Pentecost Pics

Dorothy, Hanzel, Noel and Me picnicing at Ranwadi

Kakae for dinner! Brandon Stooms wan flying fox... aka bat.
La Maison du Pentecost

Elle tre jolie!
East Coast Pentecost walkabout


















Planting Water Taro, Island Style (wan woman blong Pentecost!)














Witem ol women blong Lacoco during custom mat dying
















Brandon and Noel on the "main road" to Lacoco

Meri Kristmas, Joyeux Noel, Merry Christmas: The silly season arrives!

Well, Christmas has well and truly hit ol Santo town, and with it, a number of festive events on the Santo/Luganville scene.

First up, ol man Paama had a festival which including a Fijian reggae outfit at Charpi Stadium. After cruising around Luganville on the back of an expat’s truck taking in the nightlife that is Santo’s handful of resorts and hotels, Jess, Brandon, Ian (expat truck owner) Vincent (another Vincent with the Santo 2006 expedition, accountant not sailor) and I arrived at Charpi Stadium to the beginning of an excellent rendition of the Herbs “Long Ago”. After several hours of dancing we headed off in Vincent’s truck to Palikula Beach (also known as “Club Nautique”) for a midnight swim swim witem ol phosphorescence. Nice wea. The return home made all the more amusing with wan white man ia stap long behind long truck. Emi bin wearem smol pants blong him nomo.

The following day we saw Brandon off at the airport, heading home to more civilised (and cold) climes while we contemplated the hot-rainy season ahead.

The next Saturday involved a girls night with Maxine, another VSA volunteer, and friends of hers. We indulged in pancakes, foot scrubs and facials, while watching “How to loose a guy in 10 days”. A nice break from island life but the girly flick made me think how nice it would be to have a special someone (aw shucks….).

In a parallel universe, somewhere on the island of Santo, Jess and Jen were busy creating mayhem. The following excerpt is taken courtesy of Jess Feehely:

The following weekend, Jen and I accidentally crashed the staff Christmas party at Beachfront Hotel where Vanessa Quai, Vanuatu’s most (only) famous singer, had agreed to sing a few songs for the kiddies. Vanessa (basically a Karaoke queen with a nice voice) proceeded to belt out all the regulation diva classics – Gloria Gaynor, Madonna, Whitney. Now, I challenge you to find a girl for whom early Whitney Houston isn’t a call to action, so we hit the floor with a vengeance.

The downfall of the evening began when Vanessa dedicated the J-Lo classic “Let’s Get Loud” to Marc O’Brien, a paunchy Australian who owns the main butchery in town (and, I later discovered, is a serial shagger with a trail of illegitimate ni-Van children in his wake). It’s a universal truth that a man who has learned to dance formally will insist on dancing that one style, no matter what the occasion, the audience or the music. So, he decided it was time for the jive and, despite never having met the man before, he yanked me up and led me around the floor in an excruciating series of twists and spins (which I executed very, very poorly). He then insisted on a few more dances, until he looked like he was going to have a coronary failure and I could make a dignified(ish) exit.

Sarah’s new neighbour, Jack the anthropologist refers to Vanuatu as “Paradise for Shitty People”. It’s a good description of the myriad of horrible expats (mainly middle-aged men with young ni-Van girlfriends) who exploit this country. Unfortunately, by showing a bit of enthusiasm on the dance floor I apparently earned a reputation with the Shitty People of Luganville and will have to weather their smirks and raised eyebrows for a while yet. Ugh.

[As a sort-of related aside, we received a strange wolf-whistle-ish comment the other day. A friend told us that the local boys who work at his building site passed us on the road and said “Phoah, if those girls were in island dresses, you’d have to hose me down...” Baffling. And not quite the effect the missionaries were hoping for!]

More on that episode later.

Anyway, Sunday arrived and with it, a small training for the Krab Kokonus volunteers, so we spent the afternoon helping to demonstrate crab investigation techniques (ie What am I? I’m 6 cm long, not very blue, furry belly… wait for it, I’m a female Krab Kokonus!!! Hurrah!).

