Cole and Caroline's PC Adventure: February 2015

Halo yufala! (Hi Yall!) We didn't think we would have Internet for another 3 weeks but it turns out we were able to come into Luganville yesterday for the night and we are at an Internet cafe this morning until our flight to our next training village this afternoon. We spent the last week at our site (where we will be starting in April for two years). It was an interesting, challenging, overwhelming week! Here's a recap...

We came into port Vila last Sunday from our previous training village, Lelepa. At the airport we checked in-- our bags weighed way more than they should have but the guy let us check them anyway! We weren't flying international so we didn't go through security or anything.. Just got right on the plane! So different from the U.S.!! The flight to Santo was about 50 min. We were greeted at the airport by our host family and the headmaster from Coles site-- which is a 45 min walk from mine. More on that later--we hoped in a truck and were on our way. It's an hour in a half ride from Luganville to our site. The road is super rocky, very muddy at times, up and down hill and has lots of pot holes! There are three types of sites here in Vanuatu, city or main town, beach and bush, our site is very bush. It is up a hill and surrounded by thick vegetation and lots of mud! When we got to my site (which is where we will live. Cole will make the commute back and forth from his site to mine each day) we put our things down at our "house" and walked over to one of the buildings at our school--our house is on the school grounds--where there we chairs lining the walls and a table set for two in the middle of the room. We were told to sit in two of the chairs lining the walls first. A man said an opening prayer and then our host mom came and put an island dress on me, right over my clothes, and an island shirt on Cole. Next, two kids walked over to us (one picked her nose the whole walk from one side of the room to the other!) and put two leis each on us. The nose picker put the leis on cole!! Then we were told to go and sit at the table in the middle of the room. There was a cover over the food to keep the flys away. When we sat down they uncovered the food to reveal an entire chicken and some local sides. People sat in the chairs lining the walls and watched us eat. It was the most awkward 20 min of our lives! Cole kept making noises to show how good we thought the food was to break the silence! He kept whispering really funny things to me and we basically giggled the whole time! Cole ate a chicken foot-- I discretely put mine back on the tray-- then we announced that we were "fulup" and that we would like to see Cole's site! The truck drove us further up the hill to Cole's site. It was getting dark so we just took a quick look at our host families house, the school and the house they had for us there--which is currently empty. Cole's site has never had a volunteer and they are not as prepared as my site, who has had one previous volunteer for the last two years. Our host family at his site has not been trained, our house isn't ready, and the school and community don't seem to quite know what to do with us! They are supposedly getting trained though and we will help them to see what we'll be doing and what we need from them once we come back in April. Like I said though, we will be living at my site primarily so cole will mostly just go there for work and lunch and we will go to church there every once in a while and maybe do some workshops there. We think I will go to his site with him once a week and we will teach there together, and he will stay at my site one day a week. That's still to be determined though!

Anywho... After we checked out Cole's site the truck drove us back down to my site. The truck stopped at a Kava bar on the way back down and we both had a huge cup of kava. I couldn't finish mine. We went to have dinner at our host families house at my site when we got back. They are really great! Our mom is really sassy and funny and she would do literally anything for us! Our dad is more quiet but really nice! We have 3 siblings, two are away at school and one, Junior, lives at home and is in grade 3. He's great! After dinner we walked back to our place-- which is on the other side of the village, about a 7 to 10 min walk though lots of mud! When we got home we unpacked our stuff, got settled, washed our faces with buckets of water, washed our feet with buckets of water and got under our mosquito net for what we thought would be a good nights sleep...

We were awakened in the middle of the night by lots of terrifying scratching noises, which we knew almost immediately must be rats. We shined our head lamp up to the bamboo rafters that hold up our thatched roof and saw a rat running across it. I, of coarse, was so freaked out and starting crying...a lot. It was awful and all I wanted was for it to be daylight. Cole helped a lot and took good care of me. Our house is very authentic and the roof has about a one inch opening all the way across, so it was more cool that any other night so far and he was actually able to hold onto me, which also made me cry because it felt like home. We didn't get much more sleep that night and woke up in the morning to find that the rats had eaten through 2 ziplock bags and gotten into our nature valley snack bars. We told our host mom about it and she gave us a kitten to help with our little situation! She is adorable! We named her pepper and I don't seem to be allergic to her!! We found some holes in the floor where the rats seem to be coming in and we have been told they will be fixed when we come back in April.

