The art of walking upright Is the art of using both feet... One is for holding on The other is for letting go...

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Where did the island time go?


kava with Jack, Tony and ? , Jack's Pentecost farwell


Football teachers: and wan missis

Well, I've been in Vanuatu exactly a year now... I actually went to Port Vila a week ago, stayed at Eratap Village and hung out with Jack at the Kaiviti village motel, basically the same exact things I was doing at the same time in 2006! Bizare.

Things have been really busy lately. Jack, left a week ago, so we had plenty of leaving do's to attend. They ranged from the Chapius Pentecost family gathering with kava and pig at the Anglican Church, the drive around in a matiz taxi for an afternoon with a few beers, to the party at Jack's house with "fight oclock" and robot dancing (?). I'll definitely miss Jack, both for his friendship and understanding of this place, particularly the storianyarns.... Rorchy for life!

One of Jack's projects here was to help establish a cultural centre.... and the torch has been passed to me now. So I decided to follow Jack to Vila, to meet with EU, NZ and Aussie officials, the chairman of the cultural council, check out the cultural centre and get a bit better feel for the project. Vila is very different to Luganville, and although it was very worthwhile, I was quite pleased to get back home.

The next big thing on the agenda is the beginning of the Hotel Santo Cup 2007: Women's football Tournament. Following on from the Independance celebrations, I managed to secure sponsorship after completing some environmental assessment work for Kim from Hotel Santo. So this week is the opening of the tournament, which will go from the 11th of Sept to the week before christmas, with games being played on tuesday and thursday afternoons at unity park. We've got 8 teams participating and hopefully it will lead to registered leagues next year!

Also with football, I've been on a coaching course this week with all the Northern Island sport teachers... really interesting and always fun hanging out with the teachers. Friday afternoon we had a good kava session to finish off the week at my friend Lina's kava fundraiser.

Work at the Sanma Province is building and I'm now working on the development of a draft sanma province plan, basically for the south eastern part of Santo which is starting to experience a lot of development. There is a little bit of Environmental Impact Assessment work as usual but plenty of other things to keep occupied with.

On the sporting front, there's plenty of training and games for netball, handball and football, its just a matter of finding time!

Missions in Malekula


Hair turned in Lakatoro


Waiting to escape Vao


With the ladies after church at Lavalsal


Morning on the Northern Star


Spel Smol: somewhere in the jungle of Malekula


Our first stop at Malekula on the northeast coast


Cultural Centa, Lakatoro

It was time for a new adventure. Helen had planned to come for a visit and was keen to do some outer island exploration, so we looked at the options and decided to go for the island of Malekula: it was close, big enough to have lots of travel options, and I had a friend who was keen to show us around.

As an aside, we had a 7.2 Earthquake in Luganville the week before Helen arrived. No water for a while (again), a few damaged wharves, cracked roads and buildings. Pretty violent really... lasted for about a minute with a really violent joult. anyway....

Helen arrived on the evening of the football party, which heralded the beginning of her island kakae experience (Helen would be on a par with my family for the volume of laplap and island kakae eaten in a week). The Side Riva girls arrived, island time of course, with soso laplap, other food, kava, a stereo system, and a wide variety of zouk music. Let the party begin! Lots of good food (for those laplap appreciators out there... this one had strips of ripe banana in the yam laplap... very good! Like finding hokypoky in the icecream.... okay, maybe not quite) and attempts to dance to Zouk music. Definitely harder than it looks. Noise restrictions ment the party finished a little early, but we were all tired so it was a good thing.

The next day we met with Malvina, our guide for Malekula, and dined yet again on laplap. We decided to try and get a ship on either the Monday or Tuesday, so the following day Malvina and I did the usual driveby of the two Malekula wharves looking for ships going to Artchin Island. Eventually we found the Northern Star, which was leaving on Monday night (although the first time had been Monday Arvo, classic vanuatu travelling times). So that evening, we headed to Simionson Wharf, storianed with the captain who had lived in auckland for three years, met a girl from eastern Europe travelling to Vila on the ship, and eventually found a spot at the rear deak of the ship and tried to get some sleep.

The passage across to Malekula was good, and we reached Malekula at about 3am, but had to wait until it was light enough for cargo to be loaded so anchored of the northwest coast until dawn, listening to the chorus of birds in the jungle as the sun rose in the morning. In classic island boat travelling style, we inched our way along the coastline, picking up passengers and ngatangora roofing material along the way. Eventually we made it to our destination for the morning: Heckinsons Bay, to look at the Yalo Cave. Malvina's sister lives in a village close by, so we ate, spel smol, then made our way to the cave, only to be told that there was a dispute and namele leaves at the entrance, so no visitors allowed. Definitely a pity as the cave is quite famous here for the tree that grows inside it, handprints on the ceiling and the stories that go with the cave.

