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!

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