Well, I stepped out of the building for a bit of air and was looking out to sea, when what should I spy (with my little eye) but a boat that looked uncannily like the Alis (you may recall that this is the French expedition ship). Shiver me timbers! I called to Jess but by the time she appeared the ship was out of sight, already approaching its berth at the main wharf. Once home, we stood on the deck looking out to the wharf: it definitely looked the Alis, but we couldn’t see the name of the ship. A dinner date had been planned with Jen to take her to Beachfront for her last meal before heading out to the villages for two weeks, so we headed there with Ian (and of course his truck). On the way home, after humming and haring for a while, it was decided to head down to the wharf to ask the guards at the gate whether it was indeed the Alis. About half way down the wharf road, there was Vincent (the sailor) on his way back from my house, where he had left a rose and a photo of himself at the door (apparently he had no writing implements to leave a message : ) we’re curious about why he carries a photo of himself in his wallet. You’ve gotta love the French). We stopped, I called out, Vincent jumped into the truck and we went back to my place for a few hours before he had to go back on duty. The Alis left again the following morning… …pretty surreal really. Especially as I had received a postcard from him that week saying that he thought he’d only stop in Port Vila. Jess reckons it must be a reflection of all the time we spent with magic men in Pentecost (including being shown the location of a cave which has magic rocks whereby you can summon men/women of your choice).

Christmas time has also brought the final pikinini tournament for the year: the “Christmas Carol Tournament”, sans Christmas carols. My main task was trying to get sponsorship from various shops in Luganville, particularly painful to do in Bislama with harassed Chinese shopkeepers. During the tournament my primary responsibility was the BBQ, more specifically the meat. This I acquired (without discount) from Jess’s paunchy Australian who initially thought I was Jess and commented on what a good dancer I was (didn’t get me a discount though!). The tasks of bringing the BBQ itself and bread were duly delegated to others, the BBQ not arriving till after lunch on the first day (so we got some Mama’s at the Market House to cook the sausies for us) and the bread not arriving till 12pm the second day…. Arrrr Island time…. Still, it was a good little fundraiser.

The duel identity crisis between me and Jess is now infamous. A recent visit to Beachfront with the girls saw Jess and Jen being introduced (for the tenth time) to the owner, Dave*. As I was about to be introduced, the guy was waved away with Dave giving me a “knowing” smile and saying that he knew exactly who I was, having been the girl from Vanessa’s gig! He seemed very unwilling to concede that I was in fact not even present on this night. Jinkies : )

It also seems to be wedding season so the following weekend Jess and I went along with Bong and some friends to a wedding reception. It’s surprising how similar weddings are, fulup kakae, pikinini, and the dancing really only starts after 11pm. Pity there was only 6 songs on the soundtrack (all in the French “zouk” style). There was even the attempt to seduce Jess by some pretty raunchy dancing! Pity it was a particularly drunk Ni-Van woman! Very amusing (for those not being accosted anyway).

We also had my debut venture to a village for work, in the form of the final Krab Kokonus komuniti toktok at Khole village. Jess, Jennifer (another volunteer, long story) and I headed up for what was to also be our end of year Christmas do, as the Khole is the village belonging to our field worker War. It was an interesting night. Although we get our fair share of comments from young guys in the streets of Luganville, it was my first real encounter with “creepers”. After the toktok and kakae there was a small dance in the Nakamal we were to stay in (sort of like a wharenui/meeting house in NZ). Basically women and children inside doing the “stringband shuffle”, men getting very kava’d in another small leanto, with the Nakamal basically surrounded by young men peering in through the windows or attempting to tell you what they would like to do to you later that night…. Hmmm. Needless to say, the whole thing was pretty disconcerting, especially as we were staying there the night, so I was pretty glad that the girls were all there and a couple of Ni-Van men that I trust. It also put the final nail into the coffin for me in terms of any regrets regarding moving to the Sanma Provincial Council next year.

