I haven't posted a blog update in over 3 months now and I have no good excuses. So, here is what we've been up to...
Malekula
Over the two-week school holiday back in August Cole and I
went to Malekula to visit with some of the Peace Corps volunteers there.
Malekula is the second biggest island in Vanuatu, after Santo, and is a 4 hour
ferry ride or a 25 minute flight away from Santo. The ferry ride is way cheaper
than the flight, so we decided to go with that! There are two big ferries here
in Vanuatu that travel weekly from island to island, the Vanuatu Ferry and the
Big Sister. We went on the Big Sister. The salt water was rough on the way
there and I spent most of the ride trying not to vom all over Cole! Once we
arrived safely, we spent the week traveling around and visiting 5 Peace Corps
volunteer’s sites. We don’t get to see the volunteers serving on other islands
all that much and we miss them, so it was nice to spend time them and see how
they live at their site, as all sites are unique and different. Here are a few photos from the trip..More photos can be seen in my Facebook album, "Malo, Malekula, Pentecost" Follow this link to find the photos...
Caro's Facebook
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| Cynthia's site! |
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| Cynthia's site! |
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| Shaheed's Site! |
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| Laura's Site |
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| Sergio's Site |
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| Sergio's Site |
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| Sergio's Site |
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| Nicole's Site |
Hippo Roller
At our site, and throughout Vanuatu, water is a major issue.
Many villages do not have regular access to water and have to walk long
distances in order to collect water from the nearest source (a river, spring,
well, etc) We have a pipe water system that serves our school and the small
village across the road, “side road village”. The water for the pipe system
comes from a source up in the bush. More often than not the pipe water doesn’t
run either due to the source being too low as a result of climate change/lack of rain OR due
to people from the village near the source cutting the pipe as the result of land
disputes. When the pipe water is not running we use rain tanks at our school
for drinking and cooking and we walk to a river to fetch water for bathing and
washing clothes/dishes. Many villages do not have a pipe system and rely solely
on rain tanks. The rain tanks often run dry due to lack of rain. When the tanks
are dry, they also walk to the nearest source to fetch water. The two of us,
along with our school community and many people from surrounding villages have
been affected by this lack of water for most of our time here. Several months
ago Cole did some crowd funding in order for buy a water transporting tool
created in Africa called a Hippo Roller. It’s a big, sturdy drum with a
removable handle, so you push the drum to the nearest water source, take the
handle off and fill it up, replace the handle, push it home and then use the
water to fill up your smaller water containers. The drum hold 90 liters of
water. So, it saves people from having to make trips every single day because
it holds a good amount of water AND it makes it way easy to transport the water
since you can push or pull it instead of having to carry the water in your
hands. He raised enough to buy two hippo rollers and have them shipped from
Africa to Vanuatu. We gave one of the Hippo Rollers to the side road village
and we use one of them at the school. They have been a HUGE help to the
teachers and students here at the school, to the people in the side road
village and to the construction team working on our community center, which
requires TONS of water in order to build. So, we would like to say THANK YOU so
very much to everyone who donated money toward the purchase of these Hippo
Rollers. The Hippo Rollers have been such a huge help that many families are interested in getting one of their own. We talked about this at church yesterday and decided that if a family is interested they will work on getting some money together to put towards the purchase of their own roller. We agreed to do some more fundraising in order to help them match the amount of money they are able to contribute. Water is such a source of stress here and these rollers help to alleviate a small bit of that stress. If you would like to donate please visit his page here...
Cole's Hippo Roller Crowdfunding Page Thank you in advance. Every little bit helps and we are more grateful than you'll ever know.
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| Presenting some members of the side road village with their new Hippo Roller |
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| Walking to the river to fill er up! |
Community Center
If you have been following our service you know that Cole
has been working on getting a community center built here at Ebenezer Center School
ever since we first got here. It is a huge, expensive project that has required
a ton of fundraising and planning. We first started fundraising for the project
back in December 2015 when we came home for Christmas. When we got back to
Vanuatu Cole wrote and received a US AID grant for $10, 000. The past year has
been full of meetings, fundraisers and lots of waiting. The construction was
supposed to start back in June, but was delayed again and again and again and
ended up finally starting on October 3rd. There was a slight delay
in the work from Oct. 6-11th due to a tribal war/land dispute, but
since October 11th work has been steady and successful and so much
progress has been made! The construction crew and several community members
have worked hard and been very dedicated to the project. There was one day
where they started work at 3:30a.m. and didn’t stop until 10:00p.m.. The
project has been challenging, time consuming and expensive, but we hope that
when is it completed it will be a useful mutli purpose building that will
benefit hundreds of people in several different communities around south Santo.
