Guest Blog- Returned Australian Youth Ambassador Jen P

Dress: Cocktail with a splash of island spice

With my farewell party on the horizon, complete with a tropical Pacific sunset and dive resort looking over the Segond Channel, I have decided that this would be the ideal time for me to cast my mind back on a year in Vanuatu. While my farewell party requires guests to add a splash of island spice to their attire, a year of being a volunteer in the northern frontier town of Luganville, Santo has left me feeling somewhat wizened on the subject of ‘island spice’.

While I am sure most people of the P&O cruise ship school’s idea of island spice is sipping on a Coco-Loco on a deserted white sand inlet, baking yourself until crisp under cloudless azure skies while wearing the latest Supre fashions and alien sunglasses, after living here for 52 weeks (I made it!), I can assure you that this would be labelled as ‘Bogan Tourist Island Spice’ in the MasterFoods range.

If I was to be true to the island spice theme and adorn myself in the grassroots, real-deal version for my farewell shindig I would probably be recorded as an outlier in a behavioural ecologist’s study on attracting the opposite sex, well a westernised study anyway. A ni-Vanuatu study would probably deem me suitable for a centrefold spread of ‘Sexi Missus of the Century- Miss Too Hot to Handle!’. These would be my tips for the ni-Vanuatu ‘sealed section’ fashion advisor and all my guests wishing to ‘island-it-up to the max’......
-Island dress is a must. Size must be large enough for a mother expecting quintuplets, and not give any indication that she is expecting the following week. The more tendrils, lace, non-complimentary colours, and puffy sleeves the better;
-No nailpolish, just two week old engrained dirt under the toenails. It’s going to take some industrial scrubbing to get the dirt out from under my well walked about feet.
-Jandals. As a guest on this blog site, I feel I owe it to you to use your language ;
-Eau du ‘BO’ or ‘Mould’. Most people don’t use deodorant here, you often feel yourself gasping for air in the back of a Daewoo Matiz taxi the size of a toy car and clothes just never dry with a mixture of hand-washing and humidity; and
-Frizzy hair that Kath of ‘Kath and Kim’ would be jealous of.

If we are to embellish this idea for a ni-Vanuatu Playboy Bunny of the year, I would also give the following suggestions to the photographer. It wouldn’t actually be a bunny as they don’t have rabbits here, but I can’t think of any animal that ni-Vanuatuans would label as adorable or cute as everything comes under a food category here, even cats. Anywho, I would recommend for the hard core gangsta pose with accompanying ‘homie hands’. I don’t know what else to call it, but Puff Daddy’s version of a peace sign which appears in every ni-Vanuatu photo. You could also go with props such as a bush knife and a couple of coconuts for the more rugged hunter gatherer look. Or for the homely, Simplicity look with a dash of sexiness I would probably have a smoke filled bush kitchen with an oversized pot of Australian Sunrise rice on the boil, straddling a wooden stool, gazing through the haze. The ideas are endless.

I have to admit though, that I instead opted out of the chance to become Vanuatu’s ‘It’ Misus, and wore clothes that could have wowed audiences at a Missionary fashion parade. As you can see from the photo montage, Sexi Misus, just isn’t me!

So while I tried my bestest to fit in to ni-Van culture and become part of the furniture here, being white gives you a predefined label. Most of the time as a Peace Corp volunteer. As Australian and New Zealand volunteers, Sarah, Jess and I were seriously considering printing ‘Does this accent sound American?’ t-shirts.

I would however like to think that I am going home as a semi-ni-Van. I have adopted many habits (and probably parasites) which I am sure on my return back to Oz are going to amuse friends. The habits, not the parasites. These would have to include many skills which are not going to be very applicable back home, but will add some true island spice if ever needed. These include:
-A taste for lap-lap and island food. Lap-lap is Vanuatu’s favourite food with a texture similar to glue. It comes in a variety of flavours including taro, sweet potato, plantane, banana, pumpkin, yam and my favourite wild yam. Other island food favourites include all the nuts and fruit starting with na- nangai, navele, namambe and....I give up..they all sound the same!
-Slicing and dicing pawapaw and green coconuts
-Ability to have cold showers for a year. I said ability to have, not enjoy.
-Local Bislama phrases such as ‘Ahhhhhh- wei’ at the end of a humorous statement, a strange ah-ah noise made when in agreement with someone on the phone, saying ‘Ale’ when meaning to say ‘Ok, goodbye’ and calling a goat a nanny.
*Nanny is the Bislama word for goat and every time I say it I can’t forget the time Jess and I were travelling in a boat over to Malo island off Santo. As we approached the western coast, one of the guys pointed to some bush on the point and said there were lots of nannies there. Not knowing that nanny was the name for goat at the time, I was picturing a Farside comic with dozens of grandma’s grazing in the undergrowth. Cracks me up every time!
-Hailing a taxi with the lifting of one eyebrow or a squeeking kissing noise. Then proceeding to have a chat with the taxi driver about their family, if I am married with kids, or if I have a boyfriend.
-Bislama sign language which involves flailing of the arms to indicate ‘Where are you going?’ or ‘What are you doing?’. Jess has been instrumental in adding new signs such as ‘towel’ (sorry, I couldn’t help putting some in-jokes in)
-Discovering the domesticated house-wife within. I have mastered the art of banana muffins, banana pancakes, banana cake, chocolate cake, and sweet potato salad. Not really sure why I didn’t go beyond these recipes in a year, but our supermarket has limited ingredients.

My year here has had more than just a dash of island spice experiences. I would daresay millions of experiences lasting from only a second to two weeks have made up a ‘Super Island Spice Mix’ able to blow away anyone’s taste buds. Complete with butchering a freshly killed calf in the name of World Environment Day, driving around Santo for two weeks with a team of 12 ni-Vanuatu to do a survey on the world’s largest land crab, going to the remote island of Gaua for a marijuana and kava induced cultural celebration, jumping off waterfalls into clear water holes, experiencing numerous peculiar tropical diseases, hearing Michael Bolton’s ‘Said I loved you but I lied’ over and over again, washing in rivers under the stars with fireflies in the trees....and, well the list just goes on and on.

Unfortunately, I have to finish here, as I have a few last things I need to do before I jump on the plane and head home. An island dress outing is awaiting me....

However, I would like to end this blog on a departing message to my two Vanuatu sisters, Feels and Flavs, who have made my year unforgettable and who have looked after me through the hard ‘tomato-face’ times and the good ‘three’s enough for a party’ times;
‘Word to your mother’.

This blog was brought to you by the letters e, E, C and the number 3. My computer also has a touch of island spice or in other words humidity overload, so now the above mentioned keys do not work (don’t make me copy and paste another e please!).