Otherwise, things continue to tick along. The rainy season has yet to arrive, so it’s been surprisingly pleasant and we have made the most of it with trips to the beach or resort pools. We’ve also had a new addition by way of Jack (as previously mentioned, a kiwi anthropologist). Always good for a yarn, particularly for trying to understand the male perspective of Vanuatu. So the flats are now very antipodean, although we could also call them the Tokoroa apartments, as Jack spent his first 7 years in Tokalofa! Who would have thought!


* I’m not sure if it’s the kava, the Tusker, a combination of both, or someotha something (got to love Bislama), but I have never met so many people who are so forgetful, particularly ol whiteman!

Kristmas blong Santo: I’m dreaming of a [ ??? ] Christmas….

Jess, Jen and Sarah, lazying around



Jen, Sarah and Jess: Island Mama's! Christmas Eve. Photo for all those who requested Mother Hubbard apparel (sory tumas, me sakem sleaves blong dress blong me... hemia hot tumas!)

Jess and Sarah post christmas lunch.

















My first Christmas in Vanuatu... the festivities beginning with a small soiree on Christmas Eve at my house with the girls, resplendent in island dresses and with carols by such greats as Michael Bolton and Dolly Parton and kakae supplied via several superb care packages (thanks Auntie Amy and mum and dad). Then it was off to Saint Therese, my local Catholic Church, for a service in Francaise et Bislama… it’s a good things the carols all have the same music! We got there at 8.30, just in time for the last half hour, which was lucky as it started at 7pm and was like a sauna.

Christmas morning began with the kustom socks (Christmas stockings out of Santo-Vanuatu Island calico) and unwrapping of presents. Jen and Jess went for a morning dive on the Coolidge while I retired to my bed for a spel smol and chat with the family on the phone. Then it was off to Coral Quays Resort for Christmas buffet with a mix of expats and volunteers. After feasting on crayfish, ham, shrimps and other succulent delicacies, champers in tow, we relaxed on the resort’s jetty, followed by a swim and water fights in the pool, solwata, and back in the pool. At 6pm we eventually made our way back home to change (we hadn’t taken our togs to the resort so ended up swimming in our Christmas outfits) and then headed up to the hospital to catch up with the Baby Doc’s and watch the heartwarming Christmas season movie of Love Actually. So all in all, a very good first Tropical Christmas.

Kava bar at the end of the universe: expedition to East Coast Pentecost

Well, as a bit of an adventure while my cousin was here, I arranged for us to go and stay in Pentecost with Noel and Hanzel, the family I stayed with in Efate/Vila. There was a pretty good plan put in place initially to get to Pentecost: a one night, one day trip on MV Brisk to Melsisi, Pentecost and then onwards to the village of Lacocoa on the east coast. Unfortunately the Brisk had engine problems for about a month (including breaking down on route in Pentecost while we were there). So we were up to Plan F by the time we actually left Luganville on the MV Sarafenua, with only a very vague idea of how long it would take to get to Pentecost (ranging between one and three days) and having been unable to get a message to Noel to tell them we were on Sarafenua, due to the lack of phones on the east coast and broken public phones at Melsisi. I’ld contacted some VSA volunteers based at Ranwadi School (south of Melsisi) and arranged to stay there while we waited/hoped a message would get through.

It ended up taking two days to reach Pentecost. Unfortunately, with the Brisk out of action, there weren’t many ships running the shipping route, which goes from Santo to Ambae and then Pentecost. In Vanuatu, if you want the boats to pick up cargo or people, you light a fire on the beach. Every beach had a fire on Ambae (and sometimes two) so it was an incredibly long, slow trip. Still, the weather was good, plenty of flying fish, beautiful sunsets and black rock/rainforest/coconut plantation vistas as we made our way around Ambae. It’s a good thing that things like the ship food and heat in the passenger area seem to have been forgotten!

On the second day we reached Pentecost in the evening, and I finally worked out that the woman I had been storianing with for most of the trip was actually of cousin of Noel, so I gave her a note in English and Bislama to give to him, basically saying that we would wait at Ranwadi School for them to pick us up. I was definitely relieved to know that we had a way of getting a message to them seeing that the phones here are so dodgy.