That day, Monday, we observed in the classes at my school until around lunchtime and then the headmistress brought us lunch in our house. We ate and then rested and hung out until we walked to mammas house to have dinner. At my school there are 4 teachers, but one of them had not yet shown up for school. School started at the beginning of Feb. He showed up on Wednesday. Class 1 is taught by the headmistress, 2 and 3 are taught by the teacher who was not there, 4 and 5 are taught by another teacher and 6 is taught by another teacher. At my school when a teacher is not there, they just put an assignment on the board for the kids to do and then go check on them every once in a while. Most of the work they do is copying and repeating. Their grades are about 2 years behind the U.S., so in grade 3 they are doing 1st grade work. I will be working mostly with grades 1-3 I think. Which means I really need to work on my Bislama bc grade one is taught only in Bislama!

Tuesday we walked to Cole's site for the first time-- remember we were taken there in a truck on Sunday evening-- it is up hill, hot, muddy and long! I feel so bad for cole! When we got there we found out that his school also has 4 teachers. On this particular day 2 of the 4 were there. One was at a meeting in the village and one, who is also the headmaster (who picked us up from the airport), hasn't come to school yet this school year bc he got a month of sick leave bc he can't see far away-true story. We hung out and observed for a bit, had lunch with our host fam there-- delicious fresh water prawns-- and started to make our way back down the hill. It started to rain about 5 min into our 45 min walk and rained the rest of the way, like, poured! We laughed at our situation and what is now our life almost the whole way back down! We had dinner with our family at my site again that night. One of our bosses, Lyn, also came to visit that night and had dinner with us and stayed at our mammas house.

On Wednesday morning Cole, Lyn and myself went to the village nakamal (main meeting place) for a fundraiser. The fundraiser is super important to us because it was to raise money to bring a water pipe to the school grounds. Right now we have a water tank to use to fill our buckets for swimming (bucket bath), washing dishes and clothes, etc. but it is nearly dry and the tank is old and dirty. The kids currently have no where to use the bathroom at school - they walk home if they need to go - and have no access to drinking water at school. We need that pipe. Bad. We got to the nakamal at 8:30, which is when we heard the meeting was supposed to start. Only the chief and a few other men were there. The chief told us that the assistant chief would sound the horn soon to let everyone know to come to the nakamal. He came and sounded the horn around 9:15 and we waited until about 10:15 to start. Island time! The chief started with an opening prayer and a little speech and then cole and I talked for a min-- in Bislama!-- and then our boss talked for a while about peace corps, why we were there, etc. This was not a part of the fundraiser but it was a good opportunity to introduce ourselves to the people in the village. After Lyn's speech some people asked questions and then the chief spoke again, an elder said a closing prayer and the fundraiser started! The mamas put out food and all day and night people came and got a plate of food for 100vatu (1$) or kava for 100vatu. There was also a movie shown that night which was powered by a generator. Our village is very poor and there is no electricity or running water anywhere. Hopefully they raised a lot of money and we will have that water pipe when we come back in April. It will mean that we will have a spicket where we can fill our buckets that will come from a river.

Thats afternoon (Wednesday) was supposed to be sports day at school, which the kids LOVE, but it rained a lot and they were only able to play a little. Cole played Futbol with some of the boys.

On Thursday we headed back to Cole's school. Again, 2 of the 4 teachers were there. This time the one who was at the meeting on Tuesday was there but another teacher wasn't because he and his wife had gotten in a fight the day before where he tried to hit her and she held up his phone and he hit the phone and broke it instead. She left and went to Luganville and he wasn't at school because he came to Luganville to try to find her and get her and his son back. The headmaster/class 1 teacher was still on his cant see far away sick leave. Class 1 and class 5/6 had just been dismissed on account of their teachers not being there. We talked to the other two teachers, who just left their classes to come outside and talk to us for like an hour, and then headed back to my site. We didn't eat lunch with our host family this time bc they were at their garden which is a long walk away.