I am so proud of Cole and we are both so thankful for the support we have
received from people back home, both financial and otherwise, throughout this
project and throughout our service in general.
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| First material delivery! |
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| Just getting started! |
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| Making progress! |
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| Slab is finished! |
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| Progress as of Nov 1st! |
Anniversary
One of the things I have enjoyed doing here in Vanuatu is
sharing the American customs surrounding engagements, weddings and
anniversaries with Ni Vans. Here in Vanuatu when two people want to get
married, the father of the groom goes and talks with the father of the bride
and they make an agreement to “block” the bride from seeing other men. This
blocking, our form of an engagement, involves a custom ceremony and starts the process
leading to the mared (wedding). So, our family and friends here found it very
interesting that in the U.S. the man goes down on one knee, gives the women a
ring and asks for her hand in marriage. Since sharing this custom, I have also
shared some of our wedding customs, such as, the father/daughter dance, the
mother/son dance, the tossing of the bouquet, the tossing of the garter, etc. I
also shared that some couples, like Cole and I, celebrate each wedding
anniversary with a specific gift. Since
our first wedding anniversary Cole and I have followed the traditional Hallmark
gifts and I have loved it. The first year we gave each other gifts made of
paper, year two was gifts made of cotton, year 3 was gifts made of leather, and
this year we were to give each other fruit or flowers. After sharing this with
our host mom, she helped me collect different types of flowers (like forget me
not and hibiscus) to make a small gift for Cole. She also helped me make the
gift. While we were making it some of the other teachers got involved and found
out that our anniversary was coming up. On the morning of our anniversary,
October 13th, there was a knock on our door at 5:30 a.m. It was our
neighbors, Emory and Mourine and their precious baby girl, Andorine. The
presented us with a cake, handmade salu salus (Vanuatu version of a Hawaiian
lei) made out of real frangipani flowers and a handmade card. They also dumped
baby powder all over us, which is a custom here in Vanuatu on special occasions
(I have no idea why). After they left,
Cole sent me on an adorable little scavenger hunt around our house that led me
to my present. I giggled with tears of joy in my eyes the whole time! Shortly
after that our host parents came over with more cake and a pig skull with two
tusks which is a very valuable gift here. We also gave them a plate full of
oreos because it just so happens that they have the same anniversary as
us!! A little while later the class one
teacher, Losaline, gave us more salu salus made out of local flowers.
Throughout the entire day I felt so much love, not just from Cole but also from
so many people in our school community. It was a special
day that served as further proof that the people on this tiny little island in
the middle of the South Pacific are as kind as they come.
The following weekend we celebrated our anniversary again by going on a cave tour that we have been planning on going on since we arrived in Santo. The cave is called Milenium Cave, as it was discovered in the year 2000, and the tour was amazing! It took you across a bamboo bridge, through a few villages, along a bush path and then through the dark cave that was invested with bats and involved walking through knee deep water filled with rocks. Once we excited the cave we ate lunch and then went canyoning across giant beautiful rocks and then floating down a long winding river. When we got back to the village where we started the tour we were given coffee and refreshments. It turns out the people who operate the tour are the parents of one of the students at our school and they ended up give us a ton of fresh vegetables to take home with us! Score!
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| Bamboo Bridge |
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| Bush Walk |
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| There were several of these ladders that we climbed down on the walk to the cave |
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| Custom face painting with clay before entering the cave |
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| In front of the cave entrance |
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| Floating down the river |
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| Small waterfall inside the cave |
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| Small waterfall inside the cave |
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| Climbing back up the ladders and through the bush on the way back to the village |
The next weekend we celebrated AGAIN with a perfect overnight stay at Aore Island resort given to us by our family from back home. We skipped school and got to the resort early last Friday morning. We spent the day relaxing, reading on the beach, paddle boarding, swimming in the ocean and the pool, sipping cocktails, taking hot showers and eating delicious food. On Saturday we ate more delicious food, went on a bike ride, did some more paddle boarded, went snorkling and relaxed a bit more before heading back to Santo and reality! It was such an amazing treat and one that we are very, very grateful for.