At around 10pm on Thursday we boarded the lighter with various cargo for Ranwadi School, and with phosphorescence in our boats wake, headed to our beach fire and home for the next few days. Ranwadi School is located above a small cove and beach, and has two VSA Vols, four gap students from Aussie and the UK and various other missionary types. The school is close to a picturesque waterfall and swimming hole, and a coral sand beach with a resident dugong (cow fish). So while we waited to see if the message got through there was plenty of swimming including swim swim witem cow fis and relaxing, as well as eating plenty of fruit and a bit of island kakae at a school end of year function we attended, complete with obligatory string band.

Sunday arrived with no truck or news, so the plan was made to stay till Wed and have a look around Melsisi and a kustom village, then get a flight back to Santo on Wed morning. So, just as I was booking the flights on Monday morning, a truck pulls up at the school with a man looking like a relative of Noel. He had a written message from Noel and Hanzel (east coast people speak their own language, then French, then bislama). They had received my note at church on Sunday. So we did a quick pack-up and jumped onto the truck, heading north to Melsisi and then into the interior of central Pentecost where Noel was waiting at a Nakamal. A bit further on and we were dropped off to begin a two hour hike through rainforest to our home for the next week or so. The tracks were pretty muddy, like back-country tracks in NZ, but we eventually made it to Noel’s house. He’d basically just constructed the house in the last few months, after he knew Brandon and I were coming: a beautiful island style house, woven walls, on stilts with wooden floors (most houses have dirt floors), with a small waterfall nearby for washing, a water taro patch (and channel and bamboo irrigation system), kitchen and freshly dug out-house set on the flank of a mountain surrounded by bush and a view to the solwata.

After kakae of yam and fowl, we rested our weary feet, and spel smol. Pentecost is known as the island of the rainmakers, and unfortunately a teachers water tank was apparently empty, so it rained a lot while we were there… so some pretty treacherous walk-abouts at times, especially for Brandon, who had to walk to and from the Nakamal in the dark for kava in the evenings. Luckily they would bring a plastique of kava back for me and Hanzel, there are some bonuses to being a women in Vanuatu!

Over the next week we visited some of the villages and gardens in the area and had the opportunity to see red mats being made. These mats are used as kustom money and for grade ceremonies and are first woven and then dyed with the root of a particular tree, with banana shoot stencils used to make designs.

Life in the villages is very segregated: the men go to the nakamal, the women to the kitchens, so there was plenty of storianing with the women in the village for me, while Noel and Brandon hung out at the nakamal, like an island men’s club : ) Especially in Pentecost, if you are a guy, you can go to a nakamal any time and get kava, food and a bed… every village has a nakamal and its tabu for women to enter them. Life is pretty basic, no electricity, walkabout nomo, island kakae, but the people, once they got over the fright of white people (and the first American to visit ever!), were really beautiful and incredibly generous. Brandon received two Pentecost baskets and I received two red mats (Pentecost is famous for both).

We also went for walks around the area, along the coastline which is fairly rugged, through the coconut plantations that Noel’s father planted, to waterfalls and swimming holes. Whenever you go walkabout there is always kakae around, as long as you have a bushknife… Brandon got to shoot (and kakae) a flying fox (aka a bat). Not exactly my favourite food in Vanuatu but its not every day you stoom/shoot a bat to eat eh! Planted water taro, caught Namala (fresh water shrimps), watched Rambo for the first time ever, plenty of storianing and spel. I brought a volleyball, so Hanzel (who played volleyball for Vanuatu) and I ran a small training session for some of the village girls which was a lot of fun, playing volleyball in a coconut plantation with pigs and dogs running around!

