The "3 Misses" back together again (its not a spice girl song????)

After the smol spel in New Zealand for Pip and Brownies wedding (photos and story to come), it was back to the somewhat warmer, wetter and more humid climes of Northern Vanuatu. Its funny how a week can make all the difference with weather, having left Vanuatu on the 31st of Jan to 30 plus degrees and no rain, and returning on the 7th of February to a rainy season with showers in the morning and a downpour at 11.30am, just when you want to head home for lunch!

Prior to the trip to New Zealand, the 3 Misses (moi et deux femme du australie) took an evening boatcruise as a favour for friends of Jen and Jess who own a dive and boat business in town. Our job was to look pretty (surprisingly hard to do given the weather, hand washing and island fashions), sup on champagne provided and enjoy the sunset while photographs were taken. I was a little hesitant at first-a reflection of the speedo’s and general 70’s pornstar persona of our captain- but it turned out to be a very beautiful way to enjoy a Santo evening.

We all assumed that the pic’s would be uploaded to some random website but low and behold, on returning to Luganville, there we are, plastered all over various shops in town! Okay, to be fair, its only a few of the more expat/tourist friendly establishments, the poster is only A4 and you have to look pretty closely to work out who it is, but still! It would have also been better if it had been a romantic, beautiful couple, but beggars cant be choosers eh?!

Saturday night brought another of the now infamous house parties (although sans island dresses), this time in Jack’s* apartment. What started with an evening of Tuskers mo 70’s/80’s kiwi music quickly turned into a night of Rorchy’s and a plethora or music geonera. Rorchy is now the koktael blong Vanuatu: Mix a generous helping of overproof Fijian rum with a dash of Orchy, a local orange juice cordial beverage. Add ice and beware of open flames! Dancing till 2am, we decided to find out where the next party was, which happened to be somewhere down the hill from the house. After crashing a rather dubious parti blong pikinini, mo walkabout mo ride blong wan truck, we eventually made it home at around 4am. Definitely a big night for Santo and I think we’re all a little wary of the ol firewater that is the Rorchy.

Sunday was spent nursing a fairly severe hangover, farwelling our landlord and his family who have been holidaying here for the last month or so, and then enjoying the luxury that is the Decostop Resort Swimming Pool. A coke, kumala chips and swimswim are just the ticket for soreheads, pity we had to go home. It’s a little sad to see the whanau go back to Vila, as we’d basically adopted each other, with plenty of time spent storianing, sharing kakae and generally hanging out. I brought Alan, the smol boy (last born, 8 yrs old) of the family a Kapai Kiwi book-I think he’s going to get me an island dress in Vila, hopefully for a more bunbun (skinny) girl than fatfat, which island dresses seem to be made for.

Otherwise, the new laptop is continuing to amuse and various jobs for both Sanma Province and Football are cropping up. We’re off to Malo next week to run a four day management plan workshop. It also looks like there’s some interesting jobs in the pipeline, including writing the Sanma Province Development Plan and undertaking environmental impact assessments and mitigation for the Santo Roading Project (reminiscent of Opus/Inroads days). So hopefully there won’t be any more complaints of not having enough to do!


* Just a quick reintroduction: Jack being the fellow kiwi, from Tokoroa (first seven years anyway) anthropologist here for nine or so months.