a lot of structures are made out of cement and aluminum. My room is cement and my cook house and dining room are made out of local materials. My room is a pretty good size and my bed is decently comfortable, although sleeping in a mosquito net is a bit of a hassle… especially when you wake up in the middle of the night with crazy anti-malarial induced nightmares and find yourself trapped in a heap of scratchy material. Since malaria is present in Vanuatu, Peace Corps requires all of us to take anti-malarials which have a long list of nasty side effects like crazy, often disturbing dreams.

Living without electricity and running water thus far has been a life altering experience, to say the least. There is one running tap near my house shared by many others but the water is not safe to drink, is usually full of strange things and often doesn’t work for no apparent reason. My family has a gasoline powered generator that lights our kitchen and charges my electronics but we only turn this on about once a week. Time here is driven by the sun, we get up early when the sun rises and go to bed shortly after the sun sets. At night we use kerosene lamps.

The weather here has been difficult for me to adjust to. It’s very hot and very, very humid. Unlike in the states, there is no escaping the heat with electric fans or air conditioning. In order to stay cool you find a mango tree to sit under (notorious for being the coolest of the trees here), sit by the ocean where there’s a constant breeze, or furiously fan yourself with a fan weaved out of palm leaves.

Perhaps one of the most difficult things for me to adjust to here is the role woman play in Ni Van culture. Gender equality in Vanuatu is much different than in the states and leaves me feeling very frustrated. Typically, women here fulfill similar roles to that of women in the states several decades ago. The role of a woman is customarily to cook, clean and take care of the children/family. It is taboo for women to wear pants or shorts and many villages have what’s called a “trouser fine”. One of the other training villages has this and charges $3,000 vatu (about $30 USD) to a woman if she is caught wearing pants in public. Even when swimming or playing sports, shorts/pants are usually covered with a sarong or lava lava. Spaghetti straps and sleeveless tops are also taboo, and typically the shoulders are covered. A few islands still have arranged marriages and all islands pay what’s called “bride price”, which is exactly what it sounds like. If a man marries a woman from the same island/village he will pay that woman’s family around $30,000-40,000 vatu ($3,000-4,000 USD), if they are from different islands the price is about $80,000 vatu ($8,000 USD). Usually bride price also includes items like woven mats and pigs, which are considered valuable in Vanuatu. A man’s wife is referred to as “woman blong hem”, meaning “his woman”, and sometimes this means of reference is used instead of the women’s name. There is no word for “her” or “she” in Bislama, there is only the masculine “hem”. Several assignment sites request male volunteers because at some locations men are much more respected, and in more extreme cases, community counterparts will not work with women.

I’ve encountered an array of other challenges over the past few weeks. I became very ill my first week in Takara and thought I would have to be transported to a clinic in Vila, but luckily I was able to pull through. Adjusting to the climate and food here can take a heavy toll on your health. There also isn’t a whole lot of soap around here. Sanitation seems to be a pretty prevalent issue… I foresee facilitating many a sanitation workshop in my two years of community health service to come. I’ve had rats terrorizing my room the past couple of nights. Rats here are the size of opossums in the states and make sounds I can only describe as the sounds I would anticipate a demon to make. They’ve been crawling in through my windows (which lack screens) at night and knock everything off of my desk looking for food. The mosquitoes also terrorize me at night. I slather myself in bug spray and sleep in a net, but still, they find me. I’ve never been covered in so many bites and suffice to say I take my anti-malarials religiously. The whole “fishbowl” concept has also been frustrating. Everyone in the village knows who I am and seems to know what I’m doing before I even do.