We started to make our way back to civilisation on Sunday, and made it to the central island Nakamal only for the designated truck to arrive two hours late (island time of course). The sister of one of the girls in the village lived close to Ranwadi so the plan was to stay with her while we either got another ship or a flight to Santo. After the usual trip on the back of a ute, we arrived at dusk to a small village quite near Ranwadi School, grabbed our bags and proceeded to head up a hill. What was thought to be only a 5-10 minute work (its just around the corner) turned into probably the most excruciating hour or two of the trip (esp as the village was always “closeup”). The village was halfway up the mountain range and it had been raining so the track was very slippery…. Even Noel found the going hard (if he had known it was so far we wouldn’t have gone). When we finally got to the top, he asked if I had any panadol and quickly headed for the shower. Later, I found out that it was probably due to the fact that he’d unwittingly sat on a tin of kerosene on the back of the ute which had slowly soaked through his shorts, which explained the smell of kerosene when he gave his clothes to Hanzel after the shower. The night will be forever known as the night of the kerosene g-string/hotpants (the g-string joke is a standing joke regarding nambas, the kustom leaf worn by men. Noel has made a lot of chief grades but hasn’t done the land-diving, which most of his brothers has done, his excusing being that he needs a g-string not a nambas).

The next morning we headed down to the school to use the phone and book flights… the earliest available flight being Wednesday. Brandon and I crashed with the gap volunteers (I don’t think I could make it up that hill again) and I spent the day swimming in the solwata and waterfall, picnicking and recovering, and the following day waited with Hanzel, Noel and their family for their ship to eventually arrive to take Hanzel and her kids back to Vila.

The next morning, we got a truck ride to the airfield at Lonorore and flew back to Santo via the shortest transit stops ever, in North Pentecost and Ambae. Van Air was very un-Ni-Van! There was definitely a bit of culture shock coming back to Santo: very strange coming back to straight, tarsealed roads, taxis and powerlines, let alone Chinese shops! I hate to think what it will be like coming back to NZ!

Pic's to follow soon (island time of course!)


The following is a brief rundown of the multitude of Plan A, Plan B etc that the trip involved:

• Plan A MV Brisk on 13 November
• Plan B MV Brisk on 17 November
• Plan C MV Brisk ia brok. Wan otthafula sip: MV Sarafenua or MV Alice. Try kasam wan message long friends blong mi long east coast long Pentecost. Hem ia no got wan phone mo radio mo othafula something. Phone blong Melsisi (closest phone blong West Coast Pentecost) ia brok.
• Plan D MV Alice ia brok. MV Sarafenua long Monday
• Plan E MV Sarafenua ia go long Tuesday, 8pm
• Plan F MV Sarafenua ia go long Tuesday, 11pm, mifula go.
• Plan G Arrive Pentecost Thursday nite. Send wan message long friends blong me witem wan woman me metum long MV Sarafenua ia stap long east coast. Stap long Ranwadi School (west Pentecost) witem volunteers blong New Zealand. Wait smal for friends blong mi kasam wan message.
• Plan H Sunday. No kasam wan someting. Air Vanuatu got flights long Lonare (South Pentecost airfield) long Santo. Plan to book flights for Wednesday. Must book long Monday nomo.
• Plan I Phone Air Vanuatu. Taem me phone, wan truck ia stap long Ranwadi School witem wan message blong me from friends blong me.
• Plan J Cancel Air Vanuatu booking. Go long wan truck long central Pentecost, walk long east Pentecost.
  Arrive on East Coast
• Plan K Send a boy over to Melsisi, find out what ships are going to Santo.
• Plan L No ships going to Santo. Either, get MV Brisk to Vila then fly or a Plane to Santo
• Plan M Flights fully booked for Monday. MV Brisk mo othafula ships ia run, flights booked for Wednesday
• Plan N Ring travel agent, somehow manage to get a flight to Santo for Wednesday… lucky, as Brisk broke in Pentecost and the other ship MV Lady Sabrina broke on the trip to Vila!
  
  

wan smol update nomo

Hi there

sorry its been all quiet on the west pacific front... after an epic two week mission to Pentecost and continued work dramas the following week, I'm still in the process of composing accounts of the trip.

So a small update:
Brandon (cussy bro) went back to the States on Sunday... civilisation calls!!! (I think I am far to used to Vanuatu!)
Christmas has come to Santo, and with it, a soccer tournament to organise for ol pikinini.
Also, the rainy season has officially started, with torrential downpours, fulup humidity mo hot. At least there's plenty of mangoes, pineapples, passionfruit and watermelon in the market.

Will hopefully have a few tales posted soon.

lukum yu