After a swim in the stream, we headed off at 12pm to begin our walk across the island with Malvina's sister, two sons and husband. At about 2pm we got to the "halfway" point the village of clearwater... no one in our party had been across from this point, so we asked for directions and were shown an alternative route, as the main route had too many garden roads that we could get lost on.

And what an alternative it was.... past the tamtams, down into a stream, following the stream till we basically reached the head of it, clambering up gullies, walking along the edge of a hogback ridge that separated the two catchments, walking across a steep hill with what might have been a track before the last big rain, back down through streams and finally reaching a village. Luckily there were pompemose (grapefruit) along the way, as our water was running low. As the sun began sinking below the horizon, we continued to walk through plantations of coconuts and cocao, finally making it to Lavalsal, our home for the week, at about 7.30pm. Bucket showers and more laplap and a bigfula sleep in Malvina's mum's house, and plenty of spel smol the next day. Amazingly all done in jandals: very island style.

The next day we relaxed in the village, had a look at the new spring that had come up from the recent earthquake, and spel smol. We headed to Lakatoro the next day on the back of a truck. Lakatoro is the Provincial Headquarters for Malekula, wo we visited the town, cultural centre, market and sorted out flights for the return leg to Santo.

Later that week, we also walked up the coast to check out the island of Vao. I thought Jack had said it was a good place to go to (apparenty, a different island, Vao being a little bit crazy!!!). We were on the lookout for carvings, and happened to meet a man along the road with some at his house for sale, so as the rain began to pour down, we headed to his place, brought some mask carvings, and waited till the rain subsided to find a boat to get to the island. The solwata was pretty rough (as it had been since we got off the Northern star) but we made it safely to Vao and headed through the mission school. A friend of Malvina's proceeded to lead us through, up to the nasara, where custom dances take place. Unfortunately, no cameras are allowed (which we were told after I'ld snapped off a quick pic of the tamtams), so we were quickly ushered through to the carving nakamal... It was a fairly uncomfortable situation, having been told off and then expected to purchase a carving, so we looked carefully at the kustom (and not so kustom) carvings, did a small toktok about how we had already purchased some but would come back with all our friends (yeah right) and headed away.... We came across another nasara and a crazy oldfula who told us not to use cameras or videos. We explained that we'ld been told this already and just wanted to see the pig-killing stones and tamtams.... but as we headed towards the nasara, he ran after us, thinking we were taking pics!

It was time to leave Vao

So we headed to the solwata, and eventually waved down the boat to pick us up... luckily a local truck picked us up and we headed back to the friendly faces of Lavalsal.

Otherwise, it was a great opportunity to see Malekula, meet some great people and live a bit of island life. And it was back to civilisation on Saturday to pick up Tom from the airport and out to Beachfront Resort for beers and pizzas (what, no laplap!) to farewell Peter who was returning back to NZ. The next day, we swam at the Matevulu Blue Hole and then went for dinner at Oyster Island, before Helen and Tom headed to Irikiki Island Resort for relaxation and the pool bar....

Independence Celebrations


Football Celebrations! Side Riva United: Independence Week Champions


Childrens Day



Custom Day at Unity Park




handball team


Luckily for the newbies to town was Independence week, basically a week or so celebration of Vanuatu achieving independence from France and Great Britain. Luganville went from sleepy town to action packed (and back to sleepy town of course)...

The celebrations kicked off with Childrens Day. My friend Desmond had a stall at Unity Park and I’d been asked to cook some cakes for the day, so all five of us (Rach, Marv, Bridget and Robyn) proceeded to bake and ice a range of kiwi classics the night before (including ginger crunch) to raise money to send Desmond to teachers college next year.

As with all things here, we kicked off Children’s Day with a march down the main road. I’ve been working on a project with Desmond’s class for story writing, so took photos of his class during the day for the kids to create stories, in a similar vein to the classic School Journals in NZ. The key message for the day was Telem no long drugs… so there were plenty of banners and posters about the dangers of dope, what hashish is etc… Following the march, hours of speeches and a particularly long prayer session, sports teams began…

Independence Week is the time when everything happens. From a place where it can be difficult to find things to do, it changes over independence where there are baby shows, motherhubbard competitions, displays, basically like a Vanuatu version of an A&P Show. At night stringbands and movies entertained the crowd while the men crowded around the multitude of kava bars set up for the punters.