There are a lot of great things about pre-service training thus far as well. I love my proximity to the ocean, it is literally my backyard and I can hear the waves crashing at night. We have our Bislama classes on the beach every morning. The fruit here is unlike any other fruit I’ve tasted, it’s the freshest of fresh. The papaya, coconut, bananas and grapefruit are to die for and I haven’t even tried all Vanuatu has to offer yet. Living a life of moderation and forgoing all of the excess and luxury being an American has left me accustomed to has been a very difficult but undoubtedly amazing experience and is definitely one that has changed me already and will probably continue to do so throughout my service. I do however miss internet tremendously, I feel very disconnected from the world. I am very lucky to have a cell phone though. Mobile service was just made available to most of the islands and my group was the first to receive mobile phones. So I can text and call home but it is very expensive, it ranges from 50 to 80 cents a minute, I’m not really sure how it works and none of the volunteers seem to be able to get a straight answer so I usually just talk on my phone until it beeps at me and runs out of minutes. I have to buy what are called “top up cards” to purchase minutes, they’re like little scratch card with codes you enter into your phone that put however many minutes the card was worth onto it. It’s tricky finding these cards, a lot of the small road vendors carry them and you basically have to wander along the main road saying “Digicel” (the mobile company) until you find someone that sells them and isn’t sold out already. I am very grateful to have this phone though! The people in Vanuatu are very friendly and welcoming, everyone waves at everyone. Every car that passes you on a road will wave and it’s customary to wave back, and likewise almost every person you pass will greet you. It’s nearly impossible to walk down the main road in Takara and not be received with smiles. I say nearly because some of the much smaller children have never seen white people before and are either very frightened by us to the point of tears or stare like we’re aliens. My two year old brother finally stopped screaming and crying at the sight of me. I absolutely love learning another language and culture and hope I will get the opportunity again sometime in my life.

I’m very excited to finish training and get to my site so I can begin my community health work. We don’t get to know our site assignment until right before the swearing in ceremony and I’m very nervous and anxious to see where I will go. Currently, health volunteers stay in the Shefa and Penama provinces. I’m hoping to stay near Port Vila but we’ll see what happens.

So anyway, I think this covers most major topics. I’m alive and well and trying to take it one day at a time. I miss everyone back home (especially my cat) and would love to receive some snail mail and emails!

9 days! So excited :D

More later, sleep now. Long day of shopping for solar powered things, ponchos, reef shoes and the like.

Finally. This was cutting it uncomfortably close but alls well that ends well, I suppose.

I want to take a moment to describe the circumstances that lead up to my medical clearance because I think other applicants may find it helpful. Again, my application procress was a bit out of the ordinary (please see first blog entry for details) and I'm not sure how the medical evaluation process works otherwise. For me, I had my application expedited because I was unexpectedly offered an assignment right at the six week cut off. At that time the Office of Medical Services had not even began reviewing my file. In the short, very intense 24 hour evaluation period I was told I needed some additional paperwork for something that I assumed was not an issue as they told me they would medically clear me once they received that paperwork. Unfortunately that assignment fell through for other reasons, and my medical files were put on hold. After I was offered the most recent assignment to Vanuatu a few weeks later I promptly submitted the additional paperwork.

I waited the 48 hours requested by the PC before contacting them for receipt of information. I called my screening nurse and left her a message first. Another two days after that (four business days after faxing the information) I contacted the medical assistant I had been in communication with since I first received my medical packet. This process went on for about two weeks, rotating between calling both of them every few days and leaving message trying to confirm that someone had received my information and that I had done everything correctly on my end. Three weeks passed, countless messages left, no responses. At this point my departure date was a month away, and I was getting pretty panicky. I called several other numbers at the OMS and left many more messages explaining what was going on and asking someone to please call me back and let me know if they had received my fax or not.

After almost a month of this I finally contacted the person in charge of managing the Pacific Islands assignments, who was listed on some of the paperwork I had received in my welcome packet. I explained my situation to her, and although she could not say much regarding anything medical due to confidentiality reasons she finally got me some answers. In order to do so, she physically walked down to the office of my screening nurse, gave her my name and my number and told her she needed to get in contact with me immediately. She then called me and informed me my screening nurse was in her office at that time and had said she would take my call. I called right away and she did not answer. She did however call me back the next day, and had in fact received all of my messages, but had NOT received my paperwork. I have several documents confirming I did send the fax, and it did indeed go through. Essentially my paperwork was lost in the mix. My screening nurse lacked any compassion or sympathy for my situation. Frusterated and upset with discovering that not only was my $30.00 fax misplaced by someone else's error and that I had to pay out of my own pocket to resend it and that the OMS couldn't even spare me five minutes to return my countless calls and let me know they had no such fax, I asked my screening nurse how this could happen. Her response lacked any kind of emotion other than annoyance, "we have a lot of applicants."