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| After a DELICIOUS meal with the twinkling lights of Luganville in the background! |
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| Bike ride around Aore Island |
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| We were given green coconuts when we arrived |
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| View from our bungalow |
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| Walk from our bungalow to the pool/dining area |
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| Hanging by the pool |
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| Smoothie with a view! |
Halloween
Last year a few of our friends and fellow Peace Corps Vols
celebrated Halloween at their sites. I was inspired and decided to celebrate at
our site this year. A few weeks ago during library time I asked each class if they
had ever heard of a holiday called Halloween. There was not one person, student
or teacher, at our entire school who had ever heard of Halloween. CRAZY! This
led to a discussion about different holidays around the world and how some
countries celebrate holidays that others do not. After this discussion I read
each class a book about Halloween, Clifford’s Halloween, and then told
the students all about the different Halloween customs, like pumpkin carving and
trick or treating. I showed some pictures of past pumpkin carving and of Cole
and I dressed up in costumes from previous years, which they all got a big kick
out of! I found some mask templates online and on Halloween I went around to
each class and asked them if they would like to be a cat, a pumpkin, a spider
or a monster. I made the necessary number of copies of each mask and passed
them out to be decorated. That afternoon every student from the school came and
trick or treated at our house. They loved it and we all had the best time!
Andorine dressed all in orange with her pumpkin mask and Dani dressed in a spiderman costume and
they came over after school to trick or treat, which was just about the cutest
thing ever. Several kids tried to trick me and come to trick or treat twice,
which was funny at first and then became an issue and we had to shoo them all
away and tell them it was time to walk back to their villages! It was a fun and
successful Halloween celebration and my only regret is that we didn’t do it
last year, too!
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| Pumpkin twins! |
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| Spiderman Dani |
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| Puscat Gang |
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| Class 5 ready to trick or treat! |
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| Class 1 and 2 trick or treaters! |
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| Pumpkins and Puscats! |
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| Class 3 trick or treaters! |
Around Santo and at
site
Here are some photos that show some more of what we've been up to around Santo and at our site over the past several months. There are many more on Facebook if you're interested. The link to my FB is at the beginning of this post.
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| Us with our Narango mom and dad! |
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| Ebenezer mom and dad celebrating their 50th birthdays! |
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| We spent a weekend at Jeff's and painted a world map! |
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| Canoe Cole |
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| Ralph and a little lamb |
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| My sweet love, Andorine |
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| Relay races on sports day |
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| Relay races on sports day |
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| Swimming with a sea turtle at Champagne Beach |
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| Shaheed and friends at Champagne Beach! |
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| Good times at Champagne Beach! |
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| Good times at Champagne Beach! |
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| The teachers took over library time after I did a library workshop and then they observed me for a few weeks. This is class two enjoying a read aloud after checking out books! |
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| Class 4 checking out books! |
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| Cole and one of the teachers at our school, Juliano, making a directional sign at the school! |
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| Princess Andorine! Thanks for the crown, Brittany! |
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| Rrrrrrrrrr!!! Thanks for the pirate patches, Brittany! |
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| Precious Pirate Maloni! |
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| Me with our mom and sister, Stefani, after church |
Another Cat Update
All of our cats are alive and well. Thanks to Pepper, who is still living with our neighbors, Black Tiger and Ron(da) both had kittens a few days apart. BT had 3 and Ron had 2. So, we are currently running a CATerinty ward at the Smith house. Luckily all 5 little rat killers have been claimed and will be going to live with their new owners in the next few weeks! CATastrophe avoided.
Tomorrow we are flying to an island called Ambrym to visit some PC vols and hike to an active volcano. It'll be our last trip here in Vanuatu. Once we get back we'll finish up the last few weeks of school and have the community center opening! In December we'll be hanging around Santo and doing everything we can to avoid the heat and soak up our time here! We'll spend Christmas here with our Ni van family and friends. We have our Close of Service Conference in January and plan to head home after that, which I'm getting more and more emotional about each day. Don't get me wrong, I'm ready to come home. I'm ready to hug my family and my friends. I'm ready to play ball with Murr. I'm ready to eat at the Shack. I'm ready to drive a car (someone else's at first since we are currently car-less) and jam out some good tunes. I'm ready to start a family. I'm ready. BUT, boy is it going to be hard to say goodbye. But for now I'm not going to think about that and I'm going to go and enjoy our last few months here! As always, thanks for reading and for your continued support!