During the day, most sporting disciplines had competitions for the week. It was my first opportunity to participate in women’s football, so Isabelle and I put in a team from Side Riva. I was also involved in netball (for Hybiscis) and handball…. so it resulted in some fairly hectic running between games, a strange cross between island time and games happening hurryup! Netball and handball weren’t so successful: however after a draw and loss in the football, Side Riva United managed to win all the following games, including a penalty shootout in the semifinals and a 1-0 win in the finals! A nice way to end the celebrations, particularly with the interested generated with the missis on the field.

Each day had a theme, but as part of celebrations this year, there has been a big focus on Kastom Ekonomi…. 2007 is the year of custom economy for Vanuatu. One of the announcements during our football game: “wan missis ia stap long field… bambae tomorrow, I gat wan whiteman backagain bae ia walkabout witem wan maomao”…. the following day was devoted to the kastom ekonomi, including a parade/march down the main street in kastom dress, which Jack was to take part in.

I was keen to see the kastom dress, so met Jack and his friend John on their way to the beginning of the march. When we got there, their mats were still at John’s house, so we went up to his house at Chapius area and somehow we all ended up donning kastom red mats from Pentecoste. After convincing the girls hanging round the house to come along too, we headed down and began our march with a group dominated by man Pentecost, on our way to Unity Park and in veritable speeches in the rain. Afta a couple of hours toktok, it was time for custom dancing! So I also got dragged up and danced Pentecost style, much to the amusement of the crowd…. Still, it was fun and a nice opportunity to get to know a few more of the Pentcost people in Luganville.


If it doesn't rain it pours!



Sori Tumas! Its been a while since the last blog entry, a reflection of both access to the internet and time to sit down and write.

The last few months have been a combination of plenty of visitors, new volunteers, work and the Vanuatu
Independence Celebrations.

VISITORS AND NEW ARRIVALS

Following the departure of Dave and Rene, my parents and sister Brenda arrived for a week in Santo. In comparison with more touristique visits, having told friends in Luganville that my family was coming, everyone insisted that my family come have laplap mo storian… resulting in an itinerary full of island style soso laplap (Malekula custom style), beach roasts (bbq) as well as a trip to Port Orly, Matavulu Blue Hole and a sunset cruise to Aore Island, and visits to church, Kamewa School and Sanma Provincial Council.

Then was the arrival of two new volunteers at the “fresh win” apartments. We now have a full contingent of kiwis (currently the kiwis seem to outnumber everyone else excluding babydocs in the younger expat scene). First is Robyn, from Melbourne although originally from Wellington, and working with Vanwoods. Vanwoods is a microfinance organization which has been running in Vila for a few years. Robyn is helping to set up and run the branch in Santo for 18 months as an Australian volunteer. Her arrival heralded the opening of Vanwoods complete with pre-requisite street parade and toktok long La Place (Unity Park). A friends mum asked me to take photos so I have a great day of taking pics and storianing with friends along the way.

The other new volunteer is Bridget, a mainlander who is working as a preschool teacher trainer. Both came at a good time, with heaps of stuff going on with independence celebrations, as well as meeting people and settling into island time.

The next visitors to arrive were Rach and Marvis, the niece and nephew of VSA volunteers in Vila. As it’s a bit hard to describe to people how to get to my house (you need to use a combo of descriptions “fresh win””house blong Peter James””House blong ol peacecorp””Closeup Santo East”, and you still aren’t guaranteed to get a taxi that knows where it is) I tried to make my way to the airport.

It had been raining “pig mo bullock” for four hours straight, a lot even by Vanuatu Standards. Attempts to get taxi’s were unsuccessful and finally I saw Dave Cross, a local resort manager, cruising round with a bunch of people trying to get to the airport. All roads to the airport were blocked due to flooding and the emergence of a waterfall at Rotary Park (where previously there was no stream at all, let along a torrent of water!). After trying a few other options (ie cruising around in the pouring rain on the back of a ute), to no avail, we joined the other rubber-neckers checking out the chaos at Rotary Park. Andrew was also around, attempting to pick up his granddad and sister…. Jack was also at the airport after a trip to Ambrym, so we managed to get him to round up the group of people at the airport, in anticipation of eventually being able to get through.

Eventually, a few people braved the torrent and removed some of the large coral boulders to provide a route for trucks to pass, and after 2 hours, with the rain starting to fall again, we managed to reach the airport, pick up everyone and get back into Luganville. Having sat on the back of trucks for a considerable time, and therefore soaking wet and cold, we headed home to change and then out for a classic peacecorp party at Kim’s house, with the overload of Baby Docs (about 40) and a chance for the visitors to see the full contingent of young people in Luganville… ah woo.