Thursday's are clean up day at my site -- and most schools in vanuatu -- so that's afternoon half of the kids got huge bush knifes and cut grass and the others picked up rubbish (trash). When they were done they had a devotion where they sang a song and said a prayer. Cole and I were observing this. After the devotion one of the kids asked if they could play sports for a while since their sports time had been cut short the day before. When the teacher said yes all of the kids started screaming and running with their bush knives across the field to put them away and get balls to play! It. Was. Terrifying! It looked as if they were all running into battle!

Cole played a little Futbol and then we both played volleyball with the girls!

On Friday we decided to walk to visit Gabriella, another peace corps vol, at her site. We were told it was an hour walk away. Wrong. We walked down a long, steep, rocky hill and then up and down hills down the muddy rocky road for an hour and 45 min. My shoes got holes in them about half way through due to all of the rocks. When we got to Gabriella's site we were exhausted and DRENCHED in sweat! It looked as if we had gone swimming! We hung out for a while and then got a transport (truck) about 3/4's of the way back and then walked up hill the rest of the way! I might not ever visit Gabriella again!!!! On Friday night we packed and then went to eat dinner with our host family. We were really hoping for a good nights sleep bc so far each night something has gone on to keep us up...

Sunday: the rats, like I said earlier.

Monday: excessive spitting and loogie hawking from the neighbors.

Tuesday and Wednesday: a trees leaves LOUDLY smacking in the wind.

Thursday: a lost puppy whining all night outside our house!!!

Friday night was great! No interruptions!!!

Saturday morning Gabrielle got a transport at her site and they came and picked up cole and I at our site. Cole and I hoped in the back of the truck and held on for dear life as it drove us the hour in half to town where we would spend the night. We spent the day with three other PC vols on santo from our group, Gabriella, Jeffrey (who is about an hour from town the opposite direction of us) and Hannah (who's site is here in town), Brian and Kate (a peace corps couple from the group before us who live here in town), and David (another PCV from the group before us who lives in town). Kate and Brian's house is so amazing! They have running water and electricity! We had lunch at an American cafe ( so delish!) and they took us to a blue hole! It was an amazing day! We all had a spaghetti dinner and then walked to get ice cream! It was also an amazing night! We took wonderful cold showers and slept without a mosquito net and with a fan! We will be coming here to town about once every two weeks to stay with either brain and Kate or with Hannah and to use the Internet, have a shower, eat american food etc!

This morning we got up feeling clean and refreshed and headed to the same american cafe to have breakfast and use the Internet! Another great day so far! We have been able to FaceTime some fam and friends... Sorry if we didn't call you! We don't have that much time!... And update the blog! I ate french toast. So good! In a few minutes we are heading to the airport. We will fly to Vila, take a bus to a boat landing and then take a boat to another training village, Nguna, where we will be for the next 3 weeks. I think I mentioned in the previous post that we will have running water and electricity at out host families house in Nguna! It's also by the beach which we are looking forward to!

So, all in all we had an okay week where we saw what our lives would be like for the next two years! We made a long list of things we will need to make our lives there more comfortable. It will be challenging, but we will get more used to it and we will be just fine! The people in both villages are nice and our host family at my site is wonderful! And we are lucky to be able to come into town every few weeks! It is really hard not having running water and being at such a bush site. The critters are also tough! But pepper will hopefully help us with that!

Here are a few pics to hopefully give you more of an insight into what our lives here are going to be like! Sorry if this post is confusing and rambled! I'm trying to hurry! Please keep the emails coming, like I've said before.

We will want to do some fundraising with some peeps from the US eventually to help with our school... More deets on that in April or May. They are in need of a lot! Remember, you can call us and/or send us packages! We need ziplock bags, duct tape, snacks, good books.. And whatever you want to send! Even just a letter! If you do send something, remember to send it in a padded envelope not a box!

We love you all! ...