I refaxed the paperwork the next day as well as sent a hard copy via snail mail. My screening nurse called me to tell me that they had received it and called me again to let me know when it was being reviewed. I was cleared roughly two weeks later.

What I hope other applicants can gain from this is the understanding that you have to be persistant (even if you're treated like a nuissance) and you have to be very on top of things, the Peace Corps won't do it for you. If I wouldn't have gone about this in the roundabout way I did by contacting someone completely unafilliated with OMS I don't know that I would have been medically cleared in time to leave for my assignment. There's a good possibility I would have fallen through the cracks, and I don't want that to happen to anyone else.

That being said, I leave in 18 days! I've just barely began packing and shopping for supplies. Which brings me to my next point, I'm not sure if any other PCV's even read this, but if you do, recommendations on what to pack would be greatly appreciated! I'm really struggling trying to compile some sort of wardrobe that's appropriate for the modest culture and tropical weather. Any others packing for Vanuatu experiencing this?

This is the bane of my existence every day. every. day. This image is appropriately titled "nail biter" on my computer.

I've never had that hard of a time getting a hold of the medical office before, and I realize they're very busy and I have been patient. But I faxed all of the additional paperwork that I THINK is what they needed from to me take the hold off my account over two weeks ago. I've left voicemails with several people. I've waited more than the 48 hours they ask before you call again in between calls. Still, no calls. Nothing. Can someone PLEASE tell me if I've jumped through all the hoops they asked me to or should I jump through some more? I will if that's what it takes but it's hard when you're in the dark like I am right now.

I know I'm not alone in the frustration of applying and becoming medically cleared, I just don't know how often an applicant gets an invitation before medical clearance. I just don't want to lose an assignment for the third time.

The good news is, I got a hold of the dental office. They haven't received the returned file I mailed back to them last week yet, but snail mail is very slow from Seattle to Washington DC. At least I know that's all they needed from me and got some reassurance.

In other news, I need to update my resume and my write my aspiration statement (about what I hope to accomplish during service, etc.) today. I've been putting it off because of the complications with my application. I don't want to get to attached to this assignment if it's not 100% for sure, but I guess I don't have much of a choice. I'm going to have to take a leap of faith here.

I completely understand that many of the most rewarding things in life don't come easily. You have to work for them. So I am, and I have, and even if I get a little whiny about it sometimes, I know all of my hard work and patience will pay off in the end. I just hope this IS the end, I don't want a fourth assignment! I want this one. So I might as well blog about it, right?

Where to start...

I applied for the Peace Corps in September 2009 after graduating with a degree in Communications and Political Science from Western Washington University last June. As with most hopeful volunteers, the application process was a long, tedious and incredibly stressful one; and unfortunately, is not quite over for me just yet... but I'll touch on that later.

I was originally nominated for Youth Development in Eastern Europe leaving September 2010. Post interview and just slightly pre nomination, in attempt to become a "more competitive applicant" I began to pursue all things medical/health care related. I began volunteering with the American Red Cross of King and Kitsap counties as a youth basic aid and disaster preparedness instructor and went back to school for a short program to become a Certified Nursing Assistant. After completing the program I began working as a nursing assistant at a rehabilitation and nursing facility and eventually moved to the cardiac care unit of my local hospital. It seemed my new found experience wasn't going to apply to my assignment at all until I got a call in late June asking me if I would be interested in leaving for Sub-Saharan Africa on July 19th for HIV/AIDS development. I was completely caught off guard with this. For starters, I hadn't even been medically cleared yet. The Office of Medical Services had not even begun reviewing my file. This potential assignment was nothing like my nomination and it was leaving very soon. Most surprising to me, a placement officer had come across my specific application and essentially seemed to have hand picked me for this assignment. I felt honored and was bursting with excitement, so naturally I accepted. My medical file was then expedited. The backwards nature of this is where things got complicated. To make a long story short, some inaccurate paperwork filled out by my doctor stated I had a very severe egg allergy and could not receive the proper vaccinations (which contain eggs) to serve in Zambia (which the OMS slipped to me by accident was the country of assignment). In the past I had a very mild egg allergy, with no reaction to any vaccines like the flu shot and could have/can receive all of the necessary vaccinations. But alas, I could not provide documentation of this in the short 24 hour period the program was closing and the Peace Corps doesn't take any risks with these things anyway. They offered me an assignment and then told me not only was I not fit to serve in that country, I couldn't serve in the entire continent of Africa specifically because of that allergy. Needless to say, I was devastated.

I then received another call in early July asking if I would be interested in an assignment in Sub-Saharan Africa for HIV/AIDS development leaving on August 9th. Apparently OMS informed my placement officer that they were going to medically clear me after all (after receiving new information pertaining to my egg allergy) but that they also needed some additional documentation resubmitted because portions of this paperwork were left blank with a "please see attached documentation" referring to medical records my doctor attached with the PC forms, but PC wanted their forms filled out in their entirety. It appeared now my egg allergy wasn't an issue, and the additional paperwork didn't seem to be an issue either. Extremely skeptical, I decided to sleep on this one. I mulled it over and of course, accepted with great excitement. This again got complicated. Turns out they had offered this spot to someone before me who had several years HIV/AIDS specific experience, but when they did not hear back from that person they contacted me. That person contacted them accepting right before I did and thus the spot went to them. Africa fell through for a second time. This time I was really devastated. Talk about taking candy away from a baby... TWICE.

About a week after the second major Africa disappointment my placement officer called me regarding a Community Health assignment in the Pacific Islands. My immediate response: Pacific Islands? Pffff, no way. Send me to Africa. My placement officer did not seem to enjoy this very much... and I can say without hesitation I was quite a handful for him. I'm incredibly grateful for the patience he had with me, and after actually considering the Pacific Islands and realizing that the Peace Corps didn't intend for the two previously failed assignment offers to happen the way they did, I ceased my personal vendetta and accepted the assignment with growing excitement.

As the last few weeks have progressed and I received my infamous blue packet in the mail my excitement is hardly even containable. I'm bursting at the seams with it. My departure date is 38 days away (9/10/2010) and I have so much to do and so little time! I'm completely thrilled I get to serve in a unique and beautiful place like the Pacific Islands, specifically Vanuatu.

I'm not completely in the clear yet though, and that does make me incredibly nervous and anxious and is the reason why it took me so long to get this blog up. At present, I'm neither medically or dentally cleared... so things still have the potential to fall through. I can't imagine things falling through again, especially not at this stage. I'm currently not medically cleared because of the aforementioned paperwork I had to resubmit. I can't imagine anything would go wrong with that as it's the same information already presented to them, just more formally. But I still can't help fretting about it and wondering if they'll find something glaringly rejectable about it this time around. Before they offered me the second Africa assignment they did say they were going to medically clear me once they received the additional paperwork. It makes me nervous though... like REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY nervous. Especially since I can't even get anyone to return my calls saying they at least received my fax with the updated paperwork. As far as dental goes, well... that's not even my fault so if something goes wrong with that suffice to say I envision blind rage. The dental office somehow lost my x-rays when I originally submitted them. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, they LOST a major portion of my dental file, and not a cheap one. So after a few months of trying to sort that out and getting the rest of my dental file returned to me, my dentist's office was nice enough to send them additional films and I just mailed out the rest of my file that they returned to me just last week and I have no idea if they've received them.

So anyway, fingers and toes crossed that everything goes smoothly this time. My two weeks are in at my job and I've started packing things away at my parents house, budgeting, gathering supplies, and so on. FINGERS AND TOES CROSSED, EVERYONE. please :)

and lastly- here's me, and infamous big blue. You can see the sheer delight in my incredibly cheesy grin.