Here is some information about our training so far, what we've been up to over the last 3 weeks, our host families, food in Vanuatu, Schools in Vanuatu and Cyclone Pam
Sorry there are no pictures...it is storming here now which is making the internet move slowly and they are taking too long to load. I posted a ton of pictures on my facebook today and if you would like to see them, you can click the link to my FB account on the right. :)
Training
I haven’t really
explained our training in any of the previous posts, so I thought I would take
a minute to do that! All Peace Corps volunteers have to go through 10 weeks of
training before they can be sworn in as official Peace Corps Volunteers. During
our training we have sessions on language, culture, safety and security,
monitoring and evaluating, medical, and either education, health or IT (depending
on what you have been assigned to. So, education for both Cole and myself).
During our training we have had to get used to a number of things, including
but not limited to: trainings not starting on time, trainings being moved to
other days because of not being able to get to them due to not starting on
time, trainings being long and seemingly pointless at times, some trainings
being very helpful and useful, trainings being intense at times (mostly when
talking about intense topics, like our health or safety), lots of down time
between training sessions, etc. During our down time we talk, read, play cards,
play charades, swim, etc. Due to the cyclone, the last few weeks of our
training will change because as our right now our training has been suspended
for the rest of the week (at least) and we will have to make up the sessions we
are missing at some point. We were supposed to swear in on April 2nd…hopefully
that will still happen, but we’ll see. Our training so far has gone like this…
Week 1: All volunteers were together at our first training
site, which was called IDS and was about a 30 minute bus ride from Port Vila.
Week 2 and 3: Vitel (education and IT) volunteers went to a
training village on Lelepa Island, about a 30 minute bus ride and then a 15
minute boat ride from Vila. All community health volunteers went to Nguna
Island, about an hour bus ride and 30 minute boat ride from Vila, where they
were split up on two different villages: Taloa—which is down by the salt water—and
Mere—which is about a 45 minute hike up a mountain. We met up on both Fridays
(the first in Lelepa and the second in Nguna) for trainings sessions which
pertained to all of us…safety and security and medical mostly.
Week 4: We all went to our sites for “wokabot week” where we
got a glimpse of what our lives would be like for the next two years. We met
our host families, saw our “houses”, met the people in our villages and the
people we would be working with, etc. It was a long, exciting, challenging, eye
opening, week.
Week 5, 6 and 7: Vitel and Community Health switched
islands, so Vitel went to Nguna and split up on Taloa and Mere (Cole and I were
on Taloa, by the salt water) and Comm Health went to Lelepa. We still met up on
Friday’s, the first on Lelepa and the second on Nguna. We are still supposed to
be on Nguna and were supposed to meet up on Lelepa this Friday, but we are
currently in Vila and have been since Tuesday March 10th, due to the
cyclone.
The rest of training is TBD… we were supposed to spend next
week at the provincial capital of our islands (so Cole and I would have been in
Luganville, Santo), the following week visiting a current volunteer (we were
supposed to go to the island of Ambae), and then be in Vila until swearing in
on the 2nd and heading to our permanent sites on the 6th.
We have been told that the volunteer visits have been canceled (total bummer),
but other than that we have no idea what the rest of training will look like.
I have gotten frustrated a few times during training and I
have had to learn to be patient, go with the flow, wait and be flexible. Turns
out Island Time is a very very real thing here in Vanuatu.
Some things we’ve been up to over the last 3 weeks on
Nguna Island
· We have been doing some practice teaching at the
school in our village which has been good. We have been co teaching with other
trainees. Cole and I taught one lesson on personal experiences together, I
taught one lesson with Colton on Insects and then one lesson with Nicole on
adjectives. Cole has taught with Nicole, Colton and Thomas. He mostly likes
teaching in grades 4, 5, and 6 and I like teaching in class 2 and 3. We have
also spent a little time just observing.
·
On the first Friday we were in Nguna we went to
Lelepa for the day and when we got on the boat for our 30 minute boat ride the
clouds started to roll in. Right when the boat arrived on Nguna, it started to
POUR rain. A few of us thought for a minute about going to get our suits on and
going swimming in the rain, but then we decided there was no time to go get
suits and just went in in our clothes. It was really fun.
·
That Saturday we climbed the mountain to Mere
with some current volunteers who were there to talk to us about one of the
Peace Corps Committees and have a mini camp with some of the kids in the
village to show us what one of their events (a week long camp) would be like,
in case we are interested in joining the committee or attending the camp. It
was, again, pouring rain! So, the hike up and down the mountain was quite wet and muddy! We played Frisbee and Futbol in the rain with the kids and then did some fun activities with them to teach them about positive ways to communicate with one another. It was a fun day.
That Sunday, after church, a group of us on
Taloa decided to hike the 45 min to Mere, meet up with the volunteers there and
then hike up to a dormant volcano. We were told it was a 2 kilometer long hike.
WRONG! It was 2K to the trail to hike up the mountain to the volcano! The hike
was long, steep and hot! I was so sweaty, I could feel my heart beat all over
by body, I thought I might pass out a few times, I cried once, and once we all
got to the top we decided to be super culturally inappropriate and take of our
shirts! That’s why some of the girls in the photos from this hike are wearing
sports bras! Once we got to the top, the view was really really pretty and it
felt good to have made it. I will not ever be doing it again.
·
March 5th was Sean and Grace’s birthday.
Our host mom and Kelly’s host mom both made cakes for them. Kathleen and Hannah
hiked down from Mere and all of us got together at the beach kava bar and ate
cake, drank kava and had a lot of fun!
·
One night we went fishing with our host parents
and their family (a couple who was in town visiting them from New Caledonia).
We walked down to the beach with our headlamps and flashlights. We used beer
bottles wrapped in fishing line with a hook on the end and hermit crabs for
bait to fish. Our mama made a fire on
the beach. The moon was full and really pretty. No one caught anything, but it
was pretty fun!
·
We spend a lot of time with our small group here
on Taloa (9 of us…half of the Vitel group, since the other half is up the
mountain in Mere). There is a bungalow here that was built to house tourists
who come to Nguna. It isn’t quite finished yet so it’s not open for tourists,
BUT we have been able to use it for sessions and as a hang out. It’s right on
the beach, has a nice table with comfy wicker chairs and gets a great breeze! It’s
an awesome spot for playing cards, playing charades or just hanging out! There’s
also a great mango tree that we sometimes hang out under or have sessions
under.
·
We have also spent a lot of time with our host
family here. They are wonderful…more about them below…
·
On Saturday, March 8th we all went
into Vila for the day for an interview with our project managers. It was a
great day where we got to use the internet, talk to family and friends and eat
cheeseburgers and drink milkshakes. It was also the day we learned about the
cyclone. We were told that all of the volunteers were being brought in from
their islands and that we would probably be brought back in at some point
during the week. As you now know, we were brought in on the following Tuesday (the
10th).
Host Families
So, we now have 4 host families in Vanuatu…
Lelepa: Rex, Dominque (Tommy) and Talviroa (Talvi). They
were so wonderful to us. They are younger than us, but taught us a lot about
living in Vanuatu. They treated us, and still treat us, as members of their
family and they genuinely care for us. We also had a lot of fun with them!
Santo (my permanent site): Mama, Papa, and Junior (class 3).
They also have 2 other children who are away at school and who we haven’t met
yet. It was different there because we did not live with our host family as we
had in Lelepa and as we would in Nguna. We had our own house and walked across
the village to our families house each day at least once a day. We didn’t get to
know our papa there too well because he was away for most of the week for work
(he is a carpenter). Our mama is amazing and did everything she could for us
and more! Junior is also wonderful! He is a good student, he is respectful, he
is so helpful to his mom and he is super cute and sweet! I think he is really
excited about having us there. I know he really loved Jessica, the previous
volunteer at my site. He especially loves Cole and always wants to show him his
toys (he loves them all so much, Jessica!) and hang out with him! I can already
tell I’m going to be second favorite!
Santo (cole’s permanent site): Our family at Cole’s site
picked us up from the airport when we arrived in Luganville and had arranged
for a truck to drive us the hour in a half to our site, which was great! It was
mama, papa and their youngest son, Tyson, who is 5. They also have 3 other
sons. We only saw them one time after our first night there. We had lunch with
them the first time we hiked to Cole’s site and the second time we hiked to his
site they were not there. They seem very nice and hopefully we’ll get to know
them better once we get to our site in April!
Nguna: Papa Luna and Mama Christina. They are also amazing!
Papa is the smartest man I have met in Vanuatu so far and mama is the best
cook! Papa has traveled all over the world (which is very rare for Ni Vans) and
has even taught at Cambridge. They are two of the most kind people I’ve ever
met, and they’re also both really funny. They are older, have both been married
before and both have 4 children from their previous marriages. They are very
religious and we have devotion twice each day, once before breakfast and once
before dinner. During devotion Mama plays her homemade ukulele and sings one or
two songs and then Papa says an opening prayer, reads and talks about a bible
verse and then says a closing prayer. It normally lasts about 20 or 25 minutes.
It was really nice and Cole and I both enjoyed it. It was all in Bislama, which
really helped us and was kindof a language lesson each time, and Papa always
brought us or the peace corps into his talk. He reminds me a lot of you, Poppy.
Our host families on Lelepa, my site in Santo and Nguna took
such good care of us and we are very grateful for all of them. They are
wonderful people who took us in and treated us as a part of their family. Our
Mamas on Lelepa and Nguna both cried when we left them (of course I cried,
too!) When people take you in and take care of you like that, it is hard not to
get attached. I know we will keep in touch with all of them throughout our time
here and hopefully after!
Food in Vanuatu
Cole and I are both lucky and happy to say that we enjoy a
lot of the island kaekae! Kaekae is the Bislama word for food (and eat and
cook). We eat a lot of fruits and vegetables (some that are found in the US,
like bananas and potatoes, and some that aren’t, like taro and manioc). We also
eat a lot of rice, some meat, some fish, island cabbage, fried banana, cumala
(sweet potato) chips, simboro and laplap. Simboro is grated banana, manioc or
taro wrapped in island cabbage and cooked over a fire and usually covered with
coconut milk. Laplap is grated banana, manioc, or taro wrapped in laplap leaves
and cooked over a fire. In Vila and Luganville there are stores where we can
get ingredients to make America food, like spaghetti or tacos. Once we are at
site we will probably cook for ourselves a few nights a week and go to our host
families house for dinner the rest of the time. There is not really anything I
have found that I hate, yet. I am not a huge fan of tin meat and tin tuna,
which we also eat a lot of, but I can tolerate it. We will not be going hungry!
Schools in Vanuatu
All schools that I have seen so far have just about the same
schedule...
School here starts at 7:30 with devotion from 7:30 to 8:00.
Sometimes kids come around 6:30 and sometimes they don’t come until 8:30. English
is from 8:00 to 10:00 and then there is supposed to be a break, maybe what we
would call recess, from 10:00 to 10:15. Some kids go home during this break and
some stick around the school grounds. There is no such thing as playgrounds
here, but Cole and I are gonna try to build some swings at our schools! Most of
the time the break ends up lasting until 10:30 or 10:45. After the break they
have math time from then until lunch, which is usually from either 11:30 -1:00
or 12:00-1:00. Kids go home and eat lunch and then hopefully come back for the
afternoon. The afternoon is either used to finish work from the morning or
maybe for social science or science. School ends around 2:30. A lot of schools
have problems with both teacher and student attendance. Also, many times
teachers just walk out of the classroom and leave the class unsupervised. Some
teachers have great ideas and teach good lessons, but most do not lesson plan,
teach straight from a “teachers guide” and their lessons involve a lot of
copying things from the board or repeating what the teacher says (kind of like
robots). Learning is very teacher directed and you rarely see students working
in groups or pairs. They are generally well behaved, but most are very behind. We
will be working with the kids mostly in English during the first few hours of
the day and then maybe pulling out small groups. We will be trying to co plan
and co teach with the teachers. A lot of times we will be walking around the
village during school hours, and see kids just hanging out at their house. For
many families it does not seem like a priority and it is not a law here that
children have to attend school. So, I think we will try to do some workshops or
spread the word in our villages on the importance of education and the
importance of going to school (both for teachers and students). Also, the
volunteer before me at my site created a WONDERFUL library (seriously Jessica,
if you are reading this…it really is amazing!) and we are going to try to
collect more books for it. The library at Cole’s site right now is really sad.
They are in the process of building a new one, which we hope to be a large part
of, and we are going to try to get books for his too. So, if you or anyone you
know (schools, churches, anyone,) would like to donate books or materials
PLEASE let me know! Our schools are definitely going to be a challenge, but
hopefully we will be able to help in some way and make some difference!
Cyclone Pam
So, here is a little play by play up until this point…
As I said, we first heard of the cyclone when we went into
Vila on Saturday. We went back to Nguna on Saturday afternoon and spent Sunday
and most of Monday feeling very anxious. We knew there was a cyclone, we knew
it had potential to be a big, we knew the volunteers were being brought it, and
that’s it. Once we were back in Nguna we didn’t have access to internet and
therefore couldn’t track the storm at all, and had not heard if or when we
would be brought in to vila. We knew we had a boat ride in between us and Vila
and some of us were nervous and ready to be safely in Vila with the rest of the
volunteers. We finally got word on Monday afternoon that boats would be there
on Tuesday at 11:00am to take us to Vila. We were glad, but also started to
worry about our families there. We got to Vila on Tuesday around 2:30 (the boat
ride took forever because the water was super choppy and we, surprise, did not
leave by Nguna by 11:00). We went to the PC office and had language assessments
(Cole and I both did well!) and then went to the hotel around 4:00. We had a
meeting with PC staff at 5:00 to tell us what the next steps were, what the
current cyclone situation was, and what the plan was in case of this or that.
It didn’t seem like it was going to be too bad at that point and we were told
we were at a “stage 1” which meant we were free to leave the hotel and go
around town and that our training sessions would continue the next day. That
night we had a delicious meal at the hotel and then had a fun pool party!
Today, Wednesday, we got up and had breakfast and then Vitel and Comm Health
split up and had a training session from 8:00-10:00. Around 10:15 we all met up
for a safety and security session. Around 10:45, Judy, who is the PC staff
member who was giving our training got a phone call. Also, the group leaders
started to get phone calls (we were split into groups with vols and trainees as
team leaders to make it easier to spread info and keep everyone safe and
accounted for). We were then told that the storm had gotten worse and had changed
direction and that we would be evacuated from country. They told us to go pack
all of our things and be in the lobby in 30 minutes. I hadn’t started to panic
at all until this point. Being the emotional person that I am, I started to cry
and freak out. I wasn’t the only one which made me feel better. We came to our
room and packed our stuff in record time. We got to the lobby and were told
that our flight was leaving at 12. We were loaded onto buses with all of our
stuff by 11:50, which is when they came and told us to get off the bus and that
plans had changed. Once we were all back in the lobby we were told that DOD hadn’t
approved us to get on the military flight and that there was not enough room
for all of us. They said they were exploring other options and that there would
be a meeting with team leaders at 2:00 where they would relay the latest news
for our leaders to come and tell us. Around 3:00, we were told that the
airlines had been shut down and that it was too late to evacuate. By this time
the hotel was already being boarded up. Since then we have been getting updates
on the storm regularly and have been given information on what to do and where
to go when it hits, which will likely be tomorrow or Friday. I think we are all
feeling nervous and anxious and super worried for our families. Everyone is
trying to stay positive and stay busy. We will probably start to go stir crazy
sometime tomorrow. We are on lockdown at the hotel and we have meeting with our
team leaders at 9:00 am, 2:00pm and 10:00pm. They are still working on
finishing up boarded the hotel, it should all be done by tomorrow morning. So
far it has been windy and it has rained some. Nothing crazy yet. I’ll keep
updates coming on facebook as long as we have power and internet connection.
Anything you want to know about our time here so far that
I haven’t mentioned, feel free to ask!
Thanks for all the positive thoughts and kind words! We love
ya